By Emma Nnadozie
Denge Josef Onoh has described as a historical lie statements credit to the Islamic cleric, Shiek Ahmad Gumi, that the late Biafra Head of State, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu attempted to deceive the world that Nigeria prosecuted genocide on Biafra in the events leading to and during the Nigeria civil war.
Gumi had in a recent interview while reacting to United States President, Donald Trump’s treat that America may send troops to Nigeria if the alleged Christian genocide continues, alleged that Ojukwu has used such genocide narrative to deceive the world but did not fly because the then Nigeria leader and his deputy were Christians.
In a reply to Gumi, Onoh stated that Gumi’s invocation of the memory of late Odumegwu Ojukwu was not just factually bankrupt but a deliberate attempt to rewrite the blood-soaked pages of Nigeria’s Civil War (1967–1970) for petty and divisive ends.
Gumi said that Ojukwu allegedly wanted to use it (genocide) before, saying that Muslims were killing Christians, only to be undermined by the fact that General Yakubu Gowon, the federal head of state, and his deputy were Christians.
“This is not scholarship; it is sophistry, a cheap sleight of hand meant to gaslight survivors and sanitize atrocities under the guise of peace and stability,” Onoh quipped.
Setting the record straight, Onoh said that with the unyielding truth of history which the cleric’s revisionism cannot erase, Ojukwu never made such claims.
“Absolutely, and with profound justification rooted in the pogroms that ignited Biafra’s tragic bid for survival in the fall of 1966, orchestrated by massacres that swept through northern Nigeria—regions under federal influence—claiming over 30,000 Igbo lives in weeks.
“These were not random clashes but targeted ethnic and religious cleansings: Igbo Christians hunted in their homes, churches burnt, women and children slaughtered in mosques turned killing grounds. Eyewitness accounts from the time, corroborated by international observers like the International Committee of the Red Cross and British diplomats, describe mobs chanting “Araba!” (secessionist cries) as they wielded machetes against ‘infidels” and “saboteurs.’
“Ojukwu did not invent this; he documented it in his seminal – A Statement on the Nigerian Crisis (September 1966) and in his Ashram Declaration (May 1969), where he decried the genocide of Igbos as a calculated extermination by northern elements, often framed in jihadist rhetoric. The war itself saw federal forces—predominantly northern Muslim troops bombard Biafran civilians with impunity, leading to a famine that claimed two million souls, mostly children, in what even Gowon’s own advisors privately called a “final solution.”
“Gumi’s pivot to Gowon’s Christianity is a risible deflection, ignoring that leadership faith does not absolve systemic complicity. Gowon, a devout Anglican, presided over an army where northern Muslim officers like Murtala Muhammed wielded outsized power, directing operations that blurred ethnic vendettas with religious fervor. The war’s architects included figures like the Emir of Kano, whose inflammatory sermons fueled the pogroms. To claim “we didn’t mind” because of Gowon’s deputy (Major-General Philip Effiong, an Igbo as then accepted, and Catholic who defected to Biafra) is to mock the graves of millions.
“Ojukwu fought not against Muslims as a monolith but against a federation that failed its minorities—a fight for equity that echoes my own pleas today for inclusive governance under President Tinubu.
“Gumi’s narrative isn’t peace; it’s erasure, designed to delegitimize legitimate grievances and stoke fresh sectarian fires. I honor Ojukwu’s memory by rejecting such lies, not indulging them.
“But Gumi’s mendacity is no isolated sermon; it is the rotten fruit of a career spent undermining Nigeria’s peace, past and present. This is a man who has positioned himself as a self-anointed “mediator” to bandits and terrorists, yet whose actions have prolonged their reign of terror, emboldened killers, and fractured our national fabric. Let us catalog his trail of discord, lest his clerical robes blind us to the blood on his hands.
In the past, Gumi’s interventions sowed chaos under the banner of “dialogue.” During the 2021 wave of school abductions in Kaduna and Niger States—where over 1,000 children were seized by Fulani militants—he led “peace missions” into forest enclaves, distributing Korans and medical aid while advocating a “blanket amnesty” for these criminals, akin to the Niger Delta reprieve. Far from disarming them, his visits romanticized their “militancy,” shifting public lexicon from “bandits” to “militants” and inviting foreign jihadists to view Nigeria as a “new business branch” for investment, as he infamously quipped.
The result? Escalated kidnappings: from 3,620 in 2020 to over 5,000 by mid-2025, with ransoms exceeding ₦2.57 billion, displacing millions and sacking 638 villages in Zamfara alone. Groups like the World Institute for Peace demanded his arrest in 2024, accusing his rhetoric of “emboldening perpetrators” by undermining military resolve—precisely what he did when he accused the Nigerian Army of “religious division” in 2021, claiming Muslim officers spared bandits while Christians prosecuted them.
The Army rightly warned him to “mind his utterances,” yet he persisted, quitting mediation only when bandits were legally proscribed as terrorists, feigning victimhood after endangering his life for photo-ops.
Today, Gumi’s poison spreads wider. In 2025, he accused “white evangelical Christian supremacists” of engineering Nigeria’s woes—blaming them for toppling governments in the Middle East, Venezuela, and now us—while dismissing Boko Haram as a “CIA creation” terrorizing Muslims. This conspiracism deflects from Islamist radicals he once defended, even as they bomb mosques alongside churches. His push for “peace deals” with bandits in Katsina mirrors failed 2019 pacts that collapsed, leaving rural communities undefended and accusing security forces of “sabotage.”
Just last month, he urged Tinubu to emulate the Israel-Hamas truce by negotiating with “terrorists,” ignoring how such appeasement rewards extortion. And amid U.S. concerns over violence—concerns Gumi labels “politically motivated” election meddling—he demands we sever ties with America, prioritizing sovereignty over alliances that could arm our fight against the very insurgents he coddles.
Gumi’s gospel is not stability but selective impunity: amnesty for northern armed groups, scorn for southern agitators, and historical amnesia that pits brother against brother. It has cost lives—over 2,266 slain by bandits in early 2025 alone—and deepened our wounds, rewarding violence in one region while criminalizing dissent in another. True peace demands justice for all victims, not alibis for perpetrators.
To Sheikh Gumi: Cease your distortions. To Nigerians: Reject division. Let us build the unity Ojukwu died dreaming of—one where no cleric’s word trumps the people’s will, and where equity, not ethnicity or faith, guides us. President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope calls us to heal, not hate. I stand ready, as always, to bridge our divides—for Enugu, for Sokoto, for Nigeria eternal.”
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