IPOB: THE DELINQUENT ADULTS
Members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), have become adult delinquents. They behave like spoilt children, juveniles without character, without home training. The IPOB members have refused to grow up, refused to grow to adulthood. They have continued to exhibit a lot of embarrassing characters, both at home and abroad. A lot of people who formerly had sympathy for this group are beginning to change their mind, to reexamine their stance.
For long, many people have been trying to bear with the excesses of members of IPOB, hoping that sooner or later, they would change, that they would outgrow their lack of respect for people, their lack of decorum, their improper manners of approach, their embarrassing behaviours, their stubbornness, etc., but all to no avail.
Now that the IPOB members have decided to export their unruly behaviour outside the shores of the country by stoning no less a person than the former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who had been on their side, it then means that their madness has gone haywire, has gone out of hand.
The IPOB could be likened to a popular saying that if a monkey goes to London and returns, it is still a monkey. In other words, whether they are IPOB members in Nigeria or those that had managed to find themselves outside the shores of the country, they are still basically the same, the dregs of society, miscreants, jobless and uneducated youths, Okada and Keke NAPEP riders, artisans, etc. They are unruly and uncouth, people without character, without direction, and without any set objectives.
Similarly, we are beginning to liken members of IPOB with members of Boko Haram, both of who see everybody as enemy. They are people who do not know what they want, and who fight everybody without aim, without any clear objective.
Why do IPOB members see everybody as their enemy? Why are they fighting everybody? What type of Biafra are they fighting for – the Biafra where some people would be excluded, and others given special privilege, where only the members of IPOB are going to inhabit?
When IPOB was launched in Enugu on May 30, 2014, it held a lot of promises for those who believe in it. Many of them saw the group as capable of realising the Biafra of their dream. Through its megaphone, the Radio Biafra, the leader of the group, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who was always on air, painted a very rosy picture of Biafra that was in the offing. This made many jobless and illiterate youths, to begin to see Nnamdi Kanu as their Messiah, and they began to flood around him.
Nnamdi Kanu himself was not decent in his language, in his choice of words on Radio Biafra. He was always rude. He was not respectful to those in authority, and even to his elders. He was insulting and abusing everybody, the leaders of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, South East Governors, etc.
Nnamdi Kanu had insisted that there would be no election in Igboland until a referendum was conducted for his Biafra dream. In spite of various appeals on him to moderate his language and to be respectful to both his seniors and those in authority, he refused to heed the appeals. He was stubborn and arrogant and continued to attack everybody.
This was what made a lot of people to begin to distance themselves from the group, and to begin to wonder what type of person Nnamdi Kanu was, somebody who would have no respect for his seniors, and for those in authority, who would see himself as the only saint, while every other person was a devil.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan during whose regime IPOB came on stream, largely ignored Nnamdi Kanu, not minding the huge insults and abuses the IPOB leader was hauling on his person and on his administration.
It was President Muhammadu Buhari that gave Nnamdi Kanu prominence, and made him a national hero, when he got the man arrested and clamped into detention. Buhari further rebuffed several court rulings to release Kanu on bail, which obviously had attracted a lot of sympathies for the man.
When Kanu was eventually granted bail with very stringent conditions, after he had already spent more than 15 months in detention, it was Senator Ike Ekweremadu, as the then highest Igbo political office holder, that rallied prominent Igbo leaders to meet those conditions, before Kanu was released. Now, the same Ekweremadu has become IPOB’s number one enemy, when they stoned him in far away Germany. That showed lack of respect for people and ingratitude of the highest order.
Kanu missed a golden opportunity in 2017, when all the Governors of the South East zone, other political leaders, including leaders of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, deferred to him and invited him to Government House, Enugu, for negotiations, for he and his group to embrace peace and mellow down on their militant posture, but he allegedly turned down some mouth watering offers made to him.
It was after that, that the federal government decided to descend on Kanu and his group with their “Operation Python Dance II”. The rest is now history.
But please, let somebody tell Nnamdi Kanu and his group to learn how to behave like human beings, and not like animals, to learn how to respect their seniors and those in authority. (Onye fee Eze, Eze elue ya).
Even if we were to be interested in Biafra which Nnamdi Kanu is propagating and advocating and claiming to be fighting for, obviously, it will not be a Biafra without ethical rules, a Biafra without respect to the dignity of the human person, a Biafra where people would be bullying and intimidating every other person. It is a Biafra with couth and character, a Biafra with human dignity and respect, a Biafra of freedom and liberty.
