First of all, I don’t believe what I have just read, which was attributed to General Azubuike Ihejirika, was written by him. I don’t. Indeed, if I believed for one second that the revered General wrote that piece, I would simply have taken a more reticent position of ignoring it. Why? The Igbo have a saying that a man that allowed an idiom to be explained to him should know that the dowry paid on the mother’s head is a waste.

In that context, I would see it as a military stratagem by the accomplished officer, a way of saying the opposite of what is in the public sphere. After all, stooping to conquer is a weapon commonly used by the military. So, I address this to the person that wrote that trash under the caption, Foolish is not Igbo, purely out of the need to counter the war currently being wedged against my people, Ndigbo and not as a reply to General Ihejirika. Who am I, even, a bloody civilian to join issues with such an accomplished soldier and a gentleman?

I can’t really remember the first time I read the piece of trash. It must be several months ago. I ignored it at that time for obvious reasons, one of them being that the political atmosphere in Nigeria is not as charged as it is at the moment and it would amount to a complete waste of time. I cannot afford that luxury today, because of the critical issues at hand and the place of the Igbo people who are the major target in them require the fullest attention to any element, no matter how minute capable of damaging them further. In fact, to keep silent now to the deliberate effort to destroy the Igbo essence, which this is all about, is criminal.

Yes! Just like the trash written by Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of Anambra State, my governor, I couldn’t make head or tail of what informed the entire rubbish I read outside the fact that there seems a hidden agenda by the author to sustain an onslaught against a people that neither stole the yam or cocoyam of Nigerians, but whose only sin is wishing and sometimes demanding to be allowed to be Nigerians – to be allowed to be citizens, not only as spare parts sellers at First Gate in Ogba, Lagos, okirika merchants at Sabon Gari in Kano or rubber shoes at Ochanja Market in Onitsha, but to actually raise the bar, by joining other groups in the country in the alluring dream of reaching the zenith of self-actualising aspirations of clinching the nation’s number one job. Matter finish!

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Now, how did Ndigbo wrong the naysayers in Nigeria? The author of the trash opened with pure lies, as usual, which have been employed times and again to try to hoodwink the unwary, to the effect that Ndigbo captured the juicy positions in the years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Pray! What position did Ndigbo get in Nigeria at that time to the exclusion of other ethnic groups? In 1999, Obasanjo, a Yoruba was the President, Atiku Abubakar was the Vice President, while an Igbo man was the Senate President. Recall, no Igbo man was a Service Chief under Obasanjo. An Igbo man was not the Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN). In fact, none has been, ever!

The likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Obi Ezekwesili and others, whose names were loud in that government, were just Ministers, which was statutorily allotted to every state. Is it the fault of the Igbo man that these Ministers, by sheer dint of performance became the stars of that government.

Okay, Chukwuma Soludo became the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) But before him, there was Joseph Oladele Sanusi, a Yoruba man. So, was it that position that is causing the whole deafening din of the Igbo took all the positions?

Under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, Ndigbo lost the Senate Presidency and began to play the second fiddle in all departments. The only notable position then, was the Inspector General of Police (IG), held by Ogbonnaya Onovo. Outside it, what next? In then National Assembly, they only occupied the positions of deputies.

It gets funnier, when you hear the din loudest about how President Goodluck Jonathan practically handed over his government to Ndigbo. Abeg, how? What were the positions they held in that government? That Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala held the position of the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy? She was nothing more than a Minister. The highest position was the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), held by Anyim Pius Anyim, outside Ike Ekweremadu and Emeka Ihedioha being Deputy Senate President and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, respectively.

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Okay, it was under Jonathan that appointed Ihejirika as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), the first of that position ever held by an Igbo man since history. But how long did it last before he was practically bullied out by those who believed that it was unheard of, in the same manner that they dealt with Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe as Chief of General Staff under the Ibrahim Babangida military presidency?

Indeed, I’ve searched in vain to see how Ndigbo were specially favoured during this period under reference that many people continue to bandy about. The only plausible explanation is that somehow, because of the need for balance, which are sometimes inevitable under democracy, except in the current dispensation of the All Progressives Congress (APC) era of President Muhammadu Buhari, where impunity has become such a fashion, the various leaders in Nigeria during the period tried to refrain from the primordial attitude of unabashedly relegating Ndigbo, or indeed any group to the background. That was how the Igbo man found himself in positions hitherto believed to be sacrosanct.

Thus their long absence from these positions, is what gave the impression of favouritism towards them. But, that was until the coming of Buhari, who, having no penchant for pretenses about his special hatred for the Igbo, and who seems to savour every opportunity to prove it in words and actions, reversed everything.

Now for those blaming the Igbo for playing bad politics under Buhar, let us examine the facts starting with the APC. Did you know that Ogbonnaya Onu was the National Chairman of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and that Rochas Okorocha brought his own faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), both of which collapsed into the party at its formation?

This was the contribution of the South East. But in the end, what did they get in return – Organising Secretary – given to my friend, Osita Izunaso – to be arranging chairs and tables and booking hotels for members during party events? That’s all the South East, a whole leg of the tripod that is Nigeria. That is the party you want the Igbo people to rush into.

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The author of the trash that was mimicking Ihejirika, pretends that it was the Igbo that began throwing stones at Buhari, causing him to act against them. What a blatant lie! Yes! Ndigbo didn’t vote for him. But so did the Yoruba not vote for Obasanjo in 1999. But did Obj draw out his bayonet to pursue every Yoruba man? Did he not employ his number six, to capture the zone subsequently, such that only Lagos survived the political tsunami that swept the entire South West into the PDP?

So, Buhari’s manifest treatment of Ndigbo, was not because they failed to vote for him, but a function of deep-seated hatred, flowing apparently from the vestiges of his civil war memories. Recall the confession of Femi Fani-Kayode, who disclosed what the President allegedly told him at a private meeting at Transcorp Hotel in Abuja, about why he would never forgive the Igbo.

Okay, Fani-Kayode could be lying. For a man that talks from both sides of his mouth as times demand, you couldn’t take that past him to lie against the President. But, has the President himself discharged himself to the contrary to disprove him either in words or deeds? Did the world not hear when he made his 97-5 per cent remarks in far away United States regarding Ndigbo? Has he deviated from its full implementation? Okay, what crime did that Igbo youth corps member commit in 2016, when he was singled out in Daura, during Christmas visit to the President, to be schooled about how his fathers were defeated in Biafra, a boy – whose parents, apparently were not even born during the war.

The impostor, writing in the name of Ihejirika, forgets that this is the time of the internet when just by a punch of the keyboard buttons, many information would unravel. He is telling the world how the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is the harbinger of the bad luck Ndigbo have been suffering in the last seven years plus. He talks glibly about a campaign of violence to pull down Buhari and his government. Where? When? At what point? What violence did the youths at Onitsha Head Bridge and Upper Iweka carry out before hundreds of them stopped bullets with their chests? What violence did the Igbo youths praying at a primary school in Aba commit, before they were mowed down in a hail of bullets from the guns of Nigerian security operatives who invaded the arena, knelt down in the manner of practice at a shooting range to take aim and open fire? Have you forgotten how the President refused to watch the video of that sad incident during an interview with Aljazeera?

Indeed, what record of violence did IPOB have before the group was designated a terrorist organisation as against Fulani herdsmen, known to have invaded and wiped out whole communities, which earned them the unenviable tag of the fourth deadliest terrorist organisation in the world, which was never acknowledged in Nigeria till date? Which house did they burn, public or private? Who did they kidnap or kill, outside carrying harmless flags, with IPOB inscribed on it?

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Yet, there had been many pictures of these youths being asked to swim in mud waters and gutters for non other reason than being found in the wrong places, by operatives, who see it as a sort of sport to subject them to the most excruciating treatment, just to show power and have fun. In fact, many parents have had to warn their children to steer clear of certain areas and be prayerful always, because, nowadays one of the easiest ways of losing a limb or two, denied freedom or even death, is to be designated an IPOB member. Some governors in the South East, who conveniently keyed in to the onslaught, have seen it as a pastime to deal with youths outside their political camps by simply designating them IPOB. Of course, it is an open and short case in such instances.

Till date, which of those arrested supposedly in the name of IPOB or Eastern Security Network (ESN), has been taken to court and proven to be behind the mindless carnage in the South East or elsewhere? Instead, the public is constantly assaulted with a harvest of dead bodies displayed on the floor by security forces, in the name of slain IPOB members.

Why would “Ihejirika,” not advise security operatives to comb the forests said to have been taken over by some terrorists, local and foreign, from where they launch attacks and cause mayhem, ferret them out and expose them by taking them to court, where the full stories would be disclosed, whether IPOB or not?

Or is shouting IPOB the only option? Why would the same supposed IPOB have a field day to attack their targets for hours without any challenge even with a police station or security formation just a shouting distance? shouldn’t these also come into the mix? Instead, what we hear are the puerile narrative that they are being sponsored by Igbo leaders, who have refused to rein them in. Ask who these Igbo leaders are, you’ll hardly get an answer.

Regarding Nnamdi Kanu’s release, Ndigbo have not asked anything out of the ordinary by toeing a familiar line. It has been done before. If he is a criminal or a terrorist as has been designated, let him suffer for his crime. But if he has not attacked anyone with cutlass or gun or arrow, as he once said in his interview, let the laws take its course. It is also important to state that whatever treatment he received should be meted out to others like him in equal measures.

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In all, like Ndigbo would say, those with lost items must visit on the day the thief would bury the mother, to see whether they would be found in his house, one day also, the truth would be exposed about who really is the culprit in the mayhem in Igbo land. May be when a Daniel will come to judgement, which might not be too long.