Memo To Southeast Governors: Whose Interests Are You Representing?

Greetings, your Excellencies – the governors of the land of the Rising Sun.

It is with a heart burdened with sorrow that I write you today to register my grave displeasure over your criminal complicity in the woes of the people you purport to preside over.

With your permissions, your Excellencies, I will like to start this piece with questions which have dug a very deep hole in my heart for a very long time and the questions are:

Whose interests are you representing as governors?

Where does your loyalty lie?

Why does it seem like your dominant default instinct is to please the Caliphate even if it means displeasing your people?

Dear governors, those are questions on the lips of almost every Igbo youth and those questions must not just be asked, they must be answered.

Your Excellencies, do you ever sit back and wonder why millions of Ndigbo have chosen to willingly follow Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in his quest to restore Biafra?

I will tell you:

As a people, Ndigbo have been oppressed, suppressed, dejected, isolated, marginalised, ridiculed, humiliated, haunted and murdered by the moral criminals and executive terrorists running the affairs of the Nigerian State since after the Biafran war. When Mr Hate-Made-Flesh, President Muhammadu Buhari, came on board, he elevated Igbo marginalisation and dehumanisation as an official government policy.  Two days ago, the Buhari-led government brought in tanks and sophisticated military hardware into Ala-Igbo. It doesn’t take a ‘Dibia’ to know that those weapons will be used on the same people whose lives you are being paid to protect.

In all these,

You, the people who presume to be our governors didn’t just maintain criminal silence, you connived with our oppressors to ride roughshod over our wounds. Just for the pittance known as monthly allocation, you had no qualms turning a blind eye and living in denial of our pains and miseries and wars and woes.

This year alone, you, the Southeast governors, have visited Aso Rock more times than I can remember, to pledge your commitment to #OneNigeria which begs the questions:

How many times have you visited Aso Rock to ask why Onitsha Seaport has remained comatose for years or to protest the non-inclusion of Southeast in the rail project?

How many times have you visited Aso Rock to ask why the entire production processes in Ala-Igbo have been emasculated to keep your people in a state of perpetual penury?

Despite being the most peaceful region in the entire country, the Southeast has thrice the number of police and military men deployed to the Boko Haram ravaged Northeast. Even violence prone Gaza Strip and terrorist-infested Mount Sinai in the Middle East do not boast of such high level of militarisation. And these uniformed thugs brazenly extort monies from motorists and ‘okada’ riders and humiliate those who try to resist their savagery.

How many times have you gone to Aso Rock to protest this? But how can you, when those uniformed extortionists and invaders are in Ala-Igbo with your full permissions?

What kind of #OneNigeria do you really want? A Nigeria where mediocrity and injustice walk on all four as obtains now or a Nigeria characterised by merit, justice and fairness?

Dear governors, we have lied to ourselves for far too long. Permit me to honour you with the courtesy of being blunt:

We, Ndigbo, ARE NOT in the mess we are in today because we have a president whose access to oxygen seems to depend solely on how much hatred he can dish to us. Not at all. We are where we are today because we have the singular misfortune of being cursed with one of the most criminally insensitive set of governors in our history. A set of governors whose sense of governance is simply atrocious. A set of governors whose ‘Onye Ayana Nwanne Ya’ spirit is simply non-existent. A set of governors who are indeed Pharaohs but who have succeeded in acquiring the garbs of Moses.

Your Excellencies, you are the biggest singular tragedy of Ndigbo. It grieves me beyond word to publicly admit this but it grieves me even more that it is true.

Those millions of people you see following Nnamdi Kanu are indicative of the fact that the people you pretend to lead have lost faith in you.

You have failed your people. You have failed Ala-Igbo and if you have any shred of honour, you will not disagree that you have failed even yourselves.

You act and speak like psychological slaves and you waste no time in proving your loyalty to your Fulani masters even if it means sacrificing your people. Your default inclination is to the Caliphate.

Recently, one of you, Governor Rochas Okorocha, bested Uncle Lucifer when he used soldiers to carry out a festival of blood reportedly killing not less than four persons including an 11-year-old Somtochukwu Igboanusi, all in a bid to demolish the ancient Eke-Ukwu market in Owerri. And I’m wondering, how does Okorocha sleep at night knowing he’s responsible for the death of the only male child of his parents?

The ‘No More Elections In Biafraland’ currently being championed by IPOB is receiving wide acceptance NOT NECESSARILY because of Nnamdi Kanu but because when an average Igbo man looks around, he finds it extremely difficult to point to any time any of you Igbo governors have defended his interests.

When Fulani terrorists visit us with death, rather than act like Governor Ayo Fayose, you act like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. When our dues are denied us in Nigeria, you play deaf, dumb and blind. When Fulani soldiers kill and bath us with acid even inside a church, you play the devil’s advocate BUT when we say we want a referendum to enable us decide our future, you rush to Aso Rock to counter us.

How can a people live with so-called leaders who act like that?

I’m submitting to you, my dear governors, that the five of you are the co-authors of our misfortune as a people!

But,

I have good news for you: your cups of iniquity are yet to run over. You can still redeem yourselves.

Please, in the name of the millions we lost to the Biafran war, rally round your people. Defend their right to life for once! Look the Caliphate in the eye for once and tell them that your people are no children of a lesser god. Stop holding Nicodemus meeting with Nnamdi Kanu with regards to Anambra elections. Instead, hold those meetings with the men in Aso Rock and demand that they give you something tangible – something they consider a credible alternative to Biafra, promises and assurances – to take back to your people. This is how to negotiate!

Stop giving your permission for Buhari to militarise Ala-Igbo with his occupying forces. Those soldiers are here not to protect but to kill and maim and treat Ndigbo like a conquered people.

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Time for politics is over. Today, Ndigbo are facing grave existential challenges.

This is the time to borrow a leaf from Our Father, Chief John Nnia Nwodo, the Ohaneze Ndigbo President-General and stand with your people because the truth is, Biafrans are like seed. Even when you bury them, they don’t die, instead, they germinate. So when all this is over, rest assured, we will dis-remember Buhari and his fellow nightwalkers but we will forever remember your treachery and criminal complicity in our tragedy.

Remember, your Excellencies, no man, no matter how powerful, can make a private bargain with history