By Dave Agwalla.
It is said that a grown child who does not ask what killed his father, may fall victim to the same cause. For some of us who were not there or fought in the civil war, l wish we did, the history we were taught in school, was it.
My uncle who visited some days back & watched Channels television news with us, the sight of young men who were being smuggled in & jumped down from Dangote containers & trailers trucks, got him so emmotional to say, ” God forbid that ndi Igbo will fight another war in my life time”? My 20+ year old son turned to me & said, “daddy was there a war before”? I said yes & he followed up with a lot of other questions which although l had answers, but was too shocked to continue with that line of discussion. He was asking because he did’nt know & history is no longer taught in Nigerian schools for him to know that, yes, there was a Biafran War which lasted for 3 years & had over 4 million people die, 85% of which was the Igbos.
In the event of another war today, God forbid, my son, his sibblings & school mates will have to be the ones to fight & they will do so with no sense of history.
Those who are being invited into the country, smuggled down south by alleged sponsors who may have also forgotten the effects & consequences of war, either because they were not in the epicentre or receiving end of the last civil war, must realise that we live in new times & so much has changed. The federal government of Nigeria which is yet to make a mention of the threats posed by these invaders, who are violating both their lockdowns & border closure orders & have not caused security agencies to put a halt to, may not be able to sustain another war down south, given that the one with Boko Haram has not been easy at all & has, unexpetedly, lasted.
No part of Nigeria will be in peace if a second war is allowed to start. There maybe no safe heavens.
Very dangerous.
It is alleged that 90% of the young men being smuggled down south or the invaders seen jumping down from mostly Dangote trucks, hidden behind bags of whatever, are not Nigerians, but ignorant Fulani tribesmen moving in from neighbouring Niger, Chad, Mali, Senegal & other African countries that have them. They were alleged to have been given blanket visas, unofficially, by President Buhari earlier this year, to come over & settle down in Nigeria as their new & only home in the world. That being the case, they should be settled up north with so much vast arable land & given the necessary farm impliments to engage in meaningful means of livelihood & contribute to the Nigerian economy. We do not have enough land to farm & cannot share the little available.
We must be mindful of the fact that if we allow these people to settle in our land or forests, as they crave to, that ‘ll be for good. We & our future generations may be forced to live with people whose culture is totally different from ours & who hate our way of life & relgion.
A “detribalised” northern friend of mine, a member of the National Assembly, confirmed to me last week, that these invaders are neither from the north, as we tend to believe, nor do they have any other home in Nigeria. That wherever they settle in the southeast or southsouth, will become their permanent homes. That from there, they will multiply, engage the land owners in frequent attacks, destroy our churches, build their worship centres & try to dorminate us. I laughed when he said we should never allow them on our land. I did because l know that apart from the south east Governors who had issued statements against the attempts to invade us, Governor Wike of Rivers state who has continued to warn them not to come his way, the Ohaneze Leader who had always spoken of the inherent danger & a few passionate individuals, like this writer, who has called on people of southeast/southsouth to rise & at least speak out, most of our people are complacent, treat the matter with so much levity with majority prefering to remain silent in the face of what may be existential threats.
Yes, our people reside in the north & other parts of Africa, but they neither sneak in nor set up tents in forests. Of course people, with skills to survive, from other parts of the country do come down here, they can rent apartments or buy land & build houses to live like our people do up north. But stealing in here inside trailers & container trucks & violating federal & state orders or covid 19 safety protocols should never be allowed by the authorities & must be resisted by every Nigerian concerned..
It is on record that southern “money bags”, alleged to be seeking accommodation & possible cprotectiom from federal graft agencies, donated billions of Naira to the federal government to fight *covid 19*, instead of giving to their state governments or communities. The monies so danated was alleged to have been used to provide pallietives for people in the north & probably paid to haul foreign invaders/fighters down south. in the south contribute immensely to Alh Dangote being the richest black man in Africa through our various patronages. We therefore feel that if he is really watching the role his goods haulage division is playing in building up crises down south without doing anything, it may cost him a fortune in terms of future revenue. He owes it to us a duty to stop the use of his trucks in the menace.. His international recognition, ranking & image may be on the line as well.
It is important to state here that & for the benefit of those who may not have been there to withness the last civil war or were not in school when history was a subject, that to encourage any group to try to engage the Igbos in a war at this or any other time, may be the greatest mistake ever.
Fighting a war, l believe, is the last thing Igbos want to do now. We call on our leaders to do whatever in their powers to discourage & stop the invassion of our land by foreingn fighters who are coming in the dark & in “goods only” trucks. This has to be done now before our angry, restless & provoked youths, mistakingly, fires the first shots,
We do not want war, but we will definitely & legitmately, defend ourselves by all aivailable means.