Aniedobe
I didn’t think we would ever mention Ipob and Hamas and Hezbollah in the same sentence but things evolve and maybe things are more similar than they appear.
Speaking about things being more similar than they appear, did you know that fatwa in the Islamicworld has Igbo correlate. I told you that Allah in Islam and Ala, the Igbo earth goddess and the Supreme god in the ancient Igbo pantheon are not unrelated.
Now Fatuwaa in Igbo means literally …let them catastrophically destroy with an object … such as stone, clubs etc.
Fatwa ordinarily is a ruling by Islamic authority on point of Islamic law. But Fatwa on someone’s head is a decree by a Supreme Islamic authority that the person must abandon his position on a point of teaching in Islam or face catastrophic destruction. So Fatwa in Islam and Fatuwaa in Igbo are ideophonic.
Coming from Hamas and Hezbollah, both militant political parties in the Middle East run by Islamic clerics, one can understand Fatwa as a militant decree to destroy opposing voices.
But Fatuwaa from Ipob leader, who also doubles as a Judaic cleric came as a rude shock to the Igbo world who would expect Ipob to imitate the Likud party of Israel rather than Hezbollah or Hamas.
Story is told of a feared and terrible Igbo medicine man who after making his charm, demanded a human head to conclude the sacrifice. The villagers conspired and offered the medicine man’s head.
Proverb is also told of the Igbos who insist that an idol that persists in acting out of place may be sent back to where it came from.
These proverbs speak to Igbo sense of moderation and accountability. You see, neither the great medicine man nor the great idol were above the people who procured their services.
No one can lead a people who they do not understand. Kanu does not appear to understand Igbo people or Fatuwaa against a fellow Igbo would not have enterred his brain let alone slip from his lips let alone the heat and vehemence with which it came. Igbos fear neither idols nor medicine men and certainly not Kanu.
To be clear, those who smoother the voices of moderates will listen to the voices of extremists. With the voices of moderate Nigerians raised and compiled in the 2014 National Confab now buried in a septic tank by APC, Kanu insists that he must be heard. I agree. I listen to him. Buhari should. Nigerians should. We can’t shun moderates and insist as well that Kanu can’t rail against Nigeria. He is providing a voice to voiceless Nigerians and as long as Nigeria keeps playing deaf and dumb to the aspirations of Nigerians for a fair and equitable society, Kanu will continue to be relevant.
So it is up to the Zoo to shape up or listen up because Nigeria with all her endowments cannot continue to head the league of perpetually backward nations.
But the Igbo remain a shinning example of egalitarianism and fair play. We don’t do suicide bombing. We don’t do terrorism. We don’t do fatwa. What we do is stubborn resistance to tyranny because we fear no one. We despise tyrants. Kanu despises Nigerian tyrants and speaks for all Igbos in that sense but he should know where the boundary is. Fatuwaa crossed that boundary and we hope that we won’t need to remind him of that in the future.
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