Tweet

More from @RealOlaudah

Olaudah Equiano®

@RealOlaudah

16 May

Aburi ghost, Asaba secessionists and waffles in high places.

When you listen to Nigeria’s Senate President, Ahmed Lawan’s skewed submission on southern governors’ meeting in Asaba, last week, you'll realise that people in high places too are not immune from marketplace waffles.

Miniature logic can proceed from the minds of huge, prarchute-like babanriga wearers after all. More importantly, from the tragic Lawan ill-logics, the much-talked-about January 1967 Aburi Accord will present to you as the quintessential Julius Caesar’s ghost promising to meet...

its nemesis at Philippi. Finally, you will find out that Nigeria is trapped inside this pit being because it lacks critically thinking leaders.

Read 54 tweets

Olaudah Equiano®

@RealOlaudah

15 May

1. Our Governors in the South deserve the gratitude of all of us their people for hurrying to hold a meeting on the terrible insecurity that is ravaging all the peoples of the South.

We their people should commend them for the considerable amount of bravery that they have shown in their communique. In particular, it gladdens the heart that our Governors now have the courage to decide to eliminate open grazing of cattle in all parts of the South.

That is a historic decision of great significance. So, we their people are looking forward to two things now concerning that decision; first, what are the processes by which the Governors intend to carry out this decision,...

Read 25 tweets

Olaudah Equiano®

@RealOlaudah

13 May

NNAMDI AZIKIWE, 1953 SPEECH ON PROPOSED NORTHERN NIGERIA SECESSION:

In 1953 when Northern Nigerians were beginning to consider secession from the Nigerian colony that would soon be a nation, Nnamdi Azikiwe gave a speech before the caucus of his political party,...

the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in Yaba, Nigeria on May 12, 1953. That speech, while not disallowing secession, suggested that there would be grave consequences if the Northern region became an independent nation.

Ironically, fourteen years later, Azikiwe led his Eastern Region out of Nigeria and created Biafra, a move that prompted a bloody three year civil war. Azikiwe’s 1953 speech appears below._

Read 26 tweets

Olaudah Equiano®

@RealOlaudah

12 May

A vote Of No President Or Confidence?

Somebody needs to tell the presidency that the days of intimidation, subtle threat, harassment and oppression have been confined to the refuse bin of history, since we now practice democracy.

Why do you oppress people for daring to interrogate your incompetence and inability to deliver the promises you gladly made while you were seeking our votes.
Why do you intend to silence our voices of resentment against your tactless leadership that has turned Nigeria...

to a killing field, with rivers of blood flowing from North to South cos someone we voted for has refused to lead?
Are we supposed to be clapping for an underperforming president or call him to order to rescue a country that has been variously described as a failed nation?

Read 33 tweets

Olaudah Equiano®

@RealOlaudah

12 May

WILLINK REPORT 1958 THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM A THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSION APPOINTED TO “ENQUIRE INTO THE FEARS OF MINORITIES AND THE MEANS OF ALLAYING THEM”, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “THE WILLINK COMMISSION REPORT OF JULY 1958”
THE HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND.

1. “More than 98% of people who inhabit this area (the ‘Ibo Plateau’ of the Eastern region) are Ibo and speak one language, though of course with certain differences of dialect. There are nearly five million of them and they are too many for the soil to support:

they are vigorous and intelligent and have pushed outward in every direction, seeking a livelihood by trade or in service in the surrounding areas of the Eastern Region, in the Western Region, in the North and outside Nigeria.

Read 49 tweets

Olaudah Equiano®

@RealOlaudah

11 May

Riot or Rebellion? The Women's Market Rebellion of 1929.

"In Nigeria there occurred what colonial historians have called the Aba Women’s riots of 1929, but it should be termed the Aba Women’s rebellion.

This was touched off by the imposition of direct taxation and the introduction of new local courts and especially of warrant chiefs." [A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore, 1987), p. 79.

Here is one account of this rebellion by a person who called the episode a riot in her 1937 book, Native Administration in Nigeria (London, 1937).

Read 48 tweets

Share this page!

Olaudah Equiano®

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @RealOlaudah

Olaudah Equiano®

Olaudah Equiano®

Olaudah Equiano®

Olaudah Equiano®

Olaudah Equiano®

Olaudah Equiano®

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?