The Extraordinary Festival of Zerechi

The biggest hero of Zerechi is not one who wins in the fight for the body of a killed animal, but the Nne Ruwu and the Nne Rigbe. The two men are chosen from the house of Nu’uwhye, one of the dozen houses that make up Irigwe land. In Irigwe folklore, you wake up to find the rigbe beside you, if the gods agree that you are most qualified to be the Nne Rigbe.

The prehistoric Irigwe man understood the year had come full cycle from stones he kept. There must have been about 365 of them. Every day, he took out one. By the time he sees five remaining from his starting heap, for instance, he knew there were five days left before Zerechi. It was declared, and the public would join the countdown.

In the few weeks before Zerechi, the elders at Nu’uwhye “speak with the gods.” There is an epiphany of the Nne Ruwu and Nne Rigbe. On Zerechi Day, the Nne Rigbe begins his journey with his rigbe (the horn.) He walks from Kwall, the ancestral home, descending the steep rocky slopes of the valley that separates Kwall in the south and Miango in the north. He crosses the river and climbs out of the valley, entering Miango. From time to time, he stops and blows his horn. The sound reverberates across the whole of Irigwe land. He is telling people that the year has come full cycle and it is Zerechi, the Christmas of Irigwe people. He continues his walk until he comes to a place called, Iyi-Shoko. At that point, the Nne Ruwu (the man of rites) takes over. Once the Nne Ruwu takes over, the walk ends, the marathon begins. There are crowds running after him in this marathon to Rotsu.
 
“You don’t dare pass the Nne Ruwu, you’ll die,” goes the belief. “You don’t cross the path on which he runs. If you do, you’ll die.” “You don’t dare cross the River Ruhwyevo, before he does: you don’t want to die young.” His bearing is the north, where Rotsu is located. There are villages to the left and right of the path on which he runs. Other villages are miles away from his path. The men from all these villages gather together at the River Ruhwyevo, waiting for the hero. The men, young and old, short and tall, big and frail, just sit at the bank of river, waiting and admiring his heroism. There is a cacophony from the jokes, the teasing and laughter. There is tension. It comes from the anticipation of his arrival. It comes from wondering whether one will make it in the fight to get close to the hero –the crowd is huge.
 
The year I witnessed Zerechi for the first time, we came from Renwhienku to the east of Rostu. We turned up at the river bank, tired from the long walk. Then we sat. There was a fairly long wait. Then, suddenly, there was a faint chant of a war song that made it through the distance. At our own end, everybody instinctively sprang up. “A rebe” (he is coming) chorused the voices. Then, the distant chant got closer and closer, until the Nne Ruwu came to view. Then the elders started warning the youths against the temptation of crossing the river before the hero does.

When he finally turned up, I was able to catch a glimpse of him. He was a dark young man of average height and built, and exuded heroism even in the way he ran. The waiting crowd barely let him cross the river. There were, perhaps, countless spots from where water splashed, as men jumped into the river behind the hero. It was as if millions of stones had been thrown from heaven with all falling within a span of two seconds.

The shrine at Rotsu is a place in a wild forest.  On a normal day, an ignorant passer-by would just walk through it, not observing something out of the ordinary. There is, however, a belief that though the shrine is like any other place is a forest, someone walking through will feel, in his head, that something is knocking him out of balance. It is a hint that the place isn’t ordinary.

At this shrine the ritual is performed, throwing grains, spilling the blood of an animal and praying for the rains to come and nourish the farms for good harvest as the farming season beckons. Then the crowd disperses. The hunting continues. In the hunting other heroes would be made.

 

Why Your Poor Husband Is Important

Image source: https://www.elitedaily.com

I have a neighbour, Rhoda, who got married to a young man. Her husband is self-employed and works hard to find a breakthrough.  Though he has not found his breakthrough, he brings something to the house. Rhoda, however, fails to understand the worth of her husband, and she’s always ashamed to talk about him. She is of the notion that a worthy husband is one that is “made.”

I think that Rhoda is suffering from profound ignorance, despite her education. It is important that she understands that a surprisingly high number of women are married to men of the economic strength of her spouse or even worse and, yet, talk proudly about him.

There is this widespread position of a lot of adult girls that they will wait for a wealthy man. The danger here is that if she waits too long, she will end up getting old without a husband. And, from that point, desperation could set in. The result is that she could end up without a husband or one worse than the one she feared. Grown women without spouses need to understand that:

• Most women married their husbands when the husbands had nothing. They, then, grew together.
• Such wealthy men are not many. If you continue waiting for one of them, you could end up without one or with the worst.
• A good number of women who married wealthy men also came from wealthy family backgrounds.
• If you find a wealthy man, there’s a good chance he already has a woman in his life.
• There are a lot of women who are married to wealthy men but are unhappy.  Some of these women wish the man gets poor, if his poverty will ensure they are happy.
• Your husband is what you have, what belongs to you. You should not be ashamed of talking about him. People will not despise you because you are proud of your husband.   

• I   If you stand with your husband in front of some women from wealthy marriages, some of them will admire your husband.

So, what do you need to look at in a man? The man you intend to marry should be a man you love, a man who also loves you. This is fundamental.

Poverty isn’t a virtue, but it is something you can get rid of, with hard work. So, check to see if the man has a prospect. A man with a prospect is a man who’s educated or has a skill he’s acquired and works hard. He shouldn’t be a man who lives the culture of spending every evening in a liquor bar. He shouldn’t be a womanizer. Drinking and womanizing eats up income and ensure you get stranded in poverty.

Sometimes, you get married to a man you are proud of because of his good qualities, but the man changes after sometime.  It is a challenge that has thrown itself along your path, and you have to fight it. Even in wealthy homes, there are challenges. It explains why some women in wealthy marriages are not happy. Life is never a walk in the park every time

NIGERIAN LEADERS IN HISTORY

Understanding France’s Social Character

French Flag

When I was a student, my French lecturer invited me to the field to answer, by practical demonstration, a question I had asked. I invited my closest friend. We had become riveted by the love of music.

We were still adolescents in our mindsets. Hence, the issue of music came in. My friend proposed to come along with a mobile cassette tape player. We would play Fela’s classical Afro Beat while in the field. Fela is the inventor of Afro Beat, which fuses Jazz and southwestern Nigerian music rhythms.  

When the French man heard it, he welcomed the idea, pointing out that Fela was very popular in Europe (he must have noticed Fela was not all that popular in Nigeria.)

While reading Time Magazine, an article referred to the highly social character of France. It was the statement that kept resonating in my mind, the picture still not getting clear to me, nevertheless.

I am an avid fan of international news. Radio France International is one news source I embraced. I noticed that each time there was an interlude, there was a good chance Afro Beat would be played.

I once watched a video of Ara performing somewhere in France. She is a Nigerian female music artist who carved a niche as a woman that plays the talking drum. As a Nigerian, playing to the French music fans a genre one would have considered exotic and obscure, the fans danced vigorously as if it was their invention.

Finally, when Emmanuel Macron became French President, he visited Nigeria. In his itinerary, there was going to be a visit to Fela’s shrine in Nigeria. He lived up to his travel plans. That was when, at last, the total picture of France’s profound social character became clear to me.

While in secondary school, we had a skewed understating of the word, “social.” To us, one who was social was him with a profound love for western music. Imagine the depth and enormity of our ignorance. We were to understand that one who is social is he who can tolerate and live with exotic cultures, no matter how remote they must have come from. Along this line, it is not America, as our ignorance had made us believe. It is France.

Fantastic Corruption Made Manifest

 

David Cameron. Source:wikipedia.com

David Cameron, while serving as the Prime Minister of Britain, was once caught gossiping to Queen Elizabeth of England, telling her about two nations that are “fantastically corrupt.” These nations, according to Cameron, were Nigeria and Afghanistan.

The topic, as at now, is that of Afghanistan falling back to the Talaban that was ousted from power in Afghanistan in 2001, following 9/11.

Afghans may feel differently, but one may say that the most unfortunate nationals on the surface of the planet are them; all other events in the history of the country are dwarfed by the story of an unending battle between lines of democratic governments and holy Islamic warriors, the Mujahedeens. So, constant was the battle for power between these two civilizations that one could say that ordinary Afghans have never really enjoyed modern life for any reasonable length of time, as there has hardly been enough room for the nation to blossom fully under a democratic government.   

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has been supporting a socialist regime in that nation, a regime the Mujahedeens rightly referred to as a “puppet government.” The Mujahedeen fought that government fiercely, sabotaging whatever groundwork the Soviet Union built to support the regime. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in the late-nineties, the Mujahedeens under the name of the Talaban, once again, took over the rule of the nation. They run that nation until Osama Bin Ladin, hunted for 9/11, got them into trouble in 2001.

Twenty years on, the resilient Talaban returns to power, less than a week after the withdrawal of US troops by President Joe Biden. It happened so easily that I was left asking one question: how come a national army with all its resources was so “easily” crushed by Islamic fighters whose resources is nowhere close to government’s? Glued to the television by series of breaking news from Afghanistan as the Talaban inched closer and closer to Kabul, I found the answer: corruption.

Any corruption that so totally drains the military of its capacity is definitely the most fantastic. As it is now clear, the Afghan military would not have been able to stand an invading neighbour, should any be interested invading Afghanistan.  David Cameron is finally vindicated.

Cameron is also vindicated on Nigeria. On the security front, a lot of similarities can be drawn between Afghanistan and Nigeria. When Boko Haram (inspired by the Talaban) started, it was a group of unarmed boys. Within the early years of Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, while Boko Haram was taking over local governments, they were virtually unmatched by the Nigerian military. There were stories of Nigerian military men pulling their uniforms, throwing away their guns and varnishing into civilian populations to avoid getting captured by Boko Haram. It was the reason why the insurgents were able to capture large portions of Borno, Yobe and a few areas of Adamawa States.

Nigerian foot soldiers, many of whom were killed in their thousands, explained that the weapons of the insurgents were more sophisticated, that their allowances were stolen by senior officials. The involvement of senior military officers was just half of the story; a larger portion of the money voted for insecurity was actually been used by the Jonathan Administration to buy the voting conscience of voters, as the 2015 Election neared.

Despite the betrayal of giving away the lives and possessions of ordinary people, Jonathan still lost the election to Mohammadu Buhari. The probe of cabinet members of the Jonathan administration, showed how Sambo Dasuki, the Chief Security Adviser to Goodluck Jonathan, shared the security budget to influential politicians across the country. Their instruction was: use it to buy victory for the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, in 2015.

The politicians never even used the money for the purpose Jonathan intended. Even if they had, the issue of the destruction in the northeast was grave, with everyone crying across the country. In the face of that, money was a frivolity. There would have been no point in taking money you would not live to spend. So, like Ashraf Ghani, Jonathan fell, running away to Etu-Eke in Bayelsa State.

It is still sad that corruption in the face of insecurity is still around. I do not want to believe that it is genetic, but Cameron must have scanned through the character of the Nigerian nation. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHLytIFGNddajPEnt2Ry_Xg

 

Reno Omokiri's Denouncement of Nnambi Kanu

 By Reno Omokiri

 What Would Life Be Like As a Minority in Kanu’s Biafra?

Recently, my perspective on Nigeria changed. I have never supported any separatist or secessionist agenda. However, I have supported and defended the right of any Nigerian to express himself and associate freely. It does not matter to me where such a person comes from.

When the Buhari administration moved against Ibrahim Zakzaky and the Shiites, I was the first person (not one of the first) to defend them. After defending them publicly myself, I called the then President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, and begged him to issue a statement calling for an end to the killings of Shiites. He told me that though it was an Islamic affair, nevertheless, because of his fondness for me, he would speak in support, and he did.

I have similarly championed the causes of oppressed persons or people from every part of Nigeria. As much as is humanly possible, I have refused to be partial in my advocacy.

In the last three years, I have visited 40 nations on my own dime and time, for the cause of #FreeLeahSharibu, seeking freedom for a Christian girl from Borno. I have not collected a dime from anyone and if anyone knows anyone who has given me a penny, then they should publicly expose me.

Before Nnamdi Kanu was arrested, I did not know who he was. I just defended his right to freedom of expression and association. Various Igbo leaders called me privately to thank me. It would be wrong to mention their names, because of the challenges of the moment.

When Kanu was rearrested, I called a British government official and got the facts. I was the first (not one of the first. The first) to reveal that he was arrested in Kenya, and not in The UK. After I released this information, the media ran with it.

Yesterday, a former Presidential candidate sent me a tape of Nnamdi Kanu dissolving the UK branch of IPOB and tongue lashing the members of IPOB UK. He told them to hand over IPOB money in their possession. He then said that he suspected that the British Secret service was running IPOB UK.

I was shocked and refused to believe what I heard, until this ex Presidential candidate from the South pointed me to an IPOB channel where this same audio was broadcast.

So I published it on my page. I did not add or edit or alter the voice. I released it as is.

Given that that broadcast was released earlier this year (I was told it was first broadcast in March of 2021, though I am not 100% sure) and Nnamdi Kanu was arrested so soon after (in June), I asked if that altercation could have led to Kanu being betrayed by his members in the UK.

The result was that various persons, who claimed to be members of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra descended on my page and insulted me, attacked me and accused me of collecting money from Buhari. (Would Buhari even give me money? If Buhari will give me anything, it is more likely to be a letter bomb).

They said Nnamdi Kanu can insult anyone he liked and I should leave him alone.

A certain Northerner, who has been on my page attacking me for what he had previously called my “love for the Igbo”, now asked a question. He said ‘so you people have forgotten when this man was fighting for you so soon’?

And so I went into deep thought.

If Nnamdi Kanu eventually gets Biafra and I am a minority in that Biafra, what would be my fate? Would I be able to express myself? Would I have the freedoms for which I myself have been fighting for Nnamdi Kanu to get for the last five years? Would I be able to hold sensitive positions?

I am not Yoruba, but because of me, these members of IPOB insulted the Yoruba (why do people always think I am Yoruba?). I was called ‘ewu Yoruba’. Somebody even threatened to kill me if I ever stepped into Onitsha (the same Onitsha where I donated money and raised millions for victims of the 2019 Onitsha Market Fire?).

These people in their hundreds descended on me with a consistent refrain, that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is the supreme leader of the Igbos and he could insult his members if he chose and no one could question him.

And that prompted a paradigm shift in my consciousness. If you have been following the dailies, you would have read one or two stories planted by the Buhari administration in the papers of how they have been tracing Kanu and monitoring his movements for two years.

The stories claimed that they were able to get to him through members of the Eastern Security Network that they had captured. Then a few days ago, they released a video testimony of one captured ESN member, by name Emeoyiri Uzorma Benjamin, that has now gone viral, in which the young man claimed that Kanu had given them instructions to kill policemen and soldiers, as well as their fellow Igbos.

He sensationally claimed that Kanu instructed them to bury one of his lieutenants, Nwaokike Kayinayo Andy, AKA Ikonso with 2000 human heads. Even more sensationally, he alleged that Mr. Kanu gave directives to them to kill young girls, who they used for fetish charms.

Now, it is not possible to say if this fellow is telling the truth, or half truths or lies. However, from his testimony, or account of the inside workings of IPOB/ESN, and the broadcasts which I listened to, and which is also available on some IPOB social media accounts, we see that Nnamdi Kanu had almost total authority over IPOB.

All this time, I was thinking that, though Nnamdi Kanu showed extreme indiscretion by going to a country like Kenya, which is notorious for extrajudicially extraditing people to regimes seeking them (the Turkish government did exactly the same thing the Nigerian government did with Kanu to Selahaddin Gulen, a Turkish dissident that was captured by Turkey’s intelligence from Nairobi. In that instance, Kenya first denied complicity, then promised to investigate the event. It happened in 2016. Kenya is still ‘investigating’ that event), that he nevertheless must have been betrayed by someone in his organisation, who tipped the Nigerian intelligence agencies that Kanu was headed to Kenya.

But my experience with Mr. Kanu’s supporters made me have a rethink. With the way they treat him as though he is infallible, could it not be more likely that there was nobody within the organisation bold enough to advise Mr. Kanu not to travel to Kenya, because to do so, or to counter him in any way, would have brought upon such a person weighty consequences.

And then I began thinking about the ‘dot in a circle’ statement by General Buhari. I had criticised Buhari for making that comment. It is most irresponsible of him to have described the Igbo as such. It showed his malevolent mindset towards some citizens of his own country, and he should apologise.

However, on further introspection, I began to cast my mind to statements Nnamdi Kanu had made in his many broadcasts which I only watched just yesterday.

He unacceptably insults Black people as being less intelligent than other races (how can a Black person say such things? Is that not self hatred?). He attacks Yoruba churches, pastors and media (what is a Yoruba church? Honestly, I had never heard of a Yoruba church until I heard that word from Kanu. I thought all churches belonged to God through Christ).

You can imagine if you are Yoruba and sympathetic to the plight of the Igbo, and you listen to all the bile from Kanu about your ethnic nationality, how would you look if you continue to defend him to your kinsmen?

Then you listen to some of the even more outrageous things he has said about Northerners (Igbos, your enemy is Buhari. Your enemies are not the Hausa or Fulani. Don’t mix up the two). I cannot even repeat them here.

Looking back to those broadcasts, it looks to me that it is Nnamdi Kanu himself who made IPOB (not the Igbos as Buhari claims) a dot in a circle.

He made no attempts to be persuasive. He did not even try to win hearts. He made no pretence of anything but contempt to anyone who was not part of his Biafra. Even though I had always thought that Odili, Amaechi and Wike and their people in Rivers state are Igbos, I now understand, but do not agree with Wike’s claims that they are not Igbos.

Who would want to be a minority in a country ruled by Kanu? Tufiakwa! You speak your mind and you may be shot on the spot!

To be honest, I had never listened to these broadcasts by Nnamdi Kanu until they were brought to my attention by this Southern Presidential candidate. I was clueless about their existence. In fact, I felt a bit naive. I felt like a fool!

Anyone who has been following me for the last six years would have known how much of my time and money I have devoted to defending, advocating for and promoting the cause of the Igbos.

However, having watched for the first time these videos where Nnamdi Kanu called Black people wicked (I am Black, but I don’t think I am wicked), and where he described Igbos who refuse to support IPOB as evil, I am flummoxed!

However, the one that shocked me the most was his statement that (and this is an exact quote), “If you are attending a Yoruba church, you should be ashamed of yourself. Anyone who attends a church headed by a Yoruba pastor is an idiot. A complete fool. An imbecile. I have no time for them. They are worse than Boko Haram. They are very, very foolish. If your pastor is Yoruba, you are not fit to be a human being.”

And the funniest thing is that the pastor who provoked him into making that statement is from Auchi. He is not even Yoruba. No wonder they think I am Yoruba. To these lot, any Southerner West of the Niger is Yoruba. They have a majority mindset that is not minority friendly AT ALL.

Even more disturbing is that this Auchi pastor, who Nnamdi Kanu calls Yoruba, and used to generalise all Yoruba pastors, was summoned by DSS in December of 2016, and asked to explain why he did a video calling for Kanu’s release. Who fights those who fight for them?

How did I miss these broadcasts? Have I been too focused on Buhari to the extent that I was blindsided? Is this the fellow I have been defending?

I am a minority. My late father was a minority. He went to Sokoto as a Youth Corp Member in 1975, and became Nigeria’s youngest Director of Public Prosecution and Nigeria’s youngest judge (at the time), and was elevated to the Court of Appeal, all from old Sokoto. Would that be possible in Kanu’s Biafra?

And when he was interviewed in 2020 by Dr. Damages (I did not even know until the same Southern former Presidential candidate sent me the video), and given an opportunity to denounce his previous statements against the Yoruba, Nnamdi Kanu doubled down on it and said as follows:

“Most of the difficulties we have been having have always come from these Yoruba pastors.”

Then he went on to say in that same 2020 interview as follows:

“Yoruba Pentecostalism is the reason why Fulanis are invading us today.”

Where is the connection between Pentecostal churches and killer herdsmen?

I was stunned. This video was recorded last year. How come I never saw it. I checked on YouTube and only 27,000 people had seen it.

How can I be against Isa Pantami for saying “We are all happy whenever unbelievers are being killed” and then tolerate these statements from Nnamdi Kanu?

If I do, it will make me a hypocrite. And while I mistakenly may sometimes be hypocritical, I will not be deliberately hypocritical.

Everything I have said here is the truth. It is on video and audio. If you do not like what I have written, then jejely unfollow me. We are obviously not on the same wavelength and I am not about to change in order to make you like me.

Copied from Reno Omokiri[s Facebook page.

The Kuru Attack

 Sunday 13^th June was another horrific day for the people of Kushe-Kuru in Jos-South of Plateau State. It was a day of another tragic killing of innocent men, women and children by gunmen the town described as Fulani ethnic militia. As at press time, fourteen people had been confirmed dead. This is a second such attack within Kuru in the last three months.

In small rural towns, as elsewhere, Sunday partying is an intrinsic tradition, a day when people reset themselves after a week of toiling to keep body and soul together. The attackers must have undertaken a reconnaissance of the area ahead of the attack, considering the segregated living style since 2001. At about 9:30 PM, when the attackers struck, Kushe was as effervescent as a beehive.

The gunmen came in through the vast farmlands between Wat settlement and Kushe, targeting a bar that was nearest. There, drinkers were taken unawares while sitting around their drinking tables. The attackers opened fire, turning the bar into a microcosm of hell, leaving behind splatters of blood on walls and desiccated pools of blood in which shards of glass were sprinkled.

No one is certain of the motive, but it is said that Fulani militias had openly informed the people that they intend to launch attacks after the Muslim Ramadan period.  And truly, attempts were made at border settlements of Dungus, Dabwak and Kanadap. The attempts were foiled by volunteer patrol men drawn from the very settlements. Frustrated, the gunmen decided to hit Kushe, since it is at the centre where everyone is relaxed, believing the gunmen won’t dare make an attempt.

The member representing Jos-South and Jos-East constituencies at the National Assembly, Honourable Musa Baggos, was at the scene to see things for himself and condole the people, but his arrival stirred a chaotic protest by ignorant youths who feel the MP should have magically ended the killings that has gone on for more than decade. I asked him if it wasn’t right for him to leave the place. “I will be here till the end,” he responded. He could be seen shading tears after he had been taken round to see corpses strewn outside the bar, following the sporadic shootings, outside.  

This killings style, which has been here since around 2008, has been branded the herdsmen-farmers conflict. Some groups of thought consider this unfair; it gives the impression that the two have been locked in a war, whereas it is a clear case of cold-blooded murders of innocent farmers, motivated by hatred, contempt and the love of their land and its nourishing green-grass.