By Oguwike Nwachuku
On August 21, President Muhammadu Buhari assigned portfolios to 43 ministers, his team to actualise his “Next Level” slogan.
The inauguration came six months after his re-election, and three months after taking the oath of office.
Most of the cabinet are carry-overs from the “Change We Need” canticle that rent the air in 2015 when Buhari won Aso Rock on the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC).
“Change We Need” has given way for the “Next Level”. Buhari is the conductor of the orchestra comprising 43 ministers as choristers.
My intervention this week is hardly on the choice of Buhari’s cabinet because from hindsight, one can deduce where our “Next Level” would be as the ship of state sails from now till 2023.
In fact, that some of them are linked directly or indirectly to the 2023 power game makes it even easier to decipher.
However, for those who may be in doubt as to what awaits all of us on board this ship called Nigeria, I invite you to take a second look at the merriment after the swearing in of the ministers.
While Buhari gave an assurance that he had done his utmost to assembly the best hands, the post inauguration events where most of them were caught on camera in lavish merriment and accolade betrayed his great expectation.
What such pomp that heralded the “Next Level” ministers portends is that most of them, particularly the returnees, are well aware they are on the last leg of the race and cannot afford not to help themselves as time waits for no one.
After all, the only thing that matters in Nigeria today is politics, and woe betide you if you miss the opportunity to advance your selfish interest and those of your family, friends and associates.
Many Nigerians believe that several ministers got the jobs on political patronage. Most who never expected to be reappointed were picked, meaning Buhari gave them a “thank you very much kind of appointment.”
His good intentions in the appointments are negated by doubts in the portfolio entrusted to some of them, contrary to their areas of strength or core competences gleaned from their screening in the Senate.
I wish all of them well in their jobs in the national interest. But it bothers me that the leadership deficit in this country keeps widening.
A big incident that occurred the same week Buhari inaugurated his ministers, which also shows leadership failure, affected a key player in Nigerian politics, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who was assaulted in Germany by his kinsmen.
I do not know whether the tension created by the assault on the former deputy Senate president has subsided.
Many desire that the situation dies completely and never to resurrect because the scene of that assault evokes a sad memory of what ought not to happen to one believed to be occupying a leadership position both in one’s geopolitical area and in one’s country.
I have watched the video where Ekweremadu was assaulted many times and dare say it was enormously humiliating and undermined his social standing in many ways.
The aspect that got me worried was where Ekweremadu was made to run to nowhere in particular for his dear life at the venue of a so-called Igbo festival in Nuremberg, Germany.
Not only did Ekweremadu appear dazed by that unexpected confrontation, deep inside him, he would have thought what befell him was a cheap death orchestrated by those he takes for low level persons.
I join other numerous Nigerians to stoutly condemn the despicable attitude of those who took responsibility for the assault – members of the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).
Ekweremadu did not deserve what was done to him.
IPOB members said they arranged the assault and blamed him and others for leadership failure in the South East.
What they did to him and plan to do to other Igbo leaders also amounts to leadership failure if coercion and violence are their strategy.
They accused Ekweremadu of being instrumental to Operation Python Dance that Buhari directed the army to unleash on the South East in 2017.
IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who was standing trial for treason before his bail, believed Operation Python Dance was instigated to take him out of circulation.
It has been over emphasised that the attack on Ekweremadu was uncalled for, misplaced and an attack on the image of the Igbo.
Ekweremadu himself understands the wider implication of the ugly incident which explains why he said he had forgiven his assailants.
Reading the open letter Ohanaeze Ndigbo President General, John Nwodo, wrote recently, I asked if he needed to have gone to that extent to convince IPOB of his good intentions for his people.
But Nwodo had to because IPOB has also deployed blackmail against him and some Igbo leaders.
Branding every Igbo leader anti-Igbo is as dangerous. The Igbo know their leaders and do not play to the gallery when dealing with them.
Except those who are given to rabid hatred for someone, there is no Igbo person who will deny that Nwodo has acquitted himself creditably as an Igbo leader.
Let us even assume that Ekweremadu is selfish as IPOB claim since their expectation from him as deputy Senate president was not realised, but can anyone say the same of Nwodo?
Even at that, was Ekweremadu not one of the Igbo leaders who negotiated Kanu’s release from prison? Did he not criticise the tag of terrorism slammed on IPOB by federal government?
Perhaps, the fate that befell Ekweremadu would have been the lot of Nwodo if he went to the occasion because he was also invited like Ekweremadu.
If the Igbo adage that the thought to kill a person is always not hatched in a day is our guide, it goes without saying that it has been long since IPOB started nursing the intention to humiliate Nwodo and Ekweremadu.
Feelers from their quarters indicate that almost all Igbo leaders with the exception of Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe are on IPOB’s list for humiliation anywhere they are sighted outside the country.
Nwodo was not only one of the strongest voices against the deployment of Operation Python Dance to South East, he vehemently opposed the branding of IPOB as a terrorist group.
But with what happened to Ekweremadu and coupled with the threat calls and messages sent to Nwodo, it is doubtful if he still thinks the same way about IPOB and whatever the group stands for.
The Igbo generally believe that IPOB is a peaceful body. But how can they reconcile the same feeling now that every Igbo leader who differs from the modus operandi of IPOB is a saboteur and an anti-Igbo?
IPOB cannot in one breadth claim to be a peaceful organisation and in another resort to coercion and violence in pursuit of its objectives.
Nothing can be more glaring about the use of coercion than the assault on Ekweremadu in Germany and threat notes to Nwodo and other Igbo leaders who have been warned not to visit any country in Europe, Asia and even America as they would be attacked.
There are those who see Kanu as a pragmatic and intelligent leader. Former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, is one of them. Kanu’s followers, including women and the youth, also venerate him.
The question many of them are not asking is whether his leadership style would be better than that of those Kanu is rubbishing when eventually he is crowned the only Igbo standing in the whole universe for what he thinks he is that others are not.
But Kanu cannot be in the vanguard of humiliation of his fathers, uncles, brothers, in-laws and many more today in the name of IPOB struggle believing that such leadership style is sustainable even if his dream of a Republic of Biafra is actualised tomorrow.
The Igbo have suffered so much deprivation in Nigeria that what is required from its current leadership, aspiring leadership and even followers, is not the treatment meted to Ekweremadu regardless of whether he is selfish or what anyone perceives as his style of politics or leadership.
I won’t also be surprised if local politics is playing a role in what happened to Ekweremadu in Germany, going by the efforts he made recently to boost his image in the South East and consolidate his popularity.
We have heard, for instance, that he wants to be governor of Enugu in 2023, and many Enugu people are asking if he is the only person in the state who knows the definition of politics.
It would be a shame if IPOB made itself available to be drafted into a ploy to humiliate Ekweremadu and circumscribe his political image in South East ahead of 2023, hiding under what he was unable to do for the Igbo as deputy Senate president.
Anyone who doubts what leadership failure has done to the collective interest and psyche of Ndigbo should take a look at the list of scam artistes the United States Federal Investigation Bureau (FBI) unveiled last week.
First, it was Obinwanne Okeke, Chief Executive Officer of Invictus Group, reportedly arrested over cybercrime.
Okeke, 32, was once celebrated on the Forbes list as a positive influence on the global community and particularly the youth, as a genius. He was worth several millions of dollars, and plays in many sectors, according to Forbes.
Today, he is linked to a $12 million wire fraud, and all that he has acquired is believed to have emanated from crime.
Before now, Okeke was a global phenomenon, a good image for Nigeria.
He has suddenly become onye Igbo and analysts are beginning to say that Forbes was in a hurry to do proper background check on those it showcases as a gift to humanity.
Perhaps, they are right, because our society has become such where if a criminal is rich his kits and kin struggle to associate with him because of his riches. Are we then surprised to hear things like: Yes he is a thief, but he is our thief?
On another list of fraudsters also recently released by the FBI, 77 of the 80 suspects are Igbo and this has since set tongues wagging.
And do you have to blame the critics? Although it is obvious only the Igbo in Nigeria are not associated with crime of such category, but who wants to be associated with those comfortable with societal mores?
The Igbo boys in the net of the FBI plied their trade, criminal you will say, in Europe and America before luck ran out on them.
But imagine if the leadership in Nigeria and Igbo land was the right type that created enabling environment for positive talents to be harnessed and put to productive use?
There is leadership failure in Igbo land and elsewhere in Nigeria. Youth unemployment is taken for granted and has become a way of life.
Tertiary and secondary school graduates roam the streets after many years of leaving school, and the frustrated ones resort to crime.
In the light of suffering from years of unemployment the youth come face to face with a political leadership that has everything at their bet and call as far as good life is concerned, and at the disposal of their family and associates.
In a desperate move to survive, a lot of the youth leave Nigeria disguising as refugees only to anchor at camps that incubate crime and other social ills.
Pronto, the political leadership in Nigeria is replete with mounting deficit and for Buhari’s 43 wise men/women in his new cabinet to take the country to the much vaunted next level.
They must brace up to the reality that our image is sullied whether as Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa or as Nigerians because our leaders fail to do the right things.
The reason my heart bleeds over the 77 Igbo conmen the FBI unveiled recently is because they negatively affect the Igbo landscape with their ill-gotten wealth. Their attitude wreaks shamelessness.
To also say that the scammers are in the good books of many Igbo political leaders and traditional rulers who have desecrated the customs by giving them all manner of traditional recognition, is to say the least.
Not only are most of the fraudsters ill-educated, their lifestyle is laced with immorality and foolish arrogance.
Most of the things they do are a complete disconnect from acceptable Igbo norms that give credence to positive hard work, integrity, sincerity of purpose and respect to laws, customs and traditions.
Pray, if nothing is done quickly to ostracise them as perverts, in no time we will be having in our hands a new set of Igbo leadership who are criminals by virtue of ill-gotten wealth, and probably the choice of IPOB since they want to be calling the shots.
What the unveiling of the 77 con artists also tells us is nothing but the dangers inherent in misguided and erosion of family values. It tells us how much importance Ndigbo should attach to complete value-reorientation in Igbo land.
It does not matter if most of the fraudsters now in FBI net are Igbo naturalized United States citizens, what is key is that the world has become a global village, and that is why the crime they committed in the U.S. is being felt in Nigeria.
The least Ndigbo will do is to shield any of them within our sight from extradition to the U.S. in line with Nigerian law, as doing so will mean underscoring their criminal intents and further abuse of the Igbo integrity.
In all, however, unless we come together to deal with this epidemic that has caught up with the Igbo landscape where onye me re ke ya (do as you like) has gained root, the zoo that IPOB calls Nigeria may be an irony in the future when freedom is granted Ndigbo to be their own masters.