Video is making the viral rounds in social media showing Uche Mefor, former deputy leader of Ipob, dissociating from Ipob when the group became too militant for his ideological comfort.
Read no more if you are seeking to be entertained by yet another Igbo on Igbo intellectual take down. I come neither to praise Uche nor to bury him.
But if you are looking to be made wiser by an Igbo priest of the order of Jesu Christi, read on.
To Uche Mefor, I leave the following Igbo proverbs: When it becomes customary to slay a man for incest, them we must first slay all the he goats in the village. When a slave ingratiates his master over the conduct of a fellow slave, he hastens both their punishments. Who committed the arson: he who struck the match or he who fetched the fuel? Answer these questions as you may but do not forget that the mother of a dwarf knows best how to carry him.
Framing the Struggle for Self Determination
When you step afar back to frame the struggle engaged in by Ipob, you will see that it is another scene in a 700 year struggle for self determination, adding 400 years of slavery, 150 years if colonialism and 150 years of post colonialism. The actors may differ but the narrative remains the stealing and carting away of the resources of the Igbo by White man and their African proxies. Over those years, trillions of dollars worth of wealth have been displaced from Igbo land leaving a rag tag of revolutionaries who feel that they have nothing more to lose but to fight it out even unto death.
When you draw closer to the theater of that long running Igbo struggle for self determination, then one is caught in a dizzying whirl of microdynamics involving the Fulanis, Hausas, Yorubas, White people, and fellow Igbos of different ideological variegation overtopped by religion.
Ebb and tide as the whirl goes, the struggle is the same: the control of the natural resources of Igbo land by the White man and their proxies. The entire struggle to gate down the Igbos and to lynch any Igbo leader who dared to try to break his people free is about control of Igbo resources, either directly or indirectly.
Here Comes the Igbo Priest
We sometimes get too caught up in the microdynamics of these struggles to reflect on that which truly sets us apart. There are no Jews, Christians nor Muslims in Heaven. Nor does God love an Igbo man more than he loves a Fulani man. And if you set aside some of the nonsense they teach you, then you can be Igbo in one life and Fulani in another, White man in one life and Black man in another, man in one life and woman in another. If you truly understand this christic consciousness, then you will be resigned to only one conclusion: Forgive haters for they know not what they do. With those words, our radically compassionate Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, forgave those who crucified him.
Understanding then that compassion is greater than justice, one must denounce the unjust killing of a Fulani by Igbo with the same repugnance as one must denounce Igbo on Igbo fatricide for we are all children of God, regardless of tribe or religion.
But while compassion is to be desired, self defense should be more highly esteemed, particularly by a people who have suffered genocide and reminded without remission that genocide may again come upon them.
Igbo unrelenting apprehension of genocide is one of the reasons why Kanu saw ESN as a necessity.
Has the Whiteman and his proxies left foot off the pedal of deploying violence whenever they feel the need to do so to keep the Igbos gated away from their oil and gas fields?
Then at what point is it not right for the Igbos to organize for their self defense?
Enter Caiphasian Syndrome
If you live in a planet that is roughly 2025 light years away, you would probably by now just be seeing the lights of an earthly struggle that most closely mirrors the Igbo present day struggle.
Circa 2025 years ago, a Jewish revolutionary stepped foot in Palestine to preach repentance because the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.
Caiphas the Chief Priest of that period gathered the elders and pleaded with them that slaying Jesus Christ and whatever Kingdom he was proclaiming was the most prudent way not to draw the murderous ire of Emperor Ceasar.
So convinced of proestablishment Jews of the need to rid their society of revolutionaries for the sake of dwelling in peace with the Roman’s that they made a habit of crucifying fellow Jews who dared to raise finger at Ceasar.
So they crucified Jesus, the Kingdom of God revolutionary, along with Barrabas, the Jewish self determination revolutionary, all for the sake of Ceasar, their colonial masters and lord.
And so it is that the long persecuted Igbos have leaders who are so morbidly afflicted with Caiphasian Syndrome that they are convinced that ridding Igbo land of self determination revolutionaries is Igbo best guarantee to live in peace with their neocolonial overlords.
They want to ingratiate their over lords by publicly lynching their brothers who happen to be revolutionaries.
Philosophical Dilemma
If you were Caiphas and charged with protecting your people from Ceasar’s brutality, would you have done any differently?
And if Jesus Christ made a point to struggle against the local authorities, would he not have unleashed Jew on Jew violence that would be akin to what people condemn as Igbo on Igbo violence purportedly engineered by Kanu today?
So in Igbo land we have the Caiphasians who went all out to brand Ipob as terrorists in order to get rid of them to save their necks and we have the self determination activists comprising radical and revolutionary elements who see the Caiphasian class as a major impediment to their struggle. That clash between Caiphasians and self determinators is the natural dynamic of these kinds of struggles.
Did we not see Igbo on Igbo fatricide during the Biafran war of a larger scale than we are seeing today?
Is it fair to hang the entire panoply of these kinds of struggles on Kanu because he happens to be the leading exponent, a mere actor, in a 700 year old drama for Igbo self determination?
Make your own judgment but if you are an Igbo elder, please err on the side of restraint. Over the years, the world has witnessed acts of terrorism committed by Muslims, including suicide bombing. Yet, not one notable cleric, from any where in the entire Islamic universe, has openly denounced these terrorists. Is it because they are indifferent to the pain those terrorists cause or because of their studied apprehension of the nature of these struggles?
Romans fell. As surely as the sun must rise, the Kingdom of God came, but Caiphas feels justified till this day.🤔
