There are very few Yoruba or Igbo citizens of Nigeria, that would not be in favor of the equalization of citizenship in our country, and these groups draws legitimacy from the genuine pains of the aggrieved citizens. The grievances are replicated all over Nigeria, north, east, west, and south.
I apologize to all the fools that I hope to offend with this post, and I do mean every word of this apology. It is my intention to offend you, and I shall take evidence of your offenses, as my cue to be rid of you once and for all time. You wouldn’t be worthy of my friendship if you are offended. I am certain that I am unworthy of yours
If you have found anything remotely funny about the joke making the rounds about how quickly Igbo men rallied round to raise the money for Kanu’s bail, and how tardy the Yoruba nation appears to be in doing the same thing for Sowore their son, you are a fool.
If you are a Sowore supporter, and an Orange Revolutionary, and you have lent traction to these idiotic submissions, you are a fool, and you have done Sowore a great disservice.
Calm down and hear me out.
Sowore is anything but an ethnic jingoist. I have never heard Sowore speak of any ethnic nationality in the same term as Kanu is doing, and you insult Sowore when you situate his lifelong struggles within the narrow confines of tribal politics.
The Nigerian system is particularly adept at dividing the Nigerian peoples. It gains its strength and legitimacy from the fragmentation of the people, and have actively set citizens at war against themselves, when its games have gotten out of hand.
The systematic dismantling of the national cohesion that produced the June 12 phenomenon was begun by the propaganda machine of the system, ably led by Uche Chuckwumerije, and it ended with the murder of the nation birthed on that symbolic day, to be replaced with a caricature that sought to rebrand the June 12 struggle as a Yoruba tribal grievance, and to thereby distract away from the gruesome crime that its annulment was.
Nnamdi Kanu is a reaction. I believe him to be the same as Gani Adams: evidence of the failure of my generation to provide the needed leadership, and proof of the efficiency of the Nigerian state, at making reasonable citizens abandon the advocacy of grievances, to extremist voices that they then isolate, demonize, control, and or eliminate. Whilst also delegitimizing and repressing the genuine struggle.
At the core of Kanu’s agitations are the unresolved demands for the equality of Nigerian citizenship. The argument of the OPC under the late Dr. Fasheun, and the inheritor, Gani Adams, are these very same arguments. There are very few Yoruba or Igbo citizens of Nigeria, that would not be in favor of the equalization of citizenship in our country, and these groups draws legitimacy from the genuine pains of the aggrieved citizens. The grievances are replicated all over Nigeria, north, east, west, and south.
That the Nigerian middle classes have been forced into an existential crisis, have also assured that the critical space has been abandoned by them, their constant focus being on how to pay school fees, health bills, rent, build a house, eat, train the kids, all the things that the state once did for our parents, we are having to do for ourselves, and with less, even as we are also asked to carry the state on our backs.
The only question that should be agitating all conscious citizens at this critical point in the evolution of the Sowore persecution, is the fairness or otherwise of the entirety of his experience. How many of the true enemies of the Nigerian people, have had such stringent bail conditions demanded of them? How many insurgents have been arrested and charged to courts like Agba, Mandate, and Sowore? Why is the system so desirous of silencing critical voices? Our focus on existential survival, has robbed us of critical thinking and introspection.
But we should be better than this. Sowore is not an ethnic warrior. Do not join the evil system in diminishing the man that Sowore is. Like him, or hate him, he is not an ethnic irredentist, and it is to our collective shame as a people, that having known Sowore for as long as he has been in the public space, you would even find anything remotely funny about that stupid joke. Shame on you. The joke is on you.
DF
First published 22 October, 2019.
