March 11, 2023
Apartheid Politics in Nkanuland: A Response to Faceless Nkanu Saboteurs By The League of Indigenous Nkanu Professionals
Gentlemen of the Press,
1. The people of Enugu State have in the last few days been subjected to a simulated propaganda blitzkrieg by a handful of faceless cyphers from a minority section of Nkanuland alarmed at the ongoing seismic shift in Nigerian politics arising from the silent revolution unleashed in Nigeria by the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, His Excellency, Mr Peter Obi, the record-setting former Anambra State governor, as well as the glorious Obidient Movement. Rather than embrace the new social order driven by the principles of justice, equity, peaceful co-existence and harmony, these elements from the old, decadent order in Nkanuland are fighting desperately to continue to maintain the discredited status quo which is nothing other than apartheid in our beloved homeland.
2. Without any sense of embarrassment, these empty-headed megaphones state gleefully in the public space that they are committed to the social order which divides Nkanuland into two, namely, Odenigbo and so-called Amadu. Out of sheer mischief and callousness, they have over the years tried to frame the division into descendants of the so-called freeborn and so-called slaves. In fact, they have in recent years gone as far as labelling the bigger section of our beloved homeland as made up of descendants of outcasts.
3. There cannot be a more unconscionable and false narrative. First, Nkanuland has never, never had a history of the osu caste system. Admittedly, there has been a notorious caste system in some parts of Igboland, but not in Nkanuland. Not even a history of discrimination against children of slaves has existed in Nkanuland, unlike in some parts of Igboland.
4. What has obtained in Nkanuland over the centuries has been a struggle for supremacy or dominance between the original settlers and the later ones. The original settlers are, of course, the Odenigbo group whereas the later settlers are the self-styled Amadu group, known in Igbo language as ndi obia. The evidence is overwhelming. There is a grove of documents at the National Archives, especially reports by colonial administrators, to support this position. Even common sense demonstrates clearly that the Odenigbo people were the first to settle in Nkanuland. We have far more swathes of land in a majority of towns and villages in Nkanu. We have a much higher population.
5. Even to this day to name or call an individual or a group Odenigbo anywhere in Igboland is a mark of high honour and prestige, hence it is the sobriquet of many traditional rulers and holders of other prestigious titles across the Igboland. It is, therefore, asinine to think that a sub-Igbo ethnic group which forms the overwhelming majority in Nkanuland known as Odenigbo is composed of later settlers while those whose ancestors are known to have migrated from Igala in Kogi State, Ezza in Ebonyi State and Arochukwu in Abia and different Aro communities in the Southeast and beyond even as recently as less than 100 years ago are the original settlers.
6. The present so-called controversy over who among the two groups of Nkanu that settled first in Nkanuland began simply because the self-styled Amadu were the first to embrace Western education and culture in Nkanuland. They were the first to go to school and they were the first to join the new Western administration in our place because they were the less fortunate in the pre-colonial order. The first people to embrace a new social order in every society are frequently those unable to compete effectively in the current system. They are promised better conditions in the new order, so they naturally subscribe to it. As we can see from Chinua Achebe’s great book, Things Fall Apart, the first persons to embrace the Whiteman’s ways were victims of the caste system and bad cultural practices in Igboland like the killing of twins.
7. In Nkanuland, the self-styled Amadu used the advantage of being the first to go to school and work directly with colonial masters to distort history and manufacture facts against their historical rivals and superiors. They began to give derogatory names to the Odenigbo, who are the custodians of Nkanu traditions, culture and history. Some unsuspecting persons outside Nkanuland started, with time, to believe them. Not surprising. As is now well-known, if a lie is repeated many times, it begins to adorn the cloth of truth and respectability.
8. The last 100 years have seen the worst form of apartheid and man’s inhumanity to man in Nkanuland, perpetrated by the later settlers in Nkanu who believe that they should use their historical advantage in education and elsewhere to not only take every position in Nkanuland but exterminate the Odenigbo in their various communities. As recently as less than three decades ago, the Odenigbo people were killed routinely in their numbers in the old Oruku community in Nkanu East Local Government Area, driven out completely from their ancestral land; they became internally displaced people. The church, especially the Catholic Diocese of Enugu under the leadership of His Excellency, Bishop Anthony Gbuji, and many other organisations had to go out of their way to save the remaining Odenigbo people in Oruku from extermination. The Enugu State government did so well to help bring the Odenigbo people back after eight years in different places and provide permanent boundaries between them and their Oruku neighbours.
9. As can be imagined, almost every political post in Nkanuland has gone to the so-called Amadu. The story has been the same whether it is the position of Governor or Senator or membership of the Enugu State House of Assembly or even the chairmanship of any local government in our place. As recently as last year, one of them became the gubernatorial candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), another pocketed the Enugu East senatorial ticket of the same party, three others were given the three House of Representatives seat tickets in Nkanuland and some others the House of Assembly seat tickets in Nkanuland.
10. Left with no choice, the politicians among the Odenigbo people moved to other political parties, including the Labour Party. And hell was let loose. Certain that Chief Oyibo Chukwu– a proud Odenigbo son, a former chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, the national auditor of the defunct Social Democratic Party in the Third Republic, the PDP state secretary and the LP candidate for the Enugu East senatorial race– was heading for an unprecedented landslide victory in the February 25 National Assembly election, he was assassinated at Amechi in Enugu South Local Government Area, together with his personal assistant, Mr Sunday Igwesi. Their bodies were roasted and their vehicle was set ablaze. Their offence? They were Odenigbo. That’s all. These anti-man forces could not bring themselves to imagine an Odenigbo person, no matter how well-educated and accomplished, in the Senate representing the Enugu East district. No wonder, so-called Amadu elements have bluntly refused to condemn the assassination or console the Chukwu family. Not even Peter Mbah, the PDP gubernatorial candidate, a fellow lawyer and Nkanu man, could condemn the murder or visit the Chukwu family or even call them on the phone to commiserate with them. As the Chief Chukwu family of Amurri in Nkanu West LGA has courageously stated, the late Chief Oyibo Chukwu told a number of people, even on the day he was murdered, that the notorious Ebeano cult was planning to assassinate him.
11. Those behind the assassination thought the gruesome murder would make way for a so-called Amadu rival to sail home almost without a challenge. The assassination was also meant to frighten other Odenigbo candidates contesting in the 2023 general election to the extent of withdrawing immediately. But the opposite situation is the case. Chief Oyibo Chukwu has been replaced by Sir Kelvin Chukwu, his younger brother, as the Labour Party candidate in the Enugu East senatorial election that will now hold on Saturday, March 18. The younger Chukwu is set to win by a big margin, as public sympathy is with him and the Labour Party. Two out of the three House of Representatives seats in Nkanuland have been won by Odenigbo sons. Their candidates in the House of Assembly election will certainly triumph. The Labour Party gubernatorial candidate, Barrister Chijioke Edeoga, supported enthusiastically by millions of Enugu persons, including voters in Nkanuland, will definitely win.
12. This is the background to the ongoing hysteria of mind poisoning by a coterie of Nkanu PDP members determined to do everything to revive the PDP which is now in a comatose state in Enugu. They have even tried to commit the sacrilege of desecrating the holy church with a hefty bribe, but it boomeranged badly. There are numerous videos of how Christians rejected them in different churches in the most humiliating manner on Sunday, March 5, 2023. They have tried to corrupt the press. It is a resounding failure. They are planning to use violence during the gubernatorial election. Enugu people are ready for them. They have gone to obscene levels to corrupt the INEC leadership in Enugu State. The people are aware of their plot and can’t wait to teach them a hard lesson.
13. A bad system doesn’t appear wrong to those who benefit from it. They do everything to defend it to the detriment of the larger society.
14. We want a peaceful, united, cohesive and progressive Nkanu. The era of apartheid is gone not just in South Africa but throughout the world. The wind of change is blowing across Enugu State, including Nkanuland. We counsel our brothers and sisters to eschew the politics of extreme bitterness, intolerance and hostility of the past and embrace the new social order of justice and solidarity.
God bless Enugu State.
Sign:
Prof Muna Nweke Okoye – CMRP, FCBA, FCKM, FIBAKM.
Ufam Ozalla
Convener
Chijioke Ogbodo – mnipr
National Publicity Secretary
For and on behalf of the League of Indigenous Nkanu Professionals.
