A people who desire to make progress must shift paradigm from centripetal to centrifugal characteristics and command respect among neighbours in spite of their aggregate wealth. They must be bonded by love and social responsibility for one another.
Ndigbo went from communal cohesion in the early 1920s when colonists exploited Nigerians and needed their labour and consistency in service to the atomisation induced by pogrom five years into Independence on account of avarice. During our days of pride, we fended for one another in love and social responsibility for one another. Our centripetal forces took us to all corners of Nigeria where we held sway with umbilical cords still attached to home turf. We had satellites of an integrated entity in far-flung places and kept contact with home from our disparate satellites. Funds were regularly dispatched to keep home nourished with extant symbols of wealth and comfort, and opportunities for education at home and abroad were communally funded.
Cooperative thrift and investment were native to us as a means of communal survival. This tendency kept class at bay in Igbo psyche. Igbo Union was built by patriots of Igboland to further secure our future among our neighbours who were reluctant to embrace western education.
Igbo dominated the public services of the federation before and just past Independence. The birth of University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) accentuated this dominance and fomented respect for Igbo as diligent participants in the Nigeria project. Our industry kept the nation moving until the bubble burst with connivance of colonists with the war that drove us out of centripetal but cohesive character to centrifugal and atomised status of today. Social cohesion was lost and the Igbo soul was pierced by greed for gain that has landed us in differentiation and pursuit of self and family wealth with diminishing love and social responsibility at our tribal level.
We have lost our Igbo Patriotic Union spirit that brought us fame and fortune as a people. We now cut one another down to gain access to wealth and power. We have failed our ancestors. We pursue individual wealth and power, and vanity has made us ineffective as a people that once held sway in Nigeria’s economic spectrum. We have solid landed assets in all parts of the country, but we shun our own land for fear of insecurity which atomisation built.
Cohesion must return with love before we can answer the single language zone that Igboland represents. We must recreate social responsibility for one another through a national cooperative movement in the idiom of our glorious past. We must invest at home through well-run cooperatives that will bond people once more in love and care. We must think of a well mentored youth population now. Our generation lost cognateness with youth for the whole of two generations (60 years) and nothing has been done to appropriately mentor them into security in our tribe and homeland.
Existing institutions are elitist and cannot take us out of the woods if our penchant for short term gains subsists. We must recreate ourselves into a cooperative force that is pervasive and relevant to the majority. We must cater for all classes in cooperative endeavours that must have the wealthy put together funds for the diligent hoe to get back into production. We must have food in abundance before we get into industry related with our need for food and thence to industry for local consumption and export in line with economic development paradigms that have found acceptability worldwide.
From there, we must use our industry to export food to the rest of the continent in properly processed and packaged forms that will meet needs in growing urban centres first in West Africa, Africa and the rest of the world. We must ensure that our farmers have minimum post-harvest losses that have crippled their capital through the better part of 50 years of our drift into irrelevance.
We must create cooperative entities that will be funded to produce. Our efforts at banking in the past have been crippled by our neighbours and we can no longer rely on the public sector to move up. We must have a bank that will address the needs of our people without interference with hostile public sector agents that despise our industry.
I am proud to announce to this assembly of Igbo intellectuals and socio-political and economic giants that I joined a bunch of far-sighting younger men three years ago in All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) and Imo State (Owerri Municipal) Thrift and Investment Union and with both organs we have created the first Nationwide Microfinance Bank Limited to cater for Nigerians of the future in cooperative idiom. We have received Approval in Principle (AiP) from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to commence operation, and cooperatives have been alerted to subscribe to shares in the bank.
Beginning with Imo, we have rationalised over 1,000 cooperative entities for participation in the bank. All other parts of Igboland must do the same. Cooperatives must be bonded in love and concern for welfare of each and every member. We must grow ourselves by the same principles that led us to leadership of Nigeria technocracy over eight decades ago. We must fend for our teeming offspring and hold them with love and cooperative spirit. We must bring them into awareness of their onerous task of bonding together again and subscribing creative energies to Project Nigeria and so retain relevance outside government from which we have been shut out on account of our own greed and envy of our neighbours.
We must leave political leadership for all time. We must harness our people from frittering resources in vain pursuit of power. But we must ensure pooling our votes for whom we want to protect our own interests. We must make choices in concert prior to elections and support with our pervasive population those who would guarantee us space to create products and services for Nigerians and Africans. We must latch on to industrialism with cooperative movements of all kinds.
We have established for Imo about 40 commodity and service groups to grow into national and international relevance from humble beginnings. We have plans for Commodity Exchanges and Capital Trading Points in various parts of Igboland. We have created South East Communities Development Association (SECDA) for the purpose of reaching every community in Igboland with our objective of developing Igboland through cooperation with love and social responsibility for one another. We are mobilising them already to participate in First Nationwide Microfinance Bank Limited. We shall need committed patriots to drive the bank. We must learn to trust again. We must learn to love again before we can grow our people in the right direction.
All organisations formed on Igbo cause should melt into this vehicle for the sake of our youth and our positive futures. We can only be united when basic needs are met for our majority who are young people. We must create an ambience now for them to have a future or we perish in their drift and proclivity to crime for want of appropriate mentoring.
The vehicle is now in place. Let the repair of the Igbo psyche now commence with the fruits of The Colloquium on Igbo Question now being served us within this symbolic and iconic environment. May it be well with our people all over the world through growing love and concern for one another! Amen.