I spent one whole week in the South East recently. It was for a series of academic and social engagements. Aside from giving a speech at a book launch in honour of a professor of entrepreneurship and being a special guest at another academic gathering as well as attending to questions on a live radio programme in Awka, the Anambra State capital, I also had time to do some investigative journalism (before coming home to roost in university scholarship, I was a professional and award-winning journalist). It is, therefore, in the blood to seek facts in the middle of cloudy and conflicting, sometimes, utterly misleading stories. Fake News!
Just before my trip to Igboland, there had been news that the military operation, “Python Dance,” was being ramped up, with many casualties of battery and army brutality sometimes succumbing to death. It was touted that the alleged siege was taking an ugly toll on the people of that region. Anambra was particularly in the press for the wrong reasons. It was alleged that Army personnel were administering vaccinations on school pupils involuntarily and that the vaccines were, in fact, ‘death injection’ as they contained Monkey Pox virus. Few pupils had died, the news went round, and the army was now employing force to see to it that everyone got such death injection in an attempt to wipe out the Igbo race!
This rumour sent the entire state and the South East into a state of paranoia, with school authorities closing down the schools and parents, in tumultuous hoopla, either making frenzied withdrawals of their wards or not sending them to school for the period. It was amazing how the nation took this piece of trash hook, line and sinker. The social media was particularly awash with proliferated and more distorted versions of the fake news.
My visit to the region was well-timed. I would find out for myself and invoke my journalistic instincts and spirit to find where commonsense was hidden in this matter. We have had too much of meals served on the plate of social media-Fake News. I needed to know for myself and share with others what the ‘sitrep’ actually was.
However, I reliably gathered from people around and friends that there had been incidents of free immunisation in few junior schools, but indeed the lack of trust for those who had previously initiated “python dance” had created panic in the communities because you could not have traumatised a people earlier and suddenly become their friends
From Enugu to Oji River; Oji to Awka; Awka to Umunze, through Nibo, Orumba North, Orumba South and Oko by-pass; from Idemili to Nnewi and Aguata, Nkpor and Ekwulobia, and a few other key places in Anambra and Enugu states, I had an opportunity for a bird’s eye-view of the situation in the Southeast. The few days were expectedly eventful, impactful and eye-opening. There was a lot of peace and love there. The Igbo I met and saw were very warm, nice and law-abiding. The schools I saw went about their businesses without any apprehension in the air. I hardly could see any school closed. In fact, at a function in Umunze, where a friend’s books were being launched, dozens of students of a secondary school came to add colour to the show with several literary and cultural performances.
From the north to the east, south and central of Anambra, a core Sout East state in Nigeria, there was so much calm that I wondered whether there was another Anambra State, which I had not entered that the informal and some mainstream media referred to. Yes indeed, I saw a few soldiers. But these were not in the towns or cities. They were at inter-state checkpoints, where you would find soldiers searching vehicles to be sure they were not transporting arms. The only men in uniform spotted in the inner cities were policemen, who, in their usual manner all over Nigeria, would “roger” commercial transporters. The few soldiers on the streets were not carrying weapons or driving intimidatingly in Hilux vans bearing ‘Python Dance’. These were soldiers on common daily routine of moving from Government House to the barracks or from the barracks to Government House. They did this without blaring horns or employing the noisy siren to harass anyone.
However, I reliably gathered from people around and friends, that there had been incidents of free immunisation in few junior schools, but indeed the lack of trust for those who had previously initiated “python dance” had created panic in the communities because you could not have traumatised a people earlier and suddenly become their friends. The panic hitherto and paranoia, thereafter, had created pandemonium, but the army quickly corrected itself by issuing a disclaimer that it was purely an act of corporate social responsibility and that persuasion, not force, had been the tool employed to carry out the exercise. They had immediately stopped the exercise and withdrawn from public space.
There was no death from the exercise. According to colleagues at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, the death rumours were laughable. They posited that the “death” twist to the story was political, to disparage the APC government at the Federal level, which has a strong contender, Tony Nwonye, for the November guber election.
However the case may be, the Igbo of South East Nigeria deserve a better deal than all this trauma. They deserve to feel integrated in Nigeria. After a traumatic 30 months of Civil War and distrust towards them- and yet they have not yielded in contributing to nation building and national development- what they should be getting is not a Python Dance or things that will remind them of the malign and genocidal disposition of the past. The Igbo deserve love and true integration.
By and large, the South East was peaceful and not melodramatic in anyway during my week-long stay. I walked on the streets alone or in the company of friends for my “nkwobi”, “oha”, “nsala”, or “isi ewu” without let or hindrance and took taxis or went in my friend’s car to places that were as calm as a game park. At all places where I had functions across the state, it was “udo” and “anwuli” through and through. Except for Imo, where some unpardonable act of madness prevailed in the Government House during that time, news of which filtered in and was discussed in loud
and critical tones, the Southeast was just fine. I look forward to visiting again, soon.
*Folarin, PhD. writes from Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria.
