…it’s a game plan to exterminate Igbos.
The reclaiming of towns from gunmen by youths is currently trending, and Retired Deputy Inspector General of Police Celestine Okoye spoke to Okey Maduforo on the way forward.
There seems to be a revolution going on in most communities in Anambra South against gunmen; what is your take on that?
If you call it a revolution, I don’t think it is a revolution because revolution means when you are fighting for a right or a just cause and you were denied of your right and you want to protect yourself. But in this case it has to do with insecurity and as far as I am concerned the security agencies we have in the country are not ready to protect the citizenry.
They see it as a money-making venture and that is how they see it. If you know how much that is being spent on fighting insecurity you would begin to wonder why the insecurity persists. If they fight insecurity and clear all the criminals how do they get money from government?
That is why youths of these communities have taken their destiny in their hands, and if they do not do that, nobody will do it for them . If not the military would have done that, and look at places like Lilu and Ihiala area, they look so bushy just the experience of what we had during the civil war, that is what is going on there.
I am happy with what is going on there as youths of those towns moved in there to clear their communities of what has been going on there. It is indeed a bold step and I urge them to sustain it and make sure that the miscreants are sent away so that the owners of the land would take over and commence the process of rehabilitation and rebuilding of their homes that had been decimated by the so-called gunmen.
It is important to note that those people are not from Anambra State but strange elements that were allowed to come in through the help and assistance of local criminals in those towns and they came in and took over the land and became lords of towns and villages. But I am not happy because this insecurity is a game plan of leadership on how to exterminate Igbos.
It started long ago when the past government arranged with some Igbo people to destroy Igbo land so that whenever you come home, your area has become ungovernable and you cannot get to your place. And when the man left, they handed over power and now they have started to destroy Igbo access and businesses.
They just want to make sure that Igbo businesses are destroyed, but I keep telling them that even if Lagos is a wonderful environment, they need to come home and develop their own. But one thing about the Igbo man is that there is nothing you will do to bury the Igbo man, absolutely nothing.
You cannot bury the spirit of the Igbo man which is known worldwide and the more you try to frustrate them, they keep moving on and pushing forward. Go to every part of Nigeria, you will see them and they buy their land build factories and estates and put the place in order.
Then one day, the same people that sold those plots of land to them and gave them papers as approval would wake up to destroy those investments with the reason that the process is illegal. But someone, a government official, gave them approval to buy and build, but that is part of the agenda of killing Igbo people but they cannot succeed.
What can be done to sustain the actions of youths in the area to sustain the peace?
It is better we know and understand who are sponsoring these people. It is important that we first identify the sponsors and then take it from there. It has to do with those in government as far as I am concerned and those in government know what they are doing and that is why the insecurity has lasted till today.
It cannot be business men and women that are sponsoring them, it cannot be civil servants sponsoring them but those in government who allow themselves to be used to make their homes ungovernable for selfish interests. Those you voted for in Igbo land and those that claimed that they were voted for and they claimed that they have the mandate of the people while nobody voted for them.
Some used the courts, the judiciary to achieve that and they were promised that they would be made President of Nigeria and deceived them and they started killing their own brothers and sisters. Tomorrow they will tell me that they are Igbos while I see them as saboteurs of the Igbo race.
How about the South East Governors Forum, what can they do?
I pity the Governor of Abia State, (Alex) Otti because nobody wants to cooperate with him, but to me he is the best Governor in South East today. That is the true Igbo Governor that I know in this country but eventually, it is a pity that the security agencies are not ready to work and cooperate with him, that is all.
Infact they are deriving serious joy from the killings in the South East and they are happy about what is happening. The Igbo man has done nothing to them but they are after the enterprise of the Igbo man. Just look at what happened to us during the civil war and we were redused to nothing but we came back.
I remember that in this my town Awka, it was a battle field; an open field with no houses. But in three years, within 1970 to 1973, houses sprang up, we moved forward and we were scattered all over the country but then we survived and look at where we are today.
The Igbo man is not the problem of Nigeria. He is only interested in his enterprise and they can take their politics to hell; the Igbo man is busy and wants a very conducive environment to make his life. But they are not happy and their only agenda is to wipe out that race called Ndigbo. What happened in Israel and the Middle East will start happening here.
Remember how the Jews were scattered all over the world but eventually they were called back. Go and check the state of Israel and you will discover that they are intact and the neighboring states are in ruins.
People are suggesting that the Igbos should come home to invest?
I am one of them. They should just leave all those areas and return home and develop their areas. Why are we developing other places and the only thing they do is to come and build gigantic houses that they do not live in and those buildings would be taken over by rodents.
If they are developing their homes, customers would come here to do business. We used to have sea ports that were deliberately abandoned by the powers that be so that we cannot grow but I know that if we pool our resources together, we can achieve this and make progress.
Even the ports in Rivers state are being sabotaged to kill them but we shall overcome because the Igbo man can convert stone to egg and we eat it.
