Ending Violence in Ebiraland

Wriiten by: Mr. Adoke, Retired Police Public Relation Officer (PPRO)

Posted by: Dr. Joseph Ozigis Akomodi, New York, USA

To get a solution to any problem, one has got to get to its root cause or genesis. Like all races the world over, the Ebira race has its own intractable problems. What, in fact, are these problems? Without missing words, they are mainly political, social and economical. In looking at the first one, one cannot help recalling the reign of the late Atta. Under his reign, Ebiraland was a peaceful, calm and placid. In a dramatic turn of events, towards the end of his reign, some kind of terrible wind of change came sweeping across the North rocking the boat of feudalism.

In the wake of this change came the birth of Igbirra Tribal Union (ITU). The ITU was a revolutionary mass movement formed to challenge the absolute authority of the Late Atta. That was in the early 50s. Even though the Atta enjoyed absolute power, historians are divided on whether the elements who constituted feudalism were exactly in existence in Atta’s land at that time.

It is natural that he who enjoys power never likes such power wrestled from him. The Atta vigorously resisted this. Atta had his staunch and loyal supporters. Though fewer in number than the ITU followership, they were highly enlightened, richer and influential. They formed a counter force known as the Igbirra Progressive Union (IPU).

With the formation of these two political camps, each with its own military wings, Burma Boys for the ITU and Cow Boys for the IPU, the stage was set for a long drawn-out battle. Naturally, one should expect bloody clashes. And there were indeed many such clashes but surprisingly, nobody lost his life apart from bloodied heads and bodies left in their trail.

Unable to cope with the rising tide of opposition, the Atta finally threw in the towel by formally abdicating from the throne after the ITU had gained the upper hand, having been actively supported by the then colonial maters. But his unqualified leadership, legacies and superb stewardship cannot be easily forgotten. His successor was a political one. Whether this was right or wrong is better left for the generous or ruthless verdict of history.

Most historians and political analysts agree that the leadership of the adventurous ITU predicated their revolution on a tissue of lies such as the bandying about that the Atta was a dictator, that he blocked the education of the children of the poor and also that he exploited the poor masses for the education of his children outside Ebiraland and overseas. If these were so, how, where and when did the few enlightened leaders of the ITU get their education from?

Unfortunately, what the ITU revolution left behind was a legacy of the neutralization of the flow of genuine and absolute respect for the elders from the younger ones. Where such respect ceasesto exist, an otherwise decent society will crumble like a pack of cards.

This is the situation with us today. This has led to a rapid decay of our society. The established political camps are still very much with us today with a yawning gap of opposition between the two and with little or no difference in their shape, colour and philosophy. For easy understanding, the ITU appeared to be wearing the toga of the progressives and the IPU that of the reactionaries.

In the course of the ITU pursuing its revolution and the IPU its counter revolution, both of them often used all kinds of social and cultural festivals to sponsor singers of their respective parties to fire salvos of abusive and provocative songs that in most cases often triggered off bloody clashes. This trend has continued till date and being actively supported and fuelled by sinister and unregistered social clubs.

Before the advent of the colonialists, what the Ebiras have were clannish leaders, each feeling very superior to the other. This is not good for an organized society if it has to be effectively governed. What the colonialists did was to establish the Atta dynasty. The ITU revolution destroyed all this, thus leaving a festering sore of chieftaincy problem. This problem has not been effectively solved as the recent arrangement of rotational chieftaincy among the component districts of Ebiraland had merely scratched the surface.

In my own considered opinion, a genuine and well conceived revolution should have given birth to a good and sound social and economic agenda for the general promotion of peace and the well-being of its people. This the ITU did not do. Failure of this has left our society a politically divided one, a malaise from which we are yet to recover. For what does it pay to replace an old order with one that is no better?

Today Ebiras are politically at war with each other. Internecine political clashes are occurring daily with sophisticated weapons being used in prosecuting them. With our mean and uneducated politicians supplying them with these deadly weapons, we are now near anarchy situation. If these politicians were educated, they should have used their wealth to give scholarships to the children of the poor to ensure a better future for them.

It is a pity that in Ebiraland, those who live below subsistence allowance like getting married to as many wives as possible. This set of people cannot afford to educate the children given to them by God. As they grow up, such children become wayward and soon become easy tools in the hands of mindless politicians.

This sordid can be arrested if we have the political will. As parents we must rediscover ourselves and begin to inculcate in our children the values of morality and respect for the elders. Once this foundation of fear is in our children, the temptation to commit crimes against each other and humanity generally will forever be kept at bay. Teachers, too, have a great role to play in this respect to achieve a wholesome result.

To keep irate youths and their sponsors in check and silence them forever, it is suggested that a military station be permanently established somewhere in the outskirts of Okene.

Poverty is a serious social malaise. It lures young unemployed people to commit grave crimes. This social problem is on the increase. It has contributed in no small measure in the destruction of our society today. A good government that is worth its salt should as an article of faith, effectively and immediately tackle this problem.

A soldier without a gun cannot bully or instill any fear in a fellow human being. Similarly, a thug or a hoodlum cannot do the same without a gun. The sophisticated guns in Ebiraland are too many. These have been made available to hoodlums by the politicians. If government is serious, these guns can be recovered through the arrest of the supplier-politicians and the hoodlums and anarchists coupled with a thorough house to house search by a joint team of the police and the army.

Provided we have the strong will and we, as a people, have a willingness to cooperate with constituted authorities, heads of which are not pro-growth and multiplication of thugs, hoodlums and anarchists, absolute peace will return to Ebiraland like in the late Atta era.

Adoke is a journalist and a retired Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO).