Nigerian Soldiers Identified Igbo Who Couldn’t Pronounce Obalende-Witness

The tragedy of Nigeria’s 36 months fratricidal war will not go away soon no matter how some people try to suppress it if the latest revelation by eighty-year-old Mrs Christiana Ope, is anything to go by. People with knowledge of the event will continue to share their horrible experiences. Ope revealed that it got to a stage where soldiers where identifying Igbo people with their inability to pronounce some Yoruba words like Obalende.

She said: “I was in Lagos with my second child. It was a petrol bomb that notified me that the war had begun. I saw the flame from my balcony. Many people died. There was a time I was at Island Maternity and I heard some Nigerian soldiers shooting. We were told that some people threw some bombs so the soldiers had to retaliate. “The war was terrible. War is not good. If a war starts in Nigeria, it would be worse than the Civil War. War is nobody’s friend. Getting out of it is a problem and things can never be the same.

When there is a war, people flee from their homes. “When the war started, I was on a bus going to work when some soldiers entered the bus and ordered the passengers to identify their tribes. When an Igbo man claimed to be Yoruba, the soldiers told them to pronounce Obalende or toro (shilling). The ones that couldn’t pronounce the two words were easily identified and picked up. We were all living together before the Devil came in. Lagos was a place of merriment; there were parties in many places. If a war begins in Nigeria, it would be worse than the Civil War.”

Meanwhile, this narration seems to have reopened old wounds on social media with many people lamenting the injustice in the country.