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
.
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
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