March 27, 2023

The faux apologia of Seun Osewa

Professor Chidi Odinkalu

By Chidi Odinkalu

On or around March 20, 2023, two days after the ballot into the offices of state governors and state legislators which took place on March 18, one Seun Osewa issued what he ostentatiously titled: “An Apology to the Igbo People of Nigeria.” A 40-year-old graduate of one of Nigeria’s best universities, the Obafemi Awolowo University, in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Mr. Osewa is best known as the mind behind Nairaland, the rumbustious digital bulletin board where Nigerians trade all manner of things on the ether, from the sublime to the egregious.

Addressed to “the Igbo People”, the statement claimed to “sincerely apologise for allowing a toxic political banner advert which said: ‘Lagos can never be run from Anambra; go and vote’ to run on Nairaland for several hours on Wednesday, March 15, 2023.” It described the advertisement as part of “an ethnically divisive political campaign aimed at securing Lagos State for the ruling party by instilling fear in Yoruba people, making them believe that Igbo people intended to ‘take over’ Lagos State”.

Mr. Osewa ultimately blamed the advert on the absence of “clear policy against accepting negative and ethnically divisive ads on Nairaland” before generously disclosing that having made N16,000 (sixteen thousand Naira) from the advert, he will “double it and donate it to victims of political violence in Lagos”.


It is not entirely clear what Mr. Osewa hoped to achieve with his “apology”. The response he got was anything but generous. Journalist, Fisayo Soyombo, accused him of being among people who are “led by their pockets”. Techpreneur, Osaretin Asemota, dismissed the release as “performative nonsense”. Chibuzor Okoronkwo accused Mr. Osewa’s release of “putting more salt to the injury”.

Mr. Osewa’s apology hardly helped its author. First, it came from a place that hardly abjured collective punishment on grounds of immutable identity. Ethnic politics may be de rigeur but, in Nigeria, Igbos don’t have a right to vote; citizens do. Those citizens come from any number of over 389 ethnicity and over 500 language groups. No ethnic group votes as a herd in Nigeria. Dozie Ikedife Jr. campaigned for Bola Tinubu just as Rinu Oduala supported Peter Obi.

Second, Mr. Osewa clearly conflated ethnic identity with political opinion, ending up with a determinism that equates one with the other. It was immaterial the ruling APC had high level support from such people as the incumbent governors of Ebonyi and Imo states as well as past governors of Abia and Enugu states, all of them Igbo. The people who set out to suppress the votes of Igbos in Lagos did so by rejecting the political autonomy of the citizen requiring them manumilitari to either renounce their ethnic identity or immolate their civic agency.

Third, Mr. Osewa appeared to assume that ethnic profiling can be attained with neat precision, which is far from the case because you sooner or later discover that many people look alike across lines of situational division. On the day of the state level election in Lagos, Iyanuoluwa Bolarinwa, a name that is unlikely to make the bearer Igbo, reported that she was “told to go back to Anambra”, one of the Igbo states, before being “rough handled, beaten and sent out because I look Igbo? Because I was not going to vote APC?”

Popular Youtuber, Sisi Yemmie, reported that party political heavies precluded her and her husband from voting because they were said to “look like Igbo people”. Mr. Osewa’s “apology to the Igbo people of Nigeria” did not extend to people like Sisi Yemmie or Iyanuoluwa, neither of whom is Igbo but both of whom suffered violence because of the kind of poison that he sold.

As if to add the salt of mirth to the injury and hurt from his advertisement, Mr. Osewa then promised to donate N32,000 (thirty two thousand Naira) to the “victims of political violence in Lagos”. Impressively, this part of Mr. Osewa’s release is the only one addressed to “victims”, an implicit concession that the class of the injured may have gone beyond the ethnic identity group of his target. Yet, he seems to assume that the victims are a coherent group, organised with a bank account in this season of no cash, and that their injuries can be cured by unconcealed hubris from the authors of their civic liquidation.

On any of these metrics, Mr. Osewa was probably best advised not to have bothered to issue his release. Without it, many people may have been willing to overlook the advertisement on Nairaland. After this release, most people will have few doubts as to where to place him. Mr. Osewa’s flippancy is characteristic of the people who instigated the ethnic violence and profiling or see themselves as benefiting from it. They want to turn the page as if nothing happened and quickly move on, summoning everyone along with dubious appeals to fatuous patriotism. Mr. Osewa’s “apology to Igbo People” ended with him asking his readers to “NOT give up on Nigeria”,with the promise that “TOGETHER we will overcome”. The capital letters are original to him. It is not clear, however, where he gets his collective pronoun to voice a promise he’s not in a position to make.

Like Mr. Osewa, Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, basking in the afterglow of re-election, swiftly appealed to “a spirit of solidarity and togetherness that binds us as Lagosians”. His principal, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, claimed to be “pained by cases of ethnic slurs, which are capable of creating needless mis-characterisation reported in some locations”.

The victims, understandably, are slow to make haste. They must bury their dead, bind their wounds, immortalise their scars, re-discover dignity, and then wonder whether they belong to the country that invites them to healing and patriotism only when it is convenient. In the cycle of Nigeria’s elections, patriotism can have a shelf life of the 90 minute duration of a football match involving the men’s national team. In any case, it must be furloughed in the year preceding elections. The reality is no one ever moves on from this kind of violence. The perpetrators see benefit for themselves in the humiliations and exclusions that they can inflict, which come with munificent benefits in propinquity to power thereafter. Far from being humbled, their impunity emboldens them. The victims nurse their traumas, which many of their generations will inherit from them.

This is why election violence in Nigeria is chronic. As the Report of the Sheikh Lemu Presidential Panel on post-election violence (which remains classified) of 2011 makes clear, violence and ethnic profiling have “continually featured in almost all elections in Nigeria since the first election that was conducted in 1922. The temptation is to suggest that election violence is deeply embedded in the Nigerian political culture”.

This should make it obvious that ethnic profiling and accompanying violence of the sort that characterised these elections and necessitated Mr. Osewa’s faux apologia is not a fate for Nigeria. It is a century-old choice. The divisions that sustain this pathology are so essential to the DNA of power and politics in Nigeria that those declared winners do not have any incentives to bring it to an end. The narrative of inter-ethnic zero-sum game is profitable.

In strictly material terms, you can see their point. For Mr. Osewa, the cost is a promise to contribute N32,000 to a non-existent fund or entity. In a country in which the citizens or politicians are ready to bring this nonsense to an end, Mr. Osewa will not have the courage to rub this salt into the injury that he propagated.

Seun don buy market:

In strictly material terms, you can see their point. For Mr. Osewa, the cost is a promise to contribute N32,000 to a non-existent fund or entity. In a country in which the citizens or politicians are ready to bring this nonsense to an end, Mr. Osewa will not have the courage to rub this salt into the injury that he propagated.

However Odinkalu is an emotional person whose bark is worse than his bite

What do i have to say to this🤭🤭

searchng4love:
Seun don buy market

And surrendered the front page to Obidients
I will offer simple and practical advice. Whether good or bad you have apologised .
Take it down. Its continued presence is offensive to probably everybody
You do not have to wear apology Like a tattoo or tribal marks for ever

omonnakoda:

And surrendered the front page to Obidients
I will offer simple and practical advice. Whether good or bad you have apologised .
Take it down. Its continued presence is offensive to probably everybody

Well I guess we're seeing the beginning of the cancel culture in Nigeria if we don't respond decisively to the aggressive behaviour of the Obidient touts

Seun go be like which kind wahala be dis😔

darling2424:
What do i have to say to this🤭🤭

Post Obi's pictures as usual and cry over Asiwaju's Mandate.

searchng4love:


Well I guess we're seeing the beginning of the cancel culture in Nigeria if we don't respond decisively to the aggressive behaviour of the Obidient touts

They understand only one language,total uncompromising head flattening blows

MC Oluomo speaks the language they understand,as does Buratai and Buhari
By the way that Odinkalu mumu is on Nairaland. With several hypocritical monikers

searchng4love:

Post Obi's pictures as usual and cry over Asiwaju's Mandate.

I see you gattttt nofin to say,so you know what💨

Seun you see your life outside.

When is Peter Obi going to apologize for printing posters and billboards in Anambra of Ngige being sandwiched in-between Awolowo and Tinubu......

April 18, 2011
Okey Ndibe

It’s sad to see how Governor Peter Obi of Anambra has made himself a bewildering figure. That a man whose political stock was once solid would so abjectly fail to rise to people’s expectations is – there’s no other way to put it – a matter of profound tragedy.

Mr. Obi rose to the nation’s admiration when he rejected all entreaties to forego the gubernatorial mandate that the people of Anambra had given him in 2003, and which the PDP and its candidate, Chris Ngige, had usurped. Spurning misguided pleas to “leave everything to God,” he sought the reclamation of his mandate with a stubbornness that was refreshing to encounter in a Nigerian politician. In the end, he (and the people of Anambra) secured victory. His profile rose even further when he persuaded the Supreme Court to dismiss Andy Uba, a former presidential aide, from Government House, Awka. Mr. Uba, thanks to Obasanjo and Maurice Iwu, had been enthroned as Anambra governor.

Given his history, Mr. Obi’s political currency ought to lie in how jealously he guards his reputation as an espouser and defender of electoral integrity. Instead, with former Information Minister Dora Akunyili as his accomplice, Governor Obi has all but wasted this particular currency. And he has squandered this resource, paradoxically, in pursuit of power by all means. This particular obsession has magnified the governor’s shockingly small-minded statecraft.

For a man who has been a victim of electoral fraud, Mr. Obi’s conduct in the April 9 National Assembly elections is, quite simply, appalling.

1. (Campaign) - Steep fees, Alienation, Treachery
Let’s begin with the campaigns. Mr. Obi and his team of handpicked candidates had entered the campaigns on a huge deficit. The governor’s political crisis was self-inflicted.

First, the governor’s party, the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), had alienated party faithful by handing its tickets to elements that had just landed – expediently – from the PDP planet. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, Mr. Obi (along with APGA’s chairman, Mr. Victor Umeh) betrayed Anambra when he invited Chuma Nzeribe, an unpalatable political figure, to take one of the party’s senatorial tickets.[/b] Mr. Nzeribe was a prominent – and to this day unapologetic – member of the cabal that was empowered by former President Obasanjo to turn Anambra into what I once called a theater of absurdity.

It was bad enough that APGA fielded the likes of Nzeribe. That treachery was then compounded by the fact that, before choosing the PDP turncoats, the party had collected steep fees from longtime party members interested in the various elective posts. Is it not repellent conduct to collect fees from would-be candidates when the party’s plan was to embrace an all-PDP slate?

2. (Religion) - Catholics, Strikes, Minimum wage
What’s more, Mr. Obi’s political capital in the state had become terribly meager. In the state’s governorship election of February 2010, many Catholic priests had made the deplorable blunder of proclaiming from the pulpit that Mr. Obi was the beloved political son both of God and the Pope. But soon after the election was concluded, many of Mr. Obi’s ecclesiastical supporters began to regret ever championing him. They suddenly beheld a man who is in the main self-absorbed, with scant concern for the well being of the governed. As I write, medical doctors as well as judiciary workers in the state have been on strike for several weeks. Yet, a governor who was sold to voters as commissioned by God and the pope has not deigned to enter into serious negotiations in order to resolve issues. Does the governor derive perverse pleasure from watching patients go through agonizing pain and even death because he’s too preoccupied to talk with striking doctors? How about the fact that he’s treated with disdain the state workers’ demand for the implementation of minimum wage standards?

If his nonchalance towards striking workers is ghastly, the way he conducted the campaigns for his legislative candidates was unbecoming of a man and governor. In fact, I was so ashamed of the governor’s reported utterances that I made efforts to ring him up and tell him that he ought to know better.

3. (Insultive) - Short Ngige
Several witnesses told me how, at campaign stumps with Mrs. Akunyili, Governor Obi told his audience not to vote for Mr. Ngige because the man is too short.
It beggars belief that a governor, any governor, would see fit to make his opponent’s height a campaign issue. Such an untoward focus on somebody’s physique is utterly immature and speaks to a bankruptcy of ideas. Does it mean that Mr. Obi believes a person’s height to correlate to ability? Does he consider himself more intelligent, more capable or morally astute than everybody who’s shorter than he? For that matter, does he believe himself to be inferior to all taller people? For if height is a criterion of stellar leadership, then we must wonder how Mr. Obi became a governor. Alas, Anambra boasts many, many men and women who are taller than he is.

4. (Tribalistic Campaign) - Awolowo, Tinubu, Azikwe, Ojukwu
Then he permitted campaign posters to be circulated in which the image of Mr. Ngige, a medical doctor and candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), was aligned with those of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and former Governor Bola Tinubu. By contrast, the governor’s candidates were lined up with the late Owelle Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ikemba Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. The sordid idea was to portray Ngige as belonging to a “Yoruba team.”

It is similarly appalling that a governor who reportedly has ambitions for higher political office could not restrain himself from disparaging Mr. Ngige as a Yoruba candidate. Even if we accepted the silly argument that the ACN was a Yoruba party – so what? Is the governor allergic to forging political alliances with the Yoruba? Is he not aware that such appeals to base, ethnic sentiments would return to haunt him if he ever seeks to be a political player at the national level? At any rate, was Mr. Obi not chastened by the fact that the ACN is sweeping the southwest and making inroads elsewhere in the nation, while he and his cohorts have left APGA bereft of electoral prospects anywhere? If any proof is needed, it suffices to see how Andy Uba trounced Obi’s man, Chuma Nzeribe.

5. Cheap Blackmail
Campaigning for Mrs. Akunyili, Governor Obi often reached for cheap blackmail. He threatened to deny, or pull projects as political appointments from communities that failed to vote for his candidates. In making these threats, he forgot that the people hired him for the job – and that he serves at their pleasure.

Apparently, the people of Anambra were determined to take the risk. Most of the governor’s candidates were thrashed. Many people in Anambra are certain that Mrs. Akunyili, the candidate most after the governor’s heart, was also decisively defeated. The haste with which she’s seeking a re-run of the senatorial race with Mr. Ngige suggests that she knows, deep down, that she was roundly beaten on April 9. It would amount to a monumental injustice to the voters of Anambra to revisit an election that became competitive only after the shameless manipulation that took place in Anaocha Local Government Area. The APGA team should not be rewarded with an undeserved re-run. INEC chairman Attahiru Jega should insist that the investigative panel he set up deploy forensic technology to probe the votes in Anaocha. I believe such a test would unmask a narrative of stuffed ballots.

It’s odd and disturbing that Chukwuemeka Onukaogu, the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Anambra, would appoint Charles Esinone, a professor of pharmacy, as the new returning officer for the Anambra Central senatorial zone. The fact that Mr. Esinone and Mrs. Akunyili were colleagues in the same department at the University of Nigeria casts serious doubt about the returning officer’s impartiality.

Mr. Obi’s less than inspiring performance as a governor is, ultimately, responsible for his candidates’ electoral misfortunes. Rededicating himself to the service of the people of Anambra – rather than gubernatorial threats to his employers and obtuse politicking – is the only way to rebuild his tarnished political career.

https://saharareporters.com/2011/04/18/peter-obi-akunyili-and-political-folly

Seun is allowed himself to be cyber bullied by useless obedient people. I got no pity for him.

@Seun, keep asslicking them sogbo. You are talking about a people that aren't happy for you. If its not their advantage then its unfair or rigged.

Wow, beautiful written.

Everyone errs - that's what makes us humans. Seun has apologised; let's move on and focus on more important things.

For him to write this epistle on the controversial Nairaland ad, it means Professor Chidi Odinkalu visits Nairaland.

Prof, if you are reading this, I tell you this: leave Seun Osewa alone. Do more important things like joining politics in Imo State. Afterwards, make efforts to save your dear state from the Supreme Court governor.

Prof should be more worried that a man who knows zilch about leadership is his governor, yet he keeps rigging all elections to make sure his APC stays in power and continuously loot state resources with reckless abandon.

We told Seun that this election was an Igbo agenda. This two Igbo nationalist guys below are some of the biggest Peter Obi's supporter and influencer on Twitter.

All of a sudden, Peter Obi their tribesman is now a saint after he showed up to contest for presidential election.

And

Obidients are violent creatures, and we will treat their fck up with spontaneous heat, comparable to hell fire.

As I started reading the post. I immediately spotted two lies.

1. Seun is above 40 years old, and not 40 years old.

2. Seun dropped out of the Elect/Elect program to chase his dreams just like Zuckerberg and Gates, and did not graduate from OAU.

omonnakoda:

And surrendered the front page to Obidients
I will offer simple and practical advice. Whether good or bad you have apologised .
Take it down. Its continued presence is offensive to probably everybody
You do not have to wear apology Like a tattoo or tribal marks for ever

The thing don dey vex me,opening the political section and the first thing u see is this apology bullshit

ola6:
Seun is allowed himself to be cyber bullied by useless obedient people. I got no pity for him.

@Seun, keep asslicking them sogbo. You are talking about a people that aren't happy for you. If its not their advantage then its unfair or rigged.

That's why some of you will always be urchins (the type that hangs around people's estate entrance begging for money)....unlike like Seun who has built one of the most visited online forums and wants to keep his beautiful brand (business) going.

So what exactly does he want Seun to do in particular? Add to the 32k and the apology, or just take everything back?

raskymonojendor:
Seun you see your life outside.

When is Peter Obi going to apologize for printing posters and billboards in Anambra of Ngige being sandwiched in-between Awolowo and Tinubu......

And that's the same stuff Seun is apologizing for. Even Peter Obi the man with the woman voice has more balls than Seun Osewa.

To be fair to Seun his personal support for GRV turned many Yoruba tribal jingoists again him.
I have seen many accuse him of being pro Igbo for supporting Gbadebo now referred to as "Chinedu" from Anambra by non Lagos indigenous Yorubas of APC.

This election has done one thing it has exposed what many have already known for long that Yorubas are the most tribalistic tribe in Nigeria, although there's an attempt to tag those who pushed the ethnic line as APC members of Yoruba extraction and not Yorubas as a group.

Nairaland has been reduced to a Yoruba vs Igbo bashing platform whereby if a Tiv or Igala or Urhobo man writes something against Buhari oe Tinubu he is immediately tagged as an Igbo.

This is why I no longer refer anyone to this site because Seun allowed his Mods to push their personal agenda ans couldn't checkmate their activities especially that 44 years old without Mynd that turned himself into the Ona Kakanfo of Yorubas in Nairaland

The truth is Seun allowed his platform to be used in propagating ethnic bigotry

1. Dr. Alex Otti is an IGBO MAN from Isiala-Ngwa area of Abia State. He has ALWAYS been identified to be from there.

But today, the same Ngwa people say Otti is a FOREIGNER IN ABIA by virtue of the area of Ngwa that he comes from.

They are of the opinion that he isnt an "original Ngwa man".

They say he is "Not Abia enough" to be the Governor of their state!!!

It is what has caused all the wahala in Abia State Guber.

He has won eventually but I can imagine that he will have problems.

2. Not too long ago, in this 4th Republic , a Yoruba man who had stayed forever in ONITSHA went beyond this boundaries.

He wanted to contest COUNCILORSHIP POSITION in one of their WARDS in that town.

Ordinary Councilor o!!!

They told him to clear out but he didn't understand.

He was summarily liquidated.

3. In Enugu we saw a viral video of a Leader, an elderly man, insisting that a particular politician whose ancestry was traced to nearby EBONYI STATE can never be allowed to be their Governor in Enugu.

He said NEVER.

He was terribly agitated about it.

They didn't allow that man.

4. In Anambra again, Bianca Onoh is an IGBO WOMAN. Her father was from neighbouring Enugu which used to be one state with them but she married no less a man than Emeka Ojukwu himself

A whole Ojukwu.

But Ojukwu was Anambra.

Bianca indicated that she wanted to contest the senatorial election in Anambra.

Anambra People told her to go to HER FATHERS LAND!!!!

That was it.

5. Ironically, Mrs Betty Akeredolu came to her own fathers land to ask for Senatorial ticket

Her father's land is IMO.

Imo people promptly told her to go back to her HUSBAND'S LAND IN ONDO STATE to find the ticket.

6. Till this day they still have the OSU CASTE system in that Igbo land.

Christianity couldn't wash it away.

OSU people still suffer humiliations amongst fellow Igbo people.

They have limitations to their rights up till this day.

They are discriminated against.

7. But these Abia, Anambra , Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo men are all over the place in Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, Ekiti, Osun and Lagos states telling you stories of 'One Nigeria" and preaching against"Tribalism " that it is fair and okay for them to become anything of politics in your land as they LIVE AND OWN HOUSES IN YOUR COMMUNITIES.

The want to be able to contest elections as GOVERNOR in Lagos and infact they want to achieve it by IGBO BLOC VOTES as they have moved half of their population into Lagos.

They want to be SENATORS in Lagos.

They want to be DEPUTY-GOVERNOR in Ogun.

They actually feel they deserve to be consulted in Ekiti before you chose your leaders.

They OPENLY tell you that LAGOS IS NO MAN'S LAND.

HOW A PEOPLE DEMAND FROM YOU WHAT THEY CAN'T GIVE YOU IS WHAT I WANT TO UNDERSTAND.

They don't do these things in the NORTH because they are very much aware that the NORTHERNERS KNOW THEM.

They do it to the Yoruba people because they are also very aware that the Yorubas don't travel to the EAST and therefore don't know the IGBO characters.

Yorubas are a very easy-going and easily contented, we hardly have had reasons to be going up and down to the spaces of other people.

But you come to us when we DIDN'T INVITE YOU and then begin to harrass us with games of competition which is something that isn't part of our own culture.

We don't go about with crazy aggression trying to outdo or get better than our neighbours.

Our ancestors taught us to be okay and satisfied with what we have.

We only look to be the better of ourselves, to become a better person than we were yesterday.

Money was and still is not a yardstick of measuring the quality of men in Yoruba land - YOUR OMOLÚÀBÍ CONTENT IS.

We will continue to educate our people.

Things can't be the same again.

©️ Adedamola Adetayo
23 March 2023.

raskymonojendor:
Seun you see your life outside.

When is Peter Obi going to apologize for printing posters and billboards in Anambra of Ngige being sandwiched in-between Awolowo and Tinubu......

i don't just understand the problem with some of our so called "yoruba woke" class they never learn,
a yoruba adage says, if you spend all day kneeling for who does not like you it won't change a thing.
The silly mistakes our yoruba leaders made ass- licking igbos after the biafra that ended in contempt, same mistake Tinubu also made ass-licking and despite everything tinubu did for igbos juicy appointments, yet they are his number one enemy today
Seun complicated matters bringing that post up and i am happy right from that day till now the people he chose to ass lick are serving him woto woto. maybe like jakande seun can appease the igbos with half share of Nairaland. they never learn

hahaha 🤣.Who take Odinkalu serious anylonger.Someone that never condemn for once the actions of IPOB and UGM

reddingtonblack:

i don't just understand the problem with some of our so called "yoruba woke" class they never learn,
a yoruba adage says, if you spend all day kneeling for who does not like it won't change a thing.
The silly mistakes our past leaders made ass- licking igbos after the biafra that ended contempt, same mistake Tinubu also made ass-licking and trying to pamper them, who are worst enemies of Tinubu today.
Seun complicated matters bringing that post up and i am happy right from that day till now the people he chose to ass lick are serving him woto woto. maybe like jakande seun can appease the igbos with half share of Nairaland.

They will then ask for his arms and legs after that.

Ofunaofu:
The truth is Seun allowed his platform to be used in propagating ethnic bigotry

Same people complaining today were the culprit,go back and check nairaland history,these people turned nairaland to what it is today and you don't expect other tribes to keep quiet and watch while they insult everyone

Guyman01:
This election exposed what many have already known that Yorubas are the tribalistic tribe in Nigeria, although there's an attempt to tag those who pushed the ethnic line as APC members of Yoruba extraction and not Yorubas as a group.
Nairaland has been turned into an anti Igbo platform whereby if a Tiv or Igala or Urhobo man writes something against Buhari he is immediately tagged as an Igbo.
This is why I no longer refer anyone to this site because Seun allowed it to be a tribal bashing outfit and his Mods display of tribalistic tendencies has not taken into account especially that 44 years old without Mynd

Playing victim as usual.

It was on here that I saw ibo posters calling Awolowo a tribalist. A propaganda being pushed by the ibos, and that he died from consumption of rat poison which is also a big fat lie by the way.

Some one posted earlier on a different thread about how Tribalism was introduced into Nigeria. I realised that Awolowo's Action group was set up to counter Azikwe's tribalism.

Ibrahimcoomasie:
Early politicians of the 30s, 40s, Chiefs among them are mostly talented in writing and journalism and some owned media outfits, with which they laud and inflate their egos while simultaneously deflating d profile of those they disagree with in the political firmament.

Herbert Macaulay (A Yoruba man), the Father of Nigerian Nationalism, also a journalist was fond of calling dissenting voices 'imperialism agents' but ZIK took it to an elevated proportion, re-christened it to 'imperial stooges', 'Uncle Toms' and 'aunty Jememas', even those whose patriotism and Nationalism had never been in doubt were so named; minor disagreements and you are blacklisted. ZIK had a Newspaper outlet, 'the Pilot', a tool he creatively used to maximum advantage. The editors would daily eulogize him for d basics, and sometimes for the hitherto unknown and unheard of good things for Nigeria, nay, 'Mother Africa', Some of them acclaimed him as d 'Ghandi of Africa' and others declared that ZIK deeds had 'eleczik-ified' them.

ZIK was obviously very gifted, intelligent and clever which manifested in his works; however, he was regarded by many of his peers as the 1st consummate propagandist that Nigeria ever produced. In inflating his own ego or deflating that of his rivals, publications on the Pilot observed neither modesty nor reck. In this connection, he was in direct line of succession to Herbet Macaulay, but like all sons who are worthy of their parentage, in this respect, ZIK outdid Herbert Macaulay, for he took propaganda several notches higher with a slant of deep seated tribalism.

[b]For example, when the ban on Palm Kernel was imposed, the Pilot supported it and reported thus: "the measure by the Government is fair. Instead of reducing the whole country to poverty, only the Western provinces will be affected and they can switch over to other avenues, to make body and soul live." He held similar stance as to the agitation against the 'Cocoa Pool'.

ZIK brazenly supported a policy which clearly threatened the livelihood of the Yorubas. Were the East on the receiving end here, ZIK would have dipped pen in gall, and crafted a creatively worded opinion on the Pilot, denouncing the Cocoa Pool as an 'imperialist device or stratagem whose aim, object and purpose was to oppress, repress, depress and distress Nigerian Cocoa producers and dealers economically' and he would have replicated same for d ban on palm kernels in d West. He would have labeled it 'a gross betrayal of trust, an indelible stain, blemish and stigma on British imperialism; a vain attempt, a complete misfire and a palpable boner in the realm of divide et impera.'[/b] Pardon my poor attempt at replicating ZIK's creative writing genius, he many a time used such strong words.

ZIK took this tribalist venom to higher Plateau when he graced the front page of the Pilot, and entitled it 'Football Iliad, 1940 Edition' what many described as a shocker, a big step forward in an insidious campaign colored in Bigotry. A football match between 2 schools, Christ the King's college, Onitsha was hosted by St. Gregory's college in Lagos, in a match tagged 'Win the War'.

The CKC team from Onitsha defeated St Gregory's team by 5 goals to 4. Spectators had a good watch, even the host considered the match very entertaining, a bonding moment for teams made up of teenagers of different cultures, that afterall is the spirit of sport.

But how did ZIK report it? ZIK saw in the sporting exploits and triumph of the team from Onitsha the inherent superiority of the Ibos over the Yorubas and he went to very great pains to establish this in d careful choice of words and emphasis..

"And then to think of the great combination of d Spartan heroes who crossed her loudly Niger, journeyed through the good earth of Benin, hurried across the domains of the Oshemawe of Ondo, of the Atanla of Owo, of the Owa of Ilesha, of the Ooni of Ife, of the Alake of Abeokuta in their invasion of these islands!

Who, but heroes of mighty brawn and exceptionally developed brain would have dared to make this invasion and to succeed in carrying to their River Niger home, the Golden fleece of Inter-Collegiate Soccer Championship of d Eastern and Western Provinces?"


https://twitter.com/LegendaryJoe/status/1638066082652012545?t=kX5tAe6CJgjxafLLfDYiPQ&s=19

Ibrahimcoomasie:
CONT'D

...Such was the mocking tone with which ZIK described an innocent football match with a slant of superiority complex.

But the same CKC team met the Olubadan XI, an undiluted Yoruba team in another 'Win the War' match on 24 August 1940 and were roundly defeated 3-2.

It may just be a matter of coincidence that ZIK wasn't in the mood to write at the time or perhaps he suffered what we call 'Writer's Block', because for more than 2 weeks, this headline event never got reported on the Pilot. And when the paper finally wrote on it, it was only a small item on the back page, like a mistress smuggled out of the window at the arrival of the madam of the house..and was laced with excuses,

"the CKC team was already tired; some of the players were in fact limping before the match",

and other calculated efforts to avoid giving the yoruba boys their well deserved accolade, and extreme energy was exerted in ensuring the brilliance and talent of those little yoruba boys was never acknowledged.

This was but tip of the Iceberg, ZIK would go full scale Bigotry afterwards.

Shall I Begin?

The Ibos were given inordinate publicity on the pages of the paper, which I regard as appropriate and in order, to promote one's root..but at a time when other Nationalists made concerted efforts in describing citizens of Nigeria as Nigerians or Africans and celebrated their laurels and feats as credits to Nigeria and Africa as a whole, ZIK would jettison the whole for the particular and elevate Ibo over and above every other tribe and largely over Nigeria as an entity, and in a manner that smirked Ego inspired Hate.

Typical Front Page news title in the Pilot this time were;

1. 'Ibo Young man Sail to U.K.' Sept 23, 1938. Referring to Mr. Jaja Wachukwu, who later became Speaker of Houe of Rep.

2. '14th West African Student, 10th Nigerian, 8th Ibo in U.S.A.' Jan 28, 1939. The 8th Ibo was Mr. Nwafor Orizu, later became Senator.

3. 'Ibo Medical Student Passes Exam in 1st Class Honours.' June 26, 1940. That was Dr. S.O. Eguwatu.

And some weird editorials like:

'The Ibo Are Coming' Dec 31, 1938, Wondered what ZIK meant, but the title is indicative enough of some theory of domination.

These are but very few examples of deliberate actions of ZIK in portraying the perceived supremacy of the Ibos over others, for the Pilot never beamed the light on the achievements of Nigerians of other ethnic stock...

For example, when the Ph.D. degree of London University, indeed any university for that matter, was conferred on the first Nigerian ever, such historic success was only given a small space in the paper and the title read: 'Nigerian Economist passes Ph.D. London', because that scholar was Dr. Fadipe, a Yoruba.

https://twitter.com/LegendaryJoe/status/1639515371844542466?t=rKkNJdj8CJrPBPRFw_FMOQ&s=19

raskymonojendor:

They will then ask for his arms and legs after that.

The IGbos we know are not carnibal, they are more interested in Land seun can just add naira to it. sho get 🤣

But wait, is there anything like "woke igbos"

reddingtonblack:



The IGbos we know are not carnibal, they are more interested in Land seun can just add naira to it. sho get 🤣

But wait, is there anything like "woke igbos"

At the Land. How did I miss that