0merta: An Igbo becoming the President of Nigeria?

That's like saying Genevieve Nnaji is a Virgin!

Impossible!

0merta: An Igbo becoming the President of Nigeria?

That's like saying Genevieve Nnaji is a Virgin!

Impossible!

Delydex: How Emeka Ojukwu’s war of blame has made the Igbo marginal players in Nigeria (1)

There is a common saying that truth is very bitter. Indeed, my experience is that very few people are really able to handle the truth, especially when it has to do with them. As a result, they tend to live a lie, while some others construct grand illusions and remain in them.
There are some basic truths about the Igbo in Nigeria today. Two of such are self evident. The first is that the typical Igbo is deeply unhappy with his lot in Nigeria and believes that both the Nigerian state and successive governments at the centre are not only biased against them, but also effectively marginalize them. Perhaps unknown to many Nigerians, this feeling of marginalization is deeply felt by the Igbo and permeates their entire being. During the hey days of military rule, the story of Igbo marginalization was like a swan song. It also reverberated rather loudly especially during the early period of former president Olusegun Obansojo’s first term as president. The rise of Niger Delta militancy and the strident agitation for resource control upstaged the issue of Igbo marginalization from the centrestage of national discourse. So, it is not that the Igbo have stopped feeling marginalized, rather it is that their voices have been drowned out by the better calibrated voices of other groups, who experience their own group challenges.




The current champions in that regards is the North, whose extremist and fundamentalist wing, BOKO HARAM, has forced the issue of ”Northern neglect and poverty” to the centre of both national and international discourse. The BOKO HARAM campaign of violence has been so successful that the world is now talking of measures to address the mass poverty and under development of the North. However, what I find so very curious in the whole issue, is the refusal of diverse commentators to locate the issue of poverty in the North within the context of its true cause.
The North chose freely, to embrace poverty by its rejection of Western education, enterprise and modernity. Afterall, as Boko Haram aptly captured, western education is ”haram,” evil! Pray, tell me, how can anyone enrich a decidedly illiterate population in the modern age? It is a fundamental principle of economic theory that wealth creation is a consequence or derivative of value addition. So how can anyone enrich a people who have no skills or value to add? Of course some would argue that the first order of business in such a circumstance would be to educate such a people. But then how do you educate people who believe intrinsically that education is an inherent sin, punishable by death?



Nevertheless, despite such glaring realities, the dominant narrative, locally and internationally, is that violence in the North was primarily caused by poverty, and that poverty was created by the disparity in the allocation of Nigeria’s oil wealth. Nigeria, according to the Americans, is made up of a rich South and a poor North. According to this warped logic, the wealth of the Nigerian nation was used to develop the south at the detriment of the North! What an asinine joke! In which country did that happen? This same Nigeria, which had been ruled and dominated by a succession of Northerners? No, sirs! It is simply most untrue. The truth of the poverty in the North is more accurately located in the choices both Northern leaders and Northerners made. Their choice was to be the Lords of the Nigerian nation, the privileged class who were maintained by the state.

Successive Northern leaders of Nigeria promoted a culture of cronyism and nepotism, favouring mainly Northerners in the choice of top managers of state-owned institutions, even strategic ones, and nurturing a culture of dependence and patronage. Thus the average Northerner lacked the requisite incentive to excel in virtually any field. As an undergraduate at the University of Calabar in the early 80′s, my school mates who hailed from the North were paid level 8 salaries as bursaries. Poor me, the then Imo state government never paid me a kobo. Even at that, you could count on your fingertips the number of students from the North. Today, there are still more candidates from Imo state applying for the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board Examination, (JAMB) than candidates from the whole nineteen states of the North. And Kano state is hardly an exception. Oyo and Edo sates each offer more candidates for JAMB examination each year than the entire Northern states put together.

The true facts of contemporary Nigerian history is that the North has not been marginalized. Rather, consistent with the old Peter’s principle of management, the North has merely risen to its level of incompetence.

The wonder however, is why this intellectual fallacy of Northern marginalization has not been challenged? Where are the Southern intellectuals, academics and journalists? The answer is shocking and demoralizing. The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as the Southern intellectual or public commentator. What there is in truth, is the South West intellectual and public commentator. During the years of military rule and Northern domination of political power, it was the Yoruba intellectual and activist who mounted a sustained campaign against the North. Since the emergence of President Jonathan and the rise of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Yoruba leader, there has been a redefinition of Yoruba strategic interests, and “enemies.” It would now appear as if the Yoruba interest is in tandem with the interests of the North while the archetypal Northerner, no longer fits within the Yoruba definition of “enemies”.



The enemy now is apparently President Jonathan, “the son of a drunken fisherman”, in Bola Tinubu’s infamous barb. And because Tinubu is in defacto control of the mass media, the voice of the Yoruba intellectual, hitherto vibrant and eloquent, has been muted. As a result, patently erroneous narratives have been allowed to gain currency.
Some would wonder why the Igbo voice has been muted and why there is no whimper from the South/South. Well, for the South/South, there is no distinct voice. Whereas it is true that a large segment of the media is owned by the South/South, it is the world view of the South/West that dominates the media. The South/South voice has therefore been eclipsed by the South/West. As for the Igbo, its lack of a voice is part of the loss of relevance that has been its lot since Emeka Ojukwu launched his war of blame in 1967. In truth, the Igbo march into irrelevance began even before then. It started that fateful day when one Igbo Army Officer, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, embarked on a shooting spree in a misguided bout of patriotism.



It was then accelerated by the crass naivety of another Igbo man, Major General J.T.U Aguiyi Ironsi, who enacted the notorious Decree 33 that sought to unify Nigeria, thereby effectively terminating the wonderful regional system of government which had so greatly served Nigeria well. The final nail on the Igbo coffin was nailed by Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, whose decision to take his ill-prepared people to war must rank as one of the worst strategic policy blunders of the 21st century. As Dr Nnamdi Azikwe once said of him: “Emeka Ojukwu’s capacity for wrong judgement is monumental.”
The great tragedy of the Igbo is that they fought a war, which in all honesty should not have been fought, and especially in such a manner.



The consequences of that war have made the Igbos, their children and children’s children marginal members of the Nigeria state. Sadly, Igbos do not seem to know this. So they locate their pathetic situation within different causative factors and thus keep blundering under the load of self-pity, marginalization, recrimination and group impotence. Unknown to many Nigerians, almost every Igbo including some of their best and brightest, feels deep anger and frustration, whether they are in government or out of it. Amazingly, even under President Jonathan, allegedly the first “Igbo President “of Nigeria, the feelings of marginalization have not abated. If anything it has even worsened in some ways and across the Igbo country, today, there is despair, sadness and quiet bitterness. Many Igbos ask quietly and often privately, “what do we have to show for all our support for him (Jonathan)?