THE ENDANGERED SPECIES
You may wish to perpetually slumber under that illusion of the end of the Nigerian Civil War or have the courage to heart the reality of its continued systematic prosecution to date. Don’t get it skewed, Ndigbo is the primary game for the Nigerian huntsman.
The recent barbaric display and kickboxing exploit at the Banex Plaza in Abuja by Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) Chairman, Justice Danladi Umar reinforced what quite uninformed Nigerians have persistently repressed. From avalanched reportage of the event coupled with pronto outcry by few columnists condemning the uncouth mien of Danladi Umar, my interest waned for the video.
Again, I was tempted to forage through my library to refresh my memory on legal profession ethics and qualifications for various offices in the temple of justice but was stung with the reality of our aversion to meritocracy and efficiency. Whatever transpired in Banex Plaza would best serve a storyline for historians for all I care. Those essaying elaborately on the legal implications of employing “Biafran Boys” as contained in the error-ridden rejoinder for public consumption by the CCT Head of Press and Public Relations, Ibraheem Al- Hassan, are entertaining the reading public.
Stop bargaining for their collective resignation, they would not.
Get it right, “Biafran Boys” is a coded language. Ian Haney Lopez a Professor at the University California Berkeley, succinctly chronicled coded language thus, “Current racial code operates by appealing to deep-seated stereotypes of groups that are perceived as threatening”
Black Americans bear many witnesses to social challenges of this kind.
Put bluntly, coded language is giving a dog a name for easy killing.
Since the Biafran War era to this day, amazingly Igbos are still held as a threat to Nigeria’s epileptic unity.
A plethora of reinforcement factors abound virtually in all Nigerian endeavors.
At times I wonder with rapturous ardor why our jurisprudence is littered with case reports emphatically picking interest in the tribe of the litigants over their substantive rights. The effect is simple –graphically imagining the Igbo man as a litigious being who must be avoided and with little regard to his enriching the legal industry. And I tell you, begrudge not Danladi or his ilks( Quota Justices), it’s no new custom.
In a converse manner, in early November, the previous year, at the university town of Nsukka, there was a grave altercation between a Muslim female of North extraction and a commercial tricycle (Keke) over transport fare that resulted in a brawl by the parties and their respective sympathizers. There was no press release profiling neither the Northern woman nor others who rushed to her support as “Arewa Boys”. Whether or not Umar failed to leaf through newspapers pages that bore the news is now a question of fact for lessons.
First, Enugu State Governor, Rt. Hon Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi promptly voiced emergency orders for reconstruction and replacement of any damaged items belonging to the Northern folks. Even the Nsukka Council Boss while containing the situation remarked, “what happened last Saturday was unfortunate because for many years there has been a peaceful coexistence between Northerners and Igbo Community here in Nsukka.”
He further assured them of the state government’s determination to make Enugu State habitable and conducive for all, irrespective of tribe or religious orientation. That Enugu now serves haven for all is not far from the above policy of her detribalized governor.
One cannot but wonder, “why this penchant for insidious code language by our brothers of the North, while their counterparts here in the East are ever conscious of their diction?”
BIBIAN ANEKWE NEWS ADDED ” With what’s happening in this country. Our nation don’t have any better cadidate for presidential election come 2023 expect His Excellency Gov ifeanyi ugwuanyi ( MR FULFILMENT)
Written by
IKEMSINACHI NWA-ONAH
MEDIA TEAM MEMBER OF ENUGU DI N’AKACHUKWU MOVEMENT
Writes from Makurdi the City of Benue
