President Buhari's Biafran Contradiction

By Chuks Iloegbunam  

 
Nearly six weeks after it started, President Muhammadu Buhari finally reacted to the agitation for Biafra, which has been sweeping through some cities of the South East and South South geopolitical zones. The President chose two events inside last week to make his position known. The first was the investiture of His Royal Majesty, Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe, as the 7th Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The second was the graduation ceremony of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Plateau State.

These following sum up the President's position on the Biafran agitation:

* "Government would not fold its arms and watch, while some individuals and groups create unnecessary tension in the country in the guise of seeking to break away from Nigeria."

* "Let me again call on per­sons or groups in the country who have some grievances to submit to peaceful and dem­ocratic means of expressing themselves."

* "I therefore sound a note of serious warning that the corporate existence of Nigeria as a single entity is not a sub­ject of debate and will not be compromised."

Now, the fact that it took the President nearly two months to comment on a matter that had elicited three specific threats of military re­sponse by his field command­ers probably makes the point that, in his graph of national importance, the Biafran agita­tion is no more than a vexa­tious distraction.

But, it is still welcome that he spoke late than not at all. What if he de­cided against uttering a word on the subject? After all, he has so far treated all the substanti­ated reports of the rampage and wanton killings of Fulani herdsmen across the length and breadth of Nigeria with a deafening silence. He has also treated in the same manner all the calls for his government to address the report of the properly constituted National Conference of 2014.

Now, it is assumed in quar­ters that claim comprehensive understanding of President Buhari's brand of politics that the man is not given to talk­ing glibly. He is said to expend enormously in the critical sec­tor of consideration before he ever deems it necessary to make a public statement. This means that it is in the best interest of those who have heard to accept that what the President has said on the Bia­fra agitation is his irreducible stance.

This must also raise important questions in the minds of those who have had it drummed in their ears since 1999 that what Nigeria is prac­ticing on the political front is democracy. For instance, does the current political dispensa­tion invest in the presidency a right to inflexibly speak ex cathedra on a notion that is as central to human existence as self-determination?

When Nigeria's democrati­cally elected President insists that "...the corporate exist­ence of Nigeria as a single en­tity is not a subject of debate and will not be compromised," does he really and truly sound like someone who has thor­oughly looked at all sides of the difficult question? Does he appear to have benefited himself with as wide and in­formed a range of advice as is available on the matter?

Or is his fiat imbued with the pecu­liar lordliness that issues from the control and command of coercive forces? Or, again, is he loading much more weight than can be carried by a con­trived constitution falsely blamed on the Nigerian peo­ples which purported to pro­nounce on the "indivisibility" and "indissolubility" of the country?

Nigeria could tomorrow become a theocracy, or a mon­archy, or a confederation, or a loose federation, or it could continue to run on its jangling wheels of a unitary state with­out its corporate existence suffering any injury. The argu­ment to debate the corporate existence of Nigeria is indexed on the fact that it provides the only genuine instrument for achieving a national modus vivendi.

The bloodily frac­tious texture of today's Ni­geria is – whether President Buhari acknowledges it or not – down to the polity still reel­ing from the deadweight of a military political imposition meant to have been ad hoc. That is why it reeks of political shortsightedness or the inabil­ity to grapple with lexicology, to continue to insist that, "the corporate existence of Nigeria as a single entity is not a subject of debate and will not be compromised."

Compromise is the spice of life. Inflexibility pronounces a veritable curse on this spice. If it hasn't occurred to the Presi­dent that it is antithetical to "call on persons or groups in the country who have some grievances to submit to peace­ful and democratic means of expressing themselves," and yet insist that "the corporate existence of Nigeria as a sin­gle entity is not a subject of debate and will not be com­promised," his advisers should impress it on his mind. They should warn that it is impos­sible to whip a mix of 180 mil­lion disparate peoples into a single, uncomfortable line.