Mallam Okorocha has failed

Recently, Rochas Okorocha, the Hausa-born Imo State Governor invited some people he termed Igbo leaders to strategize on the issue of Biafra. Among those he invited were governors, Senators, House of Reps members and some Igbo-centric organizations like Ohaneze. Feelers showed that such persons and groups invited felt the meeting was of utmost importance, at least for them to make a statement on the raging Biafran issue.

They were right to think the meeting was important. The effect and success of the Biafra protest asking for freedom for Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) had taken all by surprise. For the past two weeks, IPOB has organized earth-shaking protests all over Biafraland and in more than 66 countries of the world. Okorocha and his co-travellers could no longer ignore it.

It brought memories of the past five years when, while IPOB and Radio Biafra were busy preaching Biafra and organizing Biafran peoples – both on the Internet and on FM Radio –, jibes were being made at them. Some called them Facebook and Internet warriors. Some others even taunted them to dare show their faces on Nigerian streets if they meant business, and see if the Nigeria government would not decimate them.

But now, with the protests going on at home and abroad, the likes of Okorocha are no longer smiling. They felt the meeting was of utmost necessity to see what must be done to salvage their own positions.

Indeed, informed Biafrans know that the so-called meeting was to be Okorocha’s attempt at about four things. To secure his position and that of those he had invited as Igbo leaders; to prove to their puppet-master Muhammadu Buhari, they were still relevant in the scheme of things; to re-strategize on how to continue to deceive the people; and to undermine IPOB’s efforts. Okorocha would also want to divert the attention of IPOB and the demonstrators.

But Okorocha does not know that leadership in Biafraland has slipped away irretrievably from their hands and that of others like him. Even the smallest child in Igboland knows that the likes of Okorocha cannot lead even a hamlet, because they have been selfish, wicked and uncaring about the plight of the people. If Okorocha and his co-travellers don’t know this, then their daftness is worse than what many people thought. They ought to know that times have changed and things are different now. He can call any meeting he likes, but he should know that if there was something resembling Igbo leadership in the past, they it no longer exists. Indeed, Igbo leadership has changed hands.

The problem of Okorocha and his co-travellers is that they lived their lives, and based their leadership on the wrong principles and attitudes. They based it on the principles of fraud, lies and deceit which are fleeting. But Nnamdi Kanu built his on principles and attitudes that last. Kanu’s prinicples and attitudes are based on truth, justice and equity. With them, he has replicated himself in so many people, that the likes of Okorocha are now seen as scums of the land. It is those replicated Kanus that are on the march now.

To divert the attention of the protesters, Okorocha believed that when the people hear about the so-called meeting, they would pause to want to know the outcome of the meeting. But they were mistaken. Just few hours ago, Friday, November 14, Biafrans took London by storm with an earth-shaken protest that ended up at the office of the British Prime Minister.

Okorocha is wasting his time trying to convince Buhari that he and his co-travellers are still relevant in Igboland as leaders. He has failed already. The IPOB protest in the last three days of last week, in Imo State, is enough proof of that. He failed because the youths already knew him well and what he was planning to achieve through the meeting. It has become common knowledge among Biafrans that all public office holders (whether elected or appointed) were stooges of Fulani Northerners, and that they rise in their positions for being good slave boys. That was why the youths took the protest to his state, and like Obiano of Anambra State, he was nowhere to be found.

We are however not ignorant of the fact that he tried to turn the protest around to his advantage by mobilizing his MASSOB agents to march along with the IPOB members. But as usual he will fail.

Even the other plan for the meeting, which is to re-strategize on how to continue to deceive the people, Okorocha has also failed. During the build up to the last elections, he had organized some unscrupulous journalist and lawyers in the mass media as well as the social media, to plant stories and opinions that promote him as a true leader of the people. But he did not reckon with the massive work of Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB through Radio Biafra to expose him, especially the fact that he was not Igbo. The people now know that he is not Igbo, not Ijaw, Ibibio, Effik, Orhobo, Itshekiri, Ogoja or any other Biafran group. So, in spite of that his assemblage of unscrupulous elements, he failed. He failed because the number of the people has thinned out – many have seen the stupidity of their ways and made safe retreat while others have made a retreat under superior arguments. Now he stands naked before the people. Many people have deserted him, so he was in a panic mode, and wanted the meeting to convince the other so-called leaders to help him in raising more funds for the recruitment of more of such unscrupulous professionals. But the message is clear: Leadership has changed hands in Biafraland, Okorocha and co should throw in the towel.

By Tim Tochukwu