In all of his 69 -- 79 years in this world, how many times has Bola Tinubu, the man who could be the next president of Nigeria, visited the South-East?

I guess that it may not be up to a dozen times. He didn’t go there to school, compete in debate, quiz or Koran recital challenges. He surely didn’t go there on a school excursion to visit a major dam or a game reserve. Who wants to cross the Niger River just to visit Ogbunike Cave, Ngwo Pine Forest or Oguta Lake? The Umuahia Biafra War Museum was not yet built when he went to school. We know that he did not go to the South-East to work after school. With Ndubisi Kanu, Ebutu Ukiwe, Anya O. Anya, Ralph Obioha and others in NADECO, Tinubu most definitely did not go to the South-East to solicit support for MKO Abiola’s mandate during the pro-democracy movement of the 90s. When he emerged and became the governor of Lagos State, he had no need to campaign in the South-East. The same as when he became a National Leader of APC.

Why is that important? What has that got to do with the sit-at-home order introduced in the South-East by the Indigenous People of Biafra to add pressure to their quest for the actualization of an independent nation of Biafra?

I will get to that in a short while. In the meantime, follow me on this little detour.

While the opinion of Boko Haram members is not seen as the opinion of the people of the North-East of Nigeria, the same is not true of the opinion of Biafrans. Outside of the South-East, the opinion of Biafrans is by default considered the universal opinion of the people of the South-East. If you are from the South-East, many still see you as a Biafran, irrespective of how many times you swear not to be allied to the Biafrans.

We know why it is that way. It is because the people of the South-East are the most misunderstood people of Nigeria. The Fulanis come a close second. The misunderstanding is so endemic that the people of the South-East are beginning to misunderstand themselves as a result. I am sure psychologists must have a name for that syndrome.

The reason for the misunderstanding is clear. Even though all categories of South-Eastern people live all over Nigeria, speak various languages of the places they live, the same is not true about other people from other parts of Nigeria within the South-East. Take out the National Youth Service Corps program that compels many young educated and adventurous people to spend a year in the South-East; most Nigerians would not have any reason ever to visit the South-East.

There is little or no federal presence in the region to bring diverse workers from across the country to the South-East. The other reason, related to the first, is that life is very hard in the South-East. It is hard for the people in that region, so they leave at the slightest opportunity. If it is tough for the indigenes to stay and make a living, what hope does it offer non-indigenes?

For 27 years that Nelson Mandela was in prison, if black South Africans had stayed at home one day of every week, they would have spent 1,458 days at home, which would have been four years of their lives. If you think that South African blacks are poor now, imagine how poorer they would have been if they had lost four years of income. And under Apartheid, the white business-owners would have fired most of them from their jobs for such action.

While sacrifice has a place in every struggle, it must be well-crafted and one with buy-in by a majority of the people. Otherwise, those imposing the sacrifice are essentially saying that the people they are fighting for are idiots who have no mind of their own.

Also, responsible people have compared the frequent and economically strangulating sit-at-home as akin to drinking poison and hoping that your enemy would die or sitting at home crushing your testicles and wondering why you cannot get your wife pregnant. The idea that president Buhari would release Nnamdi Kanu because Igbo people are forcing themselves to stay at home does not sound like a strategy coming from those who have a good understanding of how Nigeria works, especially when it relates to anything tangential to Biafra.

A true voluntary sit-at-home would not need force to get people to comply. And Igbo people outside Igbo land will voluntarily join in staying at home. By them not joining, they are giving it thumbs down. They enjoy the freedom and the advantage that they deny folks at home. They are endorsing a philosophy that they are better and superior to those at home. That is a recipe for resentment. And resentment in a struggle like this can only lead to discord and disaster.

More dangerously, by imposing economic hardship on the home front, we encourage more people to leave home. That is the inverse of the new Igbo awareness should be – which is a return home to rebuild – aku lue ulo.

There is a reason Buhari won’t care if all the markets in the South-East are closed for the next 27 years. It is the same reason that Bola Tinubu will not care if school children in the South-East are never allowed to seat for WAEC again, if pregnant women have babies on banana leaves at home and children dig graves to bury their dead parents themselves.

We can be sentimental for the mundane, but history is not sentimental, not even for the profane. We can sit at home as much as we like, but we cannot sit on history. Our forefathers said that the wise ones get the proverb while the stubborn ones bury their heads inside the bush.

The limit of sit-at-home comes when it begins to crush a man’s testicles.

Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others

Source: http://saharareporters.com/2022/01/21/trouble-ipob%E2%80%99s-sit-home-rudolf-ogoo-okonkwo

CC: Mynd44 Lalasticala

You people will still blame Tinubu for Ojukwu death

why should he care about them? they are inconsequential

You don't mean it

make una free 'Bobo Chicago' na

we from other regions are happy with the sit at home. let them continue for the next two centuries

Nigerian gutter media trying to make Tinubu relevant in SE.
Oga down here in SE, the masses don't know who Tinubu is.

Tinubu, the E-tormenting governor general of some people.

I laugh, all for 2023

Baawaa:
You people will still blame Tinubu for Ojukwu death

Who knows Tinubu down here?
Mtcheww...

Billingslord:
why should he care about them? they are inconsequential

No one care about that frog eyes who never care about the ongoing Fulani killings in his region...

Some people are unbelievable stupid. You wrote an article with heading tinubu blamed for not caring about sit at home but failed to explain in your article where tinubu is blamed. Just say you are seeking attention by using tinubu name

BKayy:
Nigerian gutter media trying to make Tinubu relevant in SE.
Oga down here in SE, the masses don't know who Tinubu is.

People can be incredibly stupid. Wat concerns east sit at home and tinubu.

History555:


People can be incredibly stupid. Wat concerns east sit at home and tinubu.

I wonder oh.

who is tinubu?
abi na that woman wey don sell slaves for Lagos during the slave trade era?

I don’t think Tinubu should cry more than the bereaved.

If Igbo leaders cannot resist Nnamdi Kanu and his disciples sit at home order then they should bury their heads in shame.

BKayy:

Who knows Tinubu down here?
Mtcheww...

Lol Tinubu is more popular than Ojuku in the East.

No day passes in the East that your people will not speak about him.

Even your Ohaneze elders have been begging Tinubu since.

https://www.today.ng/news/politics/2023-ohanaeze-ndigbo-begs-asiwaju-tinubu-contest-402442/amp

https://punchng.com/ohanaeze-fumes-alleges-injustice-as-tinubu-declares-presidential-bid/?amp

Tinubu is the air the ibos breathe. He is the oxygen keeping them alive.



-Viper

This people obsession with Tinubu is getting out of hand.


What is the connection between their miserable sit at home and Tinubu?

IPOB has done more to Igboland than the so called enemies has done in the past 50 years.

LegendHero:


Lol Tinubu is more popular than Ojuku in the East.

No day passes in the East that your people will not speak about him.

Even your Ohaneze elders have been begging Tinubu since.

https://www.today.ng/news/politics/2023-ohanaeze-ndigbo-begs-asiwaju-tinubu-contest-402442/amp

https://punchng.com/ohanaeze-fumes-alleges-injustice-as-tinubu-declares-presidential-bid/?amp

It looks like there is a demon in you people that makes you think you can speak for other people.
I don't know if it is self esteem or something else.

Tinubu is not known down here Oga. Don't confuse the influence Lagos has over SW to other regions like SE that is like a different country from Nigeria entirely

BKayy:
Nigerian gutter media trying to make Tinubu relevant in SE.
Oga down here in SE, the masses don't know who Tinubu is.

Hahaha.... you know that you are lying. To prove that you are lying, here are members of the masses in SE shouting Asiwaju Tinubu in the market and excited to call out the name. Watch the video sir

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ModqYCLPocU

BKayy:

It looks like there is a demon in you people that makes you think you can speak for other people.
I don't know if it is self esteem or something else.

Tinubu is not known down here Oga. Don't confuse the influence Lagos has over SW to other regions like SE that is like a different country from Nigeria entirely

don't waste your time with all those TMUs ( Tinubu's Media Urchins) they'll create a stupid posts and quote Igbos on it as if Tinubu is even known in the SE

Somebody will stay in his or her state and be telling someone what is happening in south east,so you assumed that it is very hard to make it here that's why people are moving away from southeast on any slightest opportunity,Mr op,one day try and visit south east,I bet you,you will marvelled on what you will see.

BKayy:
Nigerian gutter media trying to make Tinubu relevant in SE.
Oga down here in SE, the masses don't know who Tinubu is.

Yes they haven't heard about Lagos too