By Chimenu Amadi (IIC Leader)
Go through major roads and highways in South Eastern part of Igbo land today. You can hardly move a few kilometres without encountering multiple police and military checkpoints.
In some places, the checkpoints are so frequent that they frustrate movement, trade, and daily economic activity and that doesn’t come without illegal extortion and dues paid by motorist to these security outfits.
How does an economy grow under such conditions and what has the five state Governors done or said to initiate free flow of movement in a bid to stop sabotaging the economy of the people and region?
These are the conversations ordinary people are having in markets, schools, public spaces, churches, and transport parks. In furtherance they are asking why life is hard?
Why roads are bad, why insecurity is high, why police harassment and extrajudicial killing is normalized in the South East even when the region (in reality) doesn’t experience insecurity or youth restiveness like in many parts of the country?
There are places where Islamic jihadist terrorists have ravaged and sacked many communities with churches burnt down, Christians slaughtered like rams and soldiers killed in their thousands but the people are not targeted and treated like we all see in Igbo land.
Again why jobs are scarce, and why governance does not seem to touch their lives meaningfully, why are the gas pipeline not laid in the South East and even South South?
Why is the region not amongst the beneficiaries in the ongoing rail projects since the inception of APC led government, why is Sunday Igboho of the Oduduwa Nation free but Nnamdi Kanu who was never found with a gun let alone killing people sentenced to life in prison.
Why is Boko Haram and Fulani Islamic terrorists rehabilitated and reintegrated in the society with some joining the military but Biafran agitators are either killed without justice or completely forgotten in prison,?
These and many more atrocities and inactions continues to steer the conversation and agitation for disintegration of Igbo Nation from Nigeria.
So if you’re an Igbo man, before you join in crucifying your brothers who doesn’t believe in the Nigerian arrangement anymore, ask yourself, what crime did Igbos commit before the pogroms in the North?
What crimes did Igbos commit before properties and businesses belonging to Igbos are destroyed in Lagos today?
Do not just criticize your own people because you want to be in the good books of the enemy, that’s cowardice.
