Dear Igbo Elite: Your House is on Fire

Dear Igbo elite. I know how you feel at this moment. I feel it too. The unease to confront the evolving madness at home. Not knowing who to blame for the current crisis in your land. Your inability to go home without a battery of security men. Feeling cut off from a homeland that was your last refuge and a place you went to be with kith and kin. The prospect of forced mass exile because going home offers more danger to life and freedom.

A few decades ago, you were in the forefront of complaining how Nigeria treated your parents and your tribe badly. The scars of the civil war were still fresh. The pain was real. The hurt was crippling. You needed understanding. Empathy. Nigeria was not about to apologize to you for your loss. It declared no victor, no vanquished. That was the closest to an apology. There was the 3Rs. Again, another effort at an apology.

Your parents had licked their wounds. And went back into Nigeria. Nigeria did remind them, and you that you fought a war. And that was true. And you lost. Also, true. When you get angry and fight a bully and lose, there is your anger. There is the bully. And there is your loss. And still the bully. You knew this before you went to war? That there would be consequences?

Your children have heard your complaints. And your lamentations. And have decided their generation will not accept to just whine. They must confront Nigeria. Not to right the wrongs of Nigeria against them. But to tell Nigeria to let them go. Back to where it all started. Loss of 2m souls in Biafra notwithstanding. Some of you have joined with hope to actualize the dream of your fathers

And so Mr Elite. You dismissed their rantings. and youthful anger as exuberance. It will wear off with time. But you would underestimate the rise in 2015 of someone that would define their hate. Add that to recessions. Unemployment . Hunger. Social media. Covid-19. And the rise of a new coterie of messiahs with messages of hate. And who to hate.

And soon enough the first shot was fired. Police killed . Stations burnt. Retaliation. More deaths. Kidnapping. Sit at home. Economic lockdown.

Where do you think this will end. As you tap your keyboards and analyze and forecast. Where will this end. Is your hope a reward for the highest office of the land as a payout for all the wailing of the post war years? Will the nation now accept you as equal. Having shown your own capacity for creating havoc and insecurity in your Corner of a Nigerian as others have done for the power to share the spoils of Nigeria.

And when will it end. What would you accept as a good outcome? How many deaths will be acceptable collateral damage? How much will businesses suffer? How much de-industrialization will you accept as price for this anger driven mission of your children?

Do you even think their methods are the right way. You fought with your own your voice, your gloomy faces. They want to fight with hate. Propaganda. AK47. Is this what you want? Do you want to get Biafra of the mind. Or the Biafra sitting inside the bowels of Nigeria, the bully your children are saying they want to leave. So you want to escape from a bully. And yet live within its claws?

When are you going to sit your youth down and tell them they have made their point. That Nigeria has heard them. Nigeria has taken notice. That every fight must not be for fighting sake. That every fight has outcomes. Sometimes not your own intended outcomes: the current flow of blood in the East, the poverty, exodus and unemployment driven by reckless attack on lives and livelihood, your current fear-induced temporary exile in Nigeria. They are all outcomes. Some easy to see if you had been observant from the beginning.

And are your youth the worst off in Nigeria? Why do they think Nigeria hates them? Alone? Does Nigeria love anyone? Does Nigeria love the millions who are unemployed after leaving university? Does Nigeria even love their teachers? Doctors who are on the streets everyday? Does Nigeria love those who think Nigeria offers them an advantage? Does Nigeria love those who think Nigeria belongs to them? Or those who pretend Nigeria loves them? Does Nigeria love us enough to secure us against bandits, terrorists, kidnappers, corrupt politicians, or bad roads?

Where is the love in Nigeria? Accepted, our potbellied elite and carpet baggers talk of patriotism. Of indivisibility of Nigeria. But most do so because they have the comfort of bank accounts filled with stolen money from the common purse. Their love for Nigeria is the love rapists show to their victims. Remove their loot and their love will vanish.

Our love for Nigeria is mostly of the type conferred by advantage. And that's the love that Nigeria reciprocates. If in doubt look all around you. And sometimes in the mirror.

My dear elite. Please sit down with your youth. Show them tough love. Teach them that youth is eternal. That you were youth. And their youth will soon be over and another youth will rise. That the Nigerian journey is long . Youth will come. Youth will go. But the journey will continue. Frustratingly. Slowly. Until one day, a Nigeria will emerge that makes attempts to love its people. And its people will learn to love her.

And that they should join the fight to get us to that day. Faster. Because the alternative is too scary to contemplate.