Political economist and former presidential candidate of the
African Democratic Congress, ADC, Prof. Pat Utomi, has stated that every
Nigerian in the current dispensation is a Biafran.
He further said that the Federal Government should initiate
dialogue with Biafra agitators.
Prof. Utomi, who was speaking in a chat with the Punch noted
that Biafra is a metaphor used to describe the suffering of people in different
parts of the country.
According to him, “To start with, I have always expressed a
view that Biafra is a metaphor for discontent writ large and what has happened
in Nigeria is that, in the words of Chido Onumah’s “We Are All Biafrans”,
people in the North-East are Biafrans because they are unhappy with Nigeria.
“Many in the North-Central dealing with herdsmen issues are
Biafrans because they are unhappy with Nigeria.
“Many in the South-South are Biafrans because they are
unhappy in Nigeria, and so on. Across Nigeria, there is a democratisation of
discontent. Nigerians are all Biafrans now.
“Until we can purge Nigeria of the sins that breed
discontent, every Nigerian is a Biafran.
“The only way that societies that want to move forward have
dealt with problems of people expressing dissatisfaction is political
engagement.
“I very frequently turn to (former Prime Minister) Mahathir
Mohamad of Malaysia and his reference to the words of (late US President)
Lyndon B. Johnson when he says it is better for everybody to be inside the
house pissing out than for some people to be outside the house pissing in.
“The reason Nigeria smells so bad is that there are too many
people outside the house pissing in. The biggest leadership failure of the last
50 years in Nigeria is the politics of exclusion.
“The Class of ’66 specialized in excluding: ‘We don’t want
these people.’ ‘Oh! It’s those people.’ ‘It’s this group.’ And so, they kept
excluding till most Nigerians who could contribute to Nigeria’s development
left Nigeria, either physically, as in those ones I ran into at the Atlanta
airport and many other places, or mentally.
“There are many people who live in Nigeria but don’t live in
Nigeria. They gave up on Nigeria a long time ago.
“What leadership requires now in Nigeria now is to bring
people back into the house. That’s the capacity which the current leadership
elite that’s come out of the Class of ’66 and their cronies lack. They don t
have that capacity.”
By John Owen Nwachukwu
