- It fell short of our expectation – Kaduna-based leader
- Leave now –IPOB
From Paul Orude, Bauchi, Noah Ebije, Sola Ojo, Kaduna, Layi Olayiwola, Illorin, and Emmanuel Adeyemi, Lokoja
You never can read the mind of the man pinned down in a fight: whether, if you leave him, he would continue with the fight or else, run for dear life. So goes an Igbo adage.
Faced with such dilemma over the unilateral “suspension” on Thursday, of the October 1 quit notice given by the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), many Igbo living in the North and who have been in engaged in a ‘fight’, as it were, with their thoughts, as to whether to go or stay, since June the quit order was issued, have decided to go for Option B: run, despite assurances from leaders of the group, Saturday Sun has been able to find out.
Thanks for your magnanimity in suspending the notice but our minds are already made up to go, IK Iloanya, a Bauchi-based businessman and a few other Igbos seemed to tell the Arewa Youths. “As far as I am concerned, the quit notice still stands,” the young man from Anambra State told our correspondent. “I still stand on the quit notice. I am ready to forfeit my house and other property to leave before October 1.”
Another Igbo resident, Jerry Ikechukwu, a spare parts dealer at Bakin Kura, Bauchi, confessed that had concluded plans to leave Bauchi and return after a week when he is sure that there would be no trouble. Ikechukwu, an indigene of Aniocha Local Government in Anambra State, said that but for prominent northern leaders like the Sultan of Sokoto Sa’ad Abubakar and the Emir of Bauchi, Dr Rilwanu Adamu who personally assured that nothing would happen to Igbos, he would have left as soon as the notice was issued.
He hinged his reason for leaving on what he sees as the President’s failure to make a categorical statement on the matter during his recent broadcast. “I expected President Buhari to say something about the issue in his recent speech but he did not,” he remarked. “So I am leaving and may return when I am sure the coast is clear.”
Saturday Sun reliably learnt that, despite the suspension, there is still tension and apprehension among Igbo residents. Our correspondent discovered that a lot of Igbos resident in Bauchi had either sold or leased their property, including hotels, houses and business premises. “Almost all the Igbo people in my compound are going,” said a Yoruba man who simply gave his name Olu, a Bauchi resident.
People usually sleep with their two eyes closed. But Chief Damian Sunny Inyamah, immediate past President-General of Ndi Igbo in the North, would want his kinsmen to sleep with one eye closed while keeping the other open, over the alleged withdrawal. The chicken says why it looks up while gulping water is because the thing that kills it usually falls from the sky, so goes another Igbo adage. That’s the wisdom Inyamah would want the Igbos to adopt.
“The suspension of the eviction notice by Arewa youths is a welcome development,” he told our correspondent. “But we still cannot sleep with our two eyes closed; we are watching the unfolding development because in the first place we believed that the order was uncalled for. Nigeria belongs to all of us.”
The wait-and-see-which-way-the-wind-blows attitude is what Chief Boniface Okeke President-General Igbo community in Kwara also recommends, based on the fact that the October 1 deadline is still a long way off. “We are watching and waiting for the deadline,” he announced, before adding that Igbos are anything but unfazed. “We are waiting for further development on the suspension. I hope reason will prevail at the end of the day. But sincerely, we didn’t give the issue a serious thought because an average Igbo don’t fear the notice. If you watch you will see that many Igbo leaders in the north have not been reacting to it. You can see that our people
In a related development, the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), says while it agrees with the likes of Chief Okeke that Igbos in the North have no need to lose sleep over the quit notice or the recent withdrawal, they should not forget that a war foretold is a warning for a cripple to leave the town in good time, as the Igbo would say.
Speaking through its Media and Publicity Secretary, Comrade Emma Powerful, IPOB urged all Igbos and other Southerners resident in the core North to discountenance the withdrawal of the notice and return home, noted that history had shown that the suspension does not mean that Igbo lives and property are no longer endangered in the North.
Asked how he feels about the withdrawal, he said: “it is inconsequential to IPOB whether the ‘quit notice’ was rescinded or not because it will in no way impact the pace and direction of our effort to restore Biafra. Threats don’t have any effect on us.”
Giving insight into why the group wants the Igbos to come home despite the suspension, the IPOB spokesman argued that “southerners were massacred in the pogroms of 1966 and 1967, after similar assurances were issued that people should remain in the North.”
On the Arewa youths’ insistence that the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, be re-arrested it warned of the dire consequence that might follow if the Federal government heeds the call. “Nigeria is crumbling today before our eyes due to the arrest of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu; those wishing for him to be arrested again are basically signing the death warrant of Nigeria,” he said.
While some are already packing their bags and leaving as others wait to see what will happen, not all Igbos resident in the North are ready or willing to heed the IPOB’s call. While welcoming the suspension of the order, Chika Onwuka, a resident of Bauchi said the family is not thinking moving house just yet. “We are staying,” she told Saturday Sun. “When it is time to go, we will go because nobody forced me to come to Bauchi.”
Henry Nduagube, a spare parts dealer, who confessed to a tremendous pressure from his kinsmen in Ezeagu local government of Enugu State, for him to leave the north before the October 1 deadline expressed gratitude to God for the new development.
Speaking with Saturday Sun, President, Igbo Community Welfare Association (ICWA), Kaduna chapter, Chief Chris Nnoli, while welcoming the suspension order however noted that it fell short of expectation.
“The word ‘ suspension ‘ instead of ‘withdrawal’ was used which is likely to be misinterpreted by a few,” he noted. “But all the same, we are hopeful that our parent body, Ohaneze Ndigbo, will respond to other issues raised in that press conference. No Igbo man is leaving before the deadline. We shall continue to urge our people to remain calm, to continue to be law-abiding and to go about their normal business without hindrance.”
Commenting on the development, Festus Okoye, a constitutional lawyer based in Kaduna admitted that although “activities of those claiming that they want a sovereign state have caused anxiety and panic,” the quit order ought not to have been issued in the first place.