The tragedy called Imo state by former Imo state governor Emeka Ihedioha

THE TRAGEDY CALLED IMO STATE by Emeka Ihedioha.

I have restrained myself from writing about Imo State, the Eastern Heartland, and my beloved fatherland because of a vicious anger that refused to go away. Each time I remembered my ancestral home in the last four years, the same volume of anger flooded my spirit. My soul refused to be healed.

I restrained myself from writing because of the golden law of communication – do not speak when angry.

I was angry for two reasons. First I was angry with the Northern Islamic Oligarchy and her Feudal Lords who exploited the weakness of the Nigerian State and the gullibility of her institutions to manipulate and manufacture the tragedy that is Imo today, just to fulfill the feudal dreams of the Grand Madhi.

The last Northern Madhi, Muhamadu Buhari was determined to fulfill the territorial dream of the Grand Madhi, Sultan Usman Dan Fodio, to overrun Nigeria with militant lslam and dip the Quran in the sea, a dream the British interrupted with their emergence on the Nigerian scene and their conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903.

That dream remained the driving force of the Northern political establishment and was resumed by all means after the British left.

That dream consumes popular leaders among the kafirs and throws up unpopular compromised compliant leaders among them who will be ready to take dictations from the new Madhi.

That dream consumed Awolowo and sent him to Calabar prison, imposed unpopular leaders on the then Western Region and triggered off “Operation Wetie,” the singular evil that led to January 15 coup by Chukwuma Nzeogwu, the July 29 retaliatory coup by Muritala Mohammed, the Igbo pogroms and to Biafra.

On January 14 2020, a day prior to the celebrated January 15 coup, Muhammadu Buhari unleashed his own brand of judicial coup in Imo State. With only three years to go, Madhi Buhari turned his dreamy eyes to the Eastern Heartland. On that fateful January 14, employing an already weakened Supreme Court, with a younger Madhi in the stable, Buhari turned justice on its head, discarded the sovereign will of Imo people and imposed a compromised compliant leader on the State.

The dream paid off in full – in four years of the impostor’s government, thousands of Imo youths have been ‘converted’ to Islam through government patronage and were sponsored to pilgrimage to Mecca with government funds.

We are likely going to have more Alhajis in Imo State alone than in all the Northern states put together. This is at the expense of peace, and with a high cost in blood and terror.

Unabated evil has ravaged the state and walked naked on her streets as a result of that abrasive injustice occasioned by Buhari’s judicial coup.

The anger of a state sponsored terror in my homeland has refused to go away. It is an ongoing bloody coup, more bloody than any coup that ever happened in Nigeria.

The second reason for my unabated anger was on the treacherous sellout and greedy nuances of the Imo political elite as well as the docility of the Imo populace. Less than one month after Buhari’s coup in lmo, the whole political class began a gullible dance of solidarity for the impostors. There was no single resistance.

In the twinkling of an eye all the PDP law makers who were in the majority, including the Speaker became politically compliant, joined the conqueror’s party without quams and ditched the man elected together with them by the people.

The people were no different. A collective amnesia descended on the land. A people must get the leaders they deserve, leaders must become the government of the people. In the final analysis, Imo people simply got the government they deserved.

In 1965 the Yoruba nation, who the Igbo often derogate as cowards rose in solidarity with their true leaders and resisted the imposition of leaders by the Northern oligarchy. Nigeria changed the next year.

In 1983, the people of Ondo State rose in solidarity with their chosen leaders and resisted the imposition of an Omoboriowo on them by the same Northern establishment. Three months later, Nigeria changed again. A people must indeed get the leadership they deserve.

The Imo tragedy further revealed to me a recurring trajectory of my people, something l have discovered from experience – “You don’t fight an Igbo war, you fight your war.”

Igbo war ended with Biafra. From then till now, it is your war and your war alone. It has become ‘every Igbo for himself and God for us all. Anyone going into any battle who is counting on Igbo collective resistance is wasting his time. Such discovery has made me angry, very angry.

In 1999 we found ourselves embroiled in a war of survival as Igbo speaking Anglican worshippers in Lagos Diocese. The diocese had come up with an obnoxious law, abrogating the use of Igbo language in all Igbo speaking congregations in Lagos.

Being in the vanguard of Igbo evangelism in Lagos, and having single handedly established six thriving Igbo speaking congregations within a space of two years, I became the main target of that war.

The “Igbo Anglicans in Lagos” formed in the exigency of the existential trauma of the moment became the vanguard of that war.

At the inception of the religious war, the then Primate of the Church of Nigeria and Bishop of Lagos, His Grace, the Most Rev’d J.A Adetiloye described it as “nothing but a storm in a tea cup.” He understood the psychology of the Igbo very well.

It was exactly as he predicted. The Igbo resistance was without depth and without content. The storm faded as soon as it started with many Igbo casualties littering the religious space in Lagos.

Today, as Imo people go to the polls, I refuse to have any expectations and so refuse to be disappointed. I am still angry. I have no faith in the Imo government, I have no faith in the electoral umpire, I have no faith in the judicial system, l have no faith in Imo political elite, and above all I have no faith in the Imo people. I expect nothing, and so save myself the agony of any disappointment

If at all there is anything to expect, it is the
certainty that the next electoral robbery will be swallowed by all, hook, line and sinker. And the tragedy goes on!