Joe Igbokwe has a right to his own "truths" mediated by his very limited experience.

So, many Igbo abroad are cab drivers, nursing assistants, shop keepers? Well, so what?

They are doing honest work, paying their taxes, and keeping the beef on the table.

Their children often end up at Harvard and at Investment Banks on wall street, so what's your beef, Mr. Joe Igbokwe?

I have seen many of these Igbo, and other Nigerians in fact, doing their "menial" bits out here to survive and I'm proud to call them "brethren."

They are proud men and women, and are not afraid of work. What's wrong with honest work?

Aman moves from Nigeria as a lawyer, and ends up as a shop attendant on Walmart, so he could feed his brood. So, what?

READ ALSO Igbo Ethnic Bigotry And Hate Campaigns Worry Me BY Joe Igbokwe

It is actually sad that Joe has to turn into a lickspittle, and piss on the Igbo routinely, just simply to earn his broth, and sound good to his paymasters.

The infuriating part of Mr. Igbokwe's rather ridiculous piece is that he tars a very wide nation of the Igbo with the brush of "bigotry."

If there is a group in Nigeria with the least bone of "bigotry" in their bodies, it is the widely traveled Igbo.

I have a simple test of Igbo capacity for toleration and accommodation:

Just listen to the Gospel music, where Igbo artists and musicians have held sway, and you'd hear the intense polyvocality that speaks to the Igbo willingness to absorb the very best of nation.

These are the grounds on which the Igbo stage their acts of nation-building.

They are quietly and forcefully melding the Nigerian enterprise, absorbing the best and the most vital force of the cultures with which they are making contact, and creating, through the hybridizing process, the idea of "Nigeria."

Igbo poets and novelists are doing the same. Igbo traders are doing the same.

Igbo politicians have been very notorious for being border-crossers, which has frequently earned them the reputation of "compromisers."

Joe Igbokwe is completely ignorant of what it means exactly to be Igbo.

The Igbo would wear "Aso-Ebi" proudly, as much as the "Babaringa" and the "Isi-agu" and the delta hat, and what they now call, "senator" and still be rooted in that profoundly democratic idea of the self.

The Igbo is the ultimate lover of individual freedom, who would not compromise the liberty inherent in the compact with his "chi" and who does not answer to anyone else except his conscience, his self-interest, the collective communal interest, and his chi.

When the Igbo fail to act as one, Igbo opponents, and ignorant people like Igbokwe call them names: "they are too disunited!" he would say.

When the Igbo perceive a common threat, and build their formidable bridge of resistance, and act as one, the likes of Joe will call them, "ethnic bigots."

Well, here's the deal, actually:

Joe Igbokwe, Igbo oppose Buhari, not because he is Fulani, but because the Igbo do not agree with him.

Igbo have worked equally well with Fulani and Hausa before, whenever there is common interest.

The Igbo oppose Buhari's discriminatory policies.

The Igbo oppose Buhari's economic policies that have endangered their own capacity to function, meet their communal obligations, and feed their children while the likes of Joe Igbokwe feed at the tables of his masters, as he mouths bollocks!

The Igbo oppose the idea that one people should be singled out for no cause.

The Igbo did not support Jonathan for anything other than they felt strongly that a minority president who was doing his best to govern should not be subverted and intimidated by the other major ethnic groups, and forces, including Buhari, who threatened Armageddon when Jonathan won in 2011.

It is Igbo fierce sense of justice, and the Igbo do not go back on their promise, once they've declared their loyalties always founded on hard, very negotiated grounds.

Perhaps Joe Igbokwe has conveniently forgotten:

When Jonathan was declared winner of the 2011 elections, a wild orgy of violence erupted in the North, among Buhari's supporters.

Among those killed were numerous Igbo Youth Corpers, and Buhari did not express remorse, he merely threatened a bloodbath the next time.

The Igbo did not forget.

And where was Joe Igbo when everybody was calling Jonathan all kinds of unprintable names as president.

Even Joe Igbo joined, or was Goodluck Jonathan not deserving of dignity as president? Ndi Igbo do not follow blindly.


Yes, in their churches, their town hall meetings, their learned fora, and on the dinner tables, they discuss Nigeria, and are vehement against the new regime of increasing terror and lawlessness midwifed by Joe Igbokwe and his APC party.

Joe Igbokwe's umbrage against the Igbo is because the Igbo have refused to support the APC. The party is a deadwood in the East.

And why? Because:

(a) It is conceived to be regionalist, and unrepresentative of Igbo values,

(b) Igbo value the big national umbrella that would cover the interest of the entire nation,

(c) they look at Buhari, and the APC, and they see how skewered, and narrow, and how deaf the party leadership, and the presidency is, and so the Igbo respond by opposing it.

There were those who never thought that the Igbo would be comfortable in opposition.

Well, here we are: the frontier of Nigerian opposition against a noyau order. It is called "principles" and not "bigotry."

When the ACN was in opposition, Igbokwe did not call his Yoruba friends "bigoted."

I do not remember him asking his master, Bola Tinubu, to work with Jonathan, and douse the vehemence against him in in parts of the west and parts of the North.

As for what lesson the Igbo should learn from whom… perhaps Joe Igbokwe did not know that Ike Nwachukwu's mother was a Muslim from the Katsina, married to an Igbo Christian.

Perhaps, Igbokwe does not remember that the first lady of the East, the wife of the Governor of the East, Dr. Akanu Ibiam, was a fantastic Yoruba woman, from the Sasegbon family.

And that V. C. Ike's novel, “Toads For Supper”, was precisely a valoration of that, from his own experience at Ibadan, and his marriage to the wonderful Adebimpe Ike, one of the great leaders of the Biafran Land Army.

And that the young generation of Igbo, including my own cousins are still marrying across the ethnic lines.

Perhaps he did not know that there were many Igbo who never went to church whose wives were ardent Christians.

Or that in Igbo families even today, you have variety of faiths: one might be Pentecostal, while his wife or sibling might be Anglican or Catholic, or even nothing.

Perhaps Igbokwe never understood the Igbo cultural ethic of "Chi Awu otu?"

Perhaps Igbokwe himself does not know:

- That in Igbo land, sons do not inherit their father's wealth or titles traditionally; they must strive and carve their own path.

- That a man's wealth belonged to the community, while a woman's wealth belonged to her children, and especially her female children.

- That the Igbo ordered their world traditionally so that women were the real owners of wealth, while men retained ritual authority.

Perhaps Igbokwe himself has not studied the pattern of Igbo empowerment in the modern era, at least in the last 50 years:

Igbo men that I know man give his daughters as much education and opportunity as his sons without discrimination, which accounts for the fact that today, Igbo women are the most educated category of women in all of Africa.

The facts are also made very clear and evident as you look at JAMB and WASC enrolments and results, in which the boys pair equitably with the girls, and sometimes in fact, more.

Years ago, traducers of the Igbo, looking at the slim evidence of between 1985 and 1992, when many families experienced financial difficulties, and sent their sons to learn trades while they sent the girls off to schools to prepare the next generation.

Many, including Joe Igbokwe mocked the Igbo and said, "Igbo boys are not going to school, only the girls."

That generation that went to learn trades went back to school, to earn their degrees, and many are now entrepreneurs, many of them financially independent, and many of the women are themselves highly educated professionals - teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, journalists, etc.

And as the Igbo always knew, you educate the woman, you educate an entire generation.

They are the mothers of a new generation of Igbo children who will startle the world because their cradle is firm.

So, Joe Igbokwe should keep his advice for the Igbo and when he would have woken up from his long sleep of ignorance, he might then come to see what the Igbo saw sitting down, which he could not see standing up!

Enough of this idiocy!

Obi Nwakanma


http://www.elombah.com/index.php/opinion/8599-why-ndigbo-dislike-buhari-an-answer-to-joe-igbokwe?showall=1

Ignore have said it all

Spare us this epistle

DEAR BIAFRANS,YOU ALL MUST UNDERSTAND THAT JOSEPH AND EJIAMATU IGBOKWES OF NKWO NNEWI ARE SAME FAMILY BANISHED BY THE BAKASSI BOYS FOR THE ACTIVITIES IN CRIME BETWEEN 1999-2002.JOE IGBOKWE AND HIS BROTHER,EJIAMATU WERE BEHIND ROBBERIES IN NNEWI WITH EDDY NNOGU AS THEIR SPIRITUAL GUIDE.IT WAS AFTER BAKASSI KILLED MANY IGBOKWE’S FAMILY SPONSORED ROBBERS,JOE AND EJIAMATU RAN TO LAGOS.EJIAMATU RETURNED TO NNEWI IN 2006 WHILE JOE NEVER RETURN ONLY TO INVEST HIS CRIME RESOURCES INTO TINUBU CAMPAIGN/ELECTIONS WITH JUICY POSTS AND SAME CONTINUES.JOE IGBOKWE MARRIED TO YORUBA WOMAN AND NEVER RETURN TO IGBOLAND SINCE 2002.
THIS IS THE SECRET REASON JOE IGBOKWE HATE HIS ROOT TILL DATE BUT HIS TIME WILL BE LIMITED TO LAGOS EVEN HIS BURIAL PLACE AS NO ROOM IS LEFT FOR JOE IN NNEWI OR THE COMING BIAFRALAND.BIAFRALAND DO NOT WANT A CRIMINAL LIKE JOSEPH IGBOKWE OF NKWO NNEWI AND HIS LIKES.THE BIAFRANS ARE AWARE OF ALL JOE AND EJIAMATU ACTIVITIES AND SINCE 2006,EJIAMATU BEGGED HIS KINGSMEN BUT JOE NEVER RATHER BECAME ANTI-IGBO IN ALL HIS LIFE TIME SINCE 2002. LET JOE GO TO IGBOLAND.