Military and Political Heavyweights by Eddie Iroh.

I just wonder how many Nigerians have taken their tongue to count their teeth lately? If they did, calmly and dispassionately, without the emotive effusion that often beclouds the intellect of even ordinarily reasonable men and women, they would find that if care is not taken soon and i mean very soon their country could become a toothless bull dog. The unthinkable would happen Nigeria would disintegrate. The Not Negotiable would be negotiated.

While the focus is on Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB and Ndigbo and their agitation for or against Biafra, a geographical minority in relation to the rest of the country, the Northern Elders Forum, a behemoth led by stalwarts beside whom Kanu would be a small boy, have declared the "readiness of the North to break up Nigeria." 

From the cowards and docile elements, the Facebook pontiffs whose stock in logic is the easy resort to insult and abuse, and the others who find Kanu, IPOB and Ndigbo a soft and easy target, I have not heard a whimper or a whisper against the Elders of the North and their threat. Nor have i heard a squeak from the pips of the serving and retired Army Generals who would threaten to crush any threat against the unity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic. One is then left to resort to conjectures. One such is that this conspiracy of cowardly silence is almost certainly because the true geographical, political and military heavyweights of Nigeria have spoken. 

The politicians and "we the people" have scurried under cover even though their Kaduna Declaration, alongside the Quit Notice to Ndigbo in the North, and the sudden jettisoning of Restructuring, pose a far greater threat to the unity of Nigeria than IPOB can muster. No one is calling the Northern Elders idiots, albinos, demagogues etc, as Kanu is often excoriated. No one dared! Just because a cat looks like a tiger does not make it a tiger. Indeed a cat knows a tiger when it sees one and dares not tweak the tiger's tail.

One does not have to belong to IPOB or Ohaneze to expect equity and even handedness in dealing with any issue that goes to the very heart of the corporate existence of Nigeria. But when it comes to dispassionate examination of critical national issues, there are as many positions as there are ethnic groups. That is because Nigerians are very strange animals. And any inference to the Zoo here is totally unintended.

Eddie Iroh