Between 250 CE and 1948, Jews were expelled from Europe over 80
times. That is, in 1,700 years, people in Europe expelled the Jews at the
average rate of once every 21 years.
It happened in France, England, Spain, Portugal, Germany and dozens of
other countries. These countries in their own characteristic ways rose
up one day to declare that they were tired of hosting Jews and
tolerating their behaviors and accepting their attitude that whatever land
they lived in was no man’s land. These Europeans claimed they were
more charitable, hospitable, accommodating and generous to the Jews
than any other nationality, but the Jews abused it. They demanded that
all Jews leave or be vanquished. They said they tried but they could not
see any good Jew to make them change their minds.
Historians who have studied the phenomenon came up with the usual
explanations given as the reason why Jews were expelled. Here are six
typical reasons (from history books and online sources) as expressed in
popular quotes used during each expulsion, massacre and persecution.
1.) "We hate Jews because they possess too much wealth and power."
2.) "We hate Jews because they arrogantly claim that they are the
chosen people." 3.) "Jews are a convenient group to single out and
blame for our troubles." 4.) "We hate Jews because they killed Jesus."
5.) "We hate Jews because they are different than us." 6.) "We hate
Jews because they are an inferior race."
Historians have examined these reasons in order to see if they were
causes of the hatred or the excuses for the hatred. Historians propound
that if they are causes, once the cause is taken away, the hatred will
vanish. But if the cause is taken away and the hatred remains, then, it is
mere excuse.
On the economic reason which says that Jews possess too much wealth
that causes envy and resentment, historians found out that the Polish
and Russian Jews of the 17th -20th century were “dirty poor” yet, they
were hated. When the Jews are doing well, the myth that they have a
plan to rule the world by controlling governments and financial
establishments took shape in the fictional work called, The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion. Though it has been debunked as fiction, it remains a
bestselling book in the world.
On the idea that the Jews were claiming to be the chosen ones,
historians noted that the Jews of Germany in the 19th century denied
the concept of being the chosen ones. Many of them assimilated with
mainstream Germans, abandoning their language and culture and ways
of life. Yet, when the holocaust started, it did not save them. And the
Larry Kings of America, who changed their names to hide their identities
and those who are not practicing Jews like Madam Albright, have not
been spared as objects of hate. Surprisingly, in today’s world, it is the
Christians and the Muslims who openly claim that they are the ones
chosen by God and nobody can get to God except through their
intermediaries- Jesus and Muhammad. But they don’t get the kind of
hatred that the Jews get.
The scapegoating of the Jews, especially in difficult economic and
political times, is not a cause but rather an excuse. To scapegoat, you
must first of all hate. Hitler conveniently used Jews as scapegoat
because the hatred was already there. It made it easy for Germans to
believe that Jews were the reason they lost World War I and why the
German economy was fluttering. The fifth reason, that the Jews killed
Jesus, falls flat when the Christian Bible says that the Romans killed
Jesus with the help of Jews but the hatred was reserved for Jews alone.
The Roman Catholic Church, in its Second Vatican Council in 1963, had
to officially exonerate the Jews, but the hatred continued.
The idea that the Jews were outsiders should have waned with the
increase in Jewish assimilation over the years. But it didn’t. Instead, the
complaint changed. In Germany, it turned into: "We hate you, not
because you're different, but because you're trying to become like us!
We cannot allow you to infect the Aryan race with your inferior genes."
The final reason is that “we hate the Jews because they are an inferior
race.” The Jews are not a race, to begin with.
This is how Rabbi Kalman Packouz put the dilemma of the Jews. “Every
other hated group is hated for a relatively defined reason,” he wrote.
“We Jews, however, are hated in paradoxes: Jews are hated for being a
lazy and inferior race - but also for dominating the economy and taking
over the world. We are hated for stubbornly maintaining our
separateness - and, when we do assimilate - for posing a threat to
racial purity through intermarriages. We are seen as pacifists and as
warmongers; as capitalist exploiters and as revolutionary communists;
possessed of a Chosen-People mentality, as well as of an inferiority
complex. It seems that we just can't win.”
In 2005, Okey Ndibe wrote a piece he called, "Thou Shall Not Rent to
Igbo." In it he brought to the fore the discriminatory challenges Igbo
tenants were facing in finding apartments to rent in Lagos. In a
rejoinder titled, "Igboman can be a good Tenant,” Kola Akomolede's
argued that it was not only Yoruba landlords who do not want the Igbo
tenant but landlords of other ethnicities, including some Igbo landlords.
He suggested that the real problem was the nature of the Igbo man and
not the discrimination against Igbo tenants which he made every effort
to justify. He suggested that Ohanaeze should advice Igbo men to
"change their attitude and behave like gentlemen."
European intellectuals, including some Jews, made similar appeal to
Diaspora Jews across Europe before Hitler came. Many Jews bought
into it. They changed their names and many abandoned their religion all
together. Some intermarried with Germans. But when Hitler came, it did
not save them.
Instead of finding practical structures based on law and order to deal
with universal issues between tenants and landlords, Akomolede made
flimsy arguments like the one about the Igbo with "good background"
being good tenants. Property consultants and owners, he suggested,
should care about good background of tenants. He finally fell back on
the popular refrain that the Yoruba are the most accommodating nation
in Nigeria.
We have heard that line before. And we are hearing a lot of it today.
Some have observed that beneath the issue of discrimination against
Igbo tenants is the bigger and subtle issue - the battle for Lagos.
That battle for Lagos has actually come out in the open.
Common with all things Nigeria, Akomolede's greatest failure was in
subscribing to the predominant Igbo stereotype on the basis of which he
demanded a change in the nature of the Igbo. "Stereotypes are not
necessarily malicious," once cautioned Chinua Achebe. "They may be
well meaning and even friendly. But in every case they show a
carelessness or laziness or indifference of attitude that implies that the
object of your categorization is not worth the trouble of individual
assessment." That’s how the action of a man or a group of people in
Nigeria is often ascribed to the action of an ethnic or religious group.
The old conventional wisdom was that of Samora Machel: 'For the
nation to live, the tribe must die.' The new conventional wisdom is that,
the tribe can live as long as it wants. But for the nation to live, impunity
must die; citizens’ rights must be respected; law and order must be
established and enforced, irrespective of ethnicity, religion or creed.
On the one hand, since 1914, the primary question of Nigeria has been
the Igbo question. There are other important questions, but in the
answer to the Igbo question comes the understanding of all the other
questions. On the other hand, the primary tragedy of the Igbo is that
they are living in a Nigeria that is yet to come, if it ever comes.
The innocence of the Igbo ended long time ago. It ended before 1945
when some Northern elements in Jos first rose up and massacred Igbo
people. When it was repeated in 1953 in Kano, the British inquiry
reported that, "No amount of provocation, short-term or long term, can
in any way justify their (Northern Nigerians) behavior." The British
report went further to warn that "the seeds of the trouble which broke
out in Kano on May 16 (1953) have their counterparts still in the
ground. It could happen again, and only a realization and acceptance of
the underlying causes can remove the danger."
Of course, it happened again. It happened in all of northern Nigeria in
1966, Kano in 1980, Maiduguri in 1982, Jimeta in 1984, Gombe in 1985,
Kaduna & Kafanchan in 1991, Bauchi, Kastina, & Kano in 1991, Zango-
Kataf in 1992, Funtua in 1993, Kano in 1994. Since 1999, over 10,000
people have been killed in more than a dozen incidents of religious/
ethnic conflicts. And since 2009, over 4000 people have died in Boko
Haram attacks. The dispossession and displacement of Igbo people
once desired by the leaders of the Northern House of Assembly in the
60s have now been achieved by Boko Haram in the 2010s. In places
like Maiduguri only death-defying Igbo stayed put. Even those types
have sent their wives and children home.
Usually, before Igbo bloods were spilled, it was customarily preceded by
arguments in several quarters, official and unofficial, in the media and
in secrecy, about the disdain of the very nature of the Igbo and the need
for Igbo to change. In Northern Nigeria of 1964, there were calls in the
Northern House of Assembly to revoke forthwith all Certificates of
Occupancy from the hands of the Igbo residents in the region.
Lawmakers stood up in the assembly and promised to find ways to do
away with the Igbo. Alhaji Ibrahim Musa Gashash, O.B.E and Minister
of Land and Survey, told the assembly in March of 1964 the following:
"Having heard their demand about Ibos holding land in Northern Nigeria,
my ministry will do all it can to see that the demands of members are
met. How to do this, when to do it, all this should not be disclosed. In
due course, you will all see what will happen. (Applause)".
The Northern People's Congress, NPC, followed Alhaji Gashash's
promise by issuing a booklet called SALAMA: Facts must be faced. This
booklet portrayed the Igbo in a very bad light and gave the masses in
the North the sense that the Igbo were the source of all their problems.
At the same time, the government of Western Nigeria also issued their
own booklet called UPCAISM in which the Igbo, called "strangers," were
depicted as land grabbers who must be removed from Western lands
and government positions. The booklets also displayed pictures of
shops and stores owned by the Igbo and indulged in undue character
assassination.
The military coup of 1966 presented a pretext to carry out a plan that
had been laid out years before. It was a plan that aimed at a total
extermination of the Igbo or, at least, their containment. The pogrom
and the brutal war that followed was the final solution to the perceived
Igbo problems in Nigeria. When Anthony Enahoro traveled round the
globe arguing that starvation was a weapon of war, he was following
the script for the total extermination of the Igbo. When Benjamin
Adekunle boasted to foreign reporters, "I want to see no Red Cross, no
Caritas, no World Council of Churches, no Pope, no missionary and no
UN delegation. I want to prevent even one Ibo from having even one
piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that moves
and when our troops march into the centre of Ibo territory, we shoot at
everything even at things that do not move...," he was following the
same script.
Just like the once accommodating and charitable and hospitable and
generous Germany became a graveyard of Jews when Hitler came,
Nigeria became a graveyard of Igbo when Gowon came. And, equally,
like Germany, Nigeria failed to accomplish the final solution plan. The
only difference was that the Jews learnt from that horrible Holocaust
experience and formed their own country while the Igbo failed in that
struggle for Biafra and returned to embrace Nigeria as if nothing had
happened. Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of
Stanford University and a renowned scholar on Races and World
Economies wrote that, "Most of the great mindless slaughters of the
20th century -- whether of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the
kulaks in the Soviet Union, the Jews in Germany, the I[g]bo in Nigeria or
the Tamils in Sri Lanka -- have been slaughters of those who
dramatically eclipsed the accomplishments of others."
The kulaks were liquidated. The Armenians, the Jews and the Tamils
are struggling and still fighting to keep the memories alive and stop it
from ever happening again. The Igbo on their part, forgot what
happened and why. But the Nigerian elements, disappointed in their
unfinished job, have not forgotten. Instead, they are busy preparing for
the final battle. Those in doubt should listen when they remind the Igbo
openly that “history will repeat itself.” In ways subtle and covetous, they
are laying the ground work for what we all know must come. They are
making public and closed door speeches in which they are promising
that "how to do this, when to do this, will not be disclosed." The seed of
the trouble, as far as these Nigerian elements see it, is in the nature of
the Igbo. As long as Igbo will not denounce their Igboness, it will happen
again. And this time, it may be a total annihilation, from Port Harcourt
to Lagos on to Gusau via Abuja.
Acknowledged, it has been difficult, and will always be difficult, for the
rest of Nigeria to interpret the Igbo life and worldview. There is a big
difference between what the Igbo think and what others think the Igbo
think. This misunderstanding, in many quarters, has continued to be
transformed into inert hatred. The myth of the Igbo constantly in the
face of Nigerians everywhere, has proved very difficult for many to
decipher.
In a 2005 Igbo Day keynote speech titled, The Primacy of Political or
Economic power: The Igbo Dilemma, Professor Anya O. Anya noted that:
“There is an inherent paradox and contradiction in the lgboman's place
in Nigeria. On the one hand given his industry, his intelligence and his
enterprise, the Igboman is a desirable gift to Nigeria and the stuff of
which great nations and great civilizations can be built. On the other
hand, given his presumptive confidence in his abilities and his
unabashed hunger to succeed at whatever cost, he engenders fear and
unwelcome visibility amongst his compatriots. His lack of subtlety, his
drive to overcome and his insatiable "greed" for material progress
engenders resentment and often inexplicable, and perhaps, undeserved
hostility in the host communities. His "loud" style of Life and the facility
with which he can adapt to and adopt new ways can also be unsettling
to foreign cultural formations that have come in contact with the lgbo
including the colonial masters. There is thus an underlying sense of
conflict in the lgbo presence in Nigeria.”
For those who care but do not know and those who know but do not
care, the Igbo are not perfect. Like so many other groups, the Igbo have
those uncommon human frailties and foibles as well as unique virtues
and wisdoms. When their sense of vanity is heightened, their sense of
modesty is diminished. When their sense of belonging is enhanced, their
sense of variance is lessened. The Igbo know that things others did to
them were many but the things they did to themselves were more.
(Apologies Prof. Chieka Ifemesia). But the Igbo history warrants that the
Igbo must keep eternal vigilance – chasing away the prey while scolding
the chick.
In trying to find an answer many observers of negativity in Igbo life
seek, I stumbled on "The Focus of Igbo Worldview," a paper presented
by Prof. Donatus I. Nwoga. In it he wrote:
“The opportunity which the present times have given for the
predominant attributes of the Igbo to blossom into the ugliness of
materialistic indiscipline, and lack of grace and finesse, must not be
taken to represent the all-time behavior of the Igbo. A characteristic
which could have been favorable and positive in one phase of the
history of a people, which could again be positive and beneficial in
another phase, could present the greatest negative consequences in a
transitional phase. In practical terms, the attributes which make the Igbo
appear vulgar and materialistic at this phase, could be the same
attributes that made them achieving and titled people in the past. The
present could merely be revealing the impact of new, uncharted times to
the chaotic instinct in those who had been restrained by the limiting
structures and facilities of the ordered past. And it is important to retain
then the diachronic consciousness that transitional people have the
handicap of having lost the grace and poetry of their past, without yet
acquiring the grace and poetry, or at least the discipline and sanctions
of the modern.”
The duty those who believe in Nigeria owe to this transitioning Nigeria
is to give her a structure. In a structured Nigeria where there is law and
order, people will be treated as individuals according to the laws of the
land. Those who currently take advantage of the disorder in Nigeria
would have to get in line or face the letters of the law. In a just and
equitable society, those who are industrious, honest and creative will
soar. Until then, those who dream of changing the nature of the Igbo or
any ethnic group for that matter are confounded with many paradoxes.
The fundamental truth is that the Igbo, as part of humanity, have the
right to live anywhere - with or without Nigeria. Let it be known that the
original sin of the Igbo has not changed and will never change - it is the
sin of being Igbo. It is from it that all other sins emerge and get
magnified. The Igbo have nothing to prove and must not begin a
defense of that right or a discussion of their Igboness on the terms of
others. It is a matter of expediency for the Igbo to know this and for the
Igbo to understand its implication in their final battle for survival.
If the Igbo had not embraced western education in the mid-1930s and
overtaken the rest of Nigeria thirty years after; if the Igbo had not
accepted Nigeria and emigrated from their tropical rain forest of the
east to all corners of Nigeria; maybe, the pogrom would not have
happened.
For many, a good Igbo is one who is only Igbo in his home; who is not
Igbo everyday and everywhere; who is apologetic for being Igbo, and
who wears the following expression on his forehead: "how dare you
assume I am Igbo?"
Though my last name is as Igbo as they come, I’m sure that I’m not a
good Igbo man. I do not conform to every man’s definition of an Igbo,
including definition by the Igbo themselves. But that should not be a
problem, unless you are Femi Fani-Kayode and his like.
There are serious people vigorously dedicated to the search for a good
Igbo man or woman. I enthusiastically applaud them. And I must add,
with all honesty, “Bros, Good luck with that!”