” What do Rotimi Amechi and his brother Nyesom Wike have in mind by turning choirmasters of Igbo songs lately?”
” Are they using style to tell the world that they are actually Igbos?”
” Can it be that are they retracing their steps, after severally denying and rejecting their Igbo ancestry?”
It started with Rotimi Amechi the day APC held a rally in PH, where Amechi sang an Igbo song:
The author, Mazi Omife I. Omife
“Olugo mgbe anyi ji eje ogu… “Onye ujo abiana mgbe anyi ji eje ogu…”
He even demonstrated this famous Abiriba war song as he sang to the surprise of many people including President Buhari.
I myself was surprised but I did not give much concern to the episode .
Recently, Nyesom Wike while addressing a mammoth crowd in PH, also sang an Igbo political lyric:
“Enye ndi ebea, enye ndi ebea, enye ndi Ozo…”
To send down his message to the not less than one million people, and the entire stadium erupted in response, ” .. enye ndi Rivers”.
I was surprised that the entire crowd knew the song as they danced with the governor.
Not done, Wike added another Igbo song, apparently invoking the god of confusion on his political enemies.
“Tinyere fa ogba aghara “Tinyere fa ogba aghara “Eze Jesus tinyere fa ogba aghara…”
At that point, some questions came to my mind.
Could it be that Rotimi Amechi and Nyesom Wike along with their kith and kin are coming back to their roots?
Are they repenting from their whole life-time of denying and rejecting their Igbo ancestry and anti-Igbo actions?
But can they change the mindset of their people overnight?
I know quite well that Wike and Rotimi are not the originators of the hatred against the Igbos by Rivers people. I don’t know their ages when the war ended. I don’t think they had come of age when the decision was taken by their people against the Igbos.
Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro was among.
Ken Saro Wiwa was involved.
Diete-Spiff was the father of Igbo hatred.
Elechi Amadi
E. K. Clark
Sergeant Awuse and others.
I have frequently wondered why they became hostile against a tribe that has shown them love.
I am equally surprised that even the Ikweres joined the Ijaws to deny their Igbo identity or history and even went further to change the name of most of their towns that bear Igbo names.
But even if ‘umu’ is changed to ‘Rumu’ in order to divide the Rivers people from the rest of their Igbo kinsmen and women, what of their language and culture?
I suggested in one of my previous write-ups that since they have changed the names of their towns and streets from umu to Rumu, they should also change their names from Wike (Nwike) to Runwike and Amechi to Rumechi.
Whether you call it Aro Ndizuogu, Aro Chukwu, Aro Abia, Aro Udi or Aro Ajalli, Aro remains Aro. Just as there are American Jews, Russian Jews, German Jews, but Jews remain Jews anywhere they are.
It has become a record that of all the States of Nigeria, Rivers State, one of the closest neighbouring States and indeed Igbo brother State of the Eastern region was the only state out of the twelve existing state then to seize all the Igbo properties in their state and shared and converted them to their possession without paying a dime to their rightful owners except the ones recovered through Sam Mbakwe solo efforts. God bless his soul.
Since and after the Biafra war, the people of old Rivers State have shown marked hostility, hatred and outright propensity for ethnic cleansing of Igbo people.
But if Rotimi Amechi and Nyesom Wike have now decided to heed the voice of late Igbo hero and have now woken up to identify with their Igbo people, I think that will be a welcome development.
Honestly, I have read many books to see where Igbos wronged the Rivers people, I didn’t see anything.
Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro studied Chemistry at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Throughout his stay in the school, he depended so much on his Igbo friends and colleagues.
During vacations, Isaac would hang around in the homes of Igbo friends until the next academic session.
At a time, he contested for the President of the Student Union Government against three other contestants – all Igbo. Yet, Igbo students who constituted over 80 per cent of the student population voted and fought for him to victory.
Even his chemistry department students did not support him.
Recall also that Isaac Boro was the first de facto coup plotter in Nigeria when he formed the first militia force in Nigeria, the Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF) and on February 23, 1966, declared the Niger Delta Republic. That was the first time any part of Nigeria attempted to secede. Not Biafra, as many thought.
Boro and his comrades were arrested, tried and sentenced to death for treason. It was then Head of State, General Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo who commuted their sentence to prison terms.
On the eve of the Biafra war in 1967, Boro was released, and he immediately joined the Nigerian army and was commissioned as a major.
He later led 1,000 Ijaws to fight against Biafra and open the way for Nigerian soldiers to enter Port Harcourt. He was later killed under mysterious circumstances in 1968 at Ogu (near Okrika) in Rivers State by the same people he fought on their side against Biafra.
During the Nigeria/Biafra civil war, 1967-1970, Ndigbo who are majority Biafrans left their property in the old Rivers State created in 1967, and fled for safety.
After the war, when they came back to Rivers State to start up a new life, under the then Rivers State governor, Lt-Commander Alfred Diete-Spiff, they were deprived of their property with the connivance of the Nigerian state.
Ken Saro Wiwa was allegedly among the Rivers State indigenes who led other like minds from the State to meet Gowon before the end of the war. The outcome of their meeting was an accord with the Gowon-led government that should the war end in favour of Nigeria, the state would take over all that Ndigbo left behind in Rivers State.
Thereafter, Rivers men and women led by Ken Saro Wiwa, Diete-Spiff, Elechi Amadi, E. K. Clark, Sergeant Awuse and others claimed Ndigbo property worth millions of pounds which they characterized as “Abandoned Property”.
One of them even wrote a novel in which the author mimicked Igbos by alleging how Igbos were eating toads and lizards during the war out of hunger.
Saro Wiwa afterwards became the champion of implementation of abandoned property programme and was said to be the person who, with Sani Abacha, claimed Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu’s extensive property in Port Harcourt. Who knows if their enmity started there.
Saro Wiwa was later killed along with the rest of Ogoni-9 by the Abacha regime for reasons we all know. The execution triggered wide-spread unrest in Niger Delta anchored on mass agitation for resource control.
That was when late Ikemba Ojukwu made a veiled commendation statement to the people of Niger Delta titled, “Good morning” which some people interpreted as a congratulatory message to the people for waking up from slumber for so long to demand their rights.
It is also on record that it was an Igbo, Emeka Anyoku, then as Secretary-general of the Commonwealth who opposed Abacha’s move to kill Saro Wiwa and his group. After their killing, it was Anyaoku who spearheaded sanctions against the Abacha regime.
Is it likely Rotimi Amechi and Wike have now understood the country better than their fathers and decided to wake-up to reality, especially now they have failed in their bid to become the President of Nigeria, using Igbos as a bait to their Northern overlords.
What is even more annoying is how South East was the only region denied modern rail project in Nigeria under the watch of our brother and in-law, Rotimi Amechi, even when Niger Republic, a foreign country got its share of the project, which is a great insult to the Igbo nation.
Wike on his part was alleged to have ordered the massive ethnic cleansing and massacre of hundreds of Igbo youths at Obigbo.
For the records, the entire people of old Eastern region were involved in the Biafra project as reflected in the name Biafra which took after the Bight of Biafra, located between on the shores of Rivers, Cross River and Bayelsa States.
As a matter of fact, it was Frank Opigo, an Ijaw man who suggested the name to Ojukwu in 1967. It was after the war that the Federal government changed the name to Bight of Bonny, evidently to erase the memory of Biafra.
When the war started in Gakem in present Cross River State, Biafran soldiers, mainly Igbos, came to the strong defense of the border town before they were sabotaged by some elements from the locality.
As a people who were common victims of northern pogrom in 1966, Ojukwu took all easterners as brothers and common target of domination, hence he carried Niger Deltans along in the prosecution of the war without discrimination or marginalization, with Niger Deltans effectively represented in the sharing of offices and other portfolio.
Major General Philip Effiong was Biafra’s Chief of General Staff and later, Head of State while Mr. N.U. Akpan was Secretary to the Eastern Region and later Biafran Government. Mr. Ignatius Kogbara was Biafra’s representative in London while Dr. Gary Leyton was Deputy head of the Research and Production Department.
Mr. Okon Okon Ndem was Communications officer and Broadcaster Radio Biafra while Mr. Frank Opigo, who introduced the name “Biafra”, was Commissioner for Rural Development and Biafra’s administrator of Yenagoa Province. Dr. S.E. Cookey was Biafra’s Relief Coordinator while M. T. Mbu was Commissioner for Education and Mr. S.E. Imoke – Chairman Rehabilitation Commission.
There were several others.
Up till today, Igbos have continued to regard people of the Niger Delta as brothers and allies in all national affairs, hoping and expecting that they will “wake-up.”
During the 2015 election, Igbos were at the forefront of Jonathan Goodluck’s campaign for the Presidency, even at the expense of their kit and kin in the north, going as far as adopting Jonathan as a core Igbo and rebranding him with Igbo names of Ebele and even Azikiwe.
All to show love and brotherhood to our Niger Delta neighbours.
Now Rotimi and Wike seem to have come back to their senses, let’s watch and see.
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