irvingia: It is difficult to say if Igbo and Yoruba are friends
or enemies or merely tolerating each other. On the
surface, they seem to be friends, because you
rarely hear of any clashes or killings between the
two in over 100 years. People from the two ethnic
groups work together, live together, laugh together,
worship together, and play together. Everything
seems all right. Nobody wants to be seen as
publicly making any comment seen as tribalistic or
intolerant.
But if you look deeper, there seems to be
something you cannot truly place a finger on. It’s
like a volcano waiting for the least provocation to
erupt. It only needs an excerpt from Chinua
Achebe’s There Was a Country to be made public,
or for Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos to
“deport” some Igbo to Onitsha for hell to be let
loose. Commentators immediately line up behind
their ethnic groups, releasing venom against the
other side. Luckily, such altercations usually end
in words and not in violent acts.
But on Nigerian online sites like the punchng.com
and others, where commentators can use
anonymous names, such fights are a daily affair,
and they always get embarrassingly nasty. At such
times, combatants throw caution to the wind and
rake up gut-wrenching jibes dripping of hate and
bordering on insanity. You wonder if the purveyors
of such vitriol would feel at ease afterwards
interacting with someone from the ethnic group
they have maligned so viciously. Some see it as
fun, but many don’t. They see it as a war that
must be won at all costs.
Regrettably, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe and Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-
Ojukwu, whose direct and indirect action and
inaction sowed the seed of hate and distrust
between the Igbo and the Yoruba, have died
without uprooting that dangerous plant or even
denying it water and nutrients. Therefore, till this
day, the Igbo and Yoruba still enjoy shooting at
each other with accusations of betrayal,
expansionism, hate, ingratitude, greed, as well as
trying to prove that each ethnic group is superior
to the other.
And it seems the contest for superiority is at the
root of that frosty relationship. The Igbo and
Yoruba are unarguably the most competitive in
Nigeria. They are the ethnic groups that easily and
forcefully ask for the removal of quota system in all
national life. They believe that if things are done
on merit, they will excel. The Igbo think that the
Yoruba are the major competitors they have in
Nigeria, while the Yoruba think that the Igbo are
the key competitors they have in Nigeria.
This shows in almost all spheres of life. The
Yoruba had a head-start in western education
because the British colonialists and missionaries
arrived on their land first. The Igbo, who resisted
and rejected the British initially, eventually
accepted them and thereby began a sprint to catch
up with the Yoruba. And they succeeded.
Whatever the Igbo achieve, the Yoruba have an
answer to it, and whatever the Yoruba achieve the
Igbo have a response. So, if you have a Wole
Soyinka from the South-West winning the first
Nobel Prize for Literature in Africa, you have a
Chinua Achebe from the South-East holding the
record of the most popular and most-selling
literary writer in Africa. If you have a Rangers
International Football Club of Enugu shaking the
Nigerian football scene in the 1970s and early 80s,
you have the Shooting Stars Football Club of
Ibadan shining brightly at the same period. If
Rashidi Yekini is noted for scoring Nigeria’s first
World Cup goal and being Nigeria’s all-time
highest goal scorer, then Nwankwo Kanu boasts of
being Nigeria’s most decorated footballer, while
Austin Jay-Jay Okocha flaunts his status as
Nigeria’s most glamorous and mesmerising
footballer. If Genevieve Nnaji boasts of being
named by Oprah Winfrey in 2009 among the most
popular people in the world, Omotola Jalade-
Ekeinde will show off her name in TIME magazine’s
most influential people of 2013. If P-Square and
Flavour think they rock the music scene, D’Banj
and Davido smash the charts.
So, in all areas of life, the Igbo and the Yoruba are
competing, and in the process boosting the
nation’s economy and bringing glory to the nation.
Yet, some inferiority-complex-afflicted people who
feel threatened within each of the ethnic groups
look for every excuse to spread hate among the
two peoples.
My close study of the Igbo and the Yoruba makes
me see them as the Germans and the French of
Nigeria respectively. Even the Igbo language is like
the German language in many respects. In German
and Igbo, there are no silent words. Excluding a
few words in Germans which are sounded
differently from the way the English sound theirs
(like “j” which is pronounced like “y,” “w” which is
pronounced as “v,” etc), whatever you say in both
languages is what you write. For example, the “g”
is always pronounced /g/ in Igbo and German and
never as “j.” “Danke” and “obante” are pronounced
as written.
But in French and Yoruba, what you say may be
different from how you write it. Some letters are
either silent or semi-silent. For example, the
Yoruba and the French would pronounce “san” as
if it were “saw,” or “son,” but the Igbo and
Germans would pronounce it /san/: exactly the
way it is spelt. Also, the “h” is usually silent or
glossed over in French and Yoruba: Hospital or
Kehinde.
The Igbo and the German are bullish and
technology-minded. They have fought and lost
wars but staged successful comebacks in a short
time. Conversely, the Yoruba and the French are
subtle and supercilious, with good administrative
skills, regaling in their years of history and culture.
A country that has such two success-driven ethnic
groups should be at a great advantage. The
Yoruba have been great hosts to the Igbo; and the
Igbo have reciprocated by contributing immensely
to the building of Yoruba land, especially Lagos
State, including buying swamps at a high price and
turning such places to residential or commercial
estates. The sleepiness of Lagos during the
Christmas-New Year period, when the Igbo usually
travel home en masse, bears testimony to their
contribution to making Lagos lively.
Just like the French always wish they could cut the
Germans to size, so do the Yoruba to the Igbo, but
it will never work. And just as the Germans always
try to flaunt their success at the French, so do the
Igbo do to the Yoruba, but it is completely
pointless. The Yoruba can never be like the Igbo,
and the Igbo can never be like the Yoruba. There is
nothing the Yoruba can do to suppress the Igbo,
neither is there anything the Igbo can do to
suppress the Yoruba. Both of them can actually
succeed without the other, but working closely
together will be very beneficial to each of them as
well as the nation.
The younger generations are forging greater ties,
despite the baggage of enmity the older
generations handed over to them. Working
together, attending church together and living
together seem to have increased the rate of
marriage between the two people. Most Sundays
when I look at the church bulletin, I see increasing
higher number of banns of marriage between
Yoruba and Igbo people. These days, it is common
to see women whose names are Temilade Amadi
or Ngozi Adesanya because of marriage. The
ethnic barriers are being broken, even though
ethnic jingoists continue to spread hate. Such hate
speech and thoughts need to be stopped, for
ethnic bloodshed or xenophobia does not burst
out in one day.
Since the older generations are passing away
without bringing these two great ethnic groups
together, the onus is on those born after the Civil
War to consciously take steps to bring the two
ethnic groups together for their own good and for
the good of the nation. It is high time this Tom and
Jerry relationship between the two ethnic groups
ended, for the good of both and the nation at large.
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adanduka: Why is there so much space booking on this thread?

fingard02k: what is the meaning of all these?

waternogetenemy: OP u are very stewpid for associating igbos with yaribas, we are not twins and will never be. I want to here more about igbos with better tribes like the ibibios not those saboteur.