THE £20 POUND POUNDING OF THE IGBO

THE £20 POUND POUNDING OF THE IGBO

'At your weakest point, the smartest enemy takes advantage. It is the way of men with ruthless desires. As much as man is driven by his self interest, humanity will remain far from humanity.

At the end of the Biafra war, the Igbo were devastatingly depressed and their spirit terribly broken.

Aside from the fact that Igbo towns and villages witnessed mass deaths of soldiers and civilians, houses and sometimes basic infrastructure was destroyed and the one's standing had gone comatose.

Schools remained closed and hospitals and markets remain deserted.

Every household had a dead member and in the absence of that, they would have a member with a missing limb or a missing person.

Following the fall of Biafra, it meant that the Biafran currency was no longer useful as it's legal tender status had evaporated.

This meant that the generality of Igbo had no financial power, as cash stored in Biafran pounds had become useless that it cannot buy a dog nor a dog food at a dog stand.

This led to a collapse in the economy of the East Central States as Kwashiokor induced hunger became widespread.

The only economic activity at the time was the presence of an army of occupation across the length and breadth of defunct Biafra.

The soldiers living amongst the defeated spend their salaries, about £90 in communities where they occupy hence aiding in injecting some level of economic activation.

This was the case but was a far cry from what was needed to boost a once-thriving economy.

And so the Igbo became beggars, and a few who had a lean mean became traders with the very little they had seeking for a way to make ends meet.

No one was spared from the hard-knocks, not even the highly placed.

The well known Cyprian Ekwensi, -author of many books including the revered 'Jagua Nana's Daughter'-

before the war was a Director of Information at the Federal Government sold water rubber plastics for a living.

He wouldn't be called back to work, so were many who worked as civil servants prior to the war.

Such was the height of lives demeaning stature in Igbo heartlands, the pain of hardship and the gnash of suffering.

You then wonder the plight of an ordinary Igbo at the time.

However, the succor the Igbo had at the time was to come from a single source, and it was not the other African States nor the West, but the enemy she fought, the Federal Government as led by General Yakubu Gowon.

And then on the stretch was the chief strategist, and the economic brain of the war, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

Chief Awolowo was a leading Yoruba leader in Western Nigeria, who by omission or commission chose to stand on the side of the Federal Government against Biafra.

Avoiding speculation, he has his reasons which fair enough is known by him, and only him alone.

The fact that he may have been threatened by the government or bought over is a genuine possibility.

The likelihood that he saw a greater opportunity at knocking off the Igbo from her enviable position of power and dominance in Nigeria at the time if he joined the Federal Government was also not out of place.

His back-friend, no love lost relationship with Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe may also have motivated his desire to upstage the sage of that time.

He wanted a more nationally politically aligned Yoruba race in the scheme of things, since playing opposition comes with a heavy price for any politician.

More so, I believe he knew that the Igbo were the only large group that has what it requires to challenge the sky-height of his people, and the dream he has for the larger Yoruba group.

Many motivating indicators were fully red-lighted.

Aside from the fact that most books of history point the way of Chief Awolowo as the man who superintended the adoption of a hunger strategy, he did more harm at the end of the war.

Nothing erodes a group and casts them down the allay of negative culture than two acts; first, take away the means to personal and group economic growth, and second; put in their stead shambolic mind manipulative education curriculum that stales the truth about their after war conditions.

Within his power as the economic power head, I believe he chose the first.

He handed down to every Igbo a £20 pound note irrespective of the ledger balance pre-war time.

Nothing was more cruel to a government that re-echoed the 3-R strategy for national cohesion.

Two sins; one an act of war, but a war crime, and the other borne out of the desire to keep the Igbo group down perpetually.

I have no grouse for his actions even though I condemn them.

Largely, it was an act of reality, of which if the table were to turn, it is likely the Igbo would have also ceased the opportunity the time provided.

I maybe wrong, but it goes to show that self interest often times over rides certain thinking, and certain thinking even if humane is always vulnerable to a man's burning desire.

You may defeat your desire once, but you cannot repeatedly.

If you do, you might as well not be of this world.

Looking back, and recounting how the Igbo rebuilt their lost fortunes and their scathing lives gladdens the heart.

You may say that the £20 was a blessing given the givens of the adversity theory, yet a few groups have succeeded in standing from a ravaged war as the Igbo had done, and in the speed of time within which it was done.

The rise is without doubt, the eleventh wonder of my world.

Agboeze Chidi....