Col. Adekunle: A hero or a war criminal?

When the news of Adekunle’s passing at 78 was announced recently, it barely gathered traction as a piece of news. However, on resumption of the National Assembly from vacation, the Leader of the House of Representatives, Hon. Mulikat Akande, who represents Ogbomosho, Adekunle’s hometown in Oyo State, officially brought the news to the Green Chamber. Since Adekunle fought for the federal side during the war, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, asked his colleagues to stand and honour him with a one-minute silence. As the House rose, some Igbo Reps members refused to comply. Their grouse was that Adekunle was a “war criminal” who allegedly killed a lot of defenceless civilians. In fact, he was quoted in some written works of boasting he would “kill everything that moves” in “Iboland”.

Following this event, a big fight (predictably) ensued across the social media forums between Igbo and Yoruba commentators. These fights are always breaking out whenever a historic figure dies on both sides. It happened when Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and Professor Chinua Achebe joined their Creator. When Obasanjo, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Generals Yakubu Gowon and Theophilus Danjuma eventually go, you can be sure of more fights among these, mainly young people, most of who do not properly understand the full underpinnings of our history and why people played the roles they had to.

What happened in the House of Reps was unfortunate, but I fully understood it. When it comes to the events that culminated in the civil war and their aftermath, we can never feel the same when we remember. Nigeria won independence in 1960, but in 1966, the crises that followed the independence overflowed after the January 1966 military coup. A civil war was fought when the East (Igbos) declared secession. The war was a gang-up of the rest of the country and their foreign backers to force the Igbos back to Nigeria. Those, like Adekunle, who played prominent roles at the war front towards “keeping Nigeria One” qualify as heroes of the Nigerian civil war

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The Igbos who felt the heat of the war will, naturally, not be amused when such people are being celebrated because, for them, one man’s war hero is another man’s war criminal. It is an interplay of democracy that while one side is celebrating their war hero the other side chooses to abstain.

The Benjamin Adekunle story is free for all. If he was your hero, celebrate (or mourn). If he was not, put him where he belongs. Personally, as far as events of those days were concerned, I would rather honour Col. Adekunle Fajuyi as a true hero and man of great example (who chose to go down with his visiting boss, General Aguiyi-Ironsi, rather than join his murderers) than an Benjamin Adekunle who derived demonic pleasure from killing defenceless people.

In any case, look at the One Nigeria they fought for, where everyone is crying tears, sorrow and blood, irrespective of which side they belonged. More than forty years after the war, Nigeria is yet to recover from the rapacity of those who fought to keep it one. They waged a mindless war on its resources and condemned its future. Was this what Adekunle, who returned from the war front to a life of recluse, fought and joyfully killed for?

And I am wondering: if Adekunle hated Igbos so much that he was ready to kill everything that moved during the war.                                               

                                                                            Culled from the VANGUARD

Exposing the CBN Boko Haram “sponsor”

Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has added his voice to this allegation, affirming that his own independent inquiries showed that the same individual is indeed culpable. He went on to say that the name of the person has been made available to the highest authority in the land.

The question on the lips of Nigerians is: who is this person? What is so special about him that he cannot even be named? Why can’t he be brought out for the public to see the person who has helped in sending thousands of Nigerians to their early graves while the nation is faced with the greatest threat to her unity since the Nigerian civil war nearly fifty years ago? Why has the CBN remained mute about this issue, since its name is being dragged to the mud? Why hasn’t the CBN seen it fit to tell Nigerians what it knows about this matter?

Happily, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), a social crusader organization, has taken up the gauntlet and given the CBN a fourteen-day ultimatum, based on the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. SERAP demands information about the persons involved in the money laundering and sponsorship of Boko Haram sect. A statement from the group said the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, is required to explain the exact nature of any such transactions.

We commend SERAP for wading into this matter clinging to the force of the FOIA. We are waiting patiently to see how the CBN under a new manager, Emefiele, will respond to this challenge. It will be a major metric for measuring the seriousness he attaches to his work and the need to keep the Bank clean of scandals.

We are greatly worried that the Presidency and the security agencies have chosen to keep the Nigerian public in the dark about the truth or otherwise of this individual’s involvement.

Although the very thought that an individual in the top echelon of Nigeria’s ultimate Bank and regulator of the financial system will become a bankroller of our enemy, yet it is only such a high level conspiracy that can make Boko Haram to grow into the monster it has become.

When this fellow is identified, tried and convicted, we will expect him to face the full wrath of the law. - VANGUARD

 

If you are desperately in search of a sugar mummy, then search no more as controversial actress turned singer, Cossy Orjiakor has come to your rescue.

If you are desperately in search of a sugar mummy, then search no more as controversial actress turned singer, Cossy Orjiakor has come to your rescue.

The busty actress said, her male fans wouldn’t let her be, as they want her to be their sugar mummy.

On that note, the actress has reeled out some criterion for considering them. Yes they have actually been disturbing me for that. But I told them that if you must be my sugar boy there is need for you to be a good cook, a good house boy and a driver.

I have even asked some of them to send a picture of themselves cooking in the kitchen and what they are preparing. But they weren’t sending the picture I want.

At the moment, none of them is qualified to be my sugar boy. If they had qualified, I would have employed at least three of them and placed them on salary,she said -VANGAURD