“To thy tents O Israel” was the trumpet blown by no other than a powerful Igbo personage, Peter Obi. He is the governor of the erstwhile most liberal Igbo state in Nigeria, Anambra.
He has now become fed up with pretending that Nigerians are of one nation. Obi first pealed the trumpet in support of Stella Oduah, the minister in whose charge some irregularities were fingered over purchases that violated standing orders. To Obi, nothing should happen to her if found culpable because she is Igbo.
How one had wished Obi and others who used the banner of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu had been fair to the man when he was alive. He didn’t enjoy Igbo support. One failed to find the Igbo oneness in politics because the former secessionist leader fared badly in the two presidential elections he contested in 2003 and 2007.
Igbos disgraced the gentleman who put his life on the line on their behalf to resist pogrom. It is unfortunate that Igbos did not show the same solidarity when he asked for their votes to occupy Nigeria’s presidential seat. Olusegun Obasanjo heavily defeated him in 2003, though he was sure that he would get Igbo votes in every state of Nigeria.
According to Ojukwu, Igbos are second in population in every state outside the South-east and adding their votes to those of the South-east, he would dust every other contestant.
Muhammadu Buhari, who did not boast of such an advantage, gave Obasanjo a run for his money. But for the massive rigging that attended the election, Ojukwu lost woefully in every state of the South-east to Obasanjo and Buhari. The picture was repeated in 2007 when he came far behind Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Buhari and Atiku Abubakar.
It is the same Ojukwu that Obi and his friends, who did not visibly rally to his electoral support, are deifying. This is dishonest and shows the type of people now leading Nigeria.
One’s immediate concern is Obi’s bold declaration that a Hausa man is unwelcome in Igbo land. Diminutive Nasir eI-Rufai has transformed to a phantom political giant since Obasanjo and Atiku upgraded him from a corridor boy to that height.
I don’t think any Igbo would notice el-Rufai in the swarming throng that Onitsha used to represent. Onitsha arguably is the second most densely populated city in Nigeria. Obi’s grudge with el-Rufai is not because the former minister of the Federal Capital Territory is a security risk. It is because he is a Hausa man and so he becomes a persona non grata in an lgbo state. Obi should be praised for airing his mind. El-Rufai ought to have got a visa or a permit for such a trip to an Igbo country.
Obi said he would not go to Katsina for any business, political or otherwise. Welcome to one Nigeria. If we are to use Ojukwu’s claim that Igbos are second in population in every state aside theirs in Nigeria, they become the most endangered if Obi’s policy is stretched as the rule.
There are about two million Igbos in Lagos alone. If Obi’s stand should be taken seriously, they become unwelcome in the former federal capital. Igbos command commercial respect in most Hausa states. El-Rufai is from Katsina. Should the role be reversed, it means the about half a million Igbos in that state alone would be given marching orders.
Obi has sown an irreversible wind the consequences of which may not be pleasant. It brings Nigeria to the real issue of nationality and dialogue. Most Lagos riots in 1999 and 2000 were caused by quarrels between Yorubas and Nigeriens. Hausas, unprovoked, always joined the Nigeriens to fight Yorubas who were fellow Nigerians.
That was natural sympathy for one of their kind linguistically and biologically. But we still pretend that we are one when we cannot identify properly our national interests.
There has been so much deceit in this country. Ojukwu declared Biafra and said it was for all Easterners. The Efiks, Ibibios, Annangs ljaws, Ogonis, Igbanis, Bokis and others formed a third of Eastern Nigeria then. In fact, it was an Efik, Eyo Ita, who moved the motion for the adoption of the declaration of Biafra. All the ethnic groups there suffered from the pogrom that triggered the hostilities. The minorities of the East fought gallantly on the field to actualise Biafra.
Later, Igbos changed the struggle to an ethnic one, estranging those who suffered the same fate as they did for a cause not of their making. Ojukwu, himself, while alive, gave no credit to the minority Easterners for the support they gave to him.
If the January 15, 1966 coup was the spark that caused the fire that led to hostilities, it would have been wrong to blame southern minorities for any share of the action. The coup was an Igbo–Yoruba plot that failed. But tactlessness on the part of the Igbo, like one has seen in Obi’s utterances, provoked the massive revenge that led to massacres and dismemberment. One cannot forget those tactful Igbo leaders like Nnamidi Azikiwe, Louis Mbanefo, Kingsley Mbadiwe, Mbonu Ojike, Chike Obi and others.
The late Chuba Okadigbo, a younger Benin boy than we were in the 1950s, once told me that only Igbos born or trained outside the East really understood Nigeria. He was economical with facts. All he wanted to say was that those raised locally in their homesteads hardly come to grips with the complexity of modern co-existence.
True, Mbazulike Amaechi and others cannot forget the freedom they enjoyed to operate politically in Benin in the late 1940s. It built them for national duties, shorn of the clannishness of the Obis. So there could not be a more opportune time than now to review and revisit Nigeria.
Comments
Post a Comment