Posted by By Celestine Okafor, Assistant Editor on
THEIR emergence on the scene was as dramatic as their arrest. Except, perhaps, Dr. Fredrick Fasehun, any mention of the other three did not arouse any particular familiarity or prominence.
THEIR emergence on the scene was as dramatic as their arrest. Except, perhaps, Dr. Fredrick Fasehun, any mention of the other three did not arouse any particular familiarity or prominence. They were, at best, mere mortals like millions of their other compatriots.
But from that seeming obscurity, they seized national attention in fascinating and equally frightening fashion. Dr. Fasehun, a medical doctor, founded the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) which pledged to protect and preserve the Oduduwa spirit of the South-West people. Soon, Chief Gani Adams became national factional leader.
Elsewhere, Chief Ralph Uwazurike came out with the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). His own desire was to give the 'marginalised" Igbos their own identity and entity called Biafra, a reincarnation of the defunct Biafran Republic that ceased to be with the end of the civil war in 1970.
And from the Niger-Delta creeks, Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo and his Niger-Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, NDPVF, minced no words that they were set to severe links with the Nigerian state unless there was a stop to the 'oppression and exploitation" of their people whose lives and farmlands have been devastated by oil exploration.
Thus, these motives and ill-feelings gave birth to the militia groups in OPC, MASSOB and NDPVF. Some Northern radicals toyed with an idea of Arewa Peoples Congress (APC) as a counter-force to these developments in the South. However, the noise around APC died down not too long after.
But not so with the others. They held the state by the jugular and insisted that they had (and still have) every justification for their actions which were oftentimes fatal. Their members were heavily-armed with either charms and/or deadly weapons. At some times, blood was spilled, leading to avoidable deaths and destruction of property of parties to a conflict, or innocent persons.
Government's first reaction was to outlaw the ethnic militias and embark on man-hunt of the revolutionary leaders. When that did not help, government resorted to having a dialogue with some of the leaders. In this instance, a jet was sent to fly Dokubo to Abuja while Adams was also made Federal Government's Peace Envoy. Whatever agreements reached between Dokubo and the government were broken, as the latter began to fire verbal missiles. A bloody clash at the Iyana-Ipaja area of Lagos was believed to be the cause of Aso Rock's anger. Then, it was reported that the Biafran currency was in circulation and was being accepted as a legal tender in some West African countries.
Today, the rest is history. Fasehun and Adams were picked up in Lagos. Uwazurike was arrested by officers of the State Security Service (SSS) dressed as National Youth Service Corps members at a football field in his Okwe hometown in Imo State. Dokubo was invited and went to answer the invitation by the security when he was detained. The four men are now facing treasonable charges at the Abuja Federal High Court, even as their groups ask the government to release them. But away from the justification or otherwise of their arrest, detention and arraignment, how has it been with their families? How have their spouses been coping? Is support coming from associates and their groups? Will these women ever allow their husbands to ply the same route if they are lucky to be set free? What have been the biggest challenges?
Your soar-away Saturday Vanguard took these and lots more questions to the wives of the detained men and they responded quite frankly and resolutely. Their tales are as moving as they paint the precise pictures of the women behind the fearsome ethnic militia leaders.