As the frazzled children lay on the ground, pleading for their lives, the wretchedness of barbarism came to the fore. It was a painful watch. Their teachers, all of them mothers and grandmothers, lay beside them and prayed for mercy like prisoners of war. Their offence was that they chose school instead of sitting at home. At least Boko haram advertised their hatred for Western education in their choice of name. That’s some honesty. These other ones claim independence and freedom. But they won’t let children choose school. So much for the Igbo and republicanism.
July is when exams are written. But the freedom fighters, sent by God to rescue Biafran children from captivity don’t care about their education. Their divine logic is that if the children sat at home long enough, the oppressive political leaders in Abuja would become so moved with pity to release the supreme leader of the Lord’s army from the dungeon. It’s not absurd. Freedom fighters must have foresight and conceit. In the imagination of these freedom fighters, the otherwise inhuman leaders in Abuja ought to possess a residuum of humanity. Some leftover scraps of human kindness to allow them to cringe when the freedom fighters go from tantrums to abject self-mutilation.
The eyes of the wailing children in their purple school uniforms showed an apprehension of the imminence of death. If children see ghosts they might be damaged irreparably. So our ancestors always shielded them from all evil. But the children in Igbo villages are now well acquainted with the most probable outcome of that visitation by those evangelists. That’s what they call themselves. The immutable consequences of disobedience of the freedom fighters’ decrees. The summary execution of ‘bushmeat’. That was why the children all but cried blood.
Perhaps the entire exercise was an act of indoctrination. It isn’t all too diabolical. Because freedom fighters are blessed with magical insight, they must indoctrinate the ignorant. Otherwise, their messianic talents could be wasted. Chosen by the heavens to lead the blind and ignorant out of damnation. Chukwuokike Abiama must have lifted his countenance upon the children and their teachers. Otherwise, had the children been casually executed to teach other children a lesson, they would have become a mere part of the stats. It is called inurement. Igbo society has become so accustomed to barbarism that it no longer flinches. Unlike Bokoharam, these messengers of God claim love for education.
Yet there was another telling picture. Freedom fighters stormed a village market. At a market where impoverished rural women came to find peanuts to feed their skinny children, the enforcers of wisdom stopped to treat insolence. Once the freedom fighters started shooting, the women scampered into hiding. For the hungry village women, it must have been a nightmare at noon. They left their wares. They left a baby on the ground. As the freedom fighters destroyed the vegetables and livelihoods of the poor women, the baby screamed. Poor Biafra infant, witnessing the work of freedom fighting. It could have been a scene taken from the fall of Owerri during the Biafran War without the wayward jets perpetrating ethnic cleansing from the skies. How ironical!
The pictures that had children were particularly evocative. Most of the others were just gory. It is goriness that has made many refuse to see the atrocities. If people shut their eyes at massacres to protect their hearts, how would they form sufficient revulsion for the perpetrators? Perhaps the merciful amongst the freedom fighters, the drug-free few who don’t shoot to kill must be honoured. They are few. The majority are like the lot that had visited a priest who wanted his students to sit a WAEC exam on a day the freedom fighters had outlawed schooling. The poor priest was labelled a traitor. Then he was dispatched to God. That was in 2021. That priest has been forgotten. He got no national honours. Wiped out and forgotten. So despite the harmful searing effect on the brain of those children who were whipped like errant cattle, we must thank God and thank those enforcers who, thought out of the box and, instead of shooting, flogged the children mercilessly.
The teachers and children must have gone home traumatised. But while they licked their wounds, their kinsmen might have gathered leftover food and palm wine to celebrate their survival. That’s what happens in communal settings when a man escapes from the clutches of a leopard in the bush. The impotence of the government would be left to God. The governor had threatened to close schools that obeyed the freedom fighters. The government goaded the children to school. Poor suckling children, given the hip bones of a cow to chew. But if the government can’t offer protection, why put folks in harm’s way? And if the government is so weak that it can’t use force to assert its authority, why can’t it be realistic? This isn’t a game of ludo. Realistically, it could sweet talk the freedom fighters into seeing that the children in Igbo land need education like other children in Helsinki and London and Abuja.
In the good old 70s, children grew up seeing parents and teachers as gods. But when they caught a glimpse of the government in police uniform, they watched in utter awe. In those days, the government and police didn’t share sovereignty with anyone. Now children have learnt that bandits can come to school and take them away and the government, as helpless as an old widow, would beg for their return and in some cases there would be no return. This precocious exposure of children will breed a carnivorous society.
But it isn’t just children. Many communities have lost their innocence too. In many of these affected places, bandits and insurgents are in defacto control. They settle disputes. They collect levies. They issue decrees. And carry out executions. The government looks on like nothing untoward is happening. The aberration settles and becomes a new normal. Like enclaves in Somalia run by local gangs. In the case of Somalia, the world knows and prays for the people. In the case of deserted and desolate Orsu in Imo. The world believes all is well.
A few efulefus have wondered if the masterminds of the freedom fighting would close schools and hospitals if their children lived in remote villages. But the wise men sent by Chukwuokike Abiama to rescue his stubborn goats have tried to clear up that ignorance by saying that in every freedom-fighting enterprise, the masterminds must stay away from the long arms of the oppressor so that the freedom army is not easily decapitated. The only problem is that sometimes, a gym instructor who isn’t taking part in the same repetitions he is summoning his herd to might work his clients into a heart attack. The problem with these freedom fighters is that anyone who tries to reason with them becomes a traitor. For them, dissent is treason.
Igbo land has stagnated. The Bishops, Igwes and political leaders must find a new urgency. Ambazonia has been decimated by self-imposed sit-at-homes. A coherent political solution must be devised. The future is being liquidated.
First published in Vanguard