By Dr. Chuks Osuji
Without doubt, nobody but nobody of Igbo extraction either at home or in the diaspora that will not support the secessionist desire by the Igbo and not by IPOB per say. Naturally, the average Igbo man is both restive and active in the industry. In a modern phraseology, he is a workaholic. Whether at home or the diaspora, the average person is as busy as a bee. That is why some elderly retired Igbo men and women find it difficult to stay idle in other to enjoy their ageing life and process. If you ask one or two of them to rest because they have given a lot to the society, they will reply saying, “We will stop working when nature says, stop working.” Some elderly men and women will tell you that if they stop working at old age, they will soon fall sick. Because staying idle is not a part of the Igbo man’s behaviour.
We can still remember the common Igbo proverb which says, “A soiled Hand will be a product of mouth daunted with oil.” Meaning, “that if you work with your hands, you are sure to moist your mouth with oily dish.”
This, as I have advocated at other platforms, that the stay at home order by the IPOB is not a policy fully examined before the announcement wa made. It has been said that the population of Igbo race wherever they maybe found will definitely support the realisation and the actualisation of the Biafran dream. Because the humiliation and Marginalisation of the Igbo in the Nigerian project are highly reprehensible to put it more mildly. That is why the compliance to sit at home order was almost total. But frankly speaking, there may be other reasons why the order attained such high degree of compliance. Many, particularly the elites were of the opinion that such order should have come from core Igbo leadership or organisation such as Ohanaeze NdiIgbo; some thought that it does not have the force of the law or any other reason. Whatever one may have as a reason for or against, the fact remains and remains validly so that the request for Biafra is a genuine cause since Nigerian leaderships over the years particularly after the civil war have thrown deaf ear to the aspirations of the Igbo nation. Therefore, the call for Sit at home as a function of Igbo demand for self determination is a genuine cause which will be supported by many. Because, collectively, the Igbo sons and daughters have suffered a lot of Marginalisation in a country we call our own.
As some have argued and successfully so is a tactics adopted by a secessionist group in Cameron known as the Abazonia which have lasted for four years without any iota of success. Indeed sit at home order may work elsewhere but it will not work in the environment of creative active persons like the Igbo. In addition, it’s corresponding equivalent of civil disobedience as a means of protest, wherever they have been used had not been very successful. However, in a dynamic society such as the United States, the refusal of black Americans in Mississippi and Arizona refusing to evacuate sewage worked swiftly well because within two or three days, the people in those two states saw hell as refused pilled up on the two sides of the states. In fact, the people saw hell and the authorities gave the blacks what they wanted.
Therefore that order no matter how sensible it is, it cannot work in our situation because of differences in collective orientation and divergent characteristics because Sit at home order is not part of our culture.
– Osuji, Public Opinion Analyst and Public Consultant was the Director-General of Imo State Mass Mobilisation Agency