It is not a funny matter that our dear country Nigeria takes great pride in messing up her celebrated patriots.
Who would have ever imagined that there would come a time when a personage like General TY Danjuma would be calling on Nigerians to buy guns to defend themselves?
It is as though the old general wants the government abolished!
Danjuma, like so many other erstwhile Nigerian patriots, has been left with no other choice than self-help now that the demons of death are on the loose in every part of Nigeria, especially the North, arranging mayhem and spreading annihilation with the incumbent government doing next-to-nothing to save the people.
One must not forget in a hurry that Danjuma was lionised back in time when he made some noises over General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s dead body that the Northern revenge coup of July 1966 had to happen because “they killed our people”.
It’s all a mess asking Danjuma to attempt to define “our people” in this day and age that North-on-North violence is all the rage!
It is well-nigh impossible to understand where patriotism starts and the so-called “northern interest” begins.
One of the modern-day jumped-up public intellectuals got me thoroughly confused the other day when he fervently argued that Muslim-Muslim ticket is what Nigeria needs now – even if it leads the country to war and eternal strife!
A lot of ink has been wasted on the colonial policy of the British enthroning the North over and above the rest of the country.
The British ostensibly left in 1960 following Nigeria’s arrival at flag independence, but the reality today is that the potentates of the North continue to insist that this country owes them a living, even at the expense of their very own people who are polarised along the edges of Islam, Christianity and Animism.
The aggregation of forces in the Nigeria-Biafra war did not help matters, as the North somewhat inherited the mantle of defending the federal cause.
The then Western Region and the minorities of the South and North found a ready ally in the Northern “federalists” fighting the “secessionist” Biafra dominated by the Igbo.
The war could thusly be summed up as the battle between the Nigerian patriots and the Biafran rebels.
The eminent historian, Prof Ebiegberi Joe Allagoa, for instance, wrote in his 2004 book, The Uses of Hindsight as Foresight: Reflections on Niger Delta and Nigerian History, that Isaac Adaka Boro led his “twelve-day revolution” largely because he was afraid that power had left the North following the January 1966 coup made by Majors Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Chukwuma Nzeogwu.
According to Allagoa,“The Niger Delta activists also tried to forge an alliance with the politicians of Northern Nigeria. Indeed, it was the fear that the murder of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in the 1966 military coup had destroyed the final hope of the peoples of the Niger Delta that persuaded Isaac Adaka Boro to launch his ‘Twelve Day Revolution’.”
Of course the Nigerian patriot, Isaac Adaka Boro, died fighting on the Federal side during the civil war, and there is the official no-go area that he was actually shot from the back by his so-called allies!
My late friend, Ken Saro-Wiwa, ended up being ignobly hanged by General Sani Abacha after his patriotic duties to Nigeria.
It became the lot of the ex-Biafra leader Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu to lament thusly: “What do you want me to do in the circumstances when Ken was killed by his mentors?”
Let’s not forget that the Nigerian patriot, Yakubu Gowon, who executed the Nigeria-Biafra war, would have been executed after the 1976 Dimka coup in which the then Head of State Murtala Muhammed was assassinated.
Patriotism and Nigeria are not the best of friends because even the patriot of patriots, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who boasted that his command won the war ended up being worsted eventually by that matter called Third Term.
Need we talk of The Prince on the Niger, the Evil Genius, the godfather of all patriots, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who annulled himself out of history?
I have to end this matter of Nigeria messing up her patriots after getting this message via WhatsApp: “One idiot once wrote that no Nigerian patriot who gets to lead the country after Goodluck Jonathan can ever be worse than the Otuoke man, but worse has since turned to worst, and the idiot who wrote the initial prediction was me!”
Now that there is talk of turning rotten things in Nigeria into bad, let me stop here before I accidentally drop the name of the no-nonsense patriot of next-level change who can instantly turn my rotten state of being into the bad inside of a maximum security prison in Nigeria due to my lack of patriotism!
Nigeria appears to have scrambled the heads of all her patriots, and one cannot but recall what Samuel Johnson said on the evening of April 7, 1775, to wit: “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
- Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author