The Jews and the Igbo's

By Fada Oluoma

The Jews should hold the record as the most colonized, displaced, conquered and brutally assaulted race in recorded history.

Egypt enslaved them during the reigns of the Pharaoh, which, by the way establishes the fact that Africans were among the first to enslave others. Then came the Assyrians and Babylonians.

As if that were not enough, the Greeks brutalized them further. The Romans took the baton next and inflicted the worst punishment to this volatile bread of people for insurrection. Rome's brutal execution almost sent the entire Jewish race into extinction. There were scattered across the world for almost 2000 years without identity as a nation.

The Holocaust of the recent past was like the diabolical icing on their cake of seemingly endless adversity. Long story short, Israel is a tiny Nation with gigantic global influence today despite all these.

You can be a product and not a prisoner of your experience"is a statement attributed to that saintly cerebral pontiff. Pope St Johnpaul 2nd. He lived it. He saw the horrors of Nazi war in his Polish Nation, it made him resolute in the systematic disintegration of communism. He was a product and not a prisoner of the horrific experience.

Like the Jews he concentrated his energy in building a future than getting stuck in the past the Jews didn't forget the past, same with Mandela, they just didn't allow it to sabotage the present and future.

The Biafran war remains the darkest past of our history as Igbo's and as a country. So also is the slave trade in the African continent. What do we do about them? I say we do what the Jews and Mandela did: Don't forget, But Forgive.

Yes, without forgiveness memory becomes destructive. The Jews has a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust. It makes them remember that such artrocity happened, however, the memorial doesn't conjure resentment and bitterness, it rather makes them determined to take their destiny into their hands, to be a people adequately prepared against a recurrence.

A memorial does that, it reminds you of the past without sabotage to the present and future. Lk 22, Jesus Christ instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist as a memorial of his death, and Paul repeated in 1cor 11 that every time we eat the bread and drinks the wine, we proclaim his death.

This memorial and proclamation of a death that was agonizing, bloody and gory doesn't conjure bitterness or anger now in Christian's because Jesus Christ forgave his killers. When we memorialize the Lord's death through the Eucharist, we experience divine things and willingly accept the obligation to extend love and forgiveness.

Every memorial remembers the past without pains, regrets, bitterness, rancour and self sabotaging emotions. This is what the Igbo's must learn from the Jews and Mandela. We must not weaponise the Biafran war by FORGETTING it or REMEMBERING it with bitterness, resentment and rancour. Let's memorialize it. We memorialize it by forgiving all the culprit, accepting our own blames and erecting a befitting memorial event or structure where people learn about it to learn positive lessons.

Antagonising anyone and everyone else about the past simply undermines our mental and spiritual strength and integrity. Such negativity makes us more powerless and mere victims. We must stop dissipating energy on unprofitable sentiments and be more strategic in carving our a vision for Igbo's in Nigeria.