By Sunny Igboanugo
Muhammadu Buhari was a curse to Nigeria. He was everything bad to happen to a country. If he was just banal, insipid, and underwhelming in office, the country would have since recovered. After all, the eight years he spent in office is but a short, if not an infinitesimal period in the life of a nation.
But he was far worse. He was pure poison! The evidence of this is fast spreading across the country in the most demonstrable way, as kerosene poured on a fabric, touching places hitherto innocuous to the ordinary eye.
What has Allen Onyema not done in and for Nigeria through his Air Peace airline? He has crossed the proverbial seven wildernesses and seven rivers to demonstrate how low he is ready to bend to prove loyalty to Nigeria.
But if he had been under any illusion, Tuesday, August 11, 2026, must have provided ample proof that such efforts are futile! Naught! Zero!
They are like pouring water on the back of a duck. What happened to Air Peace across the Nigerian airports on that day, ought to have handed him the clear message as to where he belonged as an Igbo man living in Nigeria under the All Progressives Congress (APC).
I heard Rufai Oseni, the fiery anchor of The Morning Show, the breakfast programme on ARISE NEWS Television allude to this, the day after the attack, questioning whether Air Peace was targeted because of where Onyema came from. Of course, the answer is in the positive.
He needed not quiver or question the authenticity of his assertions. Yes! Air Peace came under attack, because that business belongs to an Igbo man. Simplicita! For all you know, that attack is not an isolated case. There have been several moves in the past to point to what happened on Tuesday.
The shades thrown at the airline in terms of passenger reviews, particularly when it opened its international operations – the food, seats, cabin crew, et al are sequestered for undue criticisms, which on a closer look, foretells of nothing outside pure jealousy than any other enduring factor.
Now, don’t get it twisted. This is more of an APC agenda than it is of other factors. In fact, for those who want to pull the current parlous situation through ethnic prisms, they would discover that there are more Igbo-Yoruba, Igbo-Hausa, Igbo-Binin marriages happening today than was ever the case in the past.
Sons and daughters of the diverse ethnic groups are falling in love daily, having sex by the hour and generally getting into life-long relationships. So, ethnic? No! Politics? More like it! It was the brand of politics introduced by Buhari, which was at the core of the APC foundation. He made no bones about his pure hatred for Ndigbo and used every given opportunity to display it. Those he left behind have simply taken it from there.
Nobody knows, except those close to the arrangement, how he got President Bola Tinubu to buy into his odious, if not scary anti-Igbo sentiment. It is still confounding how the Asiwaju of Lagos and Jagaban of Borgu, was sold the Buhari poison, so much so that a once darling of Igboland, has increased the tempo and upped the ante more than the man who introduced him into it.
What is more? Tinubu appears to have found the apple quite sweet since having a bite. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, his eyes seem to have opened to the reality of the moment!
Now, here is the thing! The joke is on those who believe platitudes, appeasements, placations or praise-singing would be an antidote to this ugly situation.
In fact, when I hear the likes of Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of Anambra State, Dave Umahi, Minister of Works and the rest of the APC chieftains trumpet the APC option for Ndigbo, I simply donate my pity. I do, because, I know they’re simply being cowardly.
I know they know their place in the pecking order, either in the court of APC or the heart of Tinubu. Was it not the selfsame Umahi, who once described Buhari, as “next to God?”
Have you heard him speak so glowingly about the former President today? The way he was acting in the days he was in power, you would have thought that at the death of the Daura man, he would have drenched himself in ashes and refused food?
But didn’t he transfer the same obsequious sentiments to Tinubu, no soon after? I don’t even recall seeing him in Daura on the day his erstwhile second God was buried. What it means is whenever you see people like Umahi mention Tinubu seven times in 10 sentences, be sure that those eclectic adulations don’t travel beyond his lips.
If you hear him bait Peter Obi to a debate, or whenever Soludo mounts the rostrum to preach that an Igbo vote not donated to Tinubu in 2027 is wasted, don’t think they don’t know the truth. They know that Tinubu is a disaster, worse than Buhari. They cannot even convince their households otherwise.
So, consider such outings as outward manifestations of inner cowardice. They are simply afraid to confront the obvious truth, which is that the APC anti-Igbo sentiment is real. They know they don’t belong. They know that if they even find a way of convincing Ndigbo to empty into APC, there is no place for them.
But in their cowardice, they simply want to cut their losses by forcing themselves into a relationship which is no better than the biblical Jonah in the belly of the whale – the foggy, clammy, smelly place where the Igbo man has found himself in the APC Nigeria today.
I hear Air Peace, is asking for investigation and possible compensation for losing N2billion during the attack. He should better go and take a rest before he provokes the situation further! Investigation koo, interdiction nii!
I just hope his eyes are clear now. If he thought that those humanitarian gestures of answering the distressed calls of Nigerians wherever across the globe – in South Africa, Niger, Ukraine and other places, would inch him closer to the hearts of those he is trying hard to please, he must have seen the truth by now. Those frantic efforts could only be a source of envy, the result – wicked backlash.
A few weeks ago, it was one Onuorah Ezeokafor that was crying over the Mandilas building belonging to him that was stripped to the bones by agents of the Lagos State government and how he lost a whopping N5billion in the process. Has anyone heard anything about it. His public protest was met with undignifying silence, if not contempt.
If the case of this fellow Igbo brother alongside the massive demolition of Igbo properties in Lagos under one obtuse guise or the other, don’t convince him – if the jailing of Fredrick Nwajagu or the special case of Nnamdi Kanu in his present ordeal, don’t remind Onyema of his place as an Igbo man, then it is up to him. After all there is a phenomenon his people call ofeke amaghi mgbe e kere nku-ukwa! I won’t say more!
_ The Tiny Voice!
- Source: from Sunny Igboanugo Facebook Wall
