MY THOUGHTS ON THE BIAFRAN AGITATIONS(Part2)

   

Written by Rev Sunday Adelaja

 

A LIST OF THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN A MARGINALIZED SOCIETY.

1. The marginalized group are not allowed to speak their native languages. Tell me who stopped the Igbos from speaking their language?

2. The marginalized group are not allowed to practice their religion. Are the Igbos not allowed to practice their religion?

3. A marginalized group are not allowed to carry out socio-economic activities on the level of the privileged groups. Are the Igbos not allowed to carry out socio-economic activities on the same level as everyone else?

4. A marginalized group is not given the right to be actively involved in the political life of the country. This obviously is not happening in Nigeria, because the Igbos have their own governors, they vote for their governors, the people who rule over them are of their ethnic groups. Some people will claim that those who rule over them came as a result of corruption; well that happens all over Nigeria, not just among the Igbos in the Igbo land.

5. In marginalized societies, the marginalized groups are not allowed to send their children to school or receive higher education, I don’t believe this is happening in Nigeria. In that sense, only the poor people are marginalized in Nigeria; since the Igbo people control the economy, they are surely not marginalized.

6. In marginalized societies, the discriminated groups are not allowed to intermarry with the privileged groups, we simply don’t have that in Nigeria. As I have mentioned above, even my family is intermarried with Igbo people. My nephew who is like a twin brother to me, married an Igbo girl and paid the full bride price or dowry as the case may be.

7. Marginalized people are not allowed to have a voice in the mass media: newspapers, television or radio. Igbos don’t just have that right in their own state, but even in most of the other states in Nigeria where the majority are not Igbos. Igbos are allowed to have their voice in the media all over Nigeria. I am not saying there are no cases of marginalization here and there, but this will be in individual cases not a systematized thing in the federal government of Nigeria against the Igbo people.

If we are to look at a list of marginalized people groups in our world today, we will see that we cannot compare what these people are going through to what the Igbos are enjoying in the Nigerian nation.