A people must learn how to plan their politics as a people, else, they will become the political pawns of other people. The absence of this mindset is what to me, is the bane of the Igbo political liberation. I was not yet here when the Igbos were deservingly having a good cruise on the Nigerian political chessboard, but a look at the few history books we can still lay our hands on point to that reality. There was a time in this country when the Igbos had a very good hold on power at the center, and were top in the military setup of the country. But all that were to change after the unfortunate coup of July 1966, which some ethnic bigots ignorantly refer to as “July Rematch”. After this coup, deliberate efforts were made by those in authority to ensure that the Igbos never came close to power and the Igbo man’s influence in Nigeria’s security, civil service and even social setup, considerably waned. Every effort made to also suppress our economic power and influence has failed to stick. The fact that the economic gang-up against the Igbos has failed to work should tell us that it is possible to successfully resist the political persecution against us.
I have always argued that the idea of secession is cowardly and I am also aware that majority of those championing this secessionist struggles do not really mean it, as confirmed recently by Lt. Col. Achuzia who is not only the Board of Trustees Chairman of the rampaging Indigenous Peoples’ of Biafra (IPOB), but also a former high ranking functionary of the Biafran Republic in the three years that country existed. In granting an interview to some journalists, recently, the former scribe of the Ohaneze Ndigbo and a highly successful soldier whose escapades in the civil war earned the sobriquet; Hannibal, restated categorically what I have always believed and vented; that the Igbos or Biafrans are not really seeking to break away from Nigeria, but are interested in being fairly treated in a united Nigeria. In other words, the Igbos wants equity and nothing more. Fair competition brings justice, and that is exactly what the Igbos is asking for and no Nigerian leadership group at any time in the history of this country will have peace if this is not granted.
2019 election season is one of the best opportunities for the Nigerian State to take necessary steps in amending the political wrongs it has done to the Igbo people of Nigeria, but Nigerians of other ethnicities cannot do this if the Igbos for whom this demand is being made do not show enough hunger and preparedness for this struggle. Political philosophers and politicians are long agreed on the fact that; “power is not given, it must be taken.”
What inspires a good number of Igbos agitating for Biafran secession is not their lost of interest in remaining Nigerians, for there is no ethnic group in today’s Nigeria who can lay more claim to Nigeria than the Igbos, nor is there any group who love Nigeria more than the Igbos, what spurs the loud cry for secession from a section of the Igbo people is the obvious political marginalization of the Igbo people, mostly accentuated by the reality that no Igbo has become the President of Nigeria since 1967. The core promoters of the Biafran secessionist ideology capitalize on this reality to spin all manners of propaganda in order to deceive a good number of the people and sell their self-serving ideologies. One of such propaganda is that there is a conspiracy among members of the Northern Nigeria ruling class in collusion with our Yoruba siblings to shut the Igbos out of the Nigerian presidency forever. Because power is not something you beg for, rather what you negotiate for, I believe that no matter whatever conspiracy there might be anywhere, there is nothing stopping an Igbo man or woman from becoming Nigeria’s President, except the Igbo men and women themselves. Igbos are the most conspirators against the Igbo presidency ambition than any other ethnic group or elitist class.
Currently, the Igbos constitute the loudest bulk in the yet to be confirmed presidential campaign of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, while they also feature prominently in Sule Lamido and Umar Nasko’s yet to be announced presidential campaign teams. The most unfortunate thing about this is that most of these Igbo young men and women championing the presidential ambitions of these Northern politicians have not being formally consulted nor contracted by these men or their representatives to team up with them. They embark on this most unfortunate campaign as a way of getting the attention of these Northern politicians. This portrays us as cheap and easily buyable. truly, everyone enjoys the freedom to support any candidate in an election or even hold or promote any political ideology, but we must always remember that all politics is local, even in the most modern places. At this stage in the buildup to the 2019 elections, every true born Igbo should be promoting the Igbo presidency agenda, till such a time as it may have been confirmed to be unattainable, at least, this time around. We cannot afford not to have tried enough and still come back to say that we are being marginalized. We must have to make a legitimate and tenacious push for what we want as a people and when we don’t succeed, posterity will know that we gave it our best and our all.
If the Igbos won’t get the presidency this time around, it has to be because the incumbent President wants a second tenure, and in that case we must negotiate seriously for the Vice-Presidential position, if he decides to try a new deputy outside Professor Yemi Osinbajo who presently holds that position. With Buhari doing a second tenure, the Igbo presidency dream would be delayed by just four more years, but with a new Northern presidential candidate like Atiku Abubakar, Umar Nasko or Sule Lamido emerging as President this time around, the Igbos will have to wait another long eight years at the least before they can make a credible push at the presidency. This is certainly not a palatable option to any politically conscious Igbo.
It has to be stated here that while it is the right of the Igbos to demand and actually fight to fill in one of their own as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, no law of the Federal Republic would have been broken if this doesn’t happen, hence, the need for the Igbos, especially the political class to unite behind this agenda and work assiduously towards its attainment. One of the reasons why the Northerners seem to be dominating the Nigerian political space is not really because of their large population, but more as a result of the ever-readiness of their political class, to negotiate and compromise. The North believe more in the general interest of the North than the narrowness of individualism which has hurt the Igbo politics more than any other thing.
The idea of every Igbo politician aspiring to displace the other Igbo in order to get whatever he or she wants without considering the bigger interest of the entire Igbo people is a problem which the Igbo political leadership must look for ways to tackle, if we must make any real impact in our bid to reinvent our politics and take charge of the center. We must learn to unite behind someone not because that person is superior to us, but because Nature has allowed that person to be in a position that he or she is more acceptable not just to the Igbos but to other ethnic nationalities in the country. We must develop the mindset of our thing rather than the prevailing mindset of ‘my own’, which has remained the bane of our politics. We cannot be looking for a saint to go for us, because the search for such will be eternal and impossible. In looking for the captain of a team, we do not look the way of the most prolific scorer, nor do we appoint the best dribbler, but the one whom Nature has placed in his or her shoulders the ability to lead others and the acceptability needed to galvanize the necessary support. This should inform our choice.
Some of our Igbo siblings who have elected to lead the campaign for another Northern presidential candidate outside the incumbent President Buhari are actually doing this out of some kind of political frustration; they think that since the Igbos have being trying to make a case for an Igbo president of Nigeria, since 1967 without success, the option may as well be to accept failure and continue to serve those who ‘were born to rule’. This mindset is defeatist and should not be sustained, especially at a time like this when respected analysts have signified as the “Igbos best chance since after the civil war, to negotiate successfully for the nation’s top job.”
We must not fail to pick valuable lessons from the way the Northerners approach their struggle for power. When in 2011, the North felt understandably shortchanged by the decision of former President Goodluck Jonathan to seek re-election, thereby distorting the peculiar zoning formula of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the leaders of the Party teamed up together in an attempt, in the first place to wrestle the Party’s presidential ticket from him by putting Atiku Abubakar forward as its sole presidential candidate. When this failed, they went beyond Party lines to mobilize support discreetly and openly for the candidature of General Muhammadu Buhari who ran under the platform of the CPC. When these efforts could not yield the desired result, they did not go back to their various homes to complain and lick their wounds, they rather rolled up their sleeves and went to work, immediately after the 2011 elections to ensure that the presidency do not elude them by the next election year. Being a people who have a good grasp of the Nigerian political game, they knew that insisting on fighting to wrestle the control of the ruling PDP from the President would be very difficult if not impossible, hence, their idea of destroying or at least weakening that Party, then, merging other smaller political Parties to form a more formidable political Party, which today is the ruling Party.
The Igbos cannot continue to wait for when everything is alright or for them to be given the presidency on a platter of gold. They must work for it, they must think about it and they must negotiate for it, but in negotiating, they must not negotiate from a point of weakness, but from a position of strength. The Igbos must work so hard and plan so well that other ethnic nationalities will have no option but to coalesce their interests into theirs for the good of the nation.
I will conclude this particular edition of this article by pointing us to the first major step towards the attainment of this long-desired goal; identifying a political Party platform. We must identify a formidable political Party platform and be sure of having good control over the structures of that Party. There is no doubt that the ruling APC should be our first option, but it cannot be our only option, for there is no one route to power. The Igbos must not be left behind in the proposed Mega Party which some politicians in the country are marketing. We must guard against the bitter experiences of 2015, when the Igbos put all their political eggs in one basket-the PDP and support for President Goodluck Jonathan’s second term ambition. But for the foresight of leaders like Owelle Rochas Okorocha, Senator Chris Ngige, and few others, the Igbos would have completely lost out in the Nigerian political equation. The little bargaining power we have today comes from Okorocha’s foresight and well-deserved victory which has made Imo State the only Southeast State under the control of the ruling APC. Southeastern political leaders should not be taken unawares in the horse-trading that is going within the top leading Parties in the country, and even the proposed mega Party.
MAY WE HAVE A GREAT 2017