Nigeria will never break-up, says Allen Onyema, the man who brought peace to Niger Delta (1)

By Ola Jones

Our world is full of violence, and our daily lives can be marred by conflict and turmoil. But God promises His people a peace that surpasses all understanding. Perhaps this is why the Holy Books encourage our being well, seeking peace and pursuing it, for it becomes a blessing for peacemakers and according to the scripture; they shall be qualified to be christened as children of God. This aptly explains why Barrister Allen Onyema is today a favourite of God. From adolescent, he refused to tread the path of evil, rather he sought peace and vigorously, he pursued it till he became a man. The gains are the blessings of God that he now enjoys. Onyema is one of the many Nigerians with very modest background and in the class of nobility-courtesy his passion for peace making. In this interview by Ola Jones, he says no matter the desperation from any quarters to destabilize the nation through ethnic or religion tendencies, the country would not be brought down. According to him “There are a lot of people who have the goodwill, who want the country to remain Nigeria and they are in the majority. Those who are fomenting trouble are in the minority.”

Barrister Allen Onyema

Introducing himself at a first meeting in his palatial office located in Government Reserved Area, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria, the down-to-earth but easy going and dynamic personality who sits atop multi-billion naira conglomerates painted a picture of himself as a man who took a humble path to reach the throne of honour. He said, “I am just an ordinary Nigerian from a very humble background, a lawyer by profession.” He went into legal practice as far back as 1990, floated a real estate company in 1992. He was not doing agency business but buying his own properties and selling. Lawyers were coming to him to take my properties to sell. He was hitting it very big in the nineties in real estate and later he floated a trading company in the nineties too.

On how peace keeping became the road to real and overwhelming success in his life, Onyema disclosed that he got involved in peace building from childhood, “At the age of 8, I witnessed my father and the elder brother fighting and I never liked that. It was a physical fight and I was ashamed that adults could do that. In order to reconcile them, I pitched my tent with my uncle, not against my father but I ran after my uncle and I went to live with him even as the only son of my father then.

“If I could live with my uncle as I thought then as a kid that might bring both parties together again and indeed it happened. So till date everybody in the family still remember that singular act of mine. My family was never surprised about what I turned that to be in life as regards peace building efforts all over. Besides my other businesses, I am heavily into peace building through which I have made constructive name worldwide. As I said before, I am a good example of what can you do for your country and not what your country can do for you. That led me to getting agitated to some of the things happening in the country as it relates to the obvious disunity in the country.

Peace is a period of harmony between different social groups that is characterized by lack of violence, conflict behaviours and the freedom from fear of violence. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility and retribution, peace also suggests sincere attempts at reconciliation, the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the establishment of equality, and a working political order that serves the true interests of all. Understanding, this might have knocked hard on the heart of the Onyema, hence reasoning that the prevalent ethnic and religious diversity In Nigeria, his country is capable of tearing the nation into pieces if no one stands out to save her.

“Nigeria is a country of 378 ethnic nationalities and not 250; a lot of people make the mistake. We have 378 ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria and instead of Nigerians harnessing the positive attribute of individual components of this country, it has turned out to be the albatross and that is unfortunate because there should have been strength in diversity. This country is potentially blessed both in human and material resources. We have not been able to develop on the potentials and the bane of our development is ethnicity and religion. It is annoying when politicians use ethnicity and religion to seek power or gain some level of goals. Religion and ethnicity are very divisive instruments and they are very powerful too. Powerful because they could tear a nation apart; what happened in Burundi, Rwanda and all other places had to be traced to ethnicity.

“In a multicultural setting like Nigeria, we don’t need to encourage ethnic tendencies because it will be divisive. What we need to do is to promote broad nationalism as against ethnic nationalism so the problem of this country is nothing but ethnic nationalism. That is why Nigerians will tell you, I am Ibo; I am Fulani, Hausa and all of them. Nigerians have not been able to embrace broad nationalism unlike in America, every American tells you first and foremost I am an American, he doesn’t tell you I am black American, I am white American or Texas American. He tells you straight that I am American.

“He is proud to say, I am an American. Fortunately for them, even those from other climes who by happenstance got their passport are also proud to say I am an American. So, if you go to America they have been able to harness their diversity to their advantage and they are even looking for more diversity and that is why they did diversity visas and we are all running to go and get it and they are getting the best from you. You know there is a lot of strength in diversity, so they want to have as much as diversity as they could. Today they have Tino Americans Thailand, Russo Americans from Russia, Anglo Americans from England and more. We have Yoruba Americans, Igbo Americans, Hausa Americans and a lot of them are jettisoning their former nationalities. So there is pride in saying I am an American. That is broad nationalism. Unlike here, Nigerians will tell you I am an Itshekiri, I am Urhobo, I am Ijaw, Hausa, Fulani, I am Nupe, Igala. That’s another kind of thing; that is ethnic nationality and it is divisive.

“Nigeria is like a polygamous father with many wives, so the allegiance of the children of those wives is to their mother and not to the man. The man is just a meal ticket; no one cares for that man. The mothers will send out there children, you go and grab from the man, tear him apart, whatever you get bring to your own home stock, your mother siblings. That is Nigeria for you. These ethnic nationalities are the mothers and people in them are the children. Even corruption is high because of that. Except we recognise the divisive power of ethnicity and religion, we won’t move forward. We have to recognise it and we have to try as much as possible not to allow it to become our albatross. We should all harness it.”

Worried by this wide spreading caustic and deadly development in Nigeria, Onyema believes there is a way out to bring about peace and harmony in the country hence he stepped out into the society, to commence a crusade. “ This what led me to form the foundation for ethnic harmony in Nigeria because I wanted to make sure my country does not go down to doldrums,” he said and added “ I want to see how I could help undisturbed. Right from my days at the Government College Ughelli through the University of Ibadan where I studied Law, I have been fighting the incidents of ethnicity. I love mankind and I just believe in myself that I could make a difference. I never looked down on myself; I believe that God almighty has given everybody some powers. I harness mine as it relates to peace building. So I went out there found and funded an organization, the Foundation for Ethnic Harmony in Nigeria. To use it as pedestal to encourage and promote broad nationalism against ethnicity and sectionalism and again to discourage the tendency and the tools that are used to foster some of these tendencies like violence and also I decided to discourage violence in the polity and that led me to seek collaboration that will help me permanently achieve that which I set out to do which is curbing the incidence of violence in Nigeria.

“So for the first time in this country, I now designed a programme called The Nigeria Forever Project. I held the first Nigeria Forever Project in 2004 and 2005 that took me to the 36 states of the Federation and Abuja. I have thousands of followers and I spent several millions and nobody asked me where I got that money from. I was doing this single handed from my trading company, from my real estate; I was doing things and channeling the money into peace building on my own; you can find this out and the evidence are there for the whole world to see. Nobody and I repeat, nobody ever asked me how you made this money. Or who is funding you? I was doing it on my own, until one Indian man, the name is Versant Khotari, who is the Managing Director of Textiles Specialties in Ilupeju said Allen, you are spending a lot of your life savings pursuing peace in your country; do you know that you could do this as a full time job and I said how do I feed but he replied that you are naive; I said how do I feed then.

“He said no, the way you are doing it suggests that you live every other thing and face it. You can still make money out of it. I said you know, I have been spending over the years, Even when it was at Idiaraba, I went there; I will create committees, fund them, anywhere, Zaria name it. All over the country, I was busy visiting trouble spots whenever there was violence with my colleagues and funding the whole thing until we got to that Nigeria Forever Project. There was a massive event.

“The minister of information then was Chikelu; the young man was impressed with the proposal I took to the Federal government. The government was to join hands with me to do it but at the end of the day nothing came out of it. The Federal government just through the Minister of Information gave me 350,000 naira which was not enough to hire one bus to Sokoto. So It was not enough to do let say the programme I did in Lafia alone. But that encouraged me; it was like a boost that they could recognize what I was doing so I didn’t mind. I had the money; I was spending my own money. Another person that supported what I was doing was Ahmed Makarfi, the then governor of Kaduna state who gave us 25,000 naira. That was like this is good, some people are recognizing us.”

As Onyema and his team were crisscrossing the country with his peace for the nation crusade, more support was coming for him especially from the northern part of the country, where the traditional rulers, the Emirs became the column of his strength. Appreciating the overwhelming support of the traditional institution in the ‘Game of Peace’, Onyema in this interview said, I got the greatest support from the Emirs in the north. Not even from the south, the northerners supported what I was doing more than any other group, more than any other ethnic nationality.

When I was writing the traditional rulers because I wanted to use the traditional institutions for their closeness to the people I got the greatest support from all the emirs in the north. As for the southern part of this country, it was like I was forcing myself on them. But the Sultan through the Emir of Kano and the Emir of Kotangora, Sarkin Sudan and all of those I cannot name wrote that we like what you are doing, please come over. When I did the work in Sokoto, Sultan Maccido, May his soul rest in peace, hosted us massively with all his council members in attendance including Shehu Shagari. At the end of the day, Shehu Shagari, a gentleman to the core said Allen, do you mean you will leave Sokoto without coming to my house to stay for the night. I shed tears and I went to stay with Shagari. That was in 2004; he hosted me and my entourage. That is why I keep telling people that this country will never break. There are a lot of people who have the goodwill, who want this country to remain Nigeria and they are in the majority. Those who are fomenting trouble are in the minority. So we should have nothing to fear, the country will forever remain one. I tell you, I got the greatest support from the north.

To be continued