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Two Igbo lawmakers Arua Arunsi and Udo Oluchi Ibeji from Abia State, had objected to the call and denounced the late war criminal Benjamin Adekunle

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THE shooting ended in 1970 in Nigeria’s fratricidal war, but the war, it is now becoming increasingly obvious has not quite ended. Indeed, the civil war is continuing by other subterranean means, with prejudices and parochialism ossifying along

ethnic and regional lines. Many signs corroborate this conclusion, but none is so poignant as the quarrelsome one-minute silence observed in honour of civil war hero, the controversial Brig-Gen Benjamin ‘Black Scorpion’ Adekunle, last Tuesday. House of Representatives Majority Leader, Mulikat Adeola-Akande, had briefed the House on the passing of the civil war icon, and had requested a minute silence in his honour. Two Igbo lawmakers, Arua Arunsi and Udo Oluchi Ibeji from Abia State, had objected to the call and denounced the late general. We were not afforded the details of the denunciation, but before the minute silence was eventually observed, Hon. Ibeji was reported to have roared: “I do not care whether he is alive or dead.”
Gen Adekunle, it will be recalled, died on Saturday, September 13 at the age of 78. During the civil war, he became the most colourful, outspoken and controversial war commander, and was famously reported to have said he owed no apology to anyone for fighting the war so ruthlessly. He had a war to win, he said, a war he reiterated he did not start. Even though more detailed accounts of the war exonerated him of matching his words with action, and was even said to have cared for Igbo captives during the war, he was considered by many Igbo, if not most, to be a war criminal.
The war ended some 44 years ago, but apparently the wound has not healed. It began in 1967 more profoundly as a North versus East conflict; but after it ended, it has more essentially transmogrified into a Southeast versus Southwest competition,  an insidious competition that predated the civil war, going back as far as the 1950s. Given the Ibeji/Arunsi outburst, not to say its distinctive and alarming sectional undertone, the East-West conflict that has seemed to simmer for decades may witness a recrudescence sometime in the near future. The fault lines have remained, the passion has not cooled, the bitterness has endured, much of it, as the latest Chinua Achebe book proved, fuelled by misinformation, misperception and enduring ethnic mistrust and misunderstanding.
It is perhaps apposite that the minute silence controversy has reopened a wound many thought had healed. Now, we know all is not well. When Emeka Ojukwu died in 2011 also at the age of 78, Nigeria united in grief at the life and time of the leader of the secessionist struggle, with the Senate devoting an entire session in his honour. Many saw the rebel leader as a flawed but colourful hero, and others considered him brilliant, eloquent and a natural leader. Yet others described him as undisciplined, paranoid and more superficial than profound. But all were united in admiration of a man who acted in consonance with his belief, a man upon whom was thrust the collective burden and destiny of the Igbo at a time when a leader of his talent and accomplishment was needed. If he had not offered himself, argued some historians, the contradictions of the time and the exigencies of the national turmoil that overwhelmed the country in the middle and late sixties would have produced someone like him.
Given the freshness of the mistrust between the West and East, as evidenced by the minute silence controversy and rousingly inflammatory books that plumbed ethnic conflicts afresh, it seems that urgent and conscious efforts are required to resolve the differences that plague ethnic amity and subvert political competition in Nigeria. Whether the Goodluck Jonathan government can be the agent to summon the discipline and wisdom to resolve these enduring differences is another thing entirely, especially given the fact that his presidency has seemed to harness these differences for private ends and even promote them for his own political objectives.
Historians may fail to agree on the scope of Brig-Gen Adekunle’s contributions to the prosecution of the 1967-1970 civil war, and in fact there is nothing that says they must agree. But there can be no question that, in spite of his many flaws, he was perhaps the most colourful, charismatic and effective war commander Nigeria has produced. That alone, notwithstanding which side of the divide he brought his unusual and unquenchable military gifts, merits him more than a minute silence in both chambers of the parliament. If the lecherous and larcenous Sani Abacha could have a military barracks named after him, it is in fact time to honour the Black Scorpion very substantially.

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