Reno Omokri tackles an Igbo One-sided view of the Past

A random Twitter user by the ID @uzoma49 shared the message in the screenshot below and it attracted the attention of Reno Omokri who replied to the one-sided narrative of the user.

@Uzoma49 shared:

@Renoomokri:

Dear Uzoma, 

Thank you for your feedback. Are you aware that Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s free education policy policy in Western Nigeria, launched on the 17th of January, 1955, was provided to all Nigerians living in Western Nigeria, including Igbos and Northerners? 

Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala benefitted from it. People of Yoruba origin could not attend public schools in Eastern Nigeria. Please fact-check me. Chief Awolowo was a visionary. God’s gift to the Black Race. Awolowo failed in politics in the First Republic because the Eastern Region went into an alliance with the Northern Peoples Congress. Chief Awolowo was convicted and sent to prison for a trumped-up treason charge by the Northern and Eastern coalition Central government, for goodness sake. He was not released until Lt. Colonel Gowon set him free on August 1966.

 And here you are, blaming him? Regionalism and resource control were destroyed on May 24, 1966, after Majors Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu’s coup put Major General Aguiyi Ironsi in charge as Nigeria’s first military Head of State. Awolowo was in jail. He seized all resources of the regions, abolished regional civil services and ruled Nigeria as a unitary entity from his boathouse at the Lagos Marina. 

You mentioned the word rebel. What do you call people who refuse to obey the lawful government of their country? For example, when Isaac Adaka Boro declared independence from Nigeria on 23 February 1966, with his Niger Delta Republic, what did Ojukwu call him? Was it not ‘rebel’? Ojukwu invited the Federal Military Government of Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi to intervene in the Eastern Region to stop the rebellion, and Ironsi sent troops to quash Boro’s rebellion. 

His fighters were killed, and he was arrested and jailed. You guys are not complaining about that. But when Ojukwu did the same thing to the Federal Military Government, led by Lt. Colonel Gowon, you now want Nigeria to call him and his army what? Chief Awolowo foresaw all of this and suggested a Secession Clause be included in Nigeria’s constitution in 1954 during the Lagos Constitutional Conference, but Nnamdi Azikiwe rejected it and galvanised a majority of the conference attendees to kill the idea. 

After this was rejected, Chief Awolowo again wrote to the then Governor General of Nigeria, who rejected the clause on the grounds that the majority, led by Nnamdi Azikiwe, was not in support of it. It was because of Nnamdi Azikiwe that section 86 was inserted into our constitution with the proviso that if any region should secede, it would be an act of treason. Nnamdi Azikiwe himself wrote about this in an essay, which was published by the New Nigerian Newspapers in 1975 and has since been republished by other papers and by Mr Azikiwe himself. 

Were it not for Azikiwe, Biafra would have had the legal right to secede. But rather than appreciate a man who was almost an angel in human form, you are libeling him and accusing him of being responsible for your woes. When will this self-pity and navel-gazing end? Anyway, thanks again and may God bless you.

 #TableShaker