Distrust of the Igbos'; who is to blame?

During the weekend, I had the rare privilege to listen to one man whose name continually resounds in the history of Nigeria. I said rare, because who are you to say yes when NEPA says no? Anyway, it was the occasion of his 80th birthday and he was being interviewed by journalists who wanted to ask about the journey so far. I listened with bated breath because I knew there was no way the civil war would not come up.
Now, before this time, I had read from other sources (Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a yellow sun and Chinua Achebe's There was a country) and being my curious self, I wanted to get more facts in order to have my own version of the story never minding that I was born 2 decades after the war ended. So, you can imagine my joy and eagerness to hear about the "other" side of the story because my basis of knowledge initially was from the Igbos and you know what that means. I was already tailored to fault the Hausas and the Yorubas without hearing their side of the story.
The gentleman fondly called General Gowon started by saying that the whole brouhaha started when the revered leader of the Igbos went ahead of him and revealed the details of the Aburi accord before he as the Head of State had the chance to do so in a manner that was not so accurate. He also made me view the Igbo leader as someone who was power-hungry and was seeking for attention. Meanwhile, the massacre happening in the north where the Igbos' were the primary targets helped to fuel his ambition and that has led me to wander afresh what the true cause of the killings in the north was, in which pregnant women were ripped open, dismembered limbs and bodies were strewn everywhere and heads were severed from their bodies. Well, according to hearsay, the north had only political power and would stop at nothing to preserve that.
It was the announcement of a new country called Biafra that led to the senseless war when the Igbos' were not allowed to "divorce" Nigeria. The General was asked about the horrors that befell the Igbos and he said he was not directly involved with that and never gave his assent, but we all know that silence about atrocities committed by people under our control is tantamount to an indirect assent. He further exonerated himself by saying that those atrocities committed against the innocent and unsuspecting Igbos were the unfortunate consequences of war. It was the Igbos who were ‘none the wiser' (those whose case are like the grass that suffers when two elephants fight) about the political happenings that suffered the most; the rich ones simply travelled abroad to escape the madness that threatened to wipe out an entire race!
 While I do not intend to discredit this respected leader who has even decided to tell his side of the story and leave a lesson for posterity, I do however want to point out the fact that the Igbos' were robbed of a lot; their dignity, their trust, their wealth and their place in the scheme of things in Nigeria. Still reeling from the after-effects of the war, the Igbos were jostled out of their mourning to discover that they had lost the possessions they left behind while supporting a cause they believed in and had to start to "gather" again; they had simply gathered the first set of possessions for the "vultures" to pick! Still counting their losses and looking for missing family members, they awakened to a rude shock that all Igbos who had money in Nigerian banks before the war, should be given 20 pounds irrespective of the amount they had before the war! Despite the statement of the General that there was "no victor, no vanquished", it was plain to see by all that the Igbo's were indeed vanquished because not only were their houses taken over by others, their economic power was also wrenched away from them as they had no money to continue their enterprise. It was even more painful when they returned only to discover that Lagos had been a normal place where the residents had been living in peace without giving much thought to their sufferings. All these have made the average Igbo man distrustful and wary of inter-tribal interactions as he does not want history to repeat itself. Ever wondered why the average Igbo man would prefer to build a house in his village before building a house in Lagos or why he would prefer to "retire" to his village when he is old? It is because of how they were treated after the war and how their welfare was handled. Still smarting (stinging) from the loss of children, parents, identity and the nightmares of trying to escape mass destruction by shelling and choppers, they were left alone to grapple with the hard situations they found themselves in. Till date, some Igbos cannot talk about those horrific 30 months without tears springing to their eyes. Some have conveniently locked those memories while looking at the rest of the world with distrust. During my service year, I met an Igbo lady who said her father threatened to disown any of his daughters who would dare to marry outside of his tribe! This is an example of the height of the Igbos' distrust. The General however, tried his best to mitigate the effects of the war and that brought about the birth of NYSC in 1973 which is aimed at bringing about unity and helping people appreciate other people's cultures which was successful until the gubernatorial elections in 2011 when killings arose in the north again this time, killing crops members. (What an irony! The object of peace is now an instrument of disunity). It is sad to note that the issues that brought about the civil war are still present and plague us till date. Those issues threaten to plunge us into chaos all over again because people are still killed along religious and ethnic lines for reasons as simple as minor disagreements.
My advice is this, we ought to forget the past and move on because keeping these hurts only makes us potential beasts waiting as predators to unleash terror on anyone who dares encroach on our rights. Our pains must be set aside and we must see all that happened as the price we paid for a greater, better Nigeria while hoping that our present leaders reflect on all these and tread softly as whatever they do, will be recorded in the annals of history. Also, they should endeavour to leave memoirs of their political sojourn so that we can understand what they did, how they did it, for whom they did it and with whom they did it.