I take this opportunity to wish all our fathers a Happy Father’s Day.I read an appeal to Prof. Toyin Falola from a contributor asking him to step in and sue for peace in the Dr. Ariyo xenophobic crisis. I don’t know on what basis the appeal was made since he is not a member of the aggrieved group. If it is made on the basis of his being an intellectual giant, I would accept the appeal. However, on the basis of age, I am exactly 10 years older than Prof. Falola, and it is on this basis that I am making this appeal to my people that we should forgive Dr. Ariyo and leave him to his conscience for advocating the slaughter of other human beings, no matter what they have done to him. If, as we saw on Friday, the families of the victims of Dylann Roof’s cowardly hateful shooting could forgive him, we should be able to do the same.
When I first read Dr. Ariyo’s statement, I was amazed and disappointed that a man trained to save lives could be advocating and cheering the slaughter of the same human beings he is trained to save. I was proud of the appropriate response from people, not only the Igbo, to Dr. Ariyo’s statement. Whether Dr. Ariyo has adequately apologized is totally immaterial because the statement could never be erased. It is up to him to live with the conscience of what he had said or written.
I am well aware of how the said statement by Dr. Ariyo has pained the people. At some point or other, some of us have had to live the pain of being Igbo, like being yanked from London and having to resign from the Nigerian Foreign Service in January, 1967 to return to the Eastern Service, but ultimately having the distinct honor of taking the prepared declaration document of Biafra to the state house on the night of the 30th May, 1967 for Gen. Ojukwu to read; of having the distinct honor of being one of the first two diplomats that Biafra posted to America; of having the distinct honor of being directed by Ojukwu in September 1969 to bring home to Biafra his first book; of having the distinct honor of being the only officer in the 7-man Biafra office in New York invited by Ojukwu to join the government in exile when he got to Ivory Coast on the 15th of January, 1970, (17th when I received the invitation; the distinct honor of Ojukwu being hosted in my house in 1976 when he first visited the U.S. before he went to address a larger group.
Despite the names some who hardly know me have called me, like Igbo ”irredentist’ or Igbo ‘supremacist’, I have the distinct honor of having worked very hard and continue to work very hard to unite Nigerians, which doesn’t stop me from pointing out when things go wrong. Of course, people think I am more Pan-Africanist and have received 73 awards to go with that. But when I received the highest award ever given to an African by the largest African youth organization in America, The Pinnacle Award,the organization was headed by a young Yoruba lady lawyer. A lot of us have relations who are Yoruba and Hausa and we all have to live together as citizens of a great country and continent, and of course a great race of people. Two months ago, my nephew called me and told me that he had named his son from his Yoruba babymama after me, called Chika. I have three nieces and nephew in Lagos who are Yoruba as their fathers are Yoruba. I have two nephews and one niece whose mothers are Hausa-Fulani. There goes the paradox of ethnicity in Nigeria.
In essence, Umu Igbo, let’s forgive Dr. Ariyo. Let’s stop the demonstrations. The point has been made. Again, a Happy Father’s Day.
Ndeewo nu!! Udo diri anyi nile!!
Chika Onyeani
Akanagbajiegbe 1 of Ohafia
Igwe 1 of Abam
Source: NigerianWorldForum; Image: Google.com