By Gerald IBE
I have followed, watched and participated in MASSOB activities over the years. I think and want to suggest that this is the time for the movement to go to the next level through a process that will integrate it totally into and within the community it represents and that is the Igbo community. There is no hiding the fact that a lot of Igbo people especially the elites and the intelligentsia view MASSOB and her activities with suspicion and they may not have any blame for this attitude because it behoves an organisation to work and crave for acceptance amongst its target audience or group and failure in this direction could be attributable as failure of its modus operandi, etc. Apart from the MASSOB we read on paper and listen to on radio, what most people encounter daily are people extorting and intimidating fellow Igbos through one guise or the other. Recount the not too distant stories of MASSOB members killed while on extortion spree at Onitsha main market.
What I intend to put down is a simple suggestion bordering on what some groups have done in the past to gain acceptance and recognition and to become a power that be within their area of influence. The two groups I want to cite as examples are MOSOP and OPC. Those who followed the forming of MOSOP and its earlier activities would believe that it was an organisation that had the support of the totality of the people it claimed to represent, i.e., the Ogoni people. While starting out, MOSOP, in order to make their movement a mass movement and acceptable to all and not a chosen few, besides other strategies, made membership requirement as easy as possible. For instance, a token membership fee of N1.00 was levied and every Tom, Dick and Harry was able to pay this, making them equal stakeholders to each other member irrespective of their social, educational and financial status. This one naira gave each equal voice in all MOSOP activities.
In the case of OPC, especially the variant headed by Ganiyu Adams won the heart of all Yoruba irrespective of class or status. How? They apart from their avowed political aims and objectives saw a yawning gap within their environment and immediately closed it with their organisation. This vacuum they closed was in the form of securing the lives and property of the Yoruba people especially the bulk of them who were outside the purview of government - the masses. They became the custodians of law and order, provided the much needed security to the masses who lived in rural communities and in shanties around major Yoruba cities. These services automatically made them acceptable to the generality of the people and to a large extent also eclipsed their negative sides. Naturally, when the Yoruba leadership saw this trend, they had no option than to give OPC total backing and helped in no small extent to smoothen their fight with government and government agencies like the police.
Apart from shouting marginalisation and Igbo sovereignty which majority of the Igbo elite do not subscribe to that has led them sabotage the activities of MASSOB, is there no social vacuum or a needed niche they can occupy and use to gain the hearts of the totality of the Igbo race and so win the needed total support at home that will guarantee them a better voice in their external fight? I strongly believe that a niche like that exists and if utilized will sell MASSOB wholly and heartily to the entire Igbo race and will also make the Nigerian system see them in a different light.
Christmas and the New Year festivities are at the centre stage of the life of the entire modern Igbo nation both at home and in the Diaspora. But coming back to the east from any part of Nigeria has become the greatest nightmare facing the Igbo man. After battling man, government and the elements in far flung communities, the Igbo man still cannot guarantee that he will return home safely at the end of the year to re-unite with his kith and kin. The biggest problem faced by the Igbo in need of home coming at festive periods starts from hike in transport fares by transporters who are 95% of the times fellow Igbo citizens. Currently, the fare to the east from all parts of Nigeria has a 200% mark up! What can MASSOB do in this direction? Because of the few infrastructures in the east, the roads usually cannot carry the massive number of vehicular and human movement on it and this leads to massive chaos with the government and her agencies standing askance watching as we consume ourselves in our quest to be the first to get home. What can MASSOB do?
On a practical note, my recent trip from Abuja to the east was one I will not wish on my worst enemy, not even Boko Haram. It was smooth sailing from Abuja till we got to the outskirts of Asaba. The Onitsha traffic jam had spread to the outskirts of Asaba, almost getting to the new Asaba airport and there was no single government agent to help matters. Is it possible for MASSOB in their resplendent uniforms and headgears to take up the challenge of providing for the free flow of traffic during this period that has emerged as the greatest period of activity in Igboland? Begin to imagine the social and political harvest accruable if they can do this. First, the majority of our people will no longer see them as nuisance but as a disciplined group really out for the welfare of the Igbo people. Secondly, their government traducers will start seeing them in a new light of respectability. Sincerely speaking, some of the activities of MASSOB, real or imagined, do not endear them to the larger Igbo community, not to talk of Nigeria.
As I close my eyes this Christmas season, I visualize a disciplined group of MASSOB carders in their full uniforms win the hearts of the Igbos by coming out en masse from Onitsha through to Asaba, from Aba to Port Harcourt, and from 9th Mile to Enugu, directing traffic and providing security that has eluded our people for ages. And I do see an appreciative Igbo people encouraging and urging them on, standing shoulder to shoulder with them when the police call, and I see a new Nigeria listening more attentively to them.
