Separarists, militants and ‘iyalaya’ anybody!

7 years ago

Separarists, militants and ‘iyalaya’ anybody!

Prof Biodun Jeifo brought “igilangogeesi,” Yoruba onomatopoeia for grandiloquence, to academic discourse. Prof Pius Adesanmi dredged the “iyalaya anybody” lingo from the most uncouth aspects of the underbelly of the Lagos streets to make a brilliant submission to a distinguished audience of actors, professionals, and corporate types.

To the Yoruba, “iyalaya” means grandmother, granddame, matriarch, or female ancestor. When conjoined with the indefinite pronoun, “anybody,” “iyalaya” is more than just a modifier. Both words together express scant regard for the opinion of significant or insignificant others.

The rhetoric of Nigeria’s separatists, militants, and insurgents, are very hardline indeed. The separatist Indigenous (some say, Igbo) People of Biafra, and Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, militant Niger Delta Avengers, and insurgent Boko Haram, are at their most blatant in-your-face as they openly challenge the Nigerian state.

They are gung ho in their quests to exit Nigeria, put no store to the opinion of “iyalaya anybody,” and are not remiss in proclaiming it from the rooftops. IPOB, for instance, has little regard for the sensibilities of the older Igbo generation, some of whom have suggested the more moderate path of political restructuring of Nigeria.

Membership of IPOB is said to be largely from the age bracket of Generation X, iGen, and the Millennial, who some say, hardly know the horrors of the Nigerian Civil War. They are prepared to achieve their goals by violence, and probably think that pacifist MASSOB, from where they broke away, is sissy, and the moderate Ohanaeze Ndigbo, pliant.

Without being asked, IPOB admits to running a pirate protest radio station named after Radio Biafra of the Republic of Biafra. The language of this radio station is decidedly strident, graphic, even swashbuckling. It has no qualms in sending vitriolic words to Nigerians, their President, and any Igbo who does not seem to share the vision or enthusiasm for separatist Biafra.

This young and audacious group consistently pushes the Biafra Agenda into the fore of any interface with other Nigerians. They may not be unprepared to stick it to anyone who describes Biafra as defunct or a former Republic. When they are not staging a protest, they are issuing a statement in what has now been sloganeered into “BIAFREXIT.”

The Niger Delta Avengers are decidedly more violent than IPOB. They have adopted the tactics of the Nelson Mandela-led Spear of the Nation, the militant arm of South Africa’s African National Congress. They consistently attack oil and gas installations of government and the International Oil Companies.

But unlike the Spear of the Nation, they do not destroy other government establishments. They do not also harm civilians or soldiers, and they announce their intentions, and promptly claim responsibility after every attack.

The NDA wants the Nigerian state to concede 60 per cent of oil revenue to the Niger Delta, clean up the degraded environment, restructure Nigeria, adopt fiscal federalism, establish the Maritime University, and organise a referendum for self-determinism. They recently slipped in talk about exiting Nigeria. Though they engage in violence, they have not quite declared wholesale war nor foreclosed dialogue altogether.

But some politicians and unscrupulous businessmen are hiding behind the militants to fight private wars. A lesser known Iduwn Volunteers Force, presumably from the Niger Delta, asks President Muhammadu Buhari to make the Central Bank of Nigeria reverse an order asking banks to bring in insider-related loans.

A recent hoax by the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta announced a pact that included a safe passage for Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, who is wanted by security agencies. Some Niger Delta governors were reported to have vacated shame and brazenly asked the Federal Government to drop corruption charges against some politicians.

But above all, the Nigerian state must recognise that inaudible grumble from the South-West, self-determination agitations from the South-East, violent demands from the South-South, and murderous insurgency in the North-East, indicate that things aren’t so good within the Nigerian political space.

Everyone knows that the Buhari Presidency did not create the problems. But if it can find the political will not to compound, but end it all, other regions of Nigeria will not seek redress in the rude expression, “Iyalaya anybody!”