Asaba massacre: Murtala Muhammed deserves no memorials – Monarch
Obi Ilomechina Amuwah, the Obajamma of Asaba is today a king in his local community in Asaba but his royal status is not all that is historic or significant about him. He is a miraculous survivor or the genocidal Asaba Massacre. The Obi sat before the BBC and in tears recounted the events of October 1967.
About three months into the civil war, different communities in Asaba in the then Mid-West were instructed to come out in the spirit of ‘ONE NIGERIA’ to welcome the federal troupes. They had all come out to the village square, lined the path-sand streets in their traditional ceremonial ‘Akwa Ocha’ (white hand-woven) that signifies peace and aplomb. The men, women and children were gay and dancing in expectation.
What transpired later was in the words of the Obi, a great paradox. They came out with music and dance to welcome their ‘friends’ but did not know it was a wry opportunity to, in his words, sing their ‘Nunc Dimittis’. He only survived through providence. He was ‘buried’ under his dead compatriots and thus survived. Today, he sits in damning reminiscence and recalls for history the events of that day as a survivor, an eye witness and a victim.
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In the Obi’s words, the people came out in their numbers to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with music and dance but “…did not realize they were in a game of death”. It is instructive to remember that the Asaba Massacre happened after the war had ended. Preceding the genocidal incident was one of the sordid tales of the war.
The Biafran soldiers had entered the then Mid-West, taken Benin and proceeded up to Ore but were chased back by the federal troops. In retreat, they crossed over the bridge into Onitsha, strategically broke the bridge to prevent the federal army from advancing into the Eastern region. In what seemed like a retaliatory but unproved attack, the federal soldiers rumbled into Asaba and killed the civilians they found accusing them of being ‘Biafran sympathizers’. There are no records of how many hundreds were killed individually or as groups.
It was in submission and expectant peace and hopeful reunion of the survivors that the Asaba people trooped out in 1967 to welcome the Nigerian army to their town. Unfortunately, they had presented themselves for slaughter in the fashion of the Holocaust.
As they stood along the streets in celebratory mood, men and young boys as young as twelve were separated from the women and babies and gathered at Ogbe Osowa village. The second in Command of the second division, Major Ibrahim Taiwo gave orders for the men and boys to be killed. No one knows how many were killed that day but today, the victims’ families have supplied names and it is almost a thousand men and young boys that were killed in that genocide.
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The late Head of State, Murtala Muhammed, was the Commander of the Nigerian Second Division at the time of the Asaba Massacre. He had Ibrahim Haruna and Ibrahim Taiwo as deputies at the time. Many of the Asaba victims were buried in mass graves. Most families had to dig up the graves to retrieve their family victims to give them a reburial according to the Asaba customs. Women were grave diggers at some point because the men and young adult males had substantially been killed.
Today, the Asaba Development Union (ADU) has collated most of the identifiable victims’ names and published them under the ASABA MASSACRE VICTIMS village by village. The mourning goes on annually but sadly, successive Nigerian governments have not accorded it any official recognition or given closure or shown any sort of empathy or apologies to the Asaba people. If closure is not possible, there should be some form of accounting.
In remembering this part of Nigerian history, we believe that as a country, there are too many open wounds on the conscience of the Nigerian state. If the eternal words of late Othman Dan Fodio, “Conscience is an open wound, only truth can heal it” is anything to go by, then the Nigerian army had in many ways not ‘told’ the truth about the Asaba massacre acknowledged in history as one example of modern black-on-black genocide.
Late Head of state, Murtala Muhammed who was in charge of the Command that carried out that savage crime ought to have had no role in a post-war Nigeria. Even though he rose to prominence through a coup, the army has been complicit in ignoring the fact that he had blood on his hands, not from legal combat but out of a pure sadistic instinct to shed civilian blood just because he could. He should not have had access to head a government in the name of the Nigerian army having committed what in the global community is adjudged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Today, he has the premium international airport in Lagos named after him. He is on the twenty-naira currency bill. He has some other national monuments like streets and express roads named after him. We believe he does not deserve such honour in any society were merit and integrity matter. He neither showed any remorse nor made any attempts at any acts of contrition over the blood he shed not in the war front but ordering the slaughter of hapless civilians.
The Holocaust and many other genocidal and war criminals across the globe always have their days in court either locally as in the case of the Nuremberg Trials for the Nazi Holocaust or the International Court of Justice for the Ugandan, Liberian, Kosovoan, Chadian and other global war criminals tried personally or even post-humously to give the appropriate justice to both sides. The Nigerian army and governments have so far failed in this regard.
The fact that a Murtala Mohammed, an Ibrahim Taiwo and other individuals linked to obvious crimes today have national monuments named after them while the victims and their families have not been shown any form of apology is purely an aberration. A Murtala Muhammed seeming deification as a hero just because he was assassinated seems to us a perversion of justice and in a way heralded a period of lack of accountability in the Nigerian army and with all the coups and counter coups, a corruption of the Nigerian civil space. We call for all monuments and landmarks dedicated to him to be expunged. We have genuine heroes and heroines deserves better perches in our memory, not bloodthirsty hounds.
Lots of undeserving individuals seem to have either appropriated or been given underserved honors and have monuments named after them.
As we remember the Asaba Massacre, we suggest that it is never too late to do the right things in pursuit of justice and genuine national unity. Nation
