Amaechi Obi - Biafra: Ancient Igbo Leadership Structure

By Amaechi Obi

- Blueprint for Human Unity, Peace & Harmony

1914 ushered Nigeria into existence for the first time in history through the criminally orchestrated amalgamation of three sovereign nations: Biafra, Yoruba and Hausa who had been living their lives on the land for hundreds of years before. Their respective ancestral heritage discredited, subdued, and buried alive through covert and systematic education, language and religious imposition; which till today continue to impede meaningful and sustainable growth due to that unsolicited confederacy. This amalgamation agenda was crafted to end or cease to stand after one hundred years by the colonialist. And 2014 added up to one hundred years since the amalgamation. After 2014 the amalgamated nations: Biafra, Yoruba and Hausa were supposed to come together to review the agreement between the founding fathers of Nigeria and British colonial government in order to decide to continue with, review or repeal the said agreement binding the three indigenous nations together which made up the present Nigeria nation.

It is important to know that, the said Hausa, Yoruba and Biafra citizens were not duly communicated about that decision to merge them with their neighboring countries; the decision was unilaterally taken by the colonialists represented by Lord Lugard. (a fraudulent move).

In essence, nothing is duly produced outside of the human mind. Every single subject or object seen or heard of is a brain-child of the mind; the unseen are mostly the creators of everything seen or heard.

Evil machination or imagination creates evil actions, evil environments and ultimately, evil people in reward. The opposite is good machination or imagination which rewards with good actions, good environment and ultimately, good people.

Evidently, humans are governed by unseen spirits: the spirit of good-deeds and the spirit of bad-deeds who jointly form the acclaimed human duality. Humans in general are either good or bad; none of such mental state is fully satisfying. The ideal mental state is to find balance between the two opposing spirits which is the Biblical-Trinity the Neutral-Point or the connecting line between them. Trinity is the state of spiritual and physical harmony to be attained by an individual while living his or her given life. Failure to link and balance such opposing vital energy forces breeds: strife, confusion, disconnection and distress which they carry along with them as an honest reward for good or bad deeds. All our combined individual and national challenges spring out from this common premise.

I once lived in a community where people governed themselves among themselves for hundreds of years before and after colonialism. In this community every grown man was entitled to acquire any kind of weapon of choice by any possible means: design yours, buy it, borrow it; no one is bothered by such personal affairs. People could walk along with their machetes, axes and hunting guns mostly. It was unmanly to have no form of weapon in your house for protection and for outside uses.

Ironically, throughout that period under communal management, there never was anyone short intentionally or butchered. Biafrans abhor shedding blood without a spiritual purpose and if, when to offer thanksgiving to appease and share with their Creator, they usually sacrifice animal they could afford, most often, chickens and such ceremonies must be carried out by the community leader in a specified place or altar. Even after the Nigeria vs Biafra war and irrespective of arms proliferation and post-war syndromes, our community continued to enjoy absolute peace; so much that, the entire community became used to spending most of their nights sleeping on sandy soils within or out of their family compounds. Sometimes neighbors would gather around in an open field singing, playing and telling tales deep into the night until everyone was tired. Some would just sit or lay still contemplating the ever-bright-twinkling stars and the illuminating moonshine all night long; energized by the sweet-breeze oozing out from palm fronds, coco-trees, Udara, oranges and innumerable of others combined with the whistling of tall grasses surrounding our simple houses; of which, majority were made of burnt red soil and artistic palm-roofs.

The rules and regulations governing and binding the people together in brotherly and sisterly love, peace and harmony were always initiated, enacted and adopted by adult men and women in our community halls or assembly ground. At the end of inputs from all present who had anything to say or add, the community leader in conjunction with the eldest people present shall then file the decision and agreement; that way most of our rules came to existence before the external interferences infiltrated within us; especially the British and other European bandits parading as leaders of their people.

Children in our community were not prohibited from hanging around or listening to discussions being made by their parents during their gatherings. The children prefer to play around to energize themselves than listening to adults boring talks. Yet, they were all fully aware of whatever was happening around their community because of the inherent sense of belonging in every indigene; who is who in the community is an open file, from birth to death, we all lived together and buried our departed ones with deepest senses of losses. Very few things were prohibited. People were rather encouraged to adventure, inspire and create than to obey and follow. Age play an important role no doubt, but, each age group are encouraged to tango and act in unity with vested responsibilities for communal progress and prosperity.

Those were the days we lived in absolute harmony with ourselves and our CHI (God) in whom we were very pleased to eulogize, praise and give offerings from the bottom of our hearts in order to show our appreciation and thanksgiving for his generosity. No churches to preach to us about a God we already knew, lived-with and worshipped for so many good reasons from the recesses of our hearts; there were no schools of any kind yet, we were more creative and versatile than we are today.

Police, army or any uniformed armed people never existed; there were no business with or for them. If they existed, they were for foreign government that had nothing to do with us in our beloved communities; so, we thought then. We never ever had need for them and their services in anyway whatsoever. We had very profound democratic approaches to resolving our differences that exists naturally. No prisons because no evil conscious people; and when the evil-conscious people existed, was very rare and easily curtailed and resolved permanently through communal efforts.

We had degenerated and descended from there to where we are today; into such situations brothers are found bitterly fighting brothers, father against children, mother against husband and majority sabotaging their beloved community and people inhabiting in their inherited and given lands. Schools and churches are culpable for these unjust, unfair and blatant intellectual sabotage. We are deeply compromised; humanity is compromised. What is the way forward?

Servants had covertly made themselves masters over their legal masters . With that singular covert action had infiltrated and manipulated the core fabrics of human ideals and natural values; all creational rules and regulations utterly compromised: educational system devoid of true human values, environmental and self-knowledge; Religion devoid of morality and embodiment of goodness; Agriculture devoid of the essentials for self-sustenance and environmental management; Economics without basic knowledge of Commerce and productivity. All things in our lives are obviously compromised and our collective potentials in utter disarray. We cannot continue in this direction, people should learn to take charge and control of their free-given-lives.