The conversation we don’t want to have about Biafra

By David Hundeyin

Ten years ago, when I was a 19 year-old fresher at the University of Hull, I met Ify. She was, at that time, probably the most beautiful girl I had ever set my eyes on. I immediately tripped, hit my head and went into an infatuation coma. Ify was the quintessential social butterfly – witty, friendly, distinctly intelligent and culturally Nigerian, with a few notable modifications like her South London accent and a slight tomboy streak.

I think my eyeballs actually turned into heart emojis everytime I saw her, and within a week of starting university, my mission in life was to get Ify to be my girlfriend. The problem was, it didn’t matter how much time and attention I dedicated to her – Ify was not interested in me. We were very good friends, but as time went on, it became clear to my great dismay that she and I as an item, was just never going to happen. Eventually, I gave up on Ify and retired to lick my metaphorical wounds, completely assured in my 19 year-old wisdom that I would never love again.

Same Country, Different Worlds

Then one day, I happened to stumble into a conversation with our larger group of Nigerian friends, about what brought their families to the UK. Unlike the others, I was not an immigrant, so as a full fee-paying international student, I was effectively not part of the conversation. Our friends with names like Timilehin and Tunde all had similar stories – born in Nigeria, parents wanted more out of life, family moved to the UK. It didn’t occur to me or anyone that Ify – normally the life of the party – was not talking.

Then Ify spoke.

She was also born in Nigeria – Kaduna to be precise, and she lived there until 2000. That year, a religious crisis broke out in the city, and the Hausa natives embarked on a frenzied pogrom of their Igbo neighbours. According to her, a Mercedes-Benz lorry filled with the dead bodies of slaughtered Igbo people was dispatched from Kaduna to Onitsha. Ify and her family had to hide from their neighbours whom they grew up with, until her dad was able to sneak them out of Kaduna and on a flight to London, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. That was her “immigrant” story.

When she finished her story, a kind of dead silence followed as our small group of 17 to 20 year-olds tried to process probably the heaviest thing our ears had ever listened to. Suddenly I understood why Ify would never be interested in me, despite seemingly sharing every interest and identity in common – we came from two different worlds. I came from a Nigeria that I spoke of with pride, based on a privileged background and a Lagos-centric worldview. She also came from Nigeria, but her Nigeria was a place of fear, darkness and dread where the kids you grew up playing hopscotch with could at a moment’s notice become your executioners for an offence none of you understood.

I remember hearing of the corpse-filled truck incident in Onitsha as an 11 year-old, but it seemed as distant to me as a bombing in Lebanon. “Kaduna” and other exotic places like that were just names I heard in the news. Listening to Ify’s story was the first time any of it felt real. It was the first time the word “Igbo” – pejoratively thrown around in Lagos as a sort of light-hearted insult took on a new meaning to me. It was the start of my struggle to engage with the word “Biafra.”

Biafra is a very dirty word

Prior to meeting Ify and a number of friends whose experience in Nigeria substantially broadened my worldview, my only knowledge of the Biafran war was a book called ‘Sozaboy’ by Ken Saro-Wiwa, which I found in the family library. The book was written from the point of view of a barely pubescent protagonist thrust into a war he did not understand, and forced to witness acts of incredible violence. He returns home at the end of the war, only to discover that his hitherto innocent sweetheart now has a child conceived through rape. Amidst all the death and carnage, this for him, is the biggest tragedy of the war. I grew up thinking of the Biafran war as this huge, avoidable playground fight between two sets of silly boys who have now learnt their lesson.

My parents – like many other Nigerian parents – hardly ever spoke about the war. Occasionally, when someone like Ralph Uwazuruike, the MASSOB leader, appeared on the news, one of them would drop a dismissive comment about “omo Ibo” and that would be that. It never occurred to me that Uwazuruike and his group were not just some asshats on the TV talking about something that happened in 19-gboboro, or that the “omo-Ibo” thing, was a term that carried a certain weight with it.

When you grow up and go to school in Lagos, you and your mates all wear the same clothes, speak only English – because your parents won’t speak their language to you at home – listen to the same music, watch the same movies and read the same books – “Igbo,” “Yoruba” and “Hausa” are just annoying subjects at school taught by frustrated teachers with anger issues. You also learn nothing about Nigerian history beyond a few vague soundbites about Herbert Macaulay, Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo. The word “Biafra” is completely absent from your syllabus from Primary 1 through to SS3.

Even the maps on the wall of my dad’s study which had a water body called “Bight of Biafra” were later replaced with maps labeling the same body of water as “Bight of Benin.” Absolutely nobody wants to talk about Biafra, what came before, what happened next, and how it connects to our modern Nigerian reality. This goes to the heart of Nigeria’s cultural problem – a belief in using silence and hope as a strategy instead of engaging in the messy process of working out a solution. As a country and as a civilization, we believe that if we don't look at a problem hard enough, it will get tired and go away.

As we know all too well, that is never going to happen.

Civil War or Genocide? Why It Matters

Why is our awkward silence on the subject of Biafra extremely problematic? There are several reasons, but to begin with, I think it feeds into our lack of historicity, which manifests itself in our national decision making. If it was general knowledge for example, that a certain Muhammadu Buhari was involved in the so-called counter coup of 1966 – essentially a horrendous massacre of Igbo army officers that directly led to the general pogroms that started the war – even the best efforts of marketing communications agencies in Lagos back in 2015 might not have sufficed to convince Nigerian voters that he was a suitable presidential candidate for the 21st century.

But I digress.

The Nigerian civil war took place between 1966 and 1970. The Kaduna pogrom mentioned at the outset happened in 2000. What connects the two events and why is it important to break the suffocating silence and delineate what happened as a war or as a genocide as many now say? Well for one thing, it’s the same people who died in both cases – innocent civilians whose crime was being born within an ethnicity called “Igbo,” which didn’t exist 200 years ago. Assuming these “Igbos” as a group genuinely did something to warrant furious retribution – that included having their children poisoned with rations laced with rat-killer – were they again doing that something – whatever it was – in Kaduna in 2000?

Since the evidence would suggest not, that points to another motivation for the constant and continued need to massacre a specific group of unarmed civilians. Whatever that motivation is can only be identified by those who hold it – a harmless, eyeglass-wearing Lagos yuppie like myself cannot possibly answer that question. The point however, is that to begin with, “Igbos” did nothing as a group to warrant their wholesale slaughter – both before 1966 and after 1970.

If a group of five army majors, including a man named Adewale Ademoyega, carried out a coup, and the response was to slaughter Mama Nneka the rice seller in Sabon Gari market, along with her entire family and thousands of others, then the question is not “What did Mama Nneka do?” (And for the love of God, don’t say that Mama Nneka allegedly sang a song about somebody shooting somebody because if that is a capital offence, then we might as well just throw the whole country away.) The proper question is “Who felt a need to kill Mama Nneka and why?” It is a similar situation to that of a rape victim in Nigeria who is asked what she did to provoke the aggressive penis, rather than directing a question to the penis-owning rapist. Victim-blaming is a product of our toxic cultural silence – which has been fed by our 49-year silence about Nigeria’s most momentous national event.

When we ask the right questions and determine that Nigeria’s historically dreadful treatment of one of its three biggest ethnic groups is neither deserved nor justified, but is actually genocidal and irrational, then we can start making progress in our national discourse. If we admit that something is not fair, then that makes us commit to changing it. If we forever continue rationalizing stuff like this, we are merely ensuring that Nigeria will never change the record and dance to something new.

The usual saying makes it seem as if when two elephants fight, they get to walk away unscathed while the grass groans in distress. In reality, grass regrows rapidly, but the elephants sustain severe injuries when they use their tusks on each other. In Nigeria’s case, one such severe injury is the moribund, obsolete and miserable Ajaokuta steel mill. At the planning phase, consultants recommended siting the steel mill just outside Onitsha for reasons of proximity to iron ores, cutting down the need for imports.

The Nigerian elephant delivered what it thought was a huge blow to the Biafran elephant by moving the mill to Kogi state for purely political reasons. That was over 30 years ago. Today in 2019, Ajaokuta steel mill remains as unused as the day it was commissioned, but with thousands of salary earners and pensioners on its books who have sat there for decades without a single productive day’s work. Nigeria still imports every kind of steel product it needs, and the technology used at Ajaokuta is at least 20 years out of date, making Chinese steel imports cheaper than whatever it could theoretically produce today.

Oh, and guess which group of people control that import industry? Yes.

Clearly, it wasn’t only the grass that suffered.

Now let’s do a quick mental experiment. Inside your mind, picture the map of Nigeria. Shade the parts of the map where Igbo pogroms have been commonplace over the past 70 years. Now select a different mental colour and shade the parts of the map that are currently suffering from near-total breakdown of security due to violence from non-state actors. Notice how you end up shading the second colour almost exactly over the first. Precisely.

This is not because of some dead-mans-curse/karma hocus pocus. There are of course numerous political and economic factors contributing to the toxicity of such spaces which cannot be explored in this article. However, a key reason is that after decades of the Nigerian state allowing human beings to be slaughtered at the drop of a hat in those places – because said human beings are named “Chukwuka” instead of “Aliu” – the people there have internalized and normalized such violence. Long after Chukwuka and Odinanka have fled or died, the sense of total impunity and the feeling of power associated with unpunished violence remain firmly rooted in those places. Inevitably, such people turn their weapons on each other and continue acting out what they first practised on “Igbos.”

Southwestern Nigeria, which has managed by and large to restrain itself from such orgies of violence, is unsurprisingly Nigeria’s safest, wealthiest and most stable region. This is not rocket science. As Chinua Achebe eloquently put it: “We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.”

An Igbo proverb expresses this thought more starkly as “Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya,” which means: “He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

Pain Gives Birth to Strength and Resilience

Back when I worked in Marketing, I had a boss, Ayeni Adekunle who was fond of the Yoruba proverb “Ninu ikoko dudu l’eko funfun ti’n jade,” which means “White eko comes out of a black pot.” After 49 years of painful, injurious silence about Africa’s biggest-ever genocide, the cleansing effect of finally speaking up will be a great thing. These conversations will be painful. My good friend Charles Isidi is a good person to talk to if you want to get an insight into how raw, pervasive and real the pain still is, after all these years.

I remember being gobsmacked when he informed me that he knows people whose birth certificates read “Republic of Biafra,” because they were born during the war in a country called Biafra. “Nigeria” to them, was simply this big bully next door trying to kill them for no reason – which by the way, is pretty accurate. So what do we do when confronted by stories that we don’t really want to hear, and that we don’t know what to do with?

The first thing is probably to listen. Just, listen. Really listen. Don’t interrupt with “Ehn, but you know they couldn’t have known that…” It’s not your story, and it’s not about you. Listen and let people tell their story. Nigeria is not going to fall down and die if we listen to one-third of our population telling us: “You know, dropping bombs on my daddy’s head because some guys we never met did something that had nothing to do with us in a place we never saw wasn’t really called for.” It’s a difficult conversation, but not a world-ending one.

Ultimately, the Igbo ethnic group is now probably Nigeria’s most widely-recognised and diffused ethnicity, with the vast majority still holding on to their Nigerian identity. My friend Ify whom I mentioned at the outset still identifies with Nigeria and visits from time to time. Despite all that has happened, what binds us all together is still more powerful than what sets us apart. We may have a troubled relationship across ethnic lines in Nigeria, but it can still be salvaged.

Like all troubled relationships however, the first and most important step is to have the conversation.

** Published May 31, 2019 by The Scoop

** David Hundeyin is a writer, travel addict and journalist majoring in politics, tech and finance. His work has been featured in the New Yorker Magazine and the Washington Post. Hundeyin is a US Department of State nominee for the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP).

IGBO Vs ANIOMA

By Cheta Nwanze

Last year I took my friend and partner, Tunde Leye to my homestead. In going to that area, we did not cross the Niger River (Oshimmiri in my native dialect) the way most people cross it these days. Rather, we went the old way. We took a boat from Cable Point (Ikpele Nmili) in Asaba, and 12 minutes later, we were sharing a beer with some of my acquaintances at Onicha Marine. You see, for those who know the history, Asaba and Onitsha, prior to the building of the bridge, both communities were quite closeknit, something we’ll discuss later on today.

The third point in the dictionary definition of a mongrel is “any cross between different things, especially if inharmonious or indiscriminate.”

This is the classic definition of the Igbo people, something I wrote about six years ago. The Igbo people came from different parts of what is today’s Nigeria, and settled in the area that they now call home. This, centuries worth of migration, mixing and consolidation, was anything but harmonious or planned. However, further research has shown me that some of what I wrote then was incomplete, but I will refrain from saying “wrong”, because I am unfit to untie Elizabeth Isichei’s shoelaces, and it was from her 1976 work, A History of the Igbo People, that I drew heavily for that piece.

As an aside, I think it’s time for me to do my first social media appeal. Is anyone willing to finance me to go and sit with her in New Zealand once this pandemic is over? She lives there now, and she is such a repository of Igbo history. She was born in 1939 which means that at 81, the window for a comprehensive debrief of the stuff which didn’t make any of her three books that focused on the Igbo people is closing…

Let me go back to topic.

In the last few days there has been a lot of argument on Twitter about whether the Igbo speaking people of Delta State in Nigeria are Igbo, or something called Anioma. Some people from this area have pointed out that they have been victims of taunts by some Igbos from the East of the Niger, who have themselves said that Delta Igbos are not Igbo.

Both sides of this argument are right, but one tweet I saw was an outright lie. There is no one from the East who will call a native Anioma person “Onye ofe mmanụ. That particular slur is reserved for Yoruba people as the thinking behind that stereotype is that the Yoruba people cannot cook, but rather drown their soups in oil and pepper to cover the lack of culinary skills. My pot belly can tell you that that stereotype is way off, but that is another topic for another day…

The words used for the various peoples of the former Bendel are as follows — Ndị Ika to describe the Igbo speaking peoples of the Midwest; Ndị Idu to describe the Bini people; Ndị ohu (a slur) to describe the Esan people (and the history of this is actually linked to Benin); Ndị Usobo to describe those in the “proper Delta”, that is the Ijaw, Ijekiri, Isoko and Urhobo.

Now, the problem with most of Nigeria, is that we do not know where we are coming from. Generally, if you do not know where you’re coming from, it’s kinda hard to know where you’re going to.

Too many Igbo people both East and West of the Niger, do not know where they are coming from. Referring back to the piece I highlighted earlier, I pointed out that, “ The Anioma sub-group is divided into two, Enuani and Ukwuani. Enuani and Onitsha people migrated from Igala along with Ishan.” This is incomplete.

In the intervening years, I’ve had discussions with older men in Onitsha, Idumuje-Ogboko, Onicha Ugbo, Atani, Obosi, Issele Azagba and Ibusa, and built a more complete profile. Yes, some Onitsha people indeed came from the Igala area, but most claim their ancestry from around Benin (possibly from what is now called Igbanke), who fled East sometime in the 16th Century to escape the wrath of Oba Esigie. These people, under their leader, Eze Chima, founded a number of towns along the way — Ọnicha Ugbo, Ọnicha Ọlọna, Issele Uku, Issele Azagba, and then one of their number crossed the great river, and settled at Ọnicha Mmiri, which is today known simply as Ọnicha, or as the British colonists three centuries later transcribed it, Onitsha.

Now, to cross to what became Onitsha, that band of Ụmụ Eze Chima (children of Eze Chima) must have crossed the river at the closest point where the water is calmest. From the area that was called Ikpele Nmili by the natives, but was rechristened Cable Point by the British when they set up their communication channel there soon after decimating the population of Asaba. These Ụmụ Eze Chima were helped too cross by the locals who had themselves settled there two generations earlier under the leadership of Nnebisi, who had himself left his hometown, Nteje in today’s Anambra State. Nteje itself has Igala origins, and I have an appointment with the Eje of Ankpa in today’s Kogi state, to discuss this relationship (note the title of their traditional ruler — Eje, and then relate it to Nteje)…

According to Dennis Osadebey in the book, Building A Nation, Nnebisi was the son of an Nteje woman, Diaba, who had gotten pregnant for an Igala man, Ojobo. Nnebisi grew up in Nteje thinking he was of the kindred, but one day, after a quarrel, he was told that his father was not from there, so he could not take part in land sharing. He thus left Nteje with his followers, and followed a route which brought him to the great river.

If you look at a map of those areas, it is quite easy to trace the route taken by Nnebisi, which must have taken him through Nsugbe, and then along the Anambra River (Ọma Mbala), and then to the point where the Anambra River joins the Niger River. That precise point where the Anambra River joins the Niger River, is coincidentally, the precise point where you can take an eight minute boat ride and land at Cable Point in Asaba.

Nnebisi and his people crossed, landed at Ikpele Nmili and decided to plant their crops there for the year, given that planting season was just starting. A year later, they were pleasantly surprised to find how good their harvest was (of course the area is rich in alluvial soils brought from upstream by the river), so they decided not to move from there. Nnebisi called the place Ani Ahaba (We have settled in this land), and four hundred years later, some white chap hearing the name that the natives called their land, wrote “Asaba” in his map, and not Ahaba.

That man was Carlo Zappa, an Italian priest who was appointed Prefect of the Upper Niger by the Catholic Church to build the faithful in the region. He spent a lot of time converting the natives in both Asaba and Onitsha, and all the way to Ojoto, East of the Niger, and Agbor, West of the Niger. A look through Catholic records during the era of the Ekumeku resistance will show that at the turn of the century, most of the Catholic priests in what is now the Diocese of Issele Uku in Delta State, came from the Onitsha area, as they were all under the same ecclesiastical province. These records are still available.

A look at the roll call of the dead from the Aba Women’s affair of 1929, shows that the wife of the Sanitary headman in the Opobo area, was from Asaba, which kind of tells you the direction in which people went in the decades leading up to the split of Southern Nigeria into East and West in 1954. Up until that point in 1954, many from the Igbo speaking areas just west of the Niger River, found it easier to cross the river to do their business. And why not?
The distance between Asaba and Owerri is just 102km. Asaba to Enugu is 125km, while Asaba to Umuahia is 142km. All of these places are closer to Asaba than Warri, which in modern Nigerian geopolitics is in the same state as Asaba. Warri is 176km from Asaba. The Asaba man, when he arrives in either of Enugu, Owerri or Umuahia, speaks the same language as the people in those places, barring the normal dialectal differences that occur in languages that are spread over large geographical areas. This same Asaba man, would arrive in Warri, and would be at a complete loss as to what the native in Warri is saying…

Referring back to Dennis Osadebe, I’ll recommend that any young Anioma person who wants to learn his history should find Osadebe’s book, Building A Nation, and read it. Osadebe understood where he was coming from, and was unequivocal about it. Thus it was that he joined first the Asaba Union, then by sheer force of will helped to coalese it into the Western Ibo Union, and then by 1939, he was the General Secretary of the Ibo Union. He joined OBN Eluwa on his trip around both Eastern and Western Igboland between 1947 and 1953, a trip which created the Igbo identity that we know today (until 1966) at least.
Osadebe was at the forefront of agitation to remove the Asaba Division from the Benin Province to which it had been joined in 1931 and either rejoin it to the Onitsha Province where it had been prior, or create a province of its own. Of course that agitation fell flat in 1954 once the Southern Region was split into East and West, but being a pragmatic fellow, Osadebe teamed up with his Benin and Delta Division neighbours to campaign for the creation of the Midwest Region, a campaign which succeeded in 1963 with Osadebe becoming premier of the region. Even at that, Osadebe maintained his close relations with his kin from across the river, and thus it was that when war broke out four years later, more than any other, Osadebe’s people, from Asaba, bore the biggest blow that any town in Nigeria faced, the Asaba Massacre of 1967.
This was where things began to take a negative turn for the Midwestern Igbo identity. In 1964, a brilliant and ambitious 30-year old from Asaba joined the public service. Phillip Asiodu, an Oxford graduate who spoke Yoruba as a first languge, rose very fast and by mid-1966 as Nigeria was melting down around everyone, was already a Permanent Secretary in the federal civil service. Unfortunately, he faced the same mistrust that every Midwest Igbo faced in Nigeria of the time: where did his loyalties lie? With Nigeria, or with the rebels? He chose Nigeria, and as tends to be the case with people who have to prove themselves, showed his loyalty to Nigeria only too well.

Asiodu was the one who adviced Gowon to renege from the Aburi Accord when he pointed out that Ojukwu had outmanouvered Gowon in that meeting in Ghana. The moment Gowon reneged on that deal, war became inevitable. The war had a personal effect on Asiodu as his brother Sidney, a well known prize winning athlete, was killed during the Asaba Massacre in 1967. But Asiodu kept his head down, and remained firmly Nigerian, and non-Igbo. That was the birth of the split in identity. A people defeated in war have a tendency to bow their heads. Those who can, reject being members of that defeated group. So it is no surprise that those Igbos who could (borderlands) decided that they no longer wanted to be Igbo. Midwest Igbos created a new identity to the extent that the town of Igbo Akiri changed its name to Igbanke, and its most prominent son, Samuel Chiedu Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, who along with Alexander Madiebo narrowly escaped death in the July 1966 coup, dropped “Chiedu” from his name entirely, and emphasised Osaigbovo. To be honest, I cannot hold people responsible for such behaviours. The city of Gdansk in Poland was once called Danzig, and it was in Germany…
Going back to Dennis Osadebe, after the war, some prominent Igbos including Osadebe banded together to try and resurrect the Igbo Progressive Union which had been proscribed by Aguiyi-Ironsi in 1966. So they formed the Igbo National Assembly who’s stated goal was to unify Igbos under a common umbrella body. In no time, the INA was banned by the FG, but by 1976, shortly after the murder of Murtala Mohammed, they tried again, and this time, went the route of a socio-cultural organisation. Thus Ohaneze Ndị Igbo was born, and one of the original signatories to the Ohaneze charter was Dennis Osadebe. Along with Ben Nwabueze, and a few others whose names I don’t recall. Osadebe knew that the place of the Midwestern Igbo in Nigeria’s geopolitics would always be with his kin from across the river, and he always acted accordingly. Osadebe was the one who coined the term Anioma, as the entry region of the Midwestern Igbos into Ohaneze. Some of these things are simple to check out, for example, the expression “Anioma” does not appear in any document predating 1975.

The funny thing is that by 1992, even Asiodu who was perhaps most directly responsible for the identity crisis facing his people, had come around, and along with some notable people from Anioma, wrote a letter to the military head of state, Ibrahim Babangida asking him to take Anioma out of Delta state, excise Onitsha and Atani from Anambra state, and create an Anioma state which would have been a part of what is now the South-East geopolitical zone. The signatories to that letter, dated 15 June 1992 where as follows: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Owelle Onicha; Dennis Osadebe, Ojiba Ahaba; Phllip Asiodu, Izoma Ahaba; Anthony Modebe, Ogene Onicha; Ben Nwabueze (from Atani in Anambra state); Chukwuma Ijomah (from Aboh in Delta state); and Ukpabi Asika. BIC Ijomah died just over a month ago, so of all the sages who signed that letter, only Ben Nwabuee and Phillip Asiodu are still with us, and for whatever reason, IBB did not act on the letter.

What is the lesson from Chief Asiodu’s apparent turnaround?

Once your name is Emeka (figurative of course), Nigeria will always happen to you.
That is what people like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala understand.

That is what people like Austin Okocha understand.

That is what great men like Osadebe, Ijomah, Achuzia, and eventually Asiodu, understood.

The truth is that based on our history, the Anioma man never saw the Niger River as a barrier. As a matter of fact, just read Chinua Achebe’s Chike And The River, and you’ll get a sense of how people used to cris-cross the river at that salient point before the bridge was built. The remnants are still there today. Cable Point projects into the river, it is clearly an old market, and Onitsha Marine also projects into the river. That is the original location of the famous Onitsha Market. Has any one from Onitsha ever stopped to ask himself why the Basilica of Holy Trinity was built basically a few metres away from the river at Onitsha Marine? Cross the river to Asaba and St. Joseph’s Catholic Church is in an almost identical position. Both churches were built about the same time, commissioned by the same man, Carlo Zappa.

How else do you explain that the dialect of Igbo spoken in Asaba, and that spoken in Onitsha, are the same language?
In the end, the Anioma man, because Biafra lost a war 50 years ago, may deny his identity all he wants, but it will not change the fact — in the Byzantine politics of Nigeria, the day will come when Nigeria will tell you who you are.

I think that is the one thing Nigeria never fails at.

Once your name is Emeka, or Chike, or Nnamdi, or Uju, or Chukwuma, or Obi, or Ogechukwu, or Ekwi, or Azuka, or Ike, or Nonso, or Ifeanyi, or indeed Cheta, the day will come, when Nigeria will tell you who you are. Don’t be caught flat footed.

For the Igbos from the East, never forget some facts — the most effective Biafran diplomat during the war was Raphael Uwechue, Oguluzeme Ogwashi-Uku. The majority of the weapons that were supplied to Biafra came from France, and it was his efforts. Almost all of the CARITAS flights that saved starving Biafran children, had his fingerprints on them. Plus the fact that Emeka Ojukwu, Ikemba Nnewi got out of Biafra in the end and spent 12 years in exile in a French speaking country, was due to his diplomatic efforts. Raphael Chukwu Uwechue was also President-General of Ohaneze Ndị Igbo for four years. Ndị Anioma, that was your son.

Also, Igbos from the East, never forget that the successful commander of Biafran forces during the war was Joseph Achuzia, Ikemba Ahaba. From 4 October 1967 to 12 October 1967, he prevented Nigerian forces from successfully crossing the Niger River. The Nigerians could only establish a bridgehead at Onitsha Marine before they were beaten back by Achuzia. This defeat was one of the things that led to the massacre of his kinsmen in Asaba on 7 October 1967. On 31 March 1968, Achuzia directed Jona Uchendu’s company of about 700 men in what became Biafra’s most spectacular success of the war, the Abagana Ambush. In that event, 700 Biafran men defeated a Nigerian force of 6000 men. Only 100 Nigerian soldiers, including Murtala Mohammed survived. It was after that action that Murtala did not take part in the war again. Achuzia who died two years ago, was also an Anioma son.

Edit: Ben Nwabueze is still alive. He also signed the 1992 letter I referred to.

Bleak May Day in Delta over unpaid salaries

From Jonny Stevens, Asaba

As workers in Delta State are set to join their counterparts across the country to celebrate May Day, gloom, frustration, bitterness, anger, lamentation, and despair are not enough to describe the mood of the newly-recruited teachers by the Post Primary Education Board in the State who have continued to express their displeasure over the non-payment of their salaries after seven months in the service of the State without explanation from the relevant authorities.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one of the teachers now, heavily indebted and shrinking in stature, said she is a negation of her old self. She has resorted to frying akara (bean cake) at the roadside around Ughelli Central Motor park, to cater for her children.

As tears welled up in her eyes, she told our correspondent: “The last seven months have been so terrible for me. It has been like hell on earth – no salary, no food and no help. I cannot go into prostitution like many women and ladies are doing now, at least with this one (frying of Akara), I am feeding myself and my three children particularly during the Covid-19 lockdown."

Another teacher, who simply identified herself as Nkem, who said that she came from the same town with the governor complained that the nonpayment is taking longer than expected without explanation from relevant authorities, causing them to get heavily indebted, with some reaching to an extent where access to other credits is proving difficult particularly during the lockdown to prevent the spread of corona virus in Delta.

To survive the hard times brought upon her by prolonged non-payment of her salaries by the State government, the hapless woman resorted to washing plates and serving food at a popular restaurant located in Abraka,during the lockdown.

The pathetic tale of Nkem and others who craved anonymity is illustrative of the travails of the newly employed teachers some of who are now entering their eight month – from September, 2019

The increasing acute hunger, starvation and helplessness being experienced by them particularly during the period  of th lockdown exposes the insensitive nature of Delta State goverment to the plight of workers in the State.

Investigations revealed that the Delta State Government recently resorted to paying less than 300  of the newly recruited 1000 teachers which represents less than 40 percent of the total population of the new workers leaving, the other 700 to groan in pains.

Further findings revealed that as the economy bites harder as a result of the economic impact of the lockdown to curb the spread of corona virus , it has become increasingly difficult for the new teachers of the Post Primary Education Board to survive due to heavy  indebtedness with most of them resorting to begging.


Efforts to get the reaction of relevant offices in the Post Primary Education Board  or Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education is yet to yield results.

Nigeria’s Unprofitable Lockdown

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

How exactly is the lockdown helping to halt the spread of coronavirus in Nigeria? Or put another way, how is the Buhari regime which announced the lockdown in three locations, Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), ensuring that the measure unleashed is at least achieving a reasonable percentage of the purpose for which it was declared?

Has there been any thorough audit of the exercise? Who is also undertaking such an assessment in the various states that are equally on lockdown? What is the level of compliance at the various places and what percentage of the anticipated gains has so far been achieved?   


One may never get a coherent answer.  That is the problem a people must learn to live with when they are stuck with a regime that appears to derive some kind of strange animation from maintaining an icy distance from the people it claims to be governing, a leadership that seems to have become incurably estranged from the people, their problems and feelings, and appears to be trapped in abject lack of the capacity to muster any empathy and fellow-feeling either when speaking to the populace or taking actions that are sure to harshly affect their lives.


What discerning Nigerians see out there are mere perfunctory and aimless exercises by a regime that appears to be mainly interested in demonstrating that it is also doing or has done something. Whether the measures undertaken eventually achieve the desired results or not do not seem to be among the things that bother it. What appears to matter only is that the government’s megaphones are now armed with “strong evidences” of some actions undertaken by the regime and are using them to torment the ears of a terribly famished and frustrated populace by broadcasting them on rooftops and equally deploying them to great effects to launch ferocious attacks on those who try to call attention to the howling inadequacies and failures of the authorities.


Despite locking down Lagos, Ogun, the FCT and some other states for some weeks now, the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 is still rising. Due to the lockdown, the people cannot go out to work to earn a living in one of the harshest economies in the world, but is that all that is required to be done to combat the virus? What sincere efforts are being deployed to cushion the effects of the stay-at-home order so that people who are prevented from working to earn a living are not allowed to die of hunger? Has the government tried to identify with the people’s suffering in order to attract sufficient sympathy and cooperation from them for its strategy for halting the spread of the virus? Is the movement-restriction order, which most of the populace may just be seeing as punitive, helping to achieve the required “social distancing” which has been proved to be the most effective measure for the containment of coronavirus?


As I move about, I see groups of people in large numbers, gathered here and there, sitting or standing very close to each other, holding lively discussions – often almost speaking into each other’s face. From the few words you could pick from their discussions, you would see immediately that government and what is widely perceived as its uncaring nature is usually the topic of discourse.  Obviously, these people are tired, hungry and angry. These gatherings, therefore, have become some kind of tranquilizer, a way of relieving tensions and removing attention from the biting problems associated with the action of a government they believe merely emerged from its seclusion, imposed a lockdown on them, and returned to its hideout without caring about the searing effects of the policy.


But, these gatherings, sadly, only serve to sabotage the very purpose of the restriction of movements and stay-at-home order. How many of the people attend these gatherings uninfected, but go home eventually carrying the virus? So, what then are we achieving? Is it just to keep the people starving at home so that the rest of the world can see that the Nigerian government is also doing something to contain the spread of the virus, even though all the efforts being clumsily and aimlessly undertaken appear like pouring water in a basket?


I have been saying it for some years now that Nigeria presents the best picture of how a country could look like and exist in the absence of any form of government.. The average Nigerian has learnt to exist without expecting anything good, edifying or exciting happening to remind him about the existence of the government. Nigerians have learnt to endure the bad roads and dilapidated public infrastructures like hospitals and schools.  In most cases, they help themselves by making the roads that lead to their homes, providing potable water for themselves and generating their own electric power – by spending so much on petrol daily and polluting the atmosphere with ear-splitting noise and thick, harmful smokes. Even security which should be the most basic obligation any government owes its people since it controls the instruments of force and violence is almost non-existent. People are left at the mercy of criminals and bandits. So, in order to safeguard their lives, Nigerians spend so much to arrange for their own security. 


Many Nigerians, therefore, have grown to see government as some irrelevant, indifferent or even a perennially absent entity. Government only compels them to remember that it exists when it constitutes a nuisance to their lives like coming to extract taxes from them without giving anything beneficial in return or demolishing structures and displacing many people who have managed to find shelters for themselves in the absence of any viable housing policies for the masses, or even like the imposition of a movement-restriction order  on the people and callously abandoning them to their fate as is currently being experienced in the country.


The people feel that their leaders are too immersed in their business of primitive accumulations to have any time left to seek to make them happy or try to attract their friendship and sympathy. And so, even though the restrictions are inevitable, the people are not able to buy into it. And so, the objective is largely defeated.


Even the government that is preaching “social distancing” is seen everywhere often flagrantly observing it in the breach. For instance, shortly after the Bauchi State Governor, Mr. Bala Mohammed, was released from isolation following his recovery from Covid-19, pictures of an event he featured in were released and people were scandalized that they should convoke such a crowd where people interacted very closely and “social distancing” requirements were flouted with outrageous impunity.     


All over the country, the people are witnessing top government functionaries brazenly failing to lead by example by obeying the very restrictions they had imposed to check the spread of the virus. As they do this, they deemphasize the importance and seriousness of those measures before the people. The worst example was egregiously advertised during the recent burial of the late Chief of Staff to the President, Mr. Abba Kyari. First, the corpse was flown from Lagos to Abuja, thereby endangering the lives of those who were obligated to convey and receive it. The burial was aired on television and the crowd was not, in my estimation, less than 200. This was a brazen violation of the extant crowd regulation policy of the government which stipulates that no gathering should exceed 20 people. Every requirement about “social distancing” was rudely flouted with utmost impunity. It was as if there was a deliberate effort to spread the coronavirus. Many Nigerians must have wondered at the kind of government we have that honours the dead at the expense of the safety of the living, and makes a law with one hand only to flout it with the other? 


Has anybody seen where the often very miserable palliatives are shared to hungry Nigerians? Because the people are conscious of the fact that what is being distributed are not always enough for everyone to get some bit, the fight in the usually intimidating crowd can only fill any decent person with great disgust and dread. And the videos of these shameful displays are all over the social media embarrassing and further diminishing Nigeria before the rest of the world.


So, it is not possible to, for once, treat “ordinary” Nigerians like human beings, undertake the distribution of these food items a little more decently and avoid the sorry spectacle of people fiercely fighting, wounding themselves and falling over each other to get the items being thrown at them by officials as though they were animals?


How many healthy people come for those food items only to go home infected with coronavirus? So, why the lockdown if the sharing of palliatives only help to further spread the virus? Unless the government undertakes a comprehensive audit of the gains of the lockdown, adopts a more creative and humane approach to its implementation, people will only be kept at home dying of hunger while the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 keeps increasing. Instead of assessing the gains of the four weeks people have already endured and design a better way of achieving the desired results, what we are hearing is that the president and governors have resolved to impose another two weeks of restrictions!


I will keep hoping that there is nothing in the corridors of power that makes those there incapable of realizing when they have become confused, overwhelmed and totally bereft of any workable ideas!


So far, the government has got so much money from donations from Nigeria and abroad. It is not enough to just sit somewhere in Abuja and announce the billions you claim to have shared out to people. Please, come down from your high horse, face reality and do the right thing. You are merely preparing a time bomb by keeping people at home and refusing to financially empower them so they can feed themselves and their families. If other countries, even in Africa, can successfully do it, Nigeria can. Let the cash disbursements go round. Let the food items reach everyone that is in need of them.


If leaders hope to succeed, they must strive to connect with the people and see them as human beings who have genuine needs and feelings, and not as mere statistics. Please, this is the 21st Century! This also is not an election season, so let all the propaganda end. They neither change the price of fish in the market nor fill the stomach of the starving. They are simply exasperating and nauseating. The Buhari regime should endeavour to puncture by practical actions the growing impression that it is helplessly overwhelmed. That is, if it is not!

*Ugocukwu Ejinkeonye is a Columnist and Member, Editorial Board, Daily Independent newspapers. His column appears every Monday on the back page of the paper. (scruples2006@yahoo.com; @ugowrite.) 

EDUCATION, HEALTH SECTORS AND THE UNENDING IMPUNITY OF THE RULING CLASS

 By Prof. Victor Ukaogo

The Health Sector has become the Scapegoat of Coronavirus. It would seem to many that before now the health workers did not worry much about the sector; they worried just for the many allowances that accrue to them. We may not know the details but from the outside it was like they merely worried about the disparity in their wages even as the unions within the sector battled against each other. We have not seen a concerted national action demanding tangible reforms of the health sector. Imagine patients buying syringes , surgical gloves etc in a hospital? To be given prescription drugs, only God knows!!

The competition and rivalries in the sector is legendary as nurses envy the doctors to the point of maligning them as incompetent and inefficient. The intra sector intrigues refuse to go even with the CMDs and consultants forming cabals to push their respective ideas in hospital management.

Of course as the squabbles grew, the general good of the sector suffered with no group championing or demanding for reform or facelift of the sector. Hazard allowances and sundry other personal demands dominate the airwaves hence the recurring strikes in the sector. The strikes were not for the general good of the sector because these strikes were either sectional or factional; all to the good of their oppressors.

But thanks to Covid 19. The pandemic finally gingered nurses and other health workers in Parklane Enugu to protest for their ill preparedness for covid 19. They spoke in one voice at least for once in what appeared to be for their own good or survival. No sector of the society  can develop optimally without government intervention with  substantial resources in that sector. At least,  Covid 19 has exposed our inadequacies in the Health sector which is a product of negligence and wickedness. Maybe health workers should pursue the progressive development of the sector by restrategizing; who knows if the government will do something. 

But the government invitation extended to chinese doctors recently appeared to many as the grand funeral for the  ailing health sector.  Imagine Nigeria, a super exporter of health entrepreneurs to all corners of the world being roundly humiliated by technocrats in government!! Well, it is not in doubt that whatever happens after covid 19 will surely be a case study for research.

 The decay in the health sector is in no way an accident.  Indeed the sector is not the only sector assailed by the vicissitudes of failed governance. It manifests as a clearly orchestrated wickedness by the rich to dispatch the poor to their early graves. But have they not become victims of their own wickedness?

It might be difficult to argue that the health sector is not like the Education sector. For indeed they appear quite similar with few contrasts. As medical tourism booms in the land so has education pilgrimage prospered. Imagine how Nigerian students fill mushroom Ghanaian private universities paying in dollars!! Imagine a 4 year degree course in Nigeria is offered for a mere six months with certificates according to reports in Benin Republic? Parents that complain of 30k school fees in Nigeria happily pay thousands of dollars across Seme border for their children. Interestingly, in those universities in Ghana and Benin Republic, Nigerian professors and lecturers service them in full. So the death of public schools is the happiness of proprietors of private universities. The consequence of public school failure is the shipping of  their children abroad. Yes, anywhere outside Nigeria.  But in this era of pandemic, how far did they go in medical tourism or academic pilgrimage? Covid 19 should be congratulated for exposing the health sector and the education  sector. Indeed, but for the pandemic, the shenanigans in the health sector would not have been exposed as high profile health clinics couldn't manage what doctors in tents did to discharge a pool of recovered covid 19 victims. And for t

he parents that are  willing to ship out their wards at a short notice, they failed woefully in their enterprise.  And today, the lockdown has indeed locked the big and the small.

I am not in any position  to attest to the reality or otherwise that there is an unseen deity or what appears as one compelling government not do any good to its citizens without struggle. ASUU wrestled the government to the ground to extract TETFUND from them and this intervention agency is today the only remaining hope for  the University system in Nigeria.

It is true that lecturers are being starved and blackmailed by successive regimes, but ASUU is resolute with principles; it is the only union the government  can never break no matter the antics or arsenal deployed. Teachers are resolute in demanding for proper funding of the universities not the increment in salaries as being bandied about by beneficiaries of the rot in the sector.

ASUU is the only union in the world whose members will go hungry instead of compromising. This 3 months salary seizure in this period of ruthless  pandemic  must have shocked the presidency along with their advisers as the union remain poised to salvage the Education  sector from the fangs and jaws of the rich for the benefit of the poor.

The destruction of public schools will be good business for private universities and their owners.  For parents that side the oppressors, the failure of ASUU in in his current face off will determine finally the fate of this generation. If the health sector is comfortable with the ruin and decay, all well and good but for us in knowledge industry, they must contend with teachers to the end. I sometimes wonder if madam minister and her allies in the punishment of University teachers were living in Nigeria or in the moon when this same ASUU wrestled repeatedly with military apologists in the 80s and 90s or even as late as 2013. If Military regimes didn't silence nor defeat ASUU, this rudderless civil contraption can do even less to the union.

It's unfortunate that whenever and wherever technocrats perpetrate impunity, everybody will quickly direct their anger  against President Buhari. Now the seizure of 3 months salary and the refusal of the Accountant  General to obey the presidential directive to pay the teachers over a week after is most instructive.  But like Dr David Wayas said 'History will surely remember ASUU for standing  alone for the truth,  by the truth and nothing less'. It is in the DNA of ASUU to show the light, let us not fail in this self appointed  task because victory is already in sight.

Be blessed.

Nigeria; A Country Created By Britain To Destroy Itself

By Elochukwu Nicholas Ohagi
For Family Writers Press International.

Nigeria didn't just start spoiling under APC.

It started spoiling from the first day Nigeria was created. That is because Nigeria was never meant to progress.

Nigeria was created for the interest of the British government alone.

 The more Nigeria continues to exist, the more the country self-destruct for the benefit of Britain. That is why Britain brought together people with completely different world view. People who instead of channeling a part to random progress, they keep experiencing persistent chaos.

 Britain studied the Nigeria people so well, hence they handed the contraption over to the North during the period of independence transition.

The northerners had earlier declared that they are not ready for independence three years prior to independence; so tell me how such people could have effectively managed the affairs of the newly independent country.

You must understand that in the 50s and 60s, literacy level in the North was nothing to write home about, yet the British jumped Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo who were highly intelligent and know what it takes to lead a mordern society and handed Nigeria over to Abubarka Tafawa Balewa.

They wanted the new nation to fail and most importantly depend on them.

Britain understands the diverse ideological, cultural and religious rivalry between the North, East and West, so they utilized it perfectly to their advantage. No nation with such bitter rivalry will succeed without breaking into different fragments.

From the inception of Nigeria's independence, the mission of Northern political fundamentalists is to supress the Igbo and not to grow the nation. So the North who know they can't do it alone sees an accomplice in the Yoruba who have settled for the office of the 'most beloved slave' from the hated South.

In this, Britain retains control of their colony through the back door, the North gets the lion-share in a resources they contribute nothing to, while the Yoruba settles for the rest. The East, from where the entire resources comes from remain cheated, marginalized and impoverished.

Go to the Eastern riverine areas and you will shed tears over the horrible suffering of the poverty-raged inhabitants. The oil pollution is something that can't be completely cleaned in the next 50 years.

It pains me when I hear people today lament that APC destroyed Nigeria, and it even pains more when PDP members especially the main players in the 16 years of absurd administration and embezzlement start trumpeting against the misrule of their APC twin brother.

Who is fooling who?

Was it not how APC members prior to 2015 election, kept shouting how PDP destroyed Nigeria.

After the series of destruction of the country by many different military coup including that of Gen Muhammadu Buhari, it was PDP that the country was handed over to.

This PDP instead of writing a new people's constitution, accepted the one which the outgoing military government handed over to them. It was actually a military manual through which the military who were majorly led by northern military personnel will use to rule from the background. And indeed they succeeded.

It isn't a surprise that since Nigeria returned to democracy, four men have ruled Nigeria and  two were ex-military Generals. In a culmination of 21 years of Nigeria's democracy, the military have 13 years.

For 16years, PDP know that Nigeria's constitution isn't working, yet they protected and defended it. They even wiped out Odi and Zarki Ibiam in the protection of the same 1999 constitution.

Non of these PDP players remembered that Nigeria should be restructured and the constitution changed until they were sacked by same PDP members who went rogue and formed what they called APC.

It is always good for us to know where actually the rain started beating us.

When APC unleashed all their terror on Nigerians, destroying the little that PDP left behind, PDP came back promising the people heaven on earth as to be voted back into power.

They even had to employ the service of a former APC member, to become their party Presidential candidate. Atiku Abubarka who never mentioned RESTRUCTURING during his eight years as Vice President of Nigeria now promised Nigerians restructuring if voted into power.

But APC who has mastered how to use the 1999 constitution fortified themselves with it. They first removed the Chief Justice and replaced him with ordinary sharia court judge. They rigged the election, and those they couldn't rig, they removed using supreme court. All was constitutional.

It is not surprising that since 1960 till date, Nigeria has not recorded any progress, yet Britain keeps drilling oil, together with other multinational companies. The politicians keep looting and dumping it in foreign banks.

In everything, the people remain the losers. They are fooled every four years. Come 2022/2023, some APC members will return back to PDP and start fooling the people once again, telling them how they want to remedy the country destroyed by APC. They might succeed in fooling the people and take over power, but it will be the same tales of a failed state.

The British government who amalgamated Nigeria know that as far as Nigeria remains one, they will continue harvesting failure all to their gain.

Sadly, same thing is happening almost all over Africa. European countries are sponsoring bad leaders in Africa. Leaders who will open up Africa for them to loot and destroy.

Have you wondered why Africa is extremely rich, yet inhabits the poorest people in the entire world? It is due to the manipulative nature of the European colonial powers on African countries. study the few good African leaders and see how they were murdered.

Britain knows that dividing Nigeria and allowing Biafra to become an independent nation will not only help the people trapped inside the unworkable contraption, it will also help entire Africa to grow. That is because Biafrans will export their ingenuity across Africa and beyond; thereby stopping Africa from surviving through European and American aides.

Before you start singing APC and PDP come 2023, kindly remember that those politicians in these parties will keep destroying you unless you end Nigeria. Stop the endless vicious cycle and embrace freedom.

Elochukwu Ohagi, Philosopher Teacher and Activist.

Edited By Paul Ihechi Alagba
For Family Writers Press International.

ARE THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES TURNING CONSPIRACY REALITIES?

WHILE MEN WERE UNDER LOCKDOWN AND YOU WERE DISTRACTED, YOUR LAWMAKERS WANTED TO HURRIEDLY PASS BILL TO MAKE COVID-19 VACCINE AND VACCINE CERTIFICATE COMPULSORY

Ichie Chukwuebuka wrote the following. You need to take time to read with understanding.


Yesterday, a bill to strengthen NCDC was nicodemusly brought to the house of Reps, the bill immediately scaled 1st & 2nd reading and was scaled for passage on the 3rd reading, but what was puzzling was that against the tradition of Bill reading and passage in the House, the 55 pages document of the bill was not given to the members of the house for them to go through and understand what were the contents of the Bill they were being rushed to pass.

Some woke members of the house raised alarm on this anomaly, poked further and learnt that there were many suspicious and controversial contents of this Bill, among them being that NCDC will now have unlimited powers to force every citizen of Nigeria to be vaccinated and be issued  vaccine certificate, failure to accept to be vaccinated and be certified (by any means they deem fit) you will not be allowed to  purchase air tickets, board flights or move about in public places.

These members of the House who raised the alarm pointed out that the contents of the bill are very suspicious and fitted perfectly into some conspiracy theories that are being peddled on social media locally and internationally on the intention of some suspicious global power interests to create vaccines, forcefully make people to accept these vaccines and go further to implement a means of identification by way of chips implant or any other means they deem fit to identify those that have taken the vaccines..

The House members wondered on why Nigeria should be at the forefront of enacting such a Bill at this time and even in a hurry to pass the  Bill which will support forced vaccination and certification to identify who has been vaccinated and who has not, even when no effective vaccine has been created.

The House turned rowdy amidst the concerns and complains of some members of the House which necessitated the suspension of the passage of the Bill pending further review of the Bill by members of the House.

Two lawmakers from the House who were on Channels TV Sunrise program this morning who were asked what their opinion on the Bill was, clearly stated that the Bill is suspicious and lend an amazing credence to the conspiracy theory that has been in circulation over sometime now on forced vaccination and identification by some certain global powers, they insisted that every content of the Bill must be made public and proper clarification given on the Bill contents and implementations.

NOTE:
Read further publication on Vanguard

Life has returned to normalcy in Madagascar.

  No lockdown!  No forced holidays!

People are going about their business. Reports say on March 23rd they had 9 confirmed coronavirus cases, and in one month precisely on April 25, they had 122 cases.

When coronavirus was first detected in the country, WHO predictated that they were at the verge of  unmitigated disaster.

 In general, as at today 25th April, Magadascar has no coronavirus cases and 100% recoveries , with NO SINGLE DEATH--ZERO DEATH.

WHY? HOW DID IT HAPPEN?  The young President looked inwards.
I have been condemning "copy and paste", stlye of leadership of African leaders. A few who decide to look inwards have had better results.

Madagascar's President Andry Rajoelina believes that Madagascar could possess a remedy to coronavirus, and manufactured a local herb, which the country is using to treat patients.

WHO got mad!!! World Health Organization condemned his medicine because it was made in Africa,  not in US, Europe, Asia or Australia.

WHO didn't try to investigate the 100% success story of the concoction and see if it could be adopted or modified. They condemned it, against its 100% EXCELLENT RESULTS.... Please who does that kind of thing? This is why l will continue to question WHO's integrity in this whole horrible pandemic.

The Magadascar medicine is called “Covid Organic” or “CVO”.  The President has made it compulsory for the citizens. He drank it on National television, live.  Most vulnerable citizens and school children are given the medicine free of charge.

World Health Organization should know that facts and  results don't lie. And there is nothing they can do against it.

Oh, how we need the young President of Magadascar with brain, to lead real African revolution against the slavery of China and the rest of neocolonial masters.