Genocidal Self-Incrimination by Danjuma

By Biko Agozino

In an interview with the Vanguard Newspaper, Danjuma confessed that he lost control after arresting the head of state, Ironsi, that he was sworn to protect and that he conspired to assassinate him in retaliation for the January coup of 1966 that even Danjuma acknowledged that Ironsi helped to end, that Ironsi arrested the suspects and jailed them to await trial. Danjuma claimed that they assassinated Ironsi and his Yoruba host, along with numerous Igbo army officers, in retaliation because it was taking too long to bring the suspects to trial and the press were clamoring for their release as national heroes. 

Danjuma did not confess that he has since also lost control of his village and that the same narrative of retaliation is being used to justify the genocide against innocent civilians all over the country. He wondered why the coup makers also killed military officers if they were only after corrupt civilians as if military officers were immune to corruption (no excuse for the assassinations) but he did not say why his retaliatory coup did not go to the prisons to get the coup suspects if their motive was retaliation. He did not spare a thought for millions of civilians killed in his so-called retaliatory coup that he confessed to in self-incrimination. 

There is evidence that more of the Igbo fleeing the initial pogrom from the North were waylaid in Gboko (home area of Danjuma) and systematically massacred as Soyinka recounts in many of his works in different genres and as documented by Obumselu in the massacre of NdiIgbo in Northern Nigeria. The genocide against the Igbo was led by Christian army officers from the Middle Belt and from the West but then blamed on the Muslim Hausa Fulani who are yet to brag about it like Jack Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma, Mathew Obasanjo, Benjamin Adekunle, Anthony Enahoro, and Jeremiah Awolowo with the rare exception of the boast attributed to Buhari that he was ready to kill the Igbo again with no regrets. 

Contrary to the claims by Danjuma, it was not an Igbo coup that killed leaders of other regions and spared Igbo ones (if they also killed Igbo leaders, that would not make it less treasonable). Officers from other parts of Nigeria participated in that coup and their plan was to free a Yoruba leader from prison and put him in power, something that Danjuma and co fulfilled. Yet, the genocide singled out the Igbo for total destruction, forcing the East to secede even though they were the ones persuading other regions not to secede earlier. What have the Igbo done to Danjuma to deserve such unrepentant genocidal hatred when everyone knows that genocide is never justifiable? Other coups have been done by officers from other regions (including the region of Danjuma) and yet no one has tried to subject the people from such regions to the final solution. Why the Igbophobia?

The questions that The Vanguard journalists should have asked the self-confessed genocidist Danjuma are what was the retaliatory cause of the riots against the Igbo during the colonial rule in 1945 in Jos when the war-time scarcity imposed by the British was blamed on Igbo traders and on the NCNC-supported general strike by labour led by Michael Imoudu? How about the Kano massacre of the Igbo still during colonial rule in 1956 following perceived insults to Northern leaders by politicians from Western Nigeria arising from the motion for immediate independence and the amendment of independence when practicable, was that also retaliation against the Igbo for what? 

The use of 'starvation as a legitimate weapon of war' and the indiscriminate defoliation with abundant supply of weapons by the UK Labour Party government and the indiscriminate bombing with jets supplied by the Soviet Union and flown by Egyptian pilots against Biafran civilians, were they also retaliation, for what? How about the extra-judicial killings of innocent youth who have only ever called for a referendum on the future of the country and for the democratic right to stay home and mourn their dead by flying a Black Nationalist flag (that is actually more beautiful than the lame green-white-green imposed by imperialism) in honor of their dead ancestors, how about their proscription as terrorists while 'foreign' cattle herders who have massacred civilians all over the country remain legit? Where are the responses of the Nigerian pseudo-intellectuals to the admission of fascist genocide by Danjuma and co?

As Achebe, Ekwe-Ekwe, Jacobs, Adichie, Emecheta, Uzoigwe, Nzimiro, Soyinka and a few others documented, the genocide against the Igbo was premeditated by ethnic warlords who feared that the Igbo would dominate the country in open and fair struggles for scarce resources and it was orchestrated by the British who sowed the fear of Igbo domination due to the fact that the Igbo led the struggle for the restoration of Independence in Nigeria as Shagari admitted in a 1945 poem urging the North to join the struggle to show Waka to Boko. The Igbo have since demonstrated that they are not interested in dominating anyone but only in pursuing their livelihood through their own efforts despite systematic efforts to deindustrialize their home region, quit notices from other regions, and their exclusion from top political positions. Unlike Danjuma and his fellow self-confessed genocidists, the Igbo are not looking for retaliation but they will welcome reparative justice any day as the Justice Oputa Panel on human rights violations recommended. Other Nigerians will not lose anything when the government finally admits that a great wrong was done to the Igbo and atonements are made.

Recently, Obasanjo was reported as surrendering in his efforts to conquer the Igbo when he allegedly admitted that the Igbo cannot be conquered because they are democratic and not constrained by feudal institutions in their tireless efforts to uplift themselves and their communities against all odds. Colonial anthropologists advised Obasanjo to subjugate the Igbo by imposing traditional leaders on them after the war to make them more submissive like people from other regions, a thing that the colonial authorities had attempted before being defeated by the Women's War of 1929, leaving the East with no House of Traditional Rulers unlike the North and the West.

Obasanjo got it wrong because the other sections of the country never had a single leader compared to the Igbo who supposedly have only individualism. There have always been majority and minority politicians in every region of Nigeria (Aminu Kano in the North West, Waziri in the North East; Tarka and Lar in the North Central; Akintola, Agbekoya, Fela, Soyinka, and Falae in the South West; Boro and Ita in the South South; and Chike Obi, SG Ikoku, CC Onoh, Arthur Nwankwo and even Ojukwu in the East) in line with democratic rights to freedom of association. 

The Igbo have consistently voted their conscience for presidential candidates from other regions even against Igbo candidates in the cases of Shagari, Obasanjo, Yaradua, Jonathan and Atiku (they also elected a Fulani man as the Mayor of Enugu and appointed a minority Eyo Ita as head of government business in Enugu while Chimaroke Nnamani included a Yoruba man in his cabinet from 1999-2007 in Enugu). 

Apart from the Plateau State support for Azikiwe in the second republic and the initial victory of Zik in the Western region, no other region can boast of a similar detribalized record in supporting presidential candidates and yet the Igbo are still suspected of being a threat to Nigeria (the appointment of Okonkwo Kano, Ojukwu's uncle, to the Northern Legislative Council, the alliances that Zik formed across the country, and the election of Igbo candidates to the Federal House of Representatives from Lagos - that attracted threats of drowning in the lagoon if the Igbo did not vote a certain way preferred by a traditional ruler - notwithstanding). 

It is the genocidist generals who have dominated the misrule of Nigeria who should apologize to Nigerians for scapegoating the Igbo while giving self-confessed terrorists oil blocks, hundreds of billions, and political appointments to placate them. The result is that when the rain falls, it will not fall on Igbo rooftops only. Danjuma has since lost control of his village after leading the genocide against the Igbo. 

The solution to the genocidist states that imperialism foisted across Africa is the dissolution of the colonial boundaries to make way for the United Republic of African States or the Peoples Republic of Africa for which the people have voted with their feet as they transgress the imaginary lines drawn at the Berlin conference in search of their livelihood. The neocolonial states in Africa beg to be restructured in Pan African directions to prevent any group of genocidal trigger-happy killers trained by imperialism to attempt another genocide in any part of Africa without being stopped by the people who will be busy rebuilding Africa in leaps and bounds. Do Not Agonize, Organize!