A moral question
Black revolutionaries like Malcolm X, Steve Biko, Henry Emomotimi Okah, Franz Fanon, Nnamdi Kanu, etc, are consistent on one point: That if, for any reason, the state refuses to protect the black man from internal violence, or finds itself incapable of protecting him, then the black man has his God-given right to defend himself by means no less proportionate. Writing under a highly circumscribed environment where he was censored, Biko never used the word ‘violence;’ what he actually said was that the black man should defend himself ‘in any manner he deems fit.’
But Martin Luther King Jr and Allen Onyema, Prophets of Non-Violence, disagreed. Their approach to fighting internal violence is dialogue with the hope that the victimizer would change. Young blacks, however, seem to turn their back on King and Onyema while embracing Biko and Okah. This is because non-violence did not factor in hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, alcoholism, resource capture, poverty and crowded/polluted environments as forms of violence; as pointed out by Biko and Okah, in particular.
In the late 1990s, the Nigerian military regime refused to save Igbo traders from hoodlums in Aba. Then Ndigbo formed the dreadful vigilante group called Bakassi Boys that wasted no time stampeding the criminals out of Igboland. Respite came the moment the victims took the law into their own hands. The armed robbers fled to South Africa, where they resumed as drug peddlers; since armed robbery was suicidal as South Africans bear arms.
In Yorubaland, armed robbers also killed innocent families during the same period. Again, the military refused to intervene. Then Gani Adams armed his Odua Peoples Congress, OPC, and killed off the tormentors of his people. Though a non-state actor, the OPC Vigilante Group took the law into its own hands, defending Yorubas through violence when the state refused to act.
The moral question is: Do Black South Africans also have the right to take the law into their own hands, raising the Dudula and March and March Vigilante Groups to violently expel Nigerian cultists committing crimes in their land? The emphatic answer is YES. Ndigbo armed the Bakassi Boys, and Yorubas armed the OPC Vigilante Group to violently expel anti-socials from Nigeria. The heavens did not fall. Is what is good for the goose no longer good for the gander? But since some are still in denial, Nigerian criminals are killing South African children by selling methamphetamine to them; let me jolt our collective memory.
One, the Punch newspaper of 2nd July 2016 reported that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, of Nigeria apprehended an Igbo called Pastor John Vincent Arinze with 92 kilos of methamphetamine and 73 kilos of ephedrine worth N1.4 billion. The Merchant of Death was exporting his poisons to South Africa before he was arrested. Had Arinze succeeded, only God knows how many South African children would have died.
Two, in Anambra State, gunmen entered St Philip Catholic Church and killed defenseless Igbos in a slaughter known as the Ozubulu Massacre. Chuks Oluigbo’s ‘Mass Murder in the Cathedral,’ BusinessDay newspaper, 13th August 2017, reveals, ‘For now, the story out there remains that Aloysius Ikegwuonu (Bishop), an alleged drug baron in South Africa, was actually the target of the gunmen. An article by Somuadila Ugwummadu, which has been circulating online, says that much. The article narrates how Bishop, a mere secondary school leaver, allegedly became a multi-millionaire barely four months after he travelled to South Africa in March 2001 and returned home in December of the same year to throw money around.’
Three, in 2015, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, extradited six Yoruba fraudsters from South Africa to Mississippi to face a nine-count indictment on internet fraud schemes. The six were Oladimeji Seun Ayelotan, 30; Rasaq Aderoju Raheem, 31; Olusegun Seyi Shonekan, 33; Taofeeq Olamilekan Oyelade, 30; Olufemi Obaro Omoraka, 26; and Anuoluwapo Segun Adegbemigun, 39.
Fourth, this 2026 seven cultists from the Edo community in South Africa are to be extradited to the US for Internet fraud. They are Perry Osagiede, 52; Enorense Izevbigie, 45; Franklyn Edosa Osagiede, 37; Osariemen Eric Clement, 35; Collins Owhofasa Otughwor, 37; Musa Mudashiru, 33; and Toritseju Gabriel Otubu, 41.
And five, how many times have you seen perfectly sane Nigerians squeeze the buttocks of women in the streets of Ogbomosho, Enugu or Benin? But we do that to South African women going about their normal business.
Nationalizing MTN, DSTV and other South African companies in Nigeria will never stop Black South Africans from expelling Nigerians. The solution is identifying and removing Nigerian cultists, fraudsters and drug peddlers from South Africa. Their South African citizenship should be revoked to make their removal easier.
Veritas Numquam Perit
Has anyone heard of Botswanans up in arms against Nigerians? The answer is NO. Why? Because Nigerians are docile in Gaborone. Why? Because Botswana stiffly applies the death penalty for murder and drug dealing. No Nigerian wants to hang. We are arrogant in South Africa because there is nothing to fear. Our criminality is deliberate because we would never do in Botswana what we do in South Africa.
There is nothing Black South Africans have not done to make Nigerians happy in their country. They have never denied we helped them during the dark decades of Apartheid. Honourable Nkem Abonta, an Igbo, was even elected into their national parliament. Tell me what a brother could do for his brother that Black South Africans have not done for us, tell me?
My son was born in 2004 at Lilian Ngoyi Clinic in the South Western Townships (SOWETO) of Johannesburg. I never paid a dime for the top-notch mother-and-child treatment my family received. None also stopped my wife from giving birth to my daughter at Johannesburg Hospital in 2007. The same social security Black South Africans enjoyed was extended to Nigerians. While hosting my wife’s uncle in 2005, the old Zulu told me ten out of the first fifteen babies born in a newly built hospital in Soweto were Nigerian babies. That whenever a South African girl put to bed and was asked the father of her baby, the usual answer was ‘The father is a Nigerian.’
On behalf of every single Nigerian in South Africa, the great Senator Adams Oshiomhole and our other parliamentarians should kindly tender an unreserved apology to our Black South African brothers and sisters. We gravely wronged them. We take responsibility. None hears the lamentation of the Gugulethu mother mourning her only child who gave up the ghost after consuming the drug sold to him by a Nigerian. You only hear the deceptive wail of certain Nigerians claiming South African police shot yet another innocent Nigerian. But in Latin we say, ‘Veritas numquam perit’ (The truth never dies).
Footnote to Ndigbo
With its strong currency and stronger international passport, South Africa is Heaven on Earth for Ndigbo. We were on a great economic trajectory till the criminality of a few Igbos brought us into a collision course with our host country. What Dr Ikedife foresaw eighteen years ago has come to pass. If you must know, Black South Africans are no longer attacking ‘Nigerians’ but ‘Igbos.’
What now becomes of the hundreds of thousands of Igbo children if their fathers are forced out of South Africa, leaving them under the custody of their overwhelmed South African mothers? Spare a fraternal thought for thousands of Igbo children in Grade 12 whose 2026 Matriculation Examination is scuttled by these attacks. Without their matric certificates, no university will offer them admission. Do you see how we Igbos shot ourselves in the foot? In Igboland, Biafran agitators for years stopped Igbo children from writing their West African School Certificate examinations on Mondays. In the Diaspora, Igbo children also suffer a similar fate due to the criminality of a few Igbos. Are we empowering our next generation or disempowering them? You be the judge.
The Roman poet, Horace, said no evil is happy. Ndigbo allowed a handful of unhappy criminals among them to provoke our benevolent Black South African brothers and sisters. Fragmentation of the Igbo family stares at us in the face, consequently. The only Igbo ecstatically heading for the Oliver Tambo International Airport is the middle-aged cultist. He sardonically chides you for living in South Africa for twenty years without building a house in your father’s compound in case of an emergency like this. For once, evil is happy.
Solution/Conclusion
If Nigerians supported Black South Africans to liberate themselves while the UK never supported them, only for our beneficiaries to shun us for the UK thirty-two years after; it simply means Nigerian diplomacy is porous. International relations are ever dynamic. Properly managed, old enemies could become new friends, like Israel and Germany; just as old friends, like the US and Iraq, could turn bitter enemies if poorly handled. Nigeria did not intervene at the ‘point of aggression’ when Black South Africans started complaining about Nigerian drug peddlers. Our leaders only woke up at this ‘point of reaction’ when the aggrieved stampeded us out of their land. Blame that on bad diplomacy.
The first remediation step is for the Nigerian government to stop posting non-career diplomats to South Africa. A career diplomat, trained to detect conflicts from afar and take steps to avert them, could have managed things differently. In posting our foreign representatives, the Federal Government should adhere to Section 171, Subsection 1,2,4,5 of the 1999 Constitution as amended.
These sections state that, in selecting those to represent Nigerians overseas, the Nigerian leadership should make it 70% career diplomats and 30% non-career diplomats. This is because competent diplomats defending Nigerians abroad are as essential as professional soldiers defending us at home. A flashpoint like South Africa should be manned by our finest diplomats. Safer still, such diplomats should be Igbo, Yoruba or Edo. This is to avoid a repetition of the 2009 acrimonious media campaign against General Mohammed Marwa by some aggrieved Igbos. When he was our High Commissioner, information leaked that he insulted Igbos and all hell was let loose.
Two, the revered Senator John Azuta Mbata, President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide; and the South East Traditional Rulers Council should remove from office the president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo South Africa for his complicity in the illegal coronation of Eziko. Extortionists masquerading as Eze-in-Council South Africa, Nze na Ozo South Africa, and those they criminally coronated should be removed from South Africa for peace to reign.
Three, Igbo and Yoruba governors should build Igbo and Yoruba markets in South Africa to help their peoples go legit, like the Chinese and Indians are doing.
Finally, the chicken having come home to roost, every Nigerian community, town union and youth council should take extreme action against any South African deportee, or anyone caught selling methamphetamine to Nigerian children. Oba youths of Anambra State are already rounding up drug peddlers and their poisons.