Something Profound Is Happening Within Our System

Something happened yesterday while we were on a project inspection at the new Coordinated Wholesale Centre (drug market) Oba. Unlike before, I saw a larger number of Igbo Masons and Artisans on site. About a year ago, this was not the case. Indeed, something profound is happening within our system. It is a silent revolution of the mind, a return to the pathway of diligent hardwork we were once known for.

Nothing should derail this… To get our young persons out of the bush and reintegrate them as normal members of Society was no tea-party. The years of constant indoctrination, radicalization and drift into irreversible ignorance was anchored on two things;

— Unstrategic secessionist agitation
— Elevation of quick untraceable wealth

The Elites who kept silent and watched this fester should not be applauded for going to Abuja to canvass for the release of one leg of our collective problem as Ndi Igbo without thinking how we must first recuperate from this years of social malady. Now that our able bodied young men have left the bush (the ones that survived), abandoned okeite and moved into legitimate living, one Elite Igwe who kept quiet all this while should not trend on social media for showing a misplaced audacity that further puts us out as a people without depth.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy he is alive and still has some chance at freedom. However, the devastation and consequences of his unstrategic actions MUST not be trivialized. This Igwe who is alive should not be unaware that some of his colleague Monarchs were unalived by “boys in the bush” during this five years of thoughtless agitation, and someone we all know, by his documented utterances made this possible. Alaigbo deserves healing, not rhetoric or popular nonsense!

— Mazi Ejimofor Opara PhD