By Obi Nwakanma

Richard Condon’s novel, The Manchurian
Candidate (1959), now a classic of the cold-war,
is a political thriller about a young American
soldier, from a very prominent political family,
who is recruited, brainwashed, and unleashed
unto the American political landscape by the
Communists to effect subterranean changes that
would have ground-shifting impact on American
politics and society.
The basic unsubtle trigger of the story is that the
main character, Raymond Shaw is programmed
as a “sleeper agent” to undermine his own
society. It is from this scenario, the characters –
individuals primed, either by self-interest, greed,
unhealed trauma, or even conditioned psychosis
that produces among other things, self-hatred,
and instigated by external forces to undermine
their own societies, communities, or even
families by pretending to work within it, that I call
the “Manchurian complex.” That drive to step
away from a common cloth, or thread, or interest;
to presume to be so aware of history that you
sometimes believe that you speak, or know
better than your society. But as we have always
known, even with the deepest capacity for
introspection, no individual is worthier or better
than his/her society. Change – the change that
does common good comes to every society by
consilience not by individuation. But I was
speaking of the “Manchurian complex.” It seems
to me that, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, the Igbo-Lagosian,
prominent these days for his harangues of the
larger community of the Igbo with whom he now
frequently disagrees, is clearly demonstrating the
symptoms of the “Manchurian complex.”
There is evidence that his political affiliations has
made him the ultimate “Manchurian candidate” –
as a “sleeper agent” among the Igbo, inserted by
his political masters to undermine and tear down
every contemporary Igbo position within the
discourse of nation, and there is evidence that he
is paid quite handsomely for it in Lagos. Let me
tell a little story of Joe Igbokwe, the Nnewi-born,
University of Nigeria Nsukka-trained Engineer,
who became a trader in Lagos in the late 1980s
and 1990s. Good old Joe earned his laurels as
part of the NADECO chattering-classes after June
12, and spoke out quite openly against that
travesty of election cancellations. He campaigned
for the restructuring of the federation, for political
justice, and for the restoration of Moshood
Abiola’s mandate. It was all dandy then. He even
wrote a book, The Igbo: 25 years after Biafra.
Frankly, it was of mediocre quality, and the
analysis was a wash, but it did the job, and put
across the issue he wanted to put across, and
that is, that the Igbo remained marginalized in
Nigeria’s political life. No sane person could
disagree with Joe Igbokwe’s position then, and we
in the Lagos press, gave him some free rein
because his sentiments melded with the leading
sentiment of the day. It all allied with what we
called the “pro-democracy” movement which
later turned out to be all fiction. He joined the
defunct AD in Lagos, and soon joined the Bola
Tinubu train, and Ogbeni Tinubu, the new Are
Ona Kakanfo of South-West politics, has since
become his god, and does no wrong. Tinubu’s
party, the APC, of which Joe Igbokwe is publicity
Secretary for Lagos, is his newest obsession. Joe
Igbokwe, most certainly because he has since
discerned what side his own bread is buttered,
has accorded Mr. Tinubu far more regard than he
ever accorded the late Ikemba Odumegwu-
Ojukwu, whom Mr. Igbokwe took to the dogs in
2001, after the so-called Igbo summit in Enugu.
Joe had sworn to undercut everything about Igbo
agitation for justice, including the new Biafra
movement, because it does not agree with his
own political choices and personal interest as a
paid servant of anti-Igbo campaigners. I should at
this stage make this point clear: Joe Igbokwe has
every right as a citizen of Nigeria to speak his
mind, take any position, and be paid for it, or act
pro-bono. What he must not be allowed to do, or
get away with is to resort to the calumniation of
an entire Igbo people, to press home his own
political frustrations. Joe is a Lagosian who cannot
win an election in Nnewi, his former home in Igbo
land. He must learn to be calm on Igbo questions
beyond his pay grade. I say this in response to
Joe Igbokwe’s most recent troll titled, “Efulefu
Biafrans and their Ethnic Card show” circulating
in many chat rooms.
In this profoundly asinine piece, Igbokwe again,
with disregard to form, basically called the Igbo,
their leaders, and those who support the Biafra
agitation – a very large number of the Igbo, the
“Efulefu.” But in truth, Joe Igbokwe and his circle
of pied-pipers are the real “Akalogoli.” A man like
Joe Igbokwe who writes that kind of hogwash,
and who calls Ndi Igbo “Efulefu” because they are
engaged in civil disobedience is not only ignorant
of the true meaning of the kind of democracy that
permits him his own voice, but of the very
meaning of political conscience. Here is what Joe
wrote for starters: “Twenty-one years ago, I wrote
my first Book, Igbos: 25 YEARS AFTER BIAFRA. In
that book I wrote that it is true that Igbo have
been marginalized in every sector in Nigeria be it
at the Federal level, State, Local Government,
Army, Navy, Airforce, Police, House of Reps,
Senate, and even in Revenue allocations,
Appointments, Infrastructure distribution,
National institutions etc. I acknowledged the fact
that even as painful as it is our people
marginalize themselves even further without
knowing it. I had thought that 46years after the
Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, Igbo would have been
matured enough to throw persecution complex,
leadership complex and defeatism attitude into
the dustbin of history knowing fully well that the
victors of that Civil War are really not better than
Igbo today in Nigeria, everything considered.”
I quote this at length to ask the following
questions: (a) have the conditions that the Igbo
cried out against 25 years after the civil war
improved? Are the Igbo still marginalized or not?
(b) If the Igbo young men and women, many of
them university-trained graduates, who are the
real victims of this marginalization that Ojukwu
described as “living in a glass ceiling” are on the
streets protesting daily, fearlessly defying the
death visited on them by soldiers and policemen
ordered to shoot them to death, how does that
amount to defeatism? I think “defeatism” is the
self-indulgent prescription for “soft-power”
recently advocated by my friend C.Don Adinuba.
The use of “soft power” is possible as strategy
only if there is the counter-balancing presence of
“hard power,” and the application of “soft power”
as a diplomatic strategy exists as an option for
those who already have the power in a condition
of imbalance, not those who are seeking to create
a balance of power from the position of
vulnerability. C-Don should read Joseph Nye more
closely. In the context in which he suggests it for
the Igbo, it means, bend, take it from behind, and
thank-your-rapist. That is what Joe Igbokwe and
his cohorts of the “Akaliogoli” are also advocating
for the Igbo: to stay silent; to be part of some
hush-hush- kumbaya- movement, so that people
like Joe Igbokwe can sleep easily, and do their
business of collecting minor rent on behalf of the
Igbo in Lagos. It is foolish, blind, selfish elitism.
Joe Igbokwe wants the “Igbo-Biafran” to keep
their gobs taped because “the victors of that Civil
War are really not better than Igbo today in
Nigeria, everything considered.”
But that is hardly the question: the issue for
these agitators is that the material condition in
which they live is generally oppressive, and they
insist on changing it. I for one do not think that
secession is the solution, nor should it be the
end-game. But it is a terrible kind of self-regard
that may warrant Mr. Igbokwe to dismiss a
popular movement because he picks the crumbs
from under the table of its opposition, like some
house nigger in the old story of black slavery in
the Americas. The truth is that the Biafrans are
not the “Efulefu,” they are courageous agitators
for justice. They are within their rights to use
non-violent means to press home a choice which
is the choice for which we all fought for
democratic rights to be restored in 1999.
Igbokwe, now in the habit of cussing out Ndi Igbo
who express different political opinion in the
crudest of language, has never raised a voice to
speak out against the massacres that happened
in Ukpor and Asaba, and in other parts of the
East, of young men and women expressing their
constitutionally given rights to assemble, speak
out, protest, and yes, if it comes to it, seek self-
determination. That is what it all boils down to:
the right to self-determination to be mediated
through a proper referendum. That is all these
Biafrans ask! I feel very sorry for Joe Igbokwe,
because he’d soon come to learn the meaning of
loneliness when decent Igbo will rise, dust their
feet and walk out of the room whenever Joe
Igbokwe enters into a gathering of Ndi Igbo –
because they see him as the ultimate
“Manchurian candidate.”


www.vanguardngr.com/2016/06/efulefu-igbo-manchurian-complex/

Very intelligent article!

igbokwe I would prrefare he call himself yorubakwe.
I'm not tribalistic. just being objective here

I think Nnamdi KANU is more Manchurian than Joe Igbokwe.
Nnamdi has helped more Igbo youths to their early graves than Joe.
He has helped more Igbo youths to hate than Igbokwe. Joe is an angel in comparison to the self-hating Kanu.

Igbo kwenu!!!

” But in truth, Joe Igbokwe and his circle of pied-pipers are the real “Akalogoli.” A man like Joe Igbokwe who writes that kind of hogwash, and who calls Ndi Igbo “Efulefu” because they are engaged in civil disobedience is not only ignorant of the true meaning of the kind of democracy that permits him his own voice,

Olabestonic001:
I think Nnamdi KANU is more Manchurian than Joe Igbokwe.
Nnamdi has helped more Igbo youths to their early graves than Joe.
He has helped more Igbo youths to hate than Igbokwe. Joe is an angel in comparison to the self-hating Kanu.

It is obvious that Nnamdi Kalu has sacrificed himself for ndi Igbo against the conspiracy by the state to shut ndi Igbo up by assassinating their youths who choose to call for a referendum and by bringing before his people the alternative hope of a better life and future if they should embrace biafra. His preaching of a land where equal rights and justice will be the other of the day! But, what is Joe's story, betraying to feed his stomach!

Wow!! So Vanguard is basically telling us any Igbo who disagrees with the Biafran idea is a "Manchurian candidate" and an "efulefu". Even in a nuclear family, blood brothers disagree sometimes.

Imagine what is coming off the stables of a "national" daily.

Olabestonic001:
I think Nnamdi KANU is more Manchurian than Joe Igbokwe.
Nnamdi has helped more Igbo youths to their early graves than Joe.
He has helped more Igbo youths to hate than Igbokwe. Joe is an angel in comparison to the self-hating Kanu.

Sometime ago, l had wondered what nnamdi kanu did to ibo people that produced these agitation, and i can only give a simple answer, he taught them history. The history joe has decided to forget cause he eats the crumbs from tinubu's table. He shud remember the biblical Nehemiah, and reject the crumbs for a full 3 course meal.
No politician can pull kanu's crowd, you cant decieve that much even with jaz, freedom is not a negotiable matter to any tribe in the world, ask mandela.

omenka:
Wow!! So Vanguard is basically telling us any Igbo who disagrees with the Biafran idea is a "Manchurian candidate" and an "efulefu". Even in a nuclear family, blood brothers disagree sometimes.

Imagine what is coming off the stables of a "national" daily.

Joe Igbokwe is a lost soul.

You can take him to the North. We don't need him.