The presidency will give the Igbo a feeling of acceptance, full reintegration, recognition of their contributions to the country and a sense of dignity. If we fail to do so come 2023 it will remain a blot on our political consciousness hence the ideal of the moral universe and justice implores both the APC and the PDP to do the needful.
By Nnanna Ijeomah
In 2020 many cities in the United States were rocked by public demonstrations under the banner of “Black Lives Matter.” These demonstrations were the consequence of years of police brutalities and killings of young African Americans, the ultimate of which was the public killing of an African American George Floyd by a Minnesota White Police officer who placed a knee on his neck for eight minutes resulting in his death.
It was during this period of the demonstrations that a prominent black and former basketball player now NBA coach, Doc Rivers, made this very pertinent and memorable comment when he said, “We (African Americans} continue to love America but America does not love us back.” That singular comment very aptly epitomizes the way most Igbos feel about Nigeria, many of who feel the country regards them as second class citizens despite their many contributions to the socio-economic development of Nigeria.
They undoubtedly feel hated, marginalized, cast aspersions on and discriminated against in federal appointments especially during this Buhari administration. They feel that they have since the end of the civil war loved Nigeria, waiting to be fully reintegrated in the affairs and life of the country, but the country has not responded lovingly to their fidelity to it.
As proof of their commitment to the lofty and still unattainable goal of “One Nigeria” they are the only ethnic group of all the many ethnic groups in Nigeria that can boast of a sizeable presence in virtually every state or community in the country, operating businesses, building mansions, going to school and above all contributing to the socio-economic development of their host states and communities.
It is said that there is hardly a village or community in the country where you will not find an Igbo man. In Lagos state, Igbo businesses alone account for a sizeable portion of the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). It is the same in most Northern states and Abuja. A prominent politician recently opined and truthfully so that the Igbos constitute the second largest voting population after the indigenous people in virtually every state outside Igboland. He also went further to say that if they are united and vote as a bloc for any presidential candidate they can provide him or her the required 25% of the votes as required in the constitution.
The story of the treatment of Igbos at the end of the civil war has been told so many times, but since for many us, our capacity for remembering is highly limited or selective, it is very instructive that it is worth retelling. Despite the “No Victor, No vanquished” mantra of the Gowon Administration, the Igbos were reminded in more ways than one that they were a defeated people who had lost rights to their properties outside Igboland, were given 20 Pounds irrespective of the amount of money they had in their bank accounts before the war.
Then came the Indigenization program whereby Nigerians were afforded the opportunity to buy controlling shares or complete takeover of nationalized companies. This took place at a time when the Igbos could not participate because they did not have the financial means to do so. It was a program the Yorubas took full advantage of after being the major beneficiaries of federal Civil Service positions vacated by Igbos because of the civil war.
The Federal Government had intentioned to break their economic necks but instead succeeded in giving them bloody noses because they embarked on an economic resurgence within a few years that has been hardly equaled by any group of people in world history.
The Igbos came out from the civil war hoping for the best but they have so far endured the worst. Fifty-two years since the end of the civil war the Igbos continue to be the most despised people in the many communities where they reside hence despite their many contributions to the national cake that outweighs that of many others, they feel unappreciated and unrequited.
For many Nigerians from other ethnic groups there still exits fixations on the same handful of grudges against the Igbos. Stung and distrustful of them many have chosen to swallow the fundamental fiction that Igbos are greedy for money, a collective nimbus of selfishness, confrontational and capricious. The problem with such characterizations of the Igbo is the fact that every tribe in Nigeria harbors citizens that share the same tendencies.
Over the years since 1967 in what can be described as “historical nihilism” the North and some in the West have spent an inordinate amount of time and effort painting the 1967 coup as an Igbo coup hence the anger and hate that has lingered in some quarters of the population.
Despite the fact that it was not entirely an Igbo coup nor was the Northern politicians the only people targeted for execution, people like Pastor Tunde Bakare who calls himself “a man of God,” recently decided to propagate a lie when during a sermon in his church he claimed the late Tafawa Balewa before his death had placed a curse on the Igbos to the effect that they will never have the opportunity to govern the country. A claim that can be best described as a fiction of his imagination as it has not been collaborated or ever mentioned in all the many books written about that coup.
For a man who was still in his early teens when the coup occurred and who most definitely never knew or met any of the coup plotters to get a firsthand information regarding the circumstances surrounding Balewa’s death or his deathbed pronouncements one begins to wonder why such a man of the cloth, purportedly, will engage in such destructive and divisive blasphemy except maybe he decided to go down the well-worn road of dehumanizing the Igbos for political advantage by pitting the North against the Igbos. Now we know why, he also wants to contest for the Presidency.
As the 2023 elections approach and as Nigerians have become fixated with who will succeed Buhari, we have been constrained to watch one ethnic bigot after another use primitive ethnic psychology to unleash the irrational fears that have masked so many citizens. Today our irrational beliefs about the Igbos have become badges of identity-the regalia of our tribes or teams, whereby proof of our loyalty to our tribe entails disapproval of those we consider our adversaries.
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In recent months one issue that has dominated public discourse in most political circles is that of zoning and if either party namely the APC and PDP will zone their presidential ticket to the South East, a zone that has never occupied the Presidency. While neither of these two major political parties has made a commitment to Zoning or picking an Igbo presidential candidate, politicians from the South East have nevertheless continued to strongly press their case for an Igbo Presidential nominee.
The question that has arisen therefore is how much of our political process depend on goodwill and how much depends on a civil construct. Goodwill in the sense that after the death of Abiola and the nullification of his victory, there was a consensus among Nigeria’s power brokers to give the President to a Yoruba man, hence the re-emergence of Obasanjo, who had earlier served as a Military Head of State. Civil construct in the sense that the parties enshrine zoning in their constitution or that they expand the principle and spirit of Federal Character as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution to the choice of their Presidential candidates.
Either way the Igbos feel they have earned the right to have one of their own rule the country. As we’ve noticed by the different politicians from other ethnic groups who have indicated their intentions to run for president and whose ethnic groups have had more than their share of national governance don’t seem willing to accord them that chance or privilege. Not surprisingly there has been a cacophony of voices from both the North and Western parts of the country opposed to the idea.
Alhaji Mamam Daura, a behind the scene member of the secretive Northern cabal that has held a tight grip on the political outcomes in the country came out recently to denounce what he called the turn-by-turn Presidency between the North and South advocating instead for competence and capability as the criteria for choosing who will be President, causing veteran journalist, Lasisi Olagunji, to ask in a recent write-up, when competence became an important and guiding criteria for the North when it comes to the issue of the presidency or anything else.
For a section of the country that has since independence benefitted from quota systems and the lowering of educational standards as a means of filling their quota allocations in colleges, the army, security and civil services to now talk about competence and capability is to reach new levels of absurdity. The Northern Elders Forum, a small group of people who tend to exercise power not commensurate with their numbers have also come out with their own view about Zoning that constitutes what constitutionalists call the “Hecklers Veto”.
In a country where courage is alien to our pampered existence and where the predominant instinct of the average Nigerian is not to ensure a just and equitable society but one in which they and their tribal or religious interest thrives, it is noteworthy to see someone with the stature of Tanko Yakassi, a prominent Northern elder statesman, come out to state most categorically that for the purpose of fairness, equity and justice the presidency in the 2023 elections should be zoned to the South East.
Though many may disagree with zoning and electing a President of the South East extraction, it is the right thing to do, hence every other zone has had a chance at governing the country except the South East. It is said that justice cannot exist where politics dominate. This is one instance when we want politics to be set aside as difficult as it may be for justice to prevail. It is absolutely not fair and indeed quite disheartening to see some of our political leaders from both the South West and the North angling for the nomination in both the APC and the PDP.
While the North has had more than their share of running this country under military and civilian dispensations, the South West has also had two stints at the helm with Olusegun Obasanjo who served as both military and civilian Head of state, not to mention eight years of Osibanjo as Vice President.
When one considers the fact that the South East strongly supported and voted for Obasanjo during his first election and re-election, Yar Adua after that, the magnanimous thing expected of the South West would be for them to support their South East brothers in the South, but it appears that is not going to be as leading South West political figures have already thrown themselves in the ring.
Today in Nigeria we have lost a shared sense and architecture of reality because we no longer have the same shared experiences. The reality is that the Igbos since the end of the civil war have had experiences of being marginalized, discriminated against in recruitment into the federal and security services, more so under the Buhari administration than any other before it. Many have been killed in the North, asked to leave Lagos by the Oba in Lagos etc., yet they continue to believe in a country that cannot decide whether they want them or not.
The truth is that for those who have come up with asinine and spurious reasons against an Igbo presidency such as that they cannot be trusted, if elected, they will occupy every federal position, they want Biafra, they are arrogant, prideful, Republican in nature, do not respect their leaders, they lack consensus, they have a go it alone mentality etc. The list goes on and on.
Some of these comments have been made by political and religious leaders whose moral obscenities illustrate the pernicious potential for ethnic hatred and crisis. It is like giving a dog a bad name so as to hang it. For these naysayers, I say, it is hard to understand exclusion until you have been excluded. Power in my opinion doesn’t destruct as much as it reveals. My take is, give the Igbos their first chance at governing this country and if they are every negative thing ascribed to them, they will be revealed.
The issue of ethnic animosity as is the case in Nigeria today is that it is deeper than it is because the problem is with us and in us. It is time for us as Nigerians to liberate ourselves from the morally perverse mindset that justifies cruelty, exclusion and discrimination. It is time to contend with our past transgressions against the Igbos as a nation – one that remains wedded to the same supremacist thinking that has fueled the most shameless chapters of our shared history.
Nigeria needs a redemption narrative, a shared story of Nigeria being born in our time. We need to awaken our moral imagination as we strive to write a new story for this nation. I believe that with the nomination and election of an Igbo president we will begin to build a redeemed society –a multi-ethnic democracy rooted in equity, equal justice and opportunity, One that defends the dignity of every Nigerian and strives to embody the great vision of “One Nation, One Destiny”.
In the words of Farouq A. Kperogi in his very illuminating piece-“Why Nigeria Needs To Elect An Igbo President In 2023”, -“You don’t promote unity by simply mouthing off platitudes about unity being non-negotiable. You promote it through meaningful symbolic gesture to reassure estranged groups that they too matter.” He continued, “Unity is promoted when conscious efforts are made to heal national wounds, to accommodate disadvantaged groups and to make political concessions to restore faith in the promise of the country”.
All the Igbos are asking for is a chance to feel loved, wanted and appreciated and nothing will heal their feeling of alienation and marginalization than being given the chance to govern this country. I would also want to believe that should that happen the clamor for Biafra in some quarters will dissipate and disappear. IPOB will lose its relevance and pre-eminence in Igboland. It will also be an affirmation, a realization of the dream and earnest wish of the Ikemba Nnewi, the late Chief Emeka Ojukwu whom I once served as his Personal Assistant. A man who contested for the Presidency a number of times because he saw it as a way of showing the rest of the country that he believed in “One Nigeria” and that he would want a full reintegration of the Igbos into Nigeria.
The presidency will give the Igbo a feeling of acceptance, full reintegration, recognition of their contributions to the country and a sense of dignity. If we fail to do so come 2023 it will remain a blot on our political consciousness hence the ideal of the moral universe and justice implores both the APC and the PDP to do the needful.
- Dr. Nnanna Ijomah, former Personal Assistant to late Dim Chikwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu wrote in from the U.S. He can be reached via: nna2ijomah@aol.com