RiverNaija

LIKE most young Nigerians, I had a picture of being young and strong while white people were white and weak. I am sure that young white people also thought black people to be weak. No one had ever tested this but we believed this so strongly that we thought nothing of the holiday jobs we all did as students. Ben and I worked in the freezing works where sheep was slaughtered, cleaned up and dressed ready for export. After cleaning, the wool and the innards, the hoofs, heads etc were stored separately – the bones were used to make buttons. Nothing was wasted – every part of the sheep had its uses. I worked in the paint house and Ben on the wool. This freezing works was a very large factory, slaughtering over 20,000-25,000 lambs per day. As each lamb is slaughtered, the feet are hung on a moving convoy. At regular intervals, there are other workers who remove the pelts and other parts not meant for export. The pelts are thrown into a giant washing machine which spits pelts on a conveyor...

NN :Before I begin to ask you questions on your manifesto, I want to touch on one more thing. In both his network and West German television interview, the Head of State [General Olusegun Obasanjo] condemned all old politicians. He said the old politicians are responsible for our ills. Do you agree? ZIK : With respect, I don’t. I feel that his speech writers or whoever is responsible for the final draft of his speech, misconceived the whole idea by generalizing. If he has said that many politicians, or some politicians he would be correct but he made a sweeping generalization. I don’t feel I am a saint or perfect, but if you study my history in the last 30 years of this country’s political development, you will find that most of the things I stood for, which my opponents opposed are the basis of what the present Federal Military Government has endorsed, and which is the basis of the new constitution. Now, how can you turn round now to say that all of us are responsible? Let me give y...

YOU were very much around in 1966. Was there any need for the coup of that year? No, and I said it in my autobiography because, the only argument was that there were political crises in Western Nigeria between two factions of the Action Group AG -the Awolowo group and that of Akintola. Of course, that crisis was serious but it was only limited to areas around Ibadan and Ijebu-Ode. Then, in Tiv division, there was crisis between supporters of the AG and UMBC and the result was that the crisis in these two places led to some killings, but the rest of the country was in peace. The pretext the military used was that they took over power in order to quell those two crises in those areas. But if you look at the consequences of their actions -all they wanted to do was to save lives, but the coup led to the civil war and a rough estimate of the number of people killed on both sides during the war was five million which was not even the accurate figure. So, if you came to save less than a h...

ON the coup: On January 15, 1966, themy struck and turned the weapons which we issued to them to defend the country, on the government and the leaders that issued the weapons to them. In the process, they killed the Prime minister of the country; they killed the premier of the West; they killed the premier of the North. They were about to kill the premier of the East but what saved Dr Michael Okpara was that Archbishop Macarious, the president of Cyprus, was his guest that night and probably they wouldn’t want war between Cyprus and Nigeria. On the other hand they could not kill Chief Dennis Osadebey because there was no Army in Benin at the time of the coup and so Osadebey managed to escape. They also killed Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Federal Minister of Finance. They also killed some members of their own group. For example, Brigadier Maimalari was innocently killed. My close friend, Colonel Arthur Unegbe was also killed. He was in charge of the Armoury and because he was reluctan...

During the presidential media chat on Wednesday 30th December 2015, Nigerian President Muhammed Buhari said that Igbos were not maltreated, and should stop screaming marginalization. Speaking of the continue protests and struggle for the realization on Biafra Republic in parts of the South East and South South, the former miliary head of state said: “Why does it have to worry me, when I have militants, Boko Haram and other. They said they are being marginalsed but they haven’t defined the extent of their marginalisation. Who marginalised them? How? Where? Do you know?,” he queried.”Who is the minister of state for petroleum, is he not Igbo? Who is the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria? Is he not Igbo? Who is minister of labour, science and technology? What do the Igbos want?” And now, Obi Nwakanma, a Poet, journalist, biographer and literary critic, has written an article in answer to the question, “What do the Igbos want?” Enjoy: In Biafra, under three years, they were mak...

Fellow Nigerian citizens, On behalf of the patriotic and well-meaning peoples of the Middle Belt and the southern parts of this country, I , Major Gideon Orka, wish to happily inform you of the successful ousting of the dictatorial, corrupt, drug baronish, evil man, deceitful, homo-sexually-centered, prodigalistic, un-patriotic administration of General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida. We have equally commenced their trials for unabated corruption, mismanagement of national economy, the murders of Dele Giwa, Major-General Mamman Vasta, with other officers as there was no attempted coup but mere intentions that were yet to materialize and other human rights violations. The National Guard already in its formative stage is disbanded with immediate effect. Decrees Number 2 and 46 are hereby abrogated. We wish to emphasis that this is not just another coup but a well conceived, planned and executed revolution for the marginalized, oppressed and enslaved peoples of the Middle Belt and the south ...

There is nothing as mentally rewarding as the capacity for one to freely express and determine the course of one’s life -which is the fundamental doctrine of democracy. This freedom, however, is not without its own challenges and responsibility as absolute freedom could breed anarchy. The independence anniversary of our nation is an eloquent reminder of the great opportunity we had over the past five decades as a country to self-govern ahead of some African countries who were under colonial rule this period. Colonisation definitely has its very ugly sides but there are certain opportunities we missed as a people along the way. The colonisation process gave us an opportunity to interrogate our culture and to expunge certain unwholesome practices and embrace the good ones. We had a leadership template that was primitive and hegemonic, which colonial masters juxtaposed from the traditional institutions gradually into the educated elite class of their own creation. This ruling class ha...