Temidayo Akinsuyi, Lagos

Chief Ayo Opadokun, elder statesman and Secretary-General of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) has urged the Federal Government to respond favourably to the agitation of the members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) so as avoid distracting the government.

Speaking in a chat with Daily Independent on activities of the group when President Muhammadu Buhari travelled to Japan for Seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD7), Opadokun said while he didn’t support the method employed by IPOB in pressing home their demands, the federal government should grant them audience and address the issues so as to avoid further distractions.

“To people in government, IPOB members are rebels but to those who are fighting for self-determination, they are doing something that is totally acceptable. Nobody gives you your right anywhere in the world, you must fight for it every day”.

“If that is one of the ways by which they could do so, the Nigerian government should do what is right and respond favourably if they don’t want an unnecessary distraction. I may not support the method employed by IPOB because there may be other better means with which they can press home their demands” he said.

“You don’t condemn agitations. To you, they are rebels. For the cause they are fighting, they are icons because if what they are fighting for succeeded, you will not continue to have monopoly on what you currently hold. Any state that has been held by sheer force of arms have never lasted. Where in the world map is USSR today?”

While citing the example of Union Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), Opadokun said any leader who thinks he can use force to hold people together is merely deceiving himself as the union can never last long.
“The struggle of self-determination is the anthem for this millennium. Any ruler anywhere in the world who imagines that he can continue to use force to hold the people together is deceiving himself. Such a leader is living in fool’s paradise. The problem you have is that some of our people are hypocrites in all manifestations”.

“They want to eat and remain with any government of the day so that they can have contracts, so they don’t want to be heard. Even though they share the same feelings with what those IPOB members are doing but they also want to be in the good books of the government”.

“No society can ever develop with that mindset”. In the ideological world, the society is a kind of class struggle”. The lower cadre are the last, the middle class and the wealthy or noveau riche at the top.
Usually in any society that will develop or grow, it is the middle class that will force down certain concessions from the noveau riche that will percolate to them and them to the lower class.

“But when those who are in the middle class are busy with agitations to get contracts for themselves, marry more wives, buy customized cars, if that is the preponderance of the middle class of any population, then that society has lost it. That is what has happened to Nigeria”.

“Through the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), the middle class have been totally wiped out by former president Ibrahim Babangida. The ones who really could take up that place, what they are busy doing is ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.

“So, there is nobody to care for the ordinary man who is at the lower rung of the society any longer and this is what has led to the state of extreme poverty in Nigeria”.

“The state of poverty in Nigeria is terribly unacceptable and it has long term effects. It may not happen today but I can tell you that the level of poverty is so intolerable that anything can be the immediate thunderbolt that will ginger up reaction of the people”.

Source:- Independentng