How UGM’s agitation gave Igboland a bleak Christmas season and threatening age-long communal bonding

The Christmas bells that rang in Southeast Nigeria in 2022 may not have caused the heart to do its acrobatic stunts the way it used to, say up to five or three years ago. Rather they were of a sort of ‘clanging chimes of doom’, as the British music group – Band Aid put it in their 1984 song, even though the song made an uninformed claim about Africa as a land ‘where nothing ever grows’.

The once bubbling Christmas season in the southeast that every Igbo person, in the diaspora and other parts of Nigeria away from their hometown, always look forward to is no longer the same as a cloud of fear and dread now covers the Southeast due to the violence perpetuated by pro-Biafra armed men known as unknown gunmen.

“If you accidentally kill a kinsman in Igboland, you need to offer sacrifices to cleanse the land so that abomination will not befall everyone, both the innocent and the guilty. The goddess, Odinala, is unforgiving if the life of a kinsman is deliberately taken. In Igboland right now, not one, not two but tens of people are being killed every day. The abomination that will befall Igboland in the coming years over the killing of innocent people, nobody will believe it. That is what I learnt growing up” Francis Ejike, a native of Akwa village in Ihiala town, Anambra state told Neusroom.

His voice sounded apprehensive on phone from his location in Festac Town, a low-cost housing community set up when Nigeria hosted the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in 1977. Ejike’s immediate younger brother is staying with him in Lagos while his other younger siblings are living with relatives in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Only his aged parents remained in the village adamantly vowing not to leave ‘their ancestral home’ in spite of the looming danger they face daily.

According to the 45-year-old tailor, for the first time since he was born, he spent the 2022 Christmas holiday in Lagos as against in the village where all family members would have converged. As usual, they had already had plans about ‘village Christmas’ as they called it and had set up a bank account where everyone contributed money into planning to buy a cow. Everything changed in August 2022 when armed men stormed the village shooting at everything in sight.

“It was not the first time they would attack our village. There was an attack in June too and I think seven to 10 people died. After this recent one in August, we had to ask our family to move. I have six younger ones. One is staying with me while the rest are staying with other family members. Only our parents have refused to leave,” Ejike said as his voice became sombre “This is the saddest Christmas for us not because we don’t have money but because our home has now become the place we fear the most because UGM (Unknown Gunmen) and ESN (Eastern Security Network) have made it hell. We have returned people’s money for the Christmas celebration to them. The essence of umunna, of family ties, is gone.”

The Igbo homecoming

December, for many Igbos living in the southeastern part of Nigeria, is not just Christmas time but an opportunity to reconnect with family and loved ones in the village many of whom they’ve not had the opportunity to see throughout the year. Either by design or coincidence, it is a practice that has been traced back to the period immediately after the Nigerian Civil war which ended in 1970.

According to Elder Ikechukwu Ukwu, a chief in Amaigbo, a town in Imo state, shortly after the war, some Igbos who returned to the cities of Kano, Lagos and Port Harcourt found out that their properties had been repossessed by strangers because they were considered abandoned properties.

“Since then, the average Igbo man decided that no matter how many houses he builds in the places where he lives, he must have a property in his village because that is the only property he is sure no one can steal,” Ukwu said.

This encouraged a periodic homecoming in December where Igbos who are traditionally known as migrant entrepreneurs doing businesses outside of their region have made it a point of duty to return home. This mass return usually takes place between the second week of December and ends in the first week of January.

Christmastime in the southeast transcended a religious festivity; it was a holiday period where all work stopped and was replaced by merriment for days. People played highlife music loudly all day and night from their stereo and no one complained. The days were packed with activities and the nights were not spared. People reconnected with old friends and made new ones.

Due to the growing popularity of this homecoming, communal events began to be fixed in December to guarantee the attendance of not just people who live in the same region but family members in other cities and other countries. Thus, it became common to have traditional weddings slated for December to ensure the attendance and participation of kinsmen. This grew to accommodate other events like housewarming ceremonies and chieftaincy coronations. Important traditional discussions and agreements are also reached. For example, someone who returned from the city can make decisions with the extended family about who to take back to start the process of Igba Boi, an entrepreneurship model where business owners take younger ones into their business structure to groom them for a certain number of agreed years while the young one ‘serves the boss’ until they are ripe enough to run their own business.

To add spice to the festivity, some villages organise football competitions, masquerade dances, parties and other social activities for the two to three weeks homecoming period. This has helped to strengthen communal ties. Sadly, the continuous practice of this agelong tradition which appears to be the only opportunity for communal and family bonding among Igbos, is being threatened by violence from the activities of Unknown Gunmen (UGM) and Eastern Security Network (ESN).

Unknown Gunmen – The masked men killing their brothers to fight the government

In 2020, the leader of the proscribed separatist group, the Indigenous People Of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, established a paramilitary arm named the Eastern Security Network which he claimed was a defensive line to halt the killing of Igbos by herdsmen and bandits. Several military offensives were carried out against the group forcing them to retreat into the bush from where they metamorphosed into Unknown Gunmen. Kanu in several tweets celebrated several attacks carried out by the UGM against security operatives.

Following Kanu’s arrest and return to Nigeria in June 2022, the UGM intensified its attack this time against people in the south east. Compulsory sit-at-home protests were organised on Mondays in the five southeast states. While compliance has been minimal in a few places, Imo and Anambra states have been greatly affected.

The biggest casualties of the terror unleashed by UGM have been Igbos. While ordinary citizens have felt their wrath, the rich and famous have not been spared. In September 2021, Dr Chike Akunyili, the husband of the late boss of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dora Akunyili, was shot dead in Anambra on his way from Enugu.

In September 2022, the convoy of Senator Ifeanyi Ubah was attacked, leading to the death of three security aides at the Enugwu-Ukwu community in Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra State while the lawmaker narrowly escaped.

In April 2022, gunmen stormed an INEC office in Ihitte Uboma council during a voters’ registration exercise leading to the death of one person while several others were injured.

With a general election coming in 2023, some offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission in the south east have been attacked and set on fire by masked men referred to as UGM. In some video footage, the masked men have reiterated that there will be no election in ‘Biafraland’ in 2023. IPOB’s stand-in leader, Simon Ekpa who is believed to be residing in Finland has used social media as a tool to organise sit-at-home protests and also insist that they wanted “Biafra or nothing.”

“They attack anybody that appears to be interested in the 2023 election. Anyone found with a voter’s card is at risk of being killed”, Ejike told Neusroom.

He noted that the emergence of Peter Obi, the former governor of Anambra state into the presidential election scene has increased political interest and participation in the south east. Those who initially supported Kanu’s Biafra agitation have found a reason to align with Obi as a way out of Igbo marginalisation.

IPOB and its paramilitary arm, however, disagree. In December 2022, a female soldier simply identified as PP Johnson based on the name tag on her uniform was kidnapped in Aku, a village in Imo state by unknown gunmen and tortured as seen on a video that went viral on social media.

According to the Nigerian government, IPOB military arm and masked unknown gunmen have killed 179 security personnel and attacked 164 police facilities. Ejike believes the number of civilians killed or kidnapped is more.

“This is happening more and more and it is sad that our brothers are the ones doing this,” Ejike said. “Before, we were told that it was Fulani herdsmen and bandits that are attacking our people but nobody believes that lie again. From what we have seen and heard, it is our own people that are committing this abomination, killing innocent Igbo men and women because of Biafra. At the rate this is going on, when Biafra is achieved, there will be no Igbo person alive to live in it.”

When home becomes a battlefield

In the past, people from Aku village in Okigwe area of Imo state, like other communities in the southeast, celebrated Christmas in style. Timothy (not real name) told Neusroom that everyone looked forward to December as friends and family made it a reunion celebration to return home during the holidays.

“We always have so many activities lined up that there is no time to rest. There is wrestling among young boys and dancing among girls. The football competition for people of my set (28 years) is always intense that you will think we are being paid to win. There is always so much food to eat and drink. It is not where you eat breakfast that you eat lunch.

“For the first time in my life, I stayed in Lagos for Christmas. We told people abroad not to come home because what’s the point? We cannot be doing the things we did in the village in Lagos.”

He told Neusroom that there was an attack on December 30, 2022, that led to the death of several people including his childhood friend.

“It is a small village and we know ourselves. Every single person that has been killed by these people is either a friend, relative or acquaintance. Even my mother has to escape into the bush and was there till night during the attack.”

On September 23, 2022, villagers living Orsumoghu, in Ihiala local government area of Anambra gathered at St Mary’s Church to celebrate the annual New Yam festival, a traditional Igbo festival which takes place at the end of the rainy season which coincides with the period of harvest and the circle that begins a new planting season. The programme had barely started when masked gunmen stormed into the church and unleashed terror.

Jeremiah Obumneme, a cloth seller in Katangowa market in Lagos told Neusroom that the New Yam festival was the village’s precursor to the Christmas celebration so those who lived in different parts of Nigeria usually attend it. As part of the programme, a Christmas committee would be appointed among the youths who would then plan the community’s Christmas celebration. Those who lived outside Nigeria were not compelled to attend the New Yam festival but were expected to send money as support for the event.

“I was inside the church with my family members when these people entered. I thought it was a movie until they started shooting. Only a few of us escaped with our lives. Right now, there is nobody in my village. I have not stepped foot inside a church since then even here in Lagos because I cannot get over the fear. I do not plan to enter any church in the next five years.”

Michael Amaechi, who also hails from Orsumoghu told Neusroom that he returned from Canada to Lagos on December 21, 2022, and was planning to travel to his village a day before Christmas when he was warned by his family not to come home.

“I and my friends that we grew up together and always make the journey to the village in the same bus said we were not going to let Unknown Gunmen stop us from carrying out our tradition which we have been doing consistently for eight years but my mother begged me not to try it. We eventually had to celebrate Christmas in a hotel in Lagos. It is sad because it is not the same. We spent all day talking about the situation back home and did not enjoy one bit of our reunion. We don’t know what the election will look like.”

IPOB has vowed that for as long as Kanu, their leader, remains in detention, they will not stop the enforcement of their sit-at-home protest. Many also believe that the kidnapping and killings too will stop if Kanu is released.

“I don’t believe so”, Amaechi told Neusroom. Kanu’s rhetorics before his detention were equally terrible and that is the template Simon Ekpa is following. I pray we can finish this thing we started because it has all the markings of another Boo Haram insurgency.

Although the Federal High Court ordered the release of Kanu in December, he remains in the custody of the Department of State Services.