During the week of the inauguration of Dr Alex Otti as the executive governor of Abia State on May 29, 2023, GeneralYakubu Gowon’s ‘prayer team’ was billed to pray in Umuahia, the state capital, and I was one of the first people who raised the alarm that Gowon must not be allowed to step foot in Umuahia, let alone ‘pray’.

For me that would be nothing but desecration of the land and I am happy that His Excellency Alex Otti listened to voice of reasoning, because it would have given his government a very bad start.

It would have been like Benjamin Netanyahu inviting Adolf Hitler to come and pray during his inauguration as the Prime Minister of Israel.

The purpose of this write-up is to react to what Gowon said that he was criticized during the civil war for being slow in crushing Biafra.

So I just want to put to rest the hallucination in the mind of Gowon and others that he crushed Biafra.

The truth is that Gowon did not crush Biafra and does not even have the capacity to crush Biafra,

What he did is that he committed genocide by killing three million innocent Biafrans.

What Gowon and other uninformed people don’t know is that Biafra is not just a geographical space.

Biafra is a spirit, a Can-Do spirit of the Igbos and as such no human being can crush a spirit.

So if Gowon has crushed Biafra, Igbos would not have being making waves all over the world.

I remember in 1977 when General Olusegun Obasanjo as a military Head of State went to Onitsha to commission a project. He had looked around and saw developments and mansions all over the place and said that nobody would believe that seven years ago, the whole town was leveled down and left in ruins.

Again, just few years ago an 82 years old Italian woman met a young Igbo man, an owner of one of the biggest super markets in Turin and said to him: “You must be a Biafran!”

The reason was because the woman and most people in the city have heard of the young man’s giant stride and she had to acknowledge him.

That is the Biafra, the Can-Do spirit of Igbo in action.

It is the same Biafran spirit that has turned 20 pounds that Gowon regime gave to the Igbos at the end of the civil war that has turned into billions of dollars.

Go to all the states in the country, Igbos are doing wonders.

That was what made Mallam Nasiru El-Rufai to say that Igbos should not be asking for any addition state that Abuja is the sixth state of the Igbos and that was because of the way they have dominated business and development in the federal capital territory.

Even in Plateau State, where Gowon comes from, Igbos are dominating. Most of the big businesses and buildings in Jos and the other parts of the state are owned by Igbos.

So, whoever thinks that he can crush Biafra should think again. You can only kill the body but you can never kill the soul.

And that is where Nigeria has lost it as a country, thinking that Biafra has been crushed and that Igbos are a defeated or conquered people.

That is the reason why the country is where it is at the moment. Nigeria has failed to tap into the Biafran spirit of the Igbos.

But what has Gowon gained after killing millions of innocent people? What a lot of people have failed to realize is that the law of retributive justice or what Indians refer to as Karma is a reality.

Though it may delay or linger, it surely comes.

Even the Bible says that with what you measured would be measured unto you.

I am very happy that Gowon’s own karma came in his life.

Today, Plateau is home state has become one of the un-safest place to live in Nigeria. Plateau his home state has turned into a killing field. His people are being killed like chickens on a daily basis. His people are being decimated on a daily basis. Communities in his home state are being taken and renamed in different languages on a daily.

Yes, what goes round comes around and I know that inwardly Gowon would be in regret of his action because his evil wish of crushing Biafrans has come back to him. It is now his own people that are being crushed.

•Peter Anosike is a world bestselling personal finance book author.

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