BY ANONYMOUS YORUBA-MAN
I got from an online contact the quote below, it left me somewhat speechless, I spent many hours contemplating what a horror my forebears suffered, and how good a non Ani Ahaba person can honestly appreciate the pains and terrible loss that followed thereafter.
I invite you to read the piece below and possibly see what I exeperince.
Happy reading!!!!!!!!
If you do not start from a point of truth and courage, you have a broken compass.
What happened in Asaba was genocide, no ifs, no buts.
I have always thought that as a (contrived) people, our cowardice is primeval and savage.
The criminals who did this to thousands of women, children and the defenseless are still alive as “statesmen.”
The evil dead are immortalized in currency notes and their evil names adorn airports.
I respect Pa Awolowo but I think he was not only wrong, he and Chief Anthony Enahoro are culpable in the genocide that was committed in Asaba.
I am not from Asaba, not that it should matter, but I could tell you about what it meant to be caught in a war-zone (Benin City under the Biafran army occupation) at age 8, without your parents, tending to your six-year old brother while living in a two-room lean to of a distant relative.
I could tell you that the terror lives with both of us to this day.
Because war is hell.
Yes. the Nigerian civil war is infinitely more complicated than any book I have ever read can script it.
It is quite possible that without a free primary education powered by Pa Awolowo’s vision, I would not be here today.
It is also true that many Asaba children are not with us today because they were denied that which was offered to me so generously; in their case, death became an offer devastatingly presented.
That is the absolute truth.
It is impossible to forget the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, its horrors, criminalities and its attendant present day Asaba City-Wide Ugly Realities, a reality too far and alien from who and what represent Asaba historical reality.
But today, Nigeria is in a very bad place, on many levels.
Those that ruined our country are still strutting about handing us gobs of malu droppings.
Nigeria’s retired crooks are on social media tweeting quotes from Mahatma Gandhi.
I mean, how difficult is it to say that the forced social-cultural set back of Asaba people, due to that unreasonable and needless civil war was wrong?
It is never a hard point to stress, that all those directly and indirectly behind the Asaba 1967 Genocide were always jealous of Ani Ahaba advancement and contribution to nation building of both the pre & post -colonial cum independent Nigeria
Now, the evil these Ani Ahaba Nation's enemy committed against us are still here with us, its ugly realities staring before our face, as well as, confronting us at all angles, re-scripting our history and falsifying our holistic narration.
That we now spend time adorning airport buildings and naming currency with names of those that committed genocide (but to those who suffered various war time acts of criminality, till date, the nation's leadership, especially, now under democratic rule, never thought it worthy erecting a monument in honor of the departed armless and defenceless heros) of a truth, these war time criminals were instrumental in committing genocide against Asaba people.
The only true consistency remains, that there is no ifs or buts.
The War time criminalities and genocide committed against Ani Ahaba people MUST be compensated, the crime and evil till date is a spiritual offence, compensating it, will bring healing and peace to the homes and towns of those who committed the Asaba 1967 Genocide.
No comments:
Post a Comment