- Why have they not been arrested?
The country is in an eerily familiar terrain with the exchange of threats and intimidation from sections of the southeast and the north. It came to a head with a statement from the Arewa Youths Consultative Council under the banner of the Coalition of Northern Groups that all Igbo citizens should vacate the north by October 1, this year.
In the 1960s, such tension was not only the prologue to an orgy of killings in the north now characterised as pogrom, the country plunged in a tailspin into a 30-month maelstrom of war. That chapter has remained a bloody shadow from our past and should also serve as a cautionary tale. It was a time when those who lived together in peace saw neighbours descend into barbarity. They scowled as monsters and handshakes hardened into machetes.
It is instructive to commend the northern establishment for dissociating from the ominous quit notice from the amorphous Arewa youths groups. They have drawn the flak of condemnations from governors, the interior minister and the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris. Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, who also leads the northern governors, came down unsparingly on the group, and has also called for the arrest of the persons behind it.
He said “we condemn, we disown, and we are totally distancing ourselves from those faceless groups who don’t have the mandate of northern Nigeria.” The Kaduna State governor, Nasir El Rufai, also berated the quit notice and ordered the arrests of the rabble rousers.
Sokoto State governor showed a great gesture of fraternity by hosting the Igbos in a state function, and said, in clear warmth, that the north could be no part of any action driven by hate.
In spite of the widespread condemnations and calls for arrests, the face of this unscrupulous group has remained defiant. Yerima Shettima said his group is legitimate and maintains its position that Igbos should leave the north. He argues that the order merely formalises the Igbo intention to secede within three months.
In an interview, he said, “yes, because by then they would have had a referendum to decide whether they want to be part of Nigeria or they want to have an independent nation of their own,” adding that “if after the three months they succeed in getting a referendum in having an independent state of Biafra, what business do they have again in the North?”
If not subversive, that quit notice is treasonous. We cannot but condemn them in full throttle for setting a section of a country against another. It is irresponsible, insidious, malignant, and intended to stoke the rage of primordial and ethnic hatred and distrust within the country.
We are disappointed that up till the time of writing this editorial no arrests have been made while the culprits still parade the streets of this country with the omen of pogrom and bloodbath on their sleeves. It gives the impression of official hypocrisy with the potential to encourage the subversives to roar with more threats and prod the north into a quiet acceptance of the presence of the Igbo as anathema. Such attitudes gradually bring the country into a spell of mutual distrust that births a state of mutual violence. It harks back to the 1960s and it is an episode we do not want to revisit.
The Inspector-General of Police has not explained why he has not done his duty. His passivity is to be condemned, and it is beginning to seem that either he does not want to do it or he was compelled to execute a pirouette on his intention.
We must also not forget that the quit notice did not come from a vacuum. The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) have roiled the polity with calls for Biafra. They even shut down the southeast in homage to the Biafran dream. IPOB chieftain Nnamdi Kanu set up Biafra Radio and has inspired protests that have led to destructions, mayhem and deaths.
It is obvious that IPOB and MASSOB have contempt for Nigeria, and they cannot by their actions associate their views with the calls for restructuring. To restructure requires a belief in a future Nigeria. To foreclose it implies an Igbo nationalism that obviates Nigeria. We have a defective federal system that has engaged the page many times.
The state structure, the fiscal character, a lopsided centre, the profile of appointments, the generation and distribution of resources and wealth have come under the rigour of questioning. But no conversation can take place in the context of secession. The Igbo elite and leaders ought to treat the secessionists with open and unavoidable contempt for treating corporate Nigeria with treasonous venom.
All of these show that Nigeria as a nation has hit the crossroads again of ethnic and regional suspicions, recriminations and intimidations. The Federal Government must douse this by taking legal actions against those on both sides who have violated the law and follow it through according to the law of the land. Kanu’s case helped to lionise a secessionist rather than show him a felon that he is.
The law is clear how to do so. Also, the law is clear how to handle Yerima Shettima and his group. The IGP has acted as though they are in hiding, whereas they are in plain sight. If we believe in the law, and we do not arrest those who hold it in contempt, we are as guilty as the treasonable felons. In fact, we justify them. Our inaction emboldens them to more treason. It makes the whole Nigerian project a laughing stock.
