When Ike Ekweremadu, the senator for Enugu West and former deputy senate president, accepted the invite to attend the annual “New Yam” festival of the Igbo community in Germany, held on Saturday at Nuremberg, he must have thought it was going to be a routine “meet the plebs” tour that is typical of the Nigerian elite, where they get off their high horses and allow a bunch of sycophants perform a bout of arse-licking.

What happened next could turn out to be a game-changer in putting the fear of the people at the heart of Nigerian politics. Members of the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) reportedly pelted the senator with eggs, dragged him from the venue, roughed him up a bit, and he was lucky to be bundled into a waiting car that sped off.

Watching the images that went viral over social media, reminded me strangely of when Denmark beat Nigeria 4-1 at the World Cup in 1998. George Kay, a DJ at London’s Choice FM, said then that he always thought “Nigeria had a good beating coming its way”. Nigerian politicians have been literally and figuratively getting away with murder since civilian rule returned in 1999. They use armed thugs to rig elections, which allow them to gain power and access to obscene wealth – in the case of senators $2m a year in a country where over 70% are below the poverty line.

Then they flaunt their wealth in the faces of their disenfranchised people with mansions in Nigeria and all over the world. Ekweremadu is no exception to this, going from a lawyer struggling to make ends meet in 1999 to stupendous wealth from first becoming chief of staff to the Enugu State governor and then a senator from 2003.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/videos/Igbos-egging-of-ike-ekweremadu-a-case-of-chickens-coming-home-to-roost/