By Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor
There is an unsettling pattern in the rhetoric
presently being introduced into our political space, rhetoric packaged
initially as harmless directives, civil disobedience or principled protest, but
carrying within it the unmistakable seeds of consequences far more devastating
than the promoters may wish the people to contemplate.
This intervention is therefore not about
politics; it is about the preservation of Ala-Igbo and the protection of the
lives, livelihoods and hard-earned peace of our people.
Any directive advocating an electoral boycott,
under whatever guise or euphemism it may be presented, must be unequivocally
rejected. We must not permit the reopening of wounds that have taken enormous
sacrifices to heal. We have witnessed, at great cost, what happens when
political grievances are converted into rigid commands and when ordinary people
are compelled to pay the ultimate price for decisions taken by those who are
themselves safely removed from the consequences.
We must therefore reject, with every sense of
responsibility, any attempt to turn electoral participation into an offence
against the collective interest of our people.
Indeed, what greater irony could there be than
to surrender our political voice in the name of defending our people, only to
discover that the silence created by such surrender has become the very
instrument through which our collective interests are diminished? Perhaps the
ballot box is now being treated as the enemy, while political irrelevance is
being advertised as victory.
We must be wiser.
There are legitimate constitutional, judicial,
political and democratic channels through which grievances can be ventilated
and remedies pursued .
I therefore condemn, in its entirety, every
directive calculated to induce electoral boycott in Ala-Igbo, particularly
where such directives are issued without transparent accountability to the people
who will ultimately bear the consequences.
Those who are gathering the storm should
understand that Ala-Igbo is no longer available for experimentation with
destructive political theories. Our people have endured enough. Our communities
have suffered enough. Our economy has paid enough. And our children deserve a
future that is not perpetually held hostage by the political calculations of
faceless actors. Ndị Igbo
must reject every attempt to drag them backwards.
We cannot continue to pursue political objectives
through strategies whose collateral consequences are borne almost exclusively
by the very people we claim to defend. A people do not preserve their homeland
by rendering it ungovernable; they preserve it by protecting its peace,
strengthening its institutions and relentlessly pursuing justice through every
legitimate avenue available to them.
The time has therefore come to jettison every
destructive ideal and directive that seeks to make electoral boycott a measure
of loyalty or patriotism. Patriotism cannot mean deliberately weakening one’s
own people. Resistance cannot mean destroying one’s own economic foundation.
And political fidelity cannot require sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of
an entire generation.
We must never again take a route whose
destination is devastation.
Ala-Igbo has travelled too far, suffered too
much and survived too many storms to become collateral damage in another
experiment in political absolutism.
Let those who genuinely love Ala-Igbo prove it
by protecting her peace.
Let those who genuinely speak for our people
listen to the people.
And let those gathering another storm be
reminded that the Igbo nation has seen the consequences of fire; we should not
be persuaded to strike another match merely to prove that we can withstand the
flames.
Ala-Igbo must not be sacrificed on the altar of
political absolutism.
By Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Esq.,
KSC
Dunu-Ezeugosinachi
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