By SUNDAY ODIBASHI
The Kaduna Declaration by the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY), on Tuesday, ordering the Igbo to vacate the North in three months, reflects an index that leaders of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), nay have made remarkable progress in coordinating the struggle for the actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra.
The global convention shows that the first stage of success in struggle for self-determination is the acceptance of the struggle by other members of the political community or other component units of the body politic.
Paradoxically, the Kaduna Declaration by the northern youths may have placed Nigeria on similar path of old unions like USSR, Yugoslavia, etc, which disintegrated into smaller units without bloodshed.
Curiously, the IPOB has sustained peaceful struggle and advocacy since taking over the Biafra Movement from the MASSOB, adopting highly sophisticated mobilsation, socialization and conscientious building techniques.
The sit-at-home Biafra anniversary order has become instrumental in generating monumental conscientiousness among the local population in the South East, thus, modifying and expanding the frontiers of participation and ownership of the Biafra Movement.
The sit-at-home anniversary order had the multiplier effect of crippling commercial activities in various states of the Federation linked to commerce from the East.
It was observed that the May 30, 2017, sit-at-home order by the IPOB, monitored from the Head Bridge/Asaba border axis of the South East, sent strong message to all stakeholders in the Nigerian project. The degree of compliance was bizarre as though a constitutional Biafran authority has been established in the South East.
While there were pockets of commercial activities in the heart of Asaba, the Expressway from the Head Bridge of Onitsha axis was a ghost zone. Motor park touts were merely roaming the parks jobless and helplessly hungry.
The usual daily movement of people from the South East to other parts of Nigeria, particularly, Lagos, Kano, Abuja and other parts of the North, was brought to solemn halt. Commercial vehicles could not move out of the South East; passengers were not even at the motor parks to be conveyed. Few commercial buses were noticed arriving Onitsha unto the hinterlands from Lagos and the South West.
People traveling out of Delta State to Lagos or the northern states were stranded as the usual commercial buses and cars were unavailable for the far distance journeys. Lagos-bound travelers were compelled to move to Benin City, Edo State, before boarding vehicles to Lagos, Ibadan and other parts of eth South West. The North was totally cut-off until late hours of the day when the order was considered to have elapsed.
Apparently, the sit-at-home order covertly melted the boundary of the Biafra agitation beyond the South East with strong signal to other parts of Nigeria.
The consequence was the “Kaduna Declaration” on Tuesday by the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY), which, hypothetically, projected a seeming unconscious acceptance of the Sovereign State of Biafra and the willingness of the North to dislocate from the commonwealth of Nigeria accommodating the Igbo of the South East.
The Coalition of Northern Youths was identified to include: the Arewa Citizens Action for Change, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Arewa Youth Development Foundation, Arewa Students Forum, Northern Emancipation Network, Northern Youth Vanguard, Northern Youths Stakeholders Forum, the North-East Assembly, among others.
The Coalition at a meeting at the Arewa House, Kaduna, on Tuesday, predicated the Kaduna Declaration on the May 30 sit-at-home order in the South East by the IPOB, which they decried shut down social and economic activities in major cities and towns in the South-East in remembrance of the Biafra declaration.
The Coalition, accordingly, issued three months ultimatum to the Igbo residing in the North to vacate the region. Northerners resident in the South-East were also ordered to immediately commence returning to their various states.
The northern youths vowed to enforce “visible actions” on the expiration of the ultimatum, explaining that it will be done in demonstration that they are no longer part of a federal union that includes the Igbo nation. The Coalition insisted on enforcing the “visible actions” through “effective, peaceful and safe mop-up of all Igbo who ignore the vacation order from October 1, 2017.
Mallam Abdulazeez Suleiman, reading a statement – “Kaduna Declaration” at the end of the meeting of the Coalition, stated the North was tired of the 1914 Amalgamation that joined the Southern and Northern protectorates to form Nigeria.
Suleiman had remarked that the Igbo secessionist tendency is widening in scope as the quest for the actualization of Biafra has assumed an alarming twist with the encroachment of the right of non-indigenes living in the South-East; stating that this will no longer be tolerated.
“We are hereby placing the Nigerian authorities and the entire nation on notice, that as from the 1st October, 2017, we shall commence the implementation of visible actions to prove to the whole world that we are no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbos.
“From that date, effective, peaceful and safe mop-up of all the remnants of the stubborn Igbos that neglect to heed this quit notice shall commence to finally eject them from every part of the North.
“And finally, all authorities, individuals or groups are hereby advised against attempting to undermine this declaration by insisting on this union with the Igbos who have thus far proved to be an unnecessary baggage carried too far and for too long,” the Coalition had declared.
CNY further protested: “The persistence for the actualisation of Biafra by the unruly Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria has lately assumed another alarming twist which involved the forceful lockdown of activities and denial of other people’s right to free movement in the South-East by the rebel Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its overt and covert sponsors.
“This latest action and similar confrontational conducts which amount to a brutal encroachment on the rights of those termed as non-indigenous people residing and doing lawful businesses in those areas, illegally demarcated and defined as Biafra by the Igbo, are downright unacceptable and shall no longer be tolerated.”
The Coalition maintained: “The Igbo people of the South-East, without remorse for the carnage they wrought on the nation in the 1960s, are today boldly reliving those sinister intentions connoted by the Biafran agitation that led to the very first bloody insurrection in Nigeria’s history.
“Emboldened by the apparent indifference of the Nigerian authorities, the Igbo secessionist tendency is widening in scope and action at every stage, with adverse effects on the law-abiding people of other regions residing in or passing through the East, while the Igbo leaders and elders by their utterances and direct action or inaction appear to support and encourage it.
“This is happening irrespective of the undisputable fact that Igbos have done and are doing more damage to our collective nationhood than any other ethnic group; being responsible for the first violent interference with democracy in Nigeria, resulting in a prolonged counter-productive chain of military dictatorship.
“It is on record that since the inception of the current democratic dispensation, the Igbos have shown and maintained open contempt and resentment for the collective decision expressed by majority of Nigerians at various stages via generally acceptable democratic processes.
“While these provocative acts of aggression persist and grow in dimension with each new move, leaders of the North whose people are at the receiving end of the threats, appear helplessly unperturbed.
“Without pursuing a resolute action-plan, these northern leaders have adopted and have been dragging its people into a pitifully pacifist position in order to sustain an elusive national cohesion that has long been ridiculed by the Igbos.
“From today, June 6, 2017, when this proclamation is signed, the North, a critical player in the Nigerian project, hereby declares that it will no longer be disposed to co-existing with the Igbos and shall take definite steps to end the partnership by pulling out of the current federal arrangement.”
The Kaduna Declaration by the northern Youths is obviously no threat as widely perceived but an overt acknowledgement of the imperative for peaceful disintegration of Nigeria. More importantly, it generates consensus building in the open society, giving currency or endorsement to formal declaration of the Sovereign State of Biafra on October 1, 2017.
The northern youths are magnanimous to the Igbo in giving such long duration to vacate their territory. They have turned the challenge to the Igbo nation to convince the world on their preparation for secession, essentially, in re-organizing the economy of the region, strengthening infrastructural facilities to accommodate returnee Igbo citizens.
It is, therefore, germane that the North should also support constitutional review to provide legal instruments for the secession of the Igbo in order to avoid bloodshed as in May 30, 1967 to January 1, 1970.