It had happened before in the city of Onitsha, Anambra State. Months ago the Nollywood popular actor, Chiwetalu Agu, popularly known as ‘Ogwu’, wearing the Biafran flag colours, was arrested by some patrolling military personnel. He was almost manhandled as he was picked up along the ever-busy Upper Iweka Road while distributing money and food items to the needy. He had stopped by to play charity only to meet a bad fate. From Onitsha Agu was flown to Enugu and from the Coal City to Abuja where he was detained for days.
His only ‘offense’, nay crime, was his temerity for wearing the Biafan flag colours publicly! When he was eventually released following the Nollywood management intervention and the public opprobrium over his apprehension like a common criminal Agu was unrepentant as he maintained his Biafraness declaring that nothing would stop him from identifying with the Biafran cause!
Many Igbos, old and young, have suffered injustices, harassments, intimidation and state terrorism just because they are Igbos. An octogenarian foster mother of the detained leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Ukamaka Ejezie, better known as Mama Biafra, was recently released from the DSS dungeon after many months in solitary confinement. She was scandalously arrested outside the court premises as she came to witness one of Mazi Kanu’s trials in the FCT.
Many young Igbos are still languishing in different gaols across the federation for identifying or sympathising with the incarcerated Mazi Kanu or the IPOB movement. Some are unaccounted for as their whereabouts remain in the realm of imagination. Others had been killed extra-judicially and conveniently tagged “terrorists” or ‘ESN criminals’.
On November 8, 2021, in Enugu, a young and promising activist from Akwa Ibom State, Idara Godwin, popularly known as Idara Gold, was unlawfully arrested and detained in Enugu by the DSS. Her ‘crime’ was that she was seen wearing a Biafra-themed outfit! The lawless secret police agents were said to have browsed through her phone where the attire was discovered on her.
According to some online reports when they saw a picture she had posted online wearing a Biafran attire to celebrate her 20th birthday she was promptly arrested and handed over to DSS in Enugu from where she was transferred to DSS Headquarters, Abuja. And since then the DSS had reportedly denied her access to her lawyers, family and friends, and have not charged her with any offense!
Since the emergence of Buharism, a presidential pestilence upon the hapless Nigerians, the enforced disappearance of Nigerians and the high level of extrajudicial killings being carried out by Nigerian security agencies (especially the notorious DSS) must be deprecated here without reservation.
Inside the DSS gulags across the federation hundreds, if not thousands, of Nigerians are currently being detained illegally without charges or trial!
The DSS go about their responsibility with irresponsibility. Their lack of professionalism is staggering! They often employ Gestapo-style approach to dealing with issues of the day. They could invade a home at wee hours of the night ransacking the building without any arrest or search warrant! They could go to ‘war’ (as was the case with the failed attempt to assassinate Sunday Igboho in Ibadan) taking away body-bags and prisoners!
It would appear that Yusuf Bichi and his lawless goons are determined to turn Nigeria into a fascist state or better still, a dictatorship. All indices of freedom of expression, association or dissent are in the red! President Buhari is executively comfortable with the state terrorism being visited on a daily basis on innocent citizens!
The crucial question here is: is it now a crime for anyone to appear in a dress of Biafran flag colours? If the answer is yes then would it amount to a crime too for anyone to wear green and white colours on the street? Solidarity with the Biafran cause is far from being a crime!
When the so-called repented bandits, kidnappers and terrorists et all, were paraded in different occasions in Abuja (in a demonstration of the Buhari regime’s propaganda-inspired success in the protracted war against terrorism) they were decked in national colours of green and white. That means that wearing national colours represented patriotism and reward for sundry crimes against Nigerians?
But wearing Biafran colours represents a crime punishable by arbitrary detention and/or imprisonment? Double standards or selective amnesia? Or both?
President Muhammadu Buhari and the Fulani executive terrorists exercising power with impunity are making the greatest mistakes of their lives by believing that criminalising the Biafra independence struggle would ultimately lead to the idea dying. The idea can never die going forward — even if Mazi Nnamdi Kanu dies (God forbid!)
The more the separatists are intimidated, detained, maimed, terrorized, tortured and killed the more the agitation would gather more momentum making those, hitherto prevaricating or undecided, to join forces. No apology would be tendered to anyone for Biafrans expressing their strong belief in Biafra!
If Nigeria is failing to accommodate the Igbos in the scheme of things then an alternative must be found for them to accommodate themselves, taking care of their collective interests.
You cannot possibly reject yourself if you are rejected by anyone, group or nation. The alternative is to comfort and encourage yourself and seek ways for your liberation.
It is an established fact that Buhari strongly dislikes the Igbos and the Igbos strongly dislike him too, in equal measure! Yes, they hold him in scorn. Animosity begets animosity! This mutual loathsomeness dated back decades when the retired lanky General and his fellow Hausa/Fulani soldiers massacred millions of Igbos ruthlessly and remorselessly during the protracted Biafran genocide of the late 60s/early70s.
That was why the South-East gave Buhari (the then APC candidate) a paltry 5 percent of votes during the presidential polls. And for this Igbos have become endangered species in the Buharian presidential aberration. His vindictive bitterness over this is legendary! Yet, it is bound to happen again if candidate Buhari presents himself for another election, though that is an impossibility.
He ‘hates’ Biafrans with passion and they reciprocate, ‘hating’ him back with passion! ‘Do-me-I-do-you, God-no-go-vex’! The Biblical old-testament Mosaic law (against turning the other cheek upon being slapped) must be applicable here. You love me not and I love you not, too!
We call for the release of the detained Idara Gold. If the DSS consider her appearance as constituting a crime then the law courts should be approached for justice to be done. Otherwise, her freedom is being violated! And this, in itself, is a crime against the fundamental human rights of the victim guaranteed by the constitution.
Free Idara Gold, or charge her to court forthwith!
SOC Okenwa
soco_abj_2006_rci@hotmail.fr
