Malu, the General, is dead. He won many battles but succumbed to diabetes at 70. Reputed for hard work and professionalism, Malu was the ideal soldier. He went into the Nigerian Defence Academy  (NDA) when military fervour was at its peak, in 1967. He was commissioned in 1970. Biafra had surrendered. But life had other battles lined up for him.

Ministers often can’t see presidents, for many months. It’s common in Nigeria. It didn’t start today. Some ministers get fenced out. They attend executive council meetings like houseboys. They  run around their offices with air of exaggerated importance. They are mistaken as men of power.  They  servilely praise the president at every opportunity. They walk around with a façade of importance. But nothing more. They can’t see the president. They can’t confide in him.

It’s been so since the ages. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Victory or defeat eventually, unfortunately, decides the abiding epithet.  Mandela was once labelled a terrorist. Nnamdi Kanu, can take heart. That baptism could be reversed by history. Mandela won and became a world acclaimed freedom fighter. 

Biafra was justice and freedom. But Biafra has become a tool for charlatans, a toy for dissipation of youthful exuberance. Biafra once evoked Igbo unity and enterprise. But Biafra has now been appropriated by jobless opportunists who exploit the frustrations of their poor brothers. Biafra was Igbo fellowship. But this their  new Biafra  thrives on  cannibalizing  fellow Igbos. Biafra was consultation, consensus. This Biafra is now  extremism, hallucination, egocentrism. 

My President. We are still in the season, so happy Eid Mubarak. I had wanted to send you this message in Igbo. So that you get the message. But I hate tit for tat.  And I know you will never give us a Sallah message in Hausa again.

Nothing baffles the public anymore. A senator accused the Inspector General of Police of corruption. He painted a picture of money for postings and promotion. No one felt enough repugnance to demand an inquiry.  Zero tolerance for corruption is a mere slogan. He announced that the police hierarchy leases policemen to companies and individuals and feeds on the returns.

It’s not impossible Lord Lugard is laughing in his grave.  It’s not often that  a man’s selfish and commercial adventure   come to be venerated as a moral ideal. When he strapped the southern and northern protectorates together in 1914, he did it to meet British colonial interests.

I remember 2015. The APC could not campaign in Okrika, Rivers State. Thrice they went, thrice they scampered away. Gun men shot at them with righteousness. APC supporters were sellouts. The police couldn’t help them. Their constitutional rights had limitations. They could not exercise  in the den of a certain lioness. The APC cried all kinds of freedom cries, and cursed the abuse of power.

Everywhere you look, you see beautiful ladies languishing. They could have moved on. But our puritanical society hates single mothers and despises unmarried women.

Weep not Ozubulu. We weep with you. Ozubulu, you are not alone. We are with you. We are you. What a man sows, he shall reap. We taught our youths ruthlessness. We filled them with the love of money. We had no jobs for them. We catapulted  them far and wide. We sold ancestral lands to procure visas.