…Bird and Ottanelli are of University of Florida, United States of America
By M A C Odu
I am privileged to have stayed alive to behold the letters of this monumental work that broke boundaries of nations to exhume by oral and documentary evidence the horrendous tragedy that befell Nigeria and the world on the subject of research with which the world was nourished by the two authors above.
I was an actor in that war and did feature in two missions through Asaba close to the time of those horrific episodes. I was joyfully privileged to learn that key promoters to memorialisation of the tragedy are younger people who were sufficiently incentivised by ancestral promptings to seek to placate human spirits that have received near irreparable distortions by those strings of repeated tragedies on just one nationality in our multi-ethnic nation state called Nigeria.
The sky-blue background of the hard copy, atop of which is a foreign dress form hanging forlorn in dripping colours of the rainbow, with brown black nonsensical forms which could be read to show multitudes of concepts of confusion, was centralised to elucidate the subject and authors of the work below in a ring.
It was sufficiently compelling for me to read it up in an aggregate time of twelve hours. My wife, an indigene of Asaba, autographed me a copy of the work which was powered by her age group and below into hitting book stands. I am grateful to her for availing me the opportunity to express this opinion and lay out key issues left out of the work for subsequent humanity.
The work is a towering tribute to the authors, as they have used the subject to etch their names in marble as historiographers of note coming from the same advanced nations which media, shown by the work to have suppressed the horrendous subject successfully for profit of their nations.
Truth, it is now clear, may be suppressed only for some time. It does burst open when the cycles of falsehood comes to a closing impelled by Nature’s inexorable laws: the law of attraction of homogenous species, the law of gravity and law of reciprocal action or the law of sowing and reaping.
The law of attraction of homogenous species compels human spirits of same qualities to find themselves and fulfil themselves whether they be good or bad in terms of God’s Laws. The Law of Gravity compels all human spirits of equal density to drop out and sink to lower regions on account of their masses and lighter human spirits to float in Lighter regions of Creation. The Law of Reciprocal Action compels every human spirit to receive back from Creation what inputs human spirits make into Creation with such intensity as the impact of such inputs created by such thoughts, volition and actions aggregate to.
See In The Light of Truth, The Grail Message by Abd-Ru-Shin, Alexander Bernhardt Publishing Co. Vomperberg Tyrol.
Insensate leadership generates so much of this tragedy for a people in a short time span and it takes a long span of time of serious effort of the will to remedy tragedy generated therefrom.
For example, Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s myopia that resulted in hunger in Biafra and poverty for Ndigbo, denied him leadership of Nigeria which he eminently qualified for, were it not for his inordinate desire to put Yoruba nation at an advantage, unduly.
Such scheming is on today from the Hausa-Fulani Oligarchy and it is bound to fail for want of universal love which is an Eternal Law that cannot be bent by whims and fancies of human beings without humungous disaster on its originators and subscribers to such negative vortices of thought forms. If desire for power is not powered by love it will not materialise as an elevating goal to the human race.
The international scope of collaboration in the production of the Asaba book speaks eloquently of the universality and insuppressibility of all events, both wholesome and downright reprehensible in the evolution of people and nations. The bestiality of the massacres could not be capped by leadership for all time at the altar of blood money that tended to prolong suffering of the victims and perpetrators of the despicable barbarism and their progeny whether they be conscious of it or not.
It should now be clear to all people of all nations that to every thought, volition and action there must be closure with repercussion on all those who planted the seed thought, positive or negative to the horrendous scale of wilful murder of defenceless citizens in the guise of fake enemy action to suppress ‘revolt’ of a major ethnic group.
Predatory instincts of Britain and Western world that set their sights on national benefits without considering universal code of ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ along with fairness and equity of the human family powered into existence by Love proselyted by same nations, speaks volumes of the degeneration of the Homo sapiens below the animal kingdom among citizens of the so-called advanced nations.
Those who participated in that massacre are reaping anguish from their enterprise. Boko Haram has lighted upon their own territory in retribution. Although the high and mighty are ostensibly comfortable, they will know no real happiness until symbolic Karma: that will assuage the hitherto unappeased human spirits: visited with death in the manner established in this title and proven through research and documentation of oral evidence in the main, through superior traditional rites of passage which have been lost in greed of advanced nations but which are still in robust existence among tribes in developing African nations like ours, are properly conducted.
The remaining horde who visited woe on fellow humans will know no peace without this symbolic expiation.
Nigeria as a nation must be involved in this or the nation will have no life in the future as a viable entity. This trend has lingered since the pogroms that took root from envy, greed and avarice just before the war.
The Biafra War, which materialised from vain pride on the part of Ndigbo: and envy, greed and avarice in the guise of Islamism in the case of Hausa-Fulani hegemony, are defenceless in Natural Law. Their utter vanity has supplied fuel for havoc to neighbouring nations to visit us with pillage and doom in direct proportion to hatred shown by component groups for one another.
Under Natural Law, evil courses are bound to cancel one another before progress can be made by each contending group in Nigeria Project and another or others. Love and Social Responsibility for one another must underpin relationships for real and enduring progress to take root and blossom anywhere and everywhere in the world.
As it is, we have not buried our dead caused by the war at various theatres of conflict. We must address it nationally or we shall keep suffering the buffeting of Natural Law from one level of degradation to another for as long as this truculence exists. This is the reward tacitly proposed by the effort of this historiographers.
That effort must be snatched with alacrity and used to repair our battered psyches of hate for one another. The alternative is that the nation must be returned to their pristine nationalities for each nationality to make appropriate atonements and votive to their ancestors on their own unpolluted cultural systems bases.
Asaba leaders of that time were in error for their patronising conduct to clear vagabonds in Nigeria colours and their invasion Commander, Brigadier Murtala Mohammed as he then was.
They alienated their cultural and linguistic affiliates with fake demonstration of solidarity with killers and lost mercy of the arbitrary horde even at that idiocy. This was gross humiliation to a proud and ambitious tribe that has led the country in its prime and aroused jealousy of other tribes.
Ndigbo of whatever lingo should learn to stand tall and defiant in the face of criminal assault on their dignity for all time in future. Our failure to stand to be counted among the consistent has led to our loss of value in Nigeria Project and must be corrected in the future of our corporate separate existence and/or forcible, futile retention in Nigeria Project.
We must remain defiant in the face of every wrong course visited on us by any power, or group of people with vain and destructive goals on their agenda.
I salute the pair who served humanity this question mark of a dish. Should humanity cover evil or expose and rally to correct it, wherever it rears its head?
.Prof Odu, an estate management icon and an active participant in the Nigeria/Biafra war, wrote from Mbaise in Imo State