Early in Nov. 2016 the Governor of Kano State, Alhaji Abdullahi Umar Ganduje directed his Attorney General and Nnolle prosequi was entered in court on the case of five Islamic zealots who murdered a 74-year old Igbo trader, Mrs. Bridget Agbahime from Imo State on spurious grounds of Blasphemy. The killers were thereupon discharged.That was after Alhaji Ganduje had earlier held meetings with Igbo leaders in Kano and the husband of victim, apologizing and assuring them that Justice shall be done to the victim.
The Nnolle prosequi entered amounted travesty of justice and Injustice to the victim, Ndigbo and Nigeria!
In page 4 of Vanguard Newspaper of 30th March, 2017 it was reported that the same Kano State Governor, Alhaji Ganduje, had been nominated, first among three State Governors, for the 2016 Zik Prize for Leadership in Good Governance.
Earlier the husband of Bridget, Elder Agbahime, a Pastor, who started protesting the travesty, was threatened and forced to re-locate from Kano back to the South-East for fear for his own safety. I met the embittered Pastor Agbahime in Enugu after his relocation.
The question to ask by awarding Zik's Leadership to Alhaji Ganduje,mwho freed murderers is:
Are we now rewarding Governor Ganduje for collaboration, conspiracy and approval of the extra-judicial murder of Bridget in Kano.?
In 1953, 150 Igbos were murdered in rioting in Kano for a political dispute between the Yoruba and the Hausa/Fulani.
In 1995 an Igbo trader, Mr, Gideon Akaluka, was abducted from so- called protective custody in a Police Station in Kano and extra-judicially beheaded by a Jihadists mob, claiming he committed blasphemy by defiling the Quran. A blood-chilling celebration of the license of impunity to the rest of Nigeria in their treatment of Igbo citizens was the confident action of the mob who hoisted the head of murdered Akaluka on a pole in a macabre street procession of triumph right in the presence of Law enforcement agents in Kano, during an orgy of days of Igbo racial bating and massacre. Akaluka's body was buried headless in his home state, Imo (abomination in Igbo trdition). Months after, Akaluka was cleared by the Police of any anti-Moslem act.
Several other riots in Kano had taken several thousand Igbo lives. It is not easy to forget over 3,000 slaughtered during the September/October pogrom of 1966.
Igbo elite has been very docile, not initiating and sustaining any lawful re-action to repeated extra-judicial killings of Ndigbo in Nigeria.
BUT DO THEY HVE TO ADD A BADGE OF HONOUR FOR THOSE WHO WANTONLY KILL IGBO AND IN THE PROCESS DISHONOUR ZIK BY AWARDING A PRIZE NAMED AFTER OUR HIGHLY REVERED AZIKIWE, TO THE MURDERERS?
Current Nigerian Igbo so-called Nigerian nationalists would give anything for relevance in Nigeria!
Prof. Anya O. Anya was known to be Chairman of Zik's Prize Council. Prof. Pat. Utomi is a current member.
In Nri cosmology Umuada/Umuokkpu (kindred daughters) are feared and respected. Their brothers are bound by custom to protect them . If not, it is feared, should anything untoward happen to any of them from acts of neglect by their brother, they would wreck vengeance on the family from the spirit world.
Bridget Agbahime was an elderly Igbo daughter. I have done my own by speaking out! The rest is up to anyone who knows about this award.
The Kano Governor must not receive Zik's Prize. That would dishonour Zik and humiliate the Igbo.
The 2016 Zik award should, instead, be cancelled.
Okpala-Eze-Nri Emeka Onyesoh.
31/3/17
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