#Biafra

Ifeanyi Chijioke

I am not a man that would deny a good action or right action in the right direction, restructuring Nigeria is the solution to Nigerian problem but I don’t see it as solution to Biafran question. While some people who don’t know the essence of power moan at the prospect of restructuring because they would lose a bit power to solve the problem bedeviling them, they prefer to hold onto excess power at the detriment of the people because they value power more than the well-being of the people. While the call for restructuring is raging as an alternative to addressing Biafra issue, I see this as medicine after death. Restructure will save Nigeria and never will it end Biafra, restructure may fight Kanu’s plan, but it cannot win his ideology that has been replicated in over 70 million Biafrans.

Restructure is a move that would give every region sense of belonging and the need to cherish their contraption and work hard as what you have or can do makes you what you are. The Northern region will then be exposed, they have so much lied that they are food producing machine, but tomato to the least of them are imported. It would give them the opportunity to farm and take credit of their products, this is a sort of power diversification that would strengthen the centre because nobody would account for anybody, but somebody will be accounting for anybody. This is the mathematics behind restructuring, it is a good move for Nigerians but it doesn’t concern Biafrans as sovereign state of Biafra is our focus.

I have no problem with the people calling for the restructure of Nigeria but I am angered at their selfishness; they are simply taking advantage of Nnamdi Kanu’s agitation and sacrifice. This however defines a black man from Africa, the ability to thrive on the perdition of others. Jerry Gana was fair when he told me that the first step to restructuring is the release of Nnamdi Kanu, then once he is released, the government would sell restructure to the people to counter Biafrexit. Those calling for restructure should put things in place to have any hope of Biafrans buying the idea. One of the things that should be in place is releasing Nnamdi Kanu to cast a neutral ground upon which the restructure will grow. The first agitation should not be restructuring Nigeria; the first step should be releasing Nnamdi Kanu to restructure Nigeria.


Meanwhile Biafran youths are being killed by Buhari on daily basis, they are forced to disappear and executed out rightly. We suffer assault and torture, we have more widows and widowers, we have more orphans and one thinks he can take advantage of our adversary for the restructure arrangement. Hence Nnamdi Kanu continues to be in prison and one is talking about restructuring and hoping Biafrans will buy the idea is a dream that will die at the touch of reality. Continued incarceration of Nnamdi defines Buhari’s readiness for war or the worst and believe you me, he would get the worst at the appropriate time. I won’t discourage those agitating for restructure because that is the last hope for Nigeria, but I will sufficiently feed them the fact that for restructure to take place, parties must be given sense of peace.

We have lost a lot and paid more price than normal, independence is everything we want and there is nothing that can substitute that. Restructuring Nigeria would have worked if Kanu was not arrested, if Biafrans were not massacred and continuously arrested and executed. There is hatred that cannot bring us together no matter the difference the unity carries. It is important to know that referendum is the solution to problems like this. Self-determination is a sacred right and opposition to due self determination is modern slavery. And in a situation you have a slave that is exposed to weapons, he would fight with the last drop of his blood to be a free man and that is what Biafrans shall do.

Finally, it would be unwise to rule out everything but I can bet that even the restructure in place won’t work out. Nigeria is a business establishment and the present structure gives meaning to the establishment. I win as the president of Nigeria to use my power and do anything I want, acquire wealth and favor my friends and family. Give oil blocs of the conquered Biafrans to my mistresses, siblings and region. The call for restructuring is to end the business venture called Nigeria and it would be fought squarely by the business men in government.

It would be golden for everybody agitating for restructuring to forfeit it and stand behind Nnamdi Kanu. We must accept the simple fact that Nigeria cannot stand as one anymore, we are not more intelligent than the man that made the treaty that after hundred years, if it is not working, we are free to go our separate ways to make life work. Look around you and tell me what Nigeria has done for you, has it given you drinking water or electricity? There is nothing good that can come out of this contraption except terrorism and genocide.
http://www.thebiafratelegraph.....co/2016/07/hence-kan

Biafrexit?
By Obi Nwakanma Sam Omatseye’s piece in the Nation, “The Ghost of Biafra,” this past week adds to the growing discussion on the inevitable impact of the new secessionist movement in important ways. The kernel of that column is that Nigeria as a nation runs in vain from its obligation to effect closure on the Biafran experience. Omatseye, of course skirts certain issues, and fudges a few, including the important question he raises: “how could a people knowing that they did not have the arms still plunge to war against an overwhelming armed opponent?” Members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, at St Peter’s Square Rome, during their visit to Pope Francis at theVatican.File photo In other words, why did the leaders of the East fight, when they knew they were outgunned? The simple answer is that (a) The East fought to survive. They did not levy war against Nigeria. War was levied on the East when the federal side reneged on the terms of peace arrived at in Aburi. The Federal Government initiated the war on July 6, 1967, by opening two fronts from the North: the Nsukka front and the Gakem front. Ojukwu evacuated Enugu, and responded with a defensive strategy; (b) as a means of easing the pressure of attack from the North, Biafra’s Liberation Army led by Brigadier Victor Banjo and Colonel Emma Ifeajuna as his Chief of Staff opened the Midwest corridor to foreclose the attack formation already planned from Jebba by the Federal forces, through the Midwest using the Military Division already established for that purpose led by Murtala Muhammed, circumventing Benin through Auchi, moving through Agbor to the East. The movement of the Biafran forces on August 9, into the Midwest, ruptured that plan. The Liberation Army would have arrived Ibadan and secured Lagos, and the tides of the war would have been dramatically turned, but for the extraordinary meeting between Banjo, Ifeajuna, and Mr. Bell, the Deputy British High Commissioner in Benin City as the Biafrans moved in a claw formation from Warri through Benin and through Auchi towards the West. Banjo’s dilemma, regarding the threat to bomb Lagos from the sea by the British frigate and turn the West into a theatre of war, and the threat to wipe out Banjo’s family still in Lagos left him with very little choices, other than to stymie the Liberation Army in the Midwest, order a haphazard withdrawal, and the rest is now history. As a matter of fact, one of the key actors in that event, the playwright and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, already waiting in Ibadan with a “reception party,” has written about this in two of his very important memoirs, The Man Died and You Must Set Forth at Dawn. But Nigerians hardly read these days, except for religious tracts. But Omatseye is right: War is a messy business. The after effects linger and take doggone time and supreme effort to heal. Nigeria has not healed from the last major war. It is that war that is the ghost that haunts Nigeria. That war is also the spectre rearing up today in the self-determination movements that are now challenging the basis of Nigerian nationhood. The IPOB/MASSOB and the Niger Delta Avengers are now raising the question of a “Biafraexit” – the call for a referendum on Biafra to constitutionally determine whether Biafra should be allowed to exit Nigeria as a separate nation. The Separatist movement has been gathering momentum since 1999, and has been recently fueled by President Buhari’s adversarial, isolationist, discriminatory and conquistadorial domestic policies. It does now seem that the greatest threat to the continued survival of Nigeria is the president of Nigeria himself who seems bent on pursuing a narrow revanchist agenda, as well as the use of coercion to stop the secessionist movement which has grown as a counter force to his revanchism. Recently, the president declared that Nigeria’s “unity” was “not negotiable.” Happily many people, including Wole Soyinka, have told him that Nigerian unity is in fact negotiable. The president of course is not talking about real “unity.” He is talking about the unity which the late Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu once described as like the relationship between Jonah and the Belly of the whale. Unity cannot be legislated. Unity is the product of a felt sense of shared destiny and values. And this is the point that the Biafran secessionists are making. I’d like to say this: every Nigerian must support the right of the Biafrans to seek self-determination through the plebiscitory process. The Biafrans must have their referendum, as permitted in International Law, on the question of “Biafrexit.” In 1964, the founding father of the modern Nigerian nation, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, wrote in the US Foreign Policy magazine, warning that though he preferred an organic nation, it might yet be better for the leaders of Nigeria to meet, and sit, and negotiate how “we will all go our separate ways peacefully” rather than push Nigeria, then lurching towards a bloodfest, to the ultimate evil of a civil war that would claim millions of Nigerian lives. Azikiwe was prescient in 1964, and I stand with the great Zik on this. It is important to settle this question of Biafra’s secession once and for all by peaceful means through a referendum. To that end, I think that those calling for secession should do the right thing: they should collect the required signatures and write the National Assembly to initiate the referendum, with a copy forwarded to the United Nations. Thereafter they should campaign for support. Here is what the Biafrans are arguing: they are arguing for a restructuring of Nigeria because Nigeria in its current formation is oppressive to their interest and survival; if Nigeria does not want to restructure constitutionally, they are arguing for peaceful exit through referendum. They are arguing that the federal government failed to meet its own obligation under the truce called “No Victor, No vanquished” by not fulfilling the promised three R’s in the old East, and by launching policies that have discriminated against, and isolated the East, especially the Igbo people, since the end of the war. They have argued that the Federal government has repeatedly failed to protect Igbo lives and property from the indiscriminate attack nation-wide, and therefore they no longer trust the government of Nigeria to secure their lives. They have argued that as republican people, they have nothing in common, culturally, with the rest of Nigeria, and that they reserve the right to pursue their separate destiny, and redeem their society from underdevelopment and poverty using their talents and energy freed from the inherent draw-backs of a Nigeria with feudal and monarchical traditions and tendencies that squelches the Igbo spirit, and the spirit of their Biafran neighbors with long, cherished republican and democratic traditions. And they have also argued about the criminal exploitation and expropriation of resources from their oil rich region which has left the region very impoverished and ecologically devastated and they want the right of self-determination in order to have the power to restore the ecological balance of the delta. These are very powerful arguments, and I am quit

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/07/biafrexit/

Biafrexit?
By Obi Nwakanma Sam Omatseye’s piece in the Nation, “The Ghost of Biafra,” this past week adds to the growing discussion on the inevitable impact of the new secessionist movement in important ways. The kernel of that column is that Nigeria as a nation runs in vain from its obligation to effect closure on the Biafran experience. Omatseye, of course skirts certain issues, and fudges a few, including the important question he raises: “how could a people knowing that they did not have the arms still plunge to war against an overwhelming armed opponent?” Members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, at St Peter’s Square Rome, during their visit to Pope Francis at theVatican.File photo In other words, why did the leaders of the East fight, when they knew they were outgunned? The simple answer is that (a) The East fought to survive. They did not levy war against Nigeria. War was levied on the East when the federal side reneged on the terms of peace arrived at in Aburi. The Federal Government initiated the war on July 6, 1967, by opening two fronts from the North: the Nsukka front and the Gakem front. Ojukwu evacuated Enugu, and responded with a defensive strategy; (b) as a means of easing the pressure of attack from the North, Biafra’s Liberation Army led by Brigadier Victor Banjo and Colonel Emma Ifeajuna as his Chief of Staff opened the Midwest corridor to foreclose the attack formation already planned from Jebba by the Federal forces, through the Midwest using the Military Division already established for that purpose led by Murtala Muhammed, circumventing Benin through Auchi, moving through Agbor to the East. The movement of the Biafran forces on August 9, into the Midwest, ruptured that plan. The Liberation Army would have arrived Ibadan and secured Lagos, and the tides of the war would have been dramatically turned, but for the extraordinary meeting between Banjo, Ifeajuna, and Mr. Bell, the Deputy British High Commissioner in Benin City as the Biafrans moved in a claw formation from Warri through Benin and through Auchi towards the West. Banjo’s dilemma, regarding the threat to bomb Lagos from the sea by the British frigate and turn the West into a theatre of war, and the threat to wipe out Banjo’s family still in Lagos left him with very little choices, other than to stymie the Liberation Army in the Midwest, order a haphazard withdrawal, and the rest is now history. As a matter of fact, one of the key actors in that event, the playwright and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, already waiting in Ibadan with a “reception party,” has written about this in two of his very important memoirs, The Man Died and You Must Set Forth at Dawn. But Nigerians hardly read these days, except for religious tracts. But Omatseye is right: War is a messy business. The after effects linger and take doggone time and supreme effort to heal. Nigeria has not healed from the last major war. It is that war that is the ghost that haunts Nigeria. That war is also the spectre rearing up today in the self-determination movements that are now challenging the basis of Nigerian nationhood. The IPOB/MASSOB and the Niger Delta Avengers are now raising the question of a “Biafraexit” – the call for a referendum on Biafra to constitutionally determine whether Biafra should be allowed to exit Nigeria as a separate nation. The Separatist movement has been gathering momentum since 1999, and has been recently fueled by President Buhari’s adversarial, isolationist, discriminatory and conquistadorial domestic policies. It does now seem that the greatest threat to the continued survival of Nigeria is the president of Nigeria himself who seems bent on pursuing a narrow revanchist agenda, as well as the use of coercion to stop the secessionist movement which has grown as a counter force to his revanchism. Recently, the president declared that Nigeria’s “unity” was “not negotiable.” Happily many people, including Wole Soyinka, have told him that Nigerian unity is in fact negotiable. The president of course is not talking about real “unity.” He is talking about the unity which the late Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu once described as like the relationship between Jonah and the Belly of the whale. Unity cannot be legislated. Unity is the product of a felt sense of shared destiny and values. And this is the point that the Biafran secessionists are making. I’d like to say this: every Nigerian must support the right of the Biafrans to seek self-determination through the plebiscitory process. The Biafrans must have their referendum, as permitted in International Law, on the question of “Biafrexit.” In 1964, the founding father of the modern Nigerian nation, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, wrote in the US Foreign Policy magazine, warning that though he preferred an organic nation, it might yet be better for the leaders of Nigeria to meet, and sit, and negotiate how “we will all go our separate ways peacefully” rather than push Nigeria, then lurching towards a bloodfest, to the ultimate evil of a civil war that would claim millions of Nigerian lives. Azikiwe was prescient in 1964, and I stand with the great Zik on this. It is important to settle this question of Biafra’s secession once and for all by peaceful means through a referendum. To that end, I think that those calling for secession should do the right thing: they should collect the required signatures and write the National Assembly to initiate the referendum, with a copy forwarded to the United Nations. Thereafter they should campaign for support. Here is what the Biafrans are arguing: they are arguing for a restructuring of Nigeria because Nigeria in its current formation is oppressive to their interest and survival; if Nigeria does not want to restructure constitutionally, they are arguing for peaceful exit through referendum. They are arguing that the federal government failed to meet its own obligation under the truce called “No Victor, No vanquished” by not fulfilling the promised three R’s in the old East, and by launching policies that have discriminated against, and isolated the East, especially the Igbo people, since the end of the war. They have argued that the Federal government has repeatedly failed to protect Igbo lives and property from the indiscriminate attack nation-wide, and therefore they no longer trust the government of Nigeria to secure their lives. They have argued that as republican people, they have nothing in common, culturally, with the rest of Nigeria, and that they reserve the right to pursue their separate destiny, and redeem their society from underdevelopment and poverty using their talents and energy freed from the inherent draw-backs of a Nigeria with feudal and monarchical traditions and tendencies that squelches the Igbo spirit, and the spirit of their Biafran neighbors with long, cherished republican and democratic traditions. And they have also argued about the criminal exploitation and expropriation of resources from their oil rich region which has left the region very impoverished and ecologically devastated and they want the right of self-determination in order to have the power to restore the ecological balance of the delta. These are very powerful arguments, and I am quit

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/07/biafrexit/



http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/07/biafrexit/

This is for all loving and caring mothers

Who sat and watched my infant head
When sleeping on my cradle bed,
And tears of sweet affection shed?
My Mother.

When pain and sickness made me cry,
Who gazed upon my heavy eye,
And wept for fear that I should die?
My Mother.

Who taught my infant lips to pray
And love God’s holy book and day,
And walk in wisdom’s pleasant way?
My Mother.

And can I ever cease to be
Affectionate and kind to thee,
Who wast so very kind to me,
My Mother?

Ah, no! the thought I cannot bear,
And if God please my life to spare
I hope I shall reward they care,
My Mother.

When thou art feeble, old and grey,
My healthy arm shall be thy stay,
And I will soothe thy pains away,
My Mother.

Ann Taylor

Biafra ga ala...@umu chineke

‘There’s A Grand Conspiracy To Wipe Out Christians In Nigeria’ – CAN Leader [INTERVIEW]
Last Updated On: July 17, 2016 at 6:59 pm 100 Report Content



Reverend Musa Asaka, general secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, has decried the levity in which security agencies in Nigeria treat the religious killings of Christians and alleged a grand conspiracy to wipe out in Nigeria.

In an interview granted to Punch, Reverend Asaka condemned President Muhammadu Buhari’s silence in the wake of religious killings in the country.

Read excerpts of the interview below:

Many Nigerians have condemned the killing of a Redeemed Christian Church of God preacher, Eunice Elisha. How do you view the fact that she was allegedly killed by Muslims?

I really don’t know – that’s not the first killing. I don’t why this is happening; we have security agencies in Nigeria. But when a Christian is killed, they (Muslims) either say it’s due to blasphemy or they don’t give a reason at all. After the killings, we are often told some people were arrested – that’s the best we hear. And, after the arrest, nothing happens again. As Christians we’re going through a difficult time. Therefore, my reaction to the killing of the RCCG’s pastor is that it was an ugly incident. It ought not to have happened. There’s never been a situation where a Christian will go and kill somebody for no reason but Christians are being killed Muslims – let me say by extremists; because not all Muslims are involved. Then, we are also faced with Fulani herdsmen who are killing people and wiping out villages as if we don’t have a government in the country. It is a very sad situation.

What is the implication of this crisis?

From the way I see things happening, there is a grand plan to wipe out Christians in this country but by the grace of God it will not come to pass. That is why I am saying if the government is not going to protect us, then we have no choice but to protect ourselves. We will not continue to fold our hands and accept being killed for no reason. These killings are going on as usual and we have got to a point to say ‘enough is enough.’ Everybody has to defend themselves.

At the National Orthopedic Hospital, Christian survivors of a Boko Haram bomb attack on a bus depot on March 18, 2013 get free care, in Kano, Nigeria on March 29, 2013. Over 100 people died and scores were injured. | Ed Kashi
At the National Orthopedic Hospital, Christian survivors of a Boko Haram bomb attack on a bus depot on March 18, 2013 get free care, in Kano, Nigeria on March 29, 2013. Over 100 people died and scores were injured. | Ed Kashi
Do you think it will be in anybody’s favour if everybody is encouraged to take the law into their hands?

That is not taking the law into our hands, it is defending ourselves. You cannot just sit down and allow people to kill you since you have nobody to help you –it’s not taking the law into your hand. If somebody breaks into your house, you have to deal with them. You slap me, I slap you. We have been preaching that ‘vengeance is of the Lord’ but we are being pushed to a certain level that we can no longer tolerate what is happening. As Christians, we don’t have anybody speaking for us; nobody is protecting us. They (the government) are leaving us to die as chickens and so I say ‘enough is enough’.

Talking about ‘vengeance is of the Lord’, do you see this as a test of faith that requires that people should allow the government to address the matter as it deems fit?

My brother, the Bible says ‘watch and pray’. The Bible again tells us that if a thief is coming to your house and you are aware of it, you cannot go to bed and allow the thief to destroy your house and kill your family. You have to protect your family. So, we are not going to sit down and be deceived; people are using that verse (of the Bible) against us. If you go into the Bible, there are many passages that we can use (to defend ourselves). If you look at it you can never give me a record of one instance that Christians started killing Muslims in this country; not one instance – I want somebody to prove me wrong.

What can be done before the crisis worsens?

There is nothing that can be done when the government seems to favour one religion – look at how appointments are shared in this government (of President Muhammadu Buhari); tell me how many Christians are there? All the security agencies in this country are in the hands of northerners. Don’t we have Christians in the North? Was it only Muslims who voted for the president in the last presidential election? Evidently, Christians have been marginalised and they are being brutalised. Christians are being treated as if we are second-citizens in this country which is sad and unfortunate but our God is not asleep.

Janet Elisha Daniang, 15, is photographed in her home in Kaduna, Nigeria on April 4, 2013. Daniang bears the scars of the St. Rita Catholic church bombing that took place on October 28, 2012 in Kaduna, where 4 people died and 192 were injured. | Ed Kashi
Janet Elisha Daniang, 15, is photographed in her home in Kaduna, Nigeria on April 4, 2013. Daniang bears the scars of the St. Rita Catholic church bombing that took place on October 28, 2012 in Kaduna, where 4 people died and 192 were injured. | Ed Kashi
Are you saying these killings won’t stop?

How can the killings stop? Look at it again: when you run to the police for reprieve, the security is in their (Muslims) hands – and they are the ones who are killing us. So, when people are arrested for killing their fellow humans, nothing happens. Or, have you ever heard of someone brought to book because of these killings? Nothing has happened. Is the government saying anything? Look at the (Evangelical Church of West Africa’s) pastor that was killed in Nasarawa State, have you heard the governor say anything? There was even no sense of sympathy expressed towards the bereaved family. Again, the woman killed in Abuja was a RCCG pastor and Nigeria’s Vice President is also a RCCG pastor. The killing of the RCCG pastor took place where they live and the President didn’t say a word – it is a sad situation.

But the wife of the Vice President visited the pastor’s bereaved family in Abuja to condole with them.

Did she make a statement? Going to condole with the bereaved and signing a condolence register, is that what we want?

Has the Christian Association of Nigeria made efforts to meet with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on the killings?

Do we have to go to him? Is he not there to represent Nigerians, not only Christians? He knows the situation of this country; that’s why he ran for the office. We don’t have to go and meet him. He knows what we are going through. What is happening is not something that he doesn’t know. Does someone need to go and tell him about it? The President knows that his deputy is of the denomination; these killings are happening, are they not provoking him? The issue is not about going to him; everything is happening in the open and nobody is saying anything.

Don’t you think all Christian groups that professed to be Christians should meet with the President or his deputy to express their displeasure about the way the government is handling the matter?

We have registered our displeasure; we have spoken and we have written. Going there is not the issue; the issue is that they are there to represent us and to defend us, to protect us. Muslims and Fulani herdsmen are committing atrocities and are going scot-free.

Islamizing Nigeria Through Terrorism: A car burns at the scene of a Christmas Day bomb explosion that the Islamist militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for at St. Theresa Catholic Church at Madalla, Suleja, just outside Nigeria's capital Abuja on December 25, 2011. | Reuters/Afolabi Sotunde
Islamizing Nigeria Through Terrorism: A car burns at the scene of a Christmas Day bomb explosion that the Islamist militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for at St. Theresa Catholic Church at Madalla, Suleja, just outside Nigeria’s capital Abuja on December 25, 2011. | Reuters/Afolabi Sotunde
What about meeting with Islamic religious leaders to resolve the crisis?

My brother, you’re in this country you know what is going on. We have Nigeria Inter-Religious Council and for several years we have never met; that is where the current issue ought to be discussed. Since the council has not been operational, which group do we meet again? And where do we start from?

Isn’t there a way to arrange a meeting with Islamic spiritual heads in the North along with some big-time pastors?

So, what big-time pastor do you want? The woman that was killed in Abuja was a Redeemed minister and I saw that the head of the Redeemed church went to condole with her family by 6.00 am. The statement he made was that he was praying for the salvation of those who killed the woman. I am confused. I don’t want to go further.

Why are you confused?

It was a very good opportunity for the head of that church (RCCG) to make a very strong statement to the government, to tell them ‘enough is enough’ because that wasn’t the first time (Christians would be killed for no just cause). But what I expected wasn’t what I got.

Is it possible to imagine that clergymen are part of the problem for not speaking up?

They are not part of the problem – I don’t understand what you meant by saying they are part of the problem. Not speaking out is my problem and I keep wondering: who are we afraid of? Who are we trying to please? That’s the problem – who are we trying to please? The Muslims take their time and speak as they want. The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigerian or what do you call them? They usually come out and speak arrogantly – nobody has challenged that association. They wiped out villages and speak as if they own people’s lives and we continue to say ‘let’s live in peace and pray’. Everything that has a beginning definitely will have an end. I am afraid the way we are going in Nigeria today is not the best. There are some people who want to destroy this country; they want to wipe out (some people) – then, we can help them to wipe everything out. And let’s see who remains. We can’t be building while somebody is destroying. We all have a choice: we can build together or we can choose to destroy together.

But would that be Christ-like? Is that what Jesus preached?

Who’s like? Is it Muslim-like? Is it Muhammad-like? Tell me is that Muhammad-like? So, if it is not Muhammad-like, it is not Christ-like. Islam is said to be a religion of peace; Christianity is a religion of peace. If we the followers want peace, let us live in peace. If we don’t want peace, let us join hands and scatter (everything).

Could the perpetrators of these killings be hiding under the banner of Islam and that they are not Muslims?

Who told you they are not?

I am just wondering.

They said they are followers of Islam. They say they are Muslims, why are you trying to defend them? Do you know them?

The mayhem left behind by Fulani militia after attacking Agatu villages | Ikwulono John Anthony
The mayhem left behind by Fulani militia after attacking Agatu villages | Ikwulono John Anthony
I don’t; I am just wondering if it is possible these killers are not Muslims?

You cannot wonder; they say they are Muslims. You cannot say they are not. Some Muslims have never denied them. They kill in the name of Islam. So, who are you to tell me that they are not muslims? If they are hiding in the name of Islam then Muslims should unveil them and say they are bringing Islam into disrepute. Have you heard Muslims say that?

No.

OK; don’t tell me they’re hiding (under the banner of Islam). They are not hiding. That is who they are.

Do you think President Muhammadu Buhari has been able, as the commander-in-chief of the country, to protect lives and property, particularly that of those being attacked by Fulani herdsmen and Muslims? Do you think he’s bothered?

It’s hard to say; he doesn’t speak whether they kill or they don’t kill, he doesn’t say anything. I don’t know whether the killing of Christians bother him or not. I don’t understand how he’s trying to protect us since security is in the hands of the Muslims. For all the killings in the North he’s not saying anything. But he is more interested in the Niger Delta, sending troops there. We are being killed but he’s not saying a word. That’s a big challenge for a leader who’s supposed to be a father to all. I don’t know whether that bothers him or not since I have not heard him talk. The government is one-sided. People are keeping quiet especially those who are in government. They feel they are fine because of where they are.

But I am reminded of a Biblical passage in the book of Esther when the Jews were to be annihilated secretly by Haman. Mordecai – Esther was then the queen (in Persia) – sent a word to Esther that there was a pogrom being planned against her people. Mordecai urged her to speak to the Persian king about the plot. Esther was trying to give the bureaucracy of the palace as an excuse. Mordecai told her that if she refused to stand and speak for the Jews salvation would come from another means. But if destruction came upon the Jews, he said even Esther and her family would not escape it. Mordecai said to her, ‘who knows maybe for a time like this that you should be in a position of power.’ To all the Christians in government that are keeping quiet, who knows maybe God allows them to be where they are today for times like this. If they speak, fine; if they don’t speak, salvation will come to Christians without or without them

Is very good for ndigbo to speack with one voice thank GOD for Nkoli

— Feeling Happy

Ede-Aro na Abagana.

Ilee anya, dịka e si eme na ngalaba igbo dị iche-iche, onweghị nwa-ada igbo nọ ebeahu. Mmeme-a bụ ezigbo omenala ndị igbo ji dị ebube. Ọ bụ mmeme eji ama nwoke tonitegoro. Ọbụrụ na a ka n'eme ụdịrị mmeme-a n'Obodo gị, gwa anyị ebe ị si na aha unu n'akpọ ya, ma gwa kwa anyị ọnwa unu ji eme ya. ‪#‎Igboamaka‬