We all know what IPOB’s objective is, that is, the actualization of an independent Biafran nation. But what the general public does not have an iota of knowledge about is their various goals, timelines etc. Of course these are strategic issues and for a struggle like these must remain under the radar because of sabotage.
Despite IPOB’s grand successes across the old Eastern Nigeria and globally, there is still more works to be done. One simply cannot do enough until victory is achieved. Therefore despite the grand sweeps across Eastern masses there are still a huge yawning gap especially of the critical middle class and the elites outside IPOB’s loop and in fact opposed to the very idea of IPOB and its style. That is why and despite what their next level is, there is an urgent need to incorporate this idea as an immediate next level goal – the idea of an IPOB and Eastern Nigerian Christmas.
Only the spiritually blind (because even the blind knows), would not know that one of the greatest human migration happens during Christmas period in Eastern Nigeria when an estimated ten to twenty million Eastern Nigerian citizens descend on the East not just from across other parts of Nigeria but from all over the world.
Over the years and especially due to the horrible lack of physical and social infrastructures across Eastern Nigeria – the real cause of IPOB’s agitation, this human mass movement has become a horrendous affair.
With virtually only one road across river Niger bridge to the East and ten million souls trying to access it same time brings to the fore the horror that Eastern Nigerians face in a country they call their own and so a driving force for separatism.
It is not my intention to dwell on the reasons for the Biafexit movement but on how IPOB and other irredentist movements can win over a large critical mass of the elites and middle class to their cause.
This Christmas season, let IPOB and allied organizations provide a seamless, violence free, kidnap free, traffic lock-jam free, police/custom/army intimidation free Christmas holiday for the traumatized citizens of Eastern Nigeria. This can easily be done through stepping into the gap abandoned by the decrepit Federal Road Safety, intervening at Asaba and Port Harcourt axis where the Nigerian federal government had laid boundary siege on Eastern Nigeria. (One wonders in the real world where custom officials are positioned if not at the nation’s boundaries). Is Asaba the boundary of Nigeria? That seems the clear message from Nigeria to Eastern Nigerians.
Also IPOB intervening at the over 2,000 police chokepoints across Eastern Nigeria is necessary. These interventions must needs be peaceful and diplomatic. I envisage a retinue of IPOB lawyers and pro-bono lawyers joining forces to man each of these identified chokepoints to help extricate citizens of Eastern Nigeria at least this festive season.
Eastern Nigerian citizens are the easiest to have on your side for causes they believe had direct bearing and immediate impact on their lives, especially daily lives. Saving a citizen from police illegal brutality at a police chokepoint will make one a convert to IPOB ideals faster than the endless marching and being gunned down by security agencies. This reminds me of OPC in its heydays. They directly impacted on the lives of the Yoruba mostly securing their lives and properties when insecurity was the order of the day in the late ‘90s Yorubaland and the Yoruba responded in kind. IPOB can take a leaf from this.
Happy Christmas in advance.
Mazi Oluchi
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