₦airaland Forum

Written by Uche Igwe
I took advantage of the break caused by the
postponement of the elections to visit a few
places in the South-East and South-South zones
and directly gauge the perception of the people
about the current political developments in the
country. The first place was my village in Mbaise,
then my mother’s village, both in Imo State.
After going to my state, I joined one of my close
friends to pay a courtesy visit to one of the
riverine villages near Yenagoa in Bayelsa State.
Interestingly, some grass-roots politicians
showed up during both visits and I took the
liberty of the two visits to discuss Nigerian
politics with both sets of people – my kinsmen
and the kinsmen of President Goodluck
Jonathan. During my discussions, it was obvious
that President Jonathan has more supporters in
Imo and other Igbo-speaking states than even in
his home state, Bayelsa. Surprised?
Let me state two things upfront...
The first is that contrary to the views expressed
in some quarters, I do not dislike President
Jonathan, at least not his person. My concern is
about his style of politics and governance and
his performance as President and how these two
factors affect me and my generation. As a
southerner and an academic, I should connect
with him. If he performs brilliantly as President, I
will share in his success and such performance
will brighten my chances and those of other
members of my generation to one day decide to
lead our country. The same way today I am
sharing in his mistakes. So, the stakes before us
are clearly beyond whatever thing I feel about
his person.
The second is that if I am given an opportunity
to nominate who will become the President of
Nigeria under normal circumstances, my first
choice will not be General Muhammadu Buhari. I
am just 40 and so you can begin to guess why.
However, in the circumstances that we have
found ourselves as a nation, Buhari is potentially
a better choice than Jonathan. It is very obvious
that our President has run out of ideas. The
country is deeply divided and the citizens are so
highly disillusioned such that it will only take a
trigger for the country to go up in flames. The
current insecurity, unemployment, poverty and
economic uncertainty in the country have
reached frightening dimensions in our villages.
But do we blame all of these on Jonathan?
Definitely no. Does he have a large chunk of the
blame as our leader at this time? Of course, yes.
The incestuous levels of corruption and blatant
looting going on under Jonathan are part of the
reasons that have led to widespread
disenchantment and loss of confidence among
the citizenry. Does my support for Buhari mean
that he will do any magic? No. These things will
take time to fix but we need another style. There
is hardly any new approach the current
President can bring on the table after trying for
almost six years. Change has become long
overdue. It will have a psychological soothing on
Nigeria and Nigerians.
Now back to my main subject. My discussions
revealed that unlike me, many people from my
village neither support Buhari nor the All
Progressives Congress. I could not but ask the
following questions: What is the Igbo agenda in
the current political dispensation? Who are those
articulating it? What is their reason for the
fixation with the status quo? Why are Ndigbo
reluctant to engage the wind of change
currently blowing in the country? Many of the
people masquerading as Igbo leaders are
individuals of questionable character
preoccupied with only pecuniary objectives. In
my village for instance, a school drop-out is now
in charge. He feeds the kinsmen with falsehood
and takes regular advantage of their ignorance
to enrich himself.
While in the village, one of my uncles called me
and abused me thoroughly for expressing views
that he termed “anti-Igbo.” Which Igbo was he
referring to? It is obvious that he is still fixated
about the civil war and the roles of some
northerners in it. I was shocked that more than
45 years after the civil war, many people are still
passionately talking about it. True, it is an
important part of our national history but is it
not time to move on? Could it be the main
reason to like or hate Buhari and the
northerners? So, what about Olusegun
Obasanjo? What about the Ijaw who took over
our abandoned properties in Port Harcourt? To
my mind, and the minds of many young Igbo
men, the Ijaw, who colluded with other majority
tribes and benefitted mostly in the acquisition of
properties and wealth in Port Harcourt from a
tribe lying helplessly prostrate from a civil war,
committed greater atrocity towards the Igbo.
The Yoruba recently came out to declare that
they would not waste their votes for anyone
without demanding something in return.
Have the Igbo made any similar declaration?
What are they getting from Jonathan and his
kinsmen in return for Ndigbo support in 2015?
Will the Ijaw presidency (no matter how hard we
try, this is what our brothers in the Niger Delta
have reduced the Presidency to) guarantee a
national redress on the injustices of the civil war
and the abandoned property saga? Will President
Jonathan, as an Ijaw, who majorly orchestrated
and benefitted from the abandoned property
saga compensate the Igbo the same way he has
guaranteed amnesty to the Niger Delta
militants?
Have Ndigbo asked for all of these, especially,
since a continued support for the South-South, if
it spirals out of country, may be jeopardising
Ndigbo’s fresh investments in wealth acquisition
in places like Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, Maiduguri,
Jos, Bauchi, Zaria, Ibadan, Lagos, Abeokuta and
Lokoja just to mention but a few. You will recall
that Ndigbo subconsciously redirected their
business investments to these new territories as
a result of the sense of insecurity following the
abandoned property saga. Will they now
jeopardise all of these new investments and
wealth accumulation in support of the kinsman
of the same tribe that stripped them of their old
wealth?
Why are we not engaging candidates on what
they can offer the nation? What are their plans
for the textile industry, shoe industry, commerce
and other areas of comparative advantage of
Ndigbo? What plans do they have to develop
Aba, Onitsha and Nnewi where our industry and
entrepreneurship are defined daily? How can we
expand the infrastructure and capabilities in
these cities and expand opportunities for our
creative youth population? Does a leader have to
be a Christian or a Muslim to attend to these
needs? How come Igbo leaders have been
unable to demand and extract some of these
promises from our politicians? Must we continue
to play the second fiddle in this country?
It is disheartening that Ndigbo have become
politically irrelevant and directionless. No one is
interested in articulating an agenda that will
move the zone forward. No one is interested to
review why someone as comfortable as Eze
Festus Odimegwu will throw his support behind
Buhari or why President Jonathan’s kinsmen are
beginning to reconsider their support for their
son. What you hear when you travel around “Ala
Igbo” are unsubstantiated rumours and
unjustifiable fixation over the history of
yesteryears. I will not join my dear uncle to
continue to bemoan the past. I have chosen to
engage the present and project, positively, for
the future.
The civil war, regrettable as it was, is in the past,
a past that even Nigeria has chosen to feign
never existed; a past that our national
educational curricula have refused to recognise
and teach officially. There is a new war in town;
it is a political war. I am struggling to find the
position of Ndigbo in the new war and it makes
one miserable. The civil war ended 45 years ago
and if care is not taken, we may lose out in this
current political war. We are losing it already
unless we redefine our current priorities from an
individual to a group survival and sustaining
agenda. For a people so talented and
resourceful, this will be nothing but tragic.
BY UCHE IGWE

You have spoken well. Well what can I say? I don't even have a PVC

The writer of this article misses the point of Igbo support for Jonathan and PDP. There are four issues involved in that support.

1. It is not about the civil war as the Igbo have in the past supported Hausa, Yoruba, Muslim. Did any candidate defeat Yaradua in any Igbo state? Indeed, no other ethnic group like IBB than the Igbo and yet he was a major fighter in the war unlike Buhari whose role was passive. The truth is that Buhari's personae is frightening to the Igbo who are damn freedom lovers. His twenty months rule is nothing to wish one's friend not to talk of oneself.

2. Buhari too is a bad politician. He had never made any serious effort to woo the Igbo. Atiku Abubakar would not have had any issue were he to have emerged.

3. Igbos feel that Jonathan is being plumeted because he is a minority and as a people with high sense of justice Igbo feel this should not be the case.

4. The manner in which APC was formed also left much to be desired. The first impression which mattered a lot was that APC was a union of Northern and Western politicians. The Igbo among them are merely tolerated. If not, why wouldn't an Igbo be made running mate to counter Goodluck's influence their. But for APC Igbo do not matter.

I think Igbo's always make the wrong alignments in politics. I still don't understand the psychology behind supporting a candidate blindly and fully, what if he loses the election? Right from before independence of Nigeria Igbo's have always supported the wrong people. First was when Awolowo's AG called for a coalition with Zik's NCNC so the South could have a shot at ruling Nigeria first over the North. NCNC however aligned with the Northern NCP which had majority members in the parliament thereby giving the north power on a platter of Gold, they became a junior partner in the aggrement whereas if they had aligned with AG they would have being the senior partner since they had 23 members to AG's 18. The North haven't released their strangle hold on Nigeria since then. Till date those unwise decisions are still being made, what if GEJ looses, the new Govt might not be favourable to the south east the same way GEJ neglected the south west, however let's assume GEJ wins and completes another four years. How will the Igbo's rule Nigeria then, who will they turn to as allies, the south south, the yoruba's or the Hausa's? Igbo's have to think very clearly about their political descisions because whichever way the election goes I don't see good prospects. Sometimes the future should be considered when making political descisions. Even if there would be support for GEJ it should not be at the detriment of Igbo chances in the future.

Any igbo person supporting jonathan is more clueless than jonathan. As for igbo presidency, that one is far fetched because the igbos are not one. If you want an igbo man not to vote for his brother, just give him some money, that's all it takes and he will vote for another tribe. Sadly enough other tribes know this weak point of the igbos and they are using it efficiently. If not igbos would have voted massively for ojukwu when he contested for presidency under apga but they didn't. If all the igbos in nigeria and beyond had voted for ojukwu, he would have won that election.

Later

......Nigeria returned to democratic governance in 1999 and since then, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) has been in power at the center. Nigeria has had its ups and downs since that time but what is the experience of Nigerian citizens? The Web Pollster is starting another opinion poll to gauge the mood of #nigerians regarding how they’ve fared in the past 6 years?

Follow links in my signature, NL is blocking any information that does not or may not favour the current government...

omazus:
The writer of this article misses the point of Igbo support for Jonathan and PDP. There are four issues involved in that support.

1. It is not about the civil war as the Igbo have in the past supported Hausa, Yoruba, Muslim. Did any candidate defeat Yaradua in any Igbo state? Indeed, no other ethnic group like IBB than the Igbo and yet he was a major fighter in the war unlike Buhari whose role was passive. The truth is that Buhari's personae is frightening to the Igbo who are damn freedom lovers. His twenty months rule is nothing to wish one's friend not to talk of oneself.

2. Buhari too is a bad politician. He had never made any serious effort to woo the Igbo. Atiku Abubakar would not have had any issue were he to have emerged.

3. Igbos feel that Jonathan is being plumeted because he is a minority and as a people with high sense of justice Igbo feel this should not be the case.

4. The manner in which APC was formed also left much to be desired. The first impression which mattered a lot was that APC was a union of Northern and Western politicians. The Igbo among them are merely tolerated. If not, why wouldn't an Igbo be made running mate to counter Goodluck's influence their. But for APC Igbo do not matter.

I like the way you defend igbo love for jonathan....but let me bring you to notice...where you have miss some point
1. Buhari aim as head of state was not to fight any tribe but to eradicate corruption.....remember he also jail Kuti
2. APC can not present Atiku as presidential candidate....cos when talking about corruption is same as james Ibori and co
3. In 2011 yoruba massively support Jonathan because we believe he will perform....but he as failed in every sector.
4. When APC want to merginalized they call on the duo of APGA and Labour party but they refuse cos igbo
have bad orientation of segregation and sentiment

Thanks Oladele for liking my response. If you have read what I wrote well you would have noted that I did not speak of love of Jonathan and hatred of Buhari perse. I spoke about a people's love of freedom and hatred of tyranny, a people's love of justice and hatred of injustice. These two points are where the issue mainly concern Buhari. As for your No. 4 I do not know what you mean by bad orientation of segregation and sentiment. But let history judge and I want to assume you are from the South West, between the Igbo and the Yoruba which group is known for entering into alliance with people from other zones? You are known for standing alone even to the externt that other zones made your son president against your wish. The truth is this, if Buhari becomes president, it will become the first time somebody ruled Nigeria dmocratically without majority Igbo support. And when you say APGA refused I wonder what you are telling people like Rochas and co.

But my last take is this, you people should not stop thinking of what will happen to Igbo if Buhari wins. We are big and strong enough to take care of ourselves not only in Nigeria but also anywhere in the world, that is why we are Igbo. And please do away with the taught that we are not supporting Buhari because he is Hausa and Muslim. Even the real Hausa proper know who their real friends are between the Igbo and Yoruba. But like Plato said, Socrates I love but truth I love more.

oladele97:
I like the way you defend igbo love for jonathan....but let me bring you to notice...where you have miss some point
1. Buhari aim as head of state was not to fight any tribe but to eradicate corruption.....remember he also jail Kuti
2. APC can not present Atiku as presidential candidate....cos when talking about corruption is same as james Ibori and co
3. In 2011 yoruba massively support Jonathan because we believe he will perform....but he as failed in every sector.
4. When APC want to merginalized they call on the duo of APGA and Labour party but they refuse cos igbo
have bad orientation of segregation and sentiment