I found this in a thread created by pazienza and decided to share. The gworo-chewing judge made me laugh lols.

source ..... https://www.nairaland.com/2338838/ndiigbo-non-igbo-eastern-neighbors-myth/1


Matthew Mbu from Cross River's view on Igbo and other Eastern minority groups.


http://www.vanguardngr.com/2009/12/12/the-north-built-on-mistakes-of-the-south-%e2%80%94-mbu/

Q: You talk about these our fathers, leaders of Nigeria at independence and some insist that they created the foundations for the type of country that we have today – tribalism, for example and the events in the Western House of Assembly. Some say Azikiwe was merely outplayed, politically and others say….?

A: No! You are not really…Permit me to interrupt you; you were not there. Zik won all, the majority, in the Western region. It was when he went to the East, that this notorious question, this notorious carpet-crossing, for the first time in our history was enacted on the floor of the Western House of Assembly. Before then, we never knew about carpet-crossing. Those who won on the platform of the NCNC were suddenly bought over by the Action Group.

Q: But in an earlier interview with Pa Ayo Adebanjo, I was told that it was at the point when they said members of the different parties should move and sit separately, that it became obvious that AG members were more?[/b]

A: He would say so. What do you expect from him, he’s AG; he’s partisan. AG top notch!

Q:It would be difficult for people not to say you are also being partisan, being of the NCNC?
The AG introduced, for the first time in our history, carpet crossing; I didn’t know about it. I wish the late Adelabu (PENKELEMSS) were alive. The leader of our movement in Ibadan, I wish he was alive, he would have told you what happened; he would have told you the drama that happened on the floor of the Western House of Assembly; the debacle, as he put it, the debacle of western election, so don’t tell me anything that I don’t know.

A:I know you know that’s why I’m asking you. For Nigerians who do not have a recollection of the events of that era and who talk about tribalism, they would want the records set straight. Some even say had Zik stayed back, may be he would have fought it? And some even say that from that moment onwards, Nigeria lost it?

Yes, we lost it from that moment onwards. That was crude tribalism on display. That’s all. What else could it be that somebody of Eastern origin should come and control a region that belongs to the westerners? That was a clear display of tribalism, crude and that was when Nigeria lost it, the true sense of nationalism. Yes! AG, NCNC, that I belonged to, were at opposing ends on true nationalism and nothing else. NCNC till tomorrow remains a nationalist party, one Nigeria, one people, one destiny. AG believed in one Yoruba, one nation, one Oduduwa.

Q: When you look at the way some people accuse the North of holding unto power without wanting to let go, and the philosophy of Awolowo that before you can claim to be a Nigerian, you would have to first be either an Igbo, a Yoruba or Hausa?

A: Chief Awolowo never pretended and I have a lot of respect for him. He never for once pretended that he was a true nationalist. He was a true Yoruba leader – simplicita. And he never in any way felt ashamed about it. Yoruba for Yoruba, Hausa for Hausa and Igbo for Igbo – that was the way he felt and he never flinched.

The North learned a lot from the mistakes of the South and the way the tribal politics was being played, the North elevated it to another level. They reasoned that if tribalism was to become the name of the game, then they were ready to move it to the next level – the North for the North. The Sardauna would always say, ‘we of the North’, and he never pretended. His great grand father, Uthman Dan Fodio, was a conqueror of a greater community and why should he go for anything less. He, therefore, settled for a bigger North.

Q: Could you please give examples of what the North learned from the South?
The North went and excelled in everything we did. We introduced thuggery, Michael Okpara called them party stalwarts in East, but they were thugs. Then the North recreated it, took it to another level: Why did we bring in the native police? They were uncompromising in the North.

A: There in the North, if you were not of the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, they would tell you, don’t cross, if you did they would kill you – and they meant it. Their own thuggery was worse and they took it to a level that was something else. So the only way to curb the excesses of the native police was to integrate them into the Nigeria Police Force, to train them, to shed them of the crude and excessive extra-legal powers. Not only that, you went to the native courts as a southerner, the Alkali courts.

A case was on, the judge was chewing his gworo and he slept off while the case was on, then he woke up and asked, ‘yes, what do you have to say; nothing. Okay go to jail for six months’. Meanwhile he had been sleeping all along-o. If you tried to argue you’re in trouble. ‘If you said anything there I’ll give you another six months; okay another six months, go’. Very crude! The North moved from one extremity to the other extremity and that’s where we are.

Q: Back to NCNC, Zik and the East: What was done to NCNC and Zik in the West, Zik was not magnanimous too, when he went back to the East?

A: I do not think that you were born to understand the politics of those days.

Q:We read?

A: It depends on what you have been reading and by whom? Look, the East was so democratic to a point where when the Onitsha issue came up, although a lot of it engendered by the opposition, led by the late chief justice of the East, Sir Louis Mbanefo, Onitsha market issue, there was a demonstration by the Onitsha people against the premiership of Zik, an Onitsha man, and I saw the father and I asked him: ‘Papa, you joined the delegation, too, to denounce the premier’? You know what he said to me in response? He said: ‘He’s not one of us, being an Onitsha man, he should not oppose us’. That was the extent to which the people in the East understood democratic principles.

Q: But an Efik was not allowed to lead in the East?

A: What was the problem of the Efik? They split. You were not born yet; you needed to be around with us then to understand what happened. UNIP was a splinter of the NCNC and they were to topple the leadership of the NCNC. UNIP was within the NCNC, led by, more or less, English trained graduates, leadership.

They were looking up on themselves as better educated than American trained graduates, led by Zik, Orizu, Mbadiwe and co – that is the truth. And who were the other groups? Graduates, Nwapa, Cambridge, make no mistake about it; Njoku, Manchester, London educated; my country man, Okoi Arikpo, London educated – London School of Economics; Ozoma; even Ita himself, having gotten his MA from Columbia University in the United States of America, came back and repeated the London MA so he used to be referred to as Prof. Eyo Ita, MA Columbia, MA London. They felt they were more educated and, therefore, a better bred to lead the new dispensation in the East; not this ill-bred American educated fellows from schools they did not recognize.

A: But Eyo Ita?

A: My friend, he was opposition, when you split against the leadership, then you are already taking up arms against the party. Must there be two premiers? It was Zik, in fact, who named him Prof. Don’t tell me what you did not witness.



We got it all wrong from the beginning. Tribalism started right from the inception of the forced-marriage.

Anyway sha, it shall well.

Make I follow you laugh jare