Nigerian National Question and State Sponsorship of Terrorism in Igbo

Abstract

The Igbos in eastern Nigeria are stigmatised and marginalised. Since the last war, every effort has been made to shortchange them. Their desire to be welcomed back into the mainstream of the federal state system has always been rebuffed. The return to civil rule in 1999 even accentuated the marginalisation than bringing it to bail. They then took back to separatist agitation which is familiar terrain for the Igbo. But the Igbo still have found no respite. The Federal government of Buhari which the Igbo had never supported or voted for in the previous elections of 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019 schemed to infiltrate the Igbo with the virus of herdsmen and terrorist incursions. The resistance of the Igbo still rattles and aggravated the Buhari state characterizing the Igbo as ‘a dot on a circle’. This Study which employs the doctrinal method looks critically into the motive behind insurgency and terrorism in the Igbo of the southeast. It finds that genuine security structures which Igbo have put in place to secure the southeast heartland are being undermined by both the Federal and the State governments. They are viewed within the suspicious spectrum of separatist agitation while those instituted and used by the State are destabilising Ndigbo, prevaricating and inducing more bloodshed in Igbo. It concludes that genuine efforts should be made by the Federal government to reconcile with the Igbo and come away from the pre-war disposition of the Nigerian state against the Igbo.