Dear Mr Nwachuku
Your article titled “How to hate Igbos” published on the Point Blank News website on 31 October 2015, makes interesting reading.
I say this because you fell into the penchant of our Igbo compatriots to, at the slightest opportunity, assume a persecution complex and levy grave allegations against their fellow compatriots.
From your rendition of the background to the crisis, it appears to me that a little bit of sensitivity to his host’s culture and sensibility by the self-styled Eze Ndi Igbo of Akure, Gregory Iloehika, should have avoided an unnecessary controversy.
As the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) rightly pointed out, it is against Yoruba customary laws, which are a part of the laws of Nigeria, to have two crowned heads in the same domain.
Hence, it was crassly insensitive and hubristic for Iloehika, who himself should normally be a subject of the Deji of Akure, Aladelusi Aladetoyinbo, to go to the palace of Aladetoyinbo wearing a crown, especially in such a charged situation.
While I deplore the reception the youths gave to Iloehika at the palace, this is what happens when we are insensitive to the feelings of other people; more so in a society like ours that runs more on self, than official, regulation.
Once you take the laws into your own hands, you cannot predict or prevent what other parties will do.
Thus, in reacting to our insensitivity and insensibility, the other party may over react, sometimes to the extent of, or even greater than, our own indiscretions.
In life, there are no consequent-free choices.
Your insinuation that the title of Eze Ndi Igbo was created by Yoruba obas for pecuniary benefits is not quite true. This “illegal title” is assumed by most leaders of Igbo communities outside Igbo land, overseas inclusive.
All settler communities living in Yoruba land are often encouraged by Yoruba obas to have leaders recognised by their courts, which serve as links between the courts and the communities.
It is the Igbo brand of this leadership that transformed itself into, and is now appropriating the rights of, a king. And that is where the problem arises.
There are no absolute rights. All rights are given, and are expected to be exercised within the bounds of reason and the law.
A person’s right to freely live anywhere in Nigeria should never be construed to mean the right to constitute a nuisance in his abode. Rights come with responsibilities, and should not be used as a licence for impunity.
A brief word on “expansionism”. When a man declares himself a king, it presupposes that he has a kingdom. So, tell me, where is Iloehika’s kingdom?
Not too long ago, some Igbo treated us to an argumentum ad nauseum to the effect that Lagos was “no man’s land”, as if when they or their predecessors got to Lagos they did not meet an established people, culture, tradition and institutions.
Soon after that argument came the now familiar insistencies of the Eze Ndi Igbo contending on wearing a crown in the kingdoms of Yoruba kings.
Properly contextualised, it does not take the mind of a rocket scientist to guess where the argument in Akure and Lagos may eventually lead.
Hence, when ARG asks Ndi Igbo to obey the laws of its land, it is merely saying the obvious and not preaching hatred.
This, in a way, is in the best interest of peaceful coexistence among the various communities in Yoruba land and among the Igbos themselves.
The rate at which this meaningless title is mushrooming among diaspora Igbo also portends danger for these communities. I gather that three Eze Ndi Igbo are in court in Oyo State slugging it out on who should be the rightful occupant of that post.
Thank God they are being civil about it at the moment; however, with the seeming power, resources and influence the post commands there is no guarantee that things will remain civil.
You seem to want to have it both ways when you take offence at ARG referring to Igbo, who insist on being, first and foremost, Igbo in Yoruba land as migrants.
And you really cannot. Because, if an Igbo man leaves the Igbo heartlands on the assumption that he was, first and foremost, Nigerian before he was Igbo, and therefore entitled to settle and live in any part of Nigeria, this same Igbo man cannot, upon arriving his destination, insist that he wants to be, first and foremost, Igbo, before he is Nigerian.
However, if he insists, then there will be no other name to call him than a migrant, because he will not be autochthonous to his host community!
Yoruba custom and tradition enjoin them to treat people who come to live with them as a part of them, but if you do not want to belong then that is your choice.
One thing most intriguing in this controversy is why a people who credit themselves with being republicans suddenly become enamoured with the institution of kingship, to the extent that they are prepared to allow it to endanger and eclipse their life’s work and endeavours.
Barring the fact that you are listening to those demagogues and paranoid megalomaniacs on Radio Biafra London, Yoruba land still remains the place where Igbo lives and property are safest in Nigeria.
Even in the darkest days of our nation, an estimated 50,000 Igbo lived in Lagos unmolested.
And, if the claim by the Igbo themselves is true that they make up 45 per cent of the current population of Lagos, then that population has grown by over 150 times since the end of the Civil War – and that is just in Lagos, a part of Yoruba land.
Nowadays it is common to hear of successful Lagos-based Igbo refusing to undertake the traditional homewards migration at festive times because of fear for their safety on their home soil.
I have also heard testimonies of Igbo living abroad who hire bodyguards to travel to their home towns in the South East and discard them immediately they arrive Lagos.
Going by the 2006 census and the claims of the Igbo themselves, Igbo living in Lagos constitute 1.94 times the population of Anambra State – the most populous of all the five core Igbo states and 2.00 times the population of Imo State – the second most populous of the core Igbo states.
The combined population of Abia, Ebonyi and Enugu States less than the population of Igbo living in Lagos. Outside the Igbo heartlands, Yoruba land still remains the only place with constituencies represented by ethnic Igbos.
The same Ondo State where this controversy has triggered the most recent charge of Yoruba hatred of the Igbo, did, between 1999 and 2003, field an Igbo House of Assembly member, who rose to become the speaker and de jure number three citizen in the state.
If a people and their land have given Igbo so much space, latitude, opportunity and cordiality to expand, achieve, increase and prosper; why do the Igbo still insist that this same people hate them? And what would the love of the Yorubas look like?
Even if as you allege, it was true that Yorubas hate Igbo, need you also not ask why it is always the Igbo alleging hatred against other people?
In South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, Goa (India), and even in Gabon – which is believed to have a head of state of Igbo descent – there have been reports of the Igbo communities being at loggerheads with sections of the local population.
Do those people also hate Igbo? Instead of their tendency to fly into a persecution complex at the slightest opportunity need there not be deep introspection by our Igbo compatriots?
The persecution complex that our Igbo compatriots are ever so quick to assume is quite unfortunate; and it becomes more so when the ember of such persecution complex is fanned by those who are supposed to know better.
Best wishes
Oluremi Olu