DEMARKETING NIGERIA

I once told you that I completed my primary and secondary educations in Jos, Plateau State. I was also a victim of my environment, an environment which makes someone who is so Igbo to appear "ju" or Bush. I loved being SOPHISTICATED, so I had to hibernate much of my "Igboness" to be socially accepted. This is a true-life experience which even still exists in Igbo lands.

Before now, it wasn't in anyway trendy to be IGBOTIC. If you speak English with an Igbo accent, you are viewed as a bush man. That was a market most girls couldn't buy then. In Jos those days you will do with the usual "Okoro" moniker if you appear and sounded IGBOTIC just the same as girls here are called "Mgbeke"

Can you remember when MNK (Mazi Nnamdi Kanu) just started heating the air waves? How many people who couldn't deal were calling us Biafraud? Many couldn't accept something so Igbo-centric, it couldn't make you appear posh, how can you even mention Biafra to your Nigerian friends in Lagos and in the north?

They called us louts, miscreants, poverty-stricken people, recalcitrant urchins, uneducated, illiterates, jobless, haters of good, and insolent kids.

But the beauty and strength of this struggle is how it is rooted in knowledge. The knowledge of Nigeria, her hopelessness and her "irredeemability", the knowledge of how careless, selfish and empty her runners are and the awareness of their greed, the knowledge of their religious bigotry and wickedness. We also are aware of the docility of her youths, their warped knowledge on what democracy truly is, their adulterated knowledge of how governance should be, then most of all, how many truths were buried in false history and revisionism.

So many are clocking 40 and above and still have this huge burden of misinformation and miseducation. How do you tell them? These were part of the ones calling us Biafraud and hating to be identified with the Igbo.

However, we set off via debates and sensitization. As these went on, many people who thought they were learned came voraciously like hungry lionesses who want to fight over a kitten meal. They thought wisdom and intelligence ended with big English and sweet grammatical constructions, they never knew that we were equipped with some rare knowledge and reason. Where they couldn't win arguments, they resorted to ad hominem, when we fire back, they always became the first to adjudge us as uncouth. They were so angry that we knew our onions, we couldn't be deceived nor intimidated by their societal, educational and financial status. Truth, knowledge and logic were our guide.

As these happened on and off social media year in year out, the Nigerian government never helped our attackers. All that we wrote and foretold happened like a recorded movie. We showed them the sham that Nigeria is, in turn, Nigeria often corroborated our claims even farther than we imagined. From these effects and events, many people started believing, many people started associating with the struggle, many people were impacted with knowledge hidden from them by the owners and controllers of Nigeria. Logs started falling off people's eyes, many people started discovering their self-worth, slaves started becoming masters of their own destinies.

This year's Independence Day was the instrument with which I used to measure our progress. 5 years ago, people were proud to put on the green white green on independence days. In those days in Port Harcourt, people and organizations marched in groups accompanied by band boys with much fanfare. Last year's effect was somewhat little, maybe because it was on a Sunday. This year was an apology, I can swear here that I didn't see one person putting on green white green. I even asked people I use to know who often celebrated Nigeria and her independence why they weren't wearing green white green; their answers were that of forlorn human beings. My wife told me of her neighbour, a girl who was pelted with pure water sachet for her bad behaviour of wearing green white green. After opening her shop, she collected wrapper, ‘tie for waist com rush go house go change am’. It is what it is.

The message is sinking, many people now want to identify with us, we are now proud to be IGBOTIC. We are proud to be called Biafrans, speaking Igbo Language is now becoming trendy. MNK said it, "we will destroy the zoo with the truth" they were thinking we kept Ak47 somewhere (laughs), yes, our Ak47 equals truth.

Udo nke Chineke

Written by:

Mazi Alex Nwagbo

(TBRV WRITER)

For: The Biafra Restoration Voice - TBRV

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