JUNE 30, 2020 | EASTERN PILOT To Mazi Nnamdi Kanu; Let me express a profound appreciation over your promise to douse the tension amo...
JUNE 30, 2020 | EASTERN PILOT
To Mazi Nnamdi Kanu;
Let me express a profound appreciation over your promise to douse the tension among Biafrans during your last live broadcast, yesterday.
You have got to lower the enforcement of change in our religious attitude. You have to lower your expectation of a fast adaptation to the change you preach. Your "cut off mark" is too high for a people whose mindsets have been fixed to believing that addressing religious excesses is sinful, and worst still, blasphemous.
We are a people who have been religiously manipulated for over 200 years by our colonialists, politicians and religious leaders. And so, the adaptation to your new call for our collective reappraisal and religious consciousness can only be gradual. Bit by bit, step by step, our consciousness will be fully reawakened. But, let me gladly admit that, a lot of our people have awakened from the religious manipulation they had suffered many years back owing to your consistent charge at all of us. The remaining others will do same, with time.
To The Main Discourse;
Permit me to reassert that Biafra is for all of us fortunate to have been born into any part of the provinces and communities that make up Biafra. However, while all of us are required to contribute to the struggle for the total liberation of Biafra, not all of would lead. Some would lead, others would follow.
"In Biafra, all of us are equal stakeholders". These are regular words of Asari Dokubo. But, as much fantastic as these words sound, Asari uses them only as tools to draw unmerited equal lines with our leaders who had sacrificed hugely for the liberation of our people and Biafra.
A close watch would show that all he dreams of, is to be given a decision-making position in the highest leadership of our struggle but he seems not to be anything close to that, leading to his daily outbursts against the most cherished leader in our people's history after the late Odumegwu Ojukwu, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. However, against his personal flaws, Asari like any of us, is important, and very important in all senses of it. But our importance begins to diminish when we attack the figure that represents our collective aspiration, unjustifiably. Kanu is that figure.
Like all of us, Asari Dokubo is a Biafran. He openly "joined" the train for the liberation of Biafra after Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had been taken into custody, and the eventual unprecedented protests for his release. Before the coming of Kanu, there was no trace of proof that Asari our brother, fought for Biafra liberation. What he fought for was resource control for the Ijaws (an ethnic group in Biafra) and by extension, "Niger Delta" ( a wrong expression for oil producing states in Biafra). This piece is necessary in order to straighten the record and counter the mischievous lies always credited to Asari that he had been fighting for the liberation of Biafra before the advent of Kanu.
I will not deny the fact that, Asari's group, the Niger-Delta People's Volunteers Force, NDPVF, during its struggle, included "self-determination" in its agenda. However, like I said earlier, the struggle was for the Ijaw ethnic group, and by extension, the "Niger Delta". Ijaw as an ethnic group, is part of Biafra, and proudly so. But fighting for Ijaw can not translate to fighting for Biafran sovereignty - it rather advances the course of division imposed on Biafra by our enemies, the Fulani Caliphate and their political conspirators across Nigeria.
Asari made his first public video in support of the Biafran struggle at the height of the global protests calling for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu's release from Nigerian prison. That was in 2017. His video came as a surprise to many on the background that he fought vigorously in 2014/15 for Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the then Nigerian president who was an advocate of one Nigeria, to be re-elected into office as president.
Before the coming of Kanu on whose arrest Asari rose in defense of Biafra that year, the latter was championing the re-election of a man that wanted, and perhaps, still wants Nigeria to remain one.
Worthy of note was the fact that he had in the previous years, renounced his Nigerian citizenship as expected of every Biafran, but he quickly jettisoned the renouncement and went back to Nigeria for his political interest over who became the next Nigerian president - an action that indicated a lack of consistency.
Asari is inconsistent. Against his regular mock of the IPOB leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Asari is guilty of his own words and actions. After his release from prison and subsequent renewed threats to his life by the federal government, Asari went on exile in Contonou, Republic of Benin. He issued counter threats to the Nigerian federal government from his hideout in Republic of Benin - See Vanguard News publication of 26th February, 2010.
Also, earlier in 2007, Asari made the following statements from his prison cell in a letter to Ijaw Indigenes living in Diaspora "most struggles for the liberation of occupied territories are led by persons in Diaspora. The PLO for instance, had its headquarters in Beirut....we urge you to embrace their historic and epoch moment in one struggle by setting up a government in EXILE....." - See Scoop National News of 31st May, 2007.
We are therefore, reminded of traits of inconsistency and hypocrisy in Asari Dokubo, anytime he mocks the absence of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from Biafra land, having been in exile and also, admitted to the fact that, genuine struggles for liberation are mostly led from the Diaspora.
Back to the fight for "resource control" and "self-determination" of the Ijaw nation. Let me state categorically here that, Asari fought vigorously in defense of a course he held high. His armed struggle against the invading federal government's troops was brutal. Asari was arrested by the Olusegun Obasanjo's administration in September, 2005 and subsequently charged with treason. But, his struggle for "resource control" and self-determination" did not see the light of the day. The federal government penetrated his ranks and files and secured an "amnesty agreement" that saw to the premature abortion of the struggle. Millions of dollars were rolled into their pockets at the expense of thousands of our youths killed in the struggle which ended up enriching Asari.
Against his regular denial of being part of those who received huge sums as "amnesty program", Asari was undeniably settled off with huge sums and oil pipeline security contracts running into tens of millions of dollars. The proceeds from these settlements are evident in the businesses, schools and mansions that he built in the Republic of Benin.
My fear is that such precedents and legacies might contaminate the heart and soul of the new struggle led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, if not checked. It is my firm opinion that my fear is genuine and so, the leadership of the struggle must as always, guard and protect the struggle effectively.
N/B: This piece is not aimed at anything more than setting the record straight over the regular claims of our brother, Asari Dokubo.
Chinwendu M. Nicholas
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