IkpuMmadu:
Nwanna, Many years ago, the General, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu spoke about the “Biafra of the mind.” Only a few, I think, understood him. Well, they say, only the deep speak to the deep.

But let me attempt here to tease out Dim Ojukwu’s prescription: the greatest proof of Igbo survival and aspiration must be to model, wherever Onye-Igbo stands, the ethos of innovation, excellence, ingenuity, and ability that marked the Igbo endeavor in Biafra. We must also use Biafra as the stepping stone to a higher vision of the Igbo place in the world.

There is no single proof or evidence today that the Igbo of this generation are capable of transforming any nation to which they lay claim. I have looked; I have studied the Igbo situation, and I have listened to my Igbo kinsmen, and I think something is fundamentally wrong: the Igbo are trapped in a deadening hate, self-pity and nostalgia. It is the kind of nostalgia that is both defeatist and deadly because it continues to romanticize the past while the future speeds away.

The Igbo cannot wait until they achieve Biafra or a separate nation in order to build and secure Igbo land. Soon after the end of the war, Igbo survivors of the war, girded their loins and embarked on the work of restoration. With singular grit, they revived the economy of the East, and by 1979, just nine years after the end of the war, were ready to take on the rest of the nation again. We their children are a disgrace to the spirit of those men and women.

The Igbo are today a beggarly nation of impotent, lachrymal people now weeping about “marginalization” and waiting for Nigeria to collapse or let them go, so that they will go and make something of themselves. This is an over-indulged generation. The last of the Igbo are old and dying; the current Igbo are “inferior Igbo.” They are just waiting for Godot.

Now, you say, the only time the Igbo will work is if power remains in the South. I think this is too simple. Take a look around you, where are those Igbo men and women? Which Igbo today have the sagacity of Zik, or the courage of Okpara, Mbakwe, or Ojukwu, the capacity of Ojike or Okigbo, the fierce pride and stabilizing force of the old Igbo women, the organizational acumen of an RBK Okafor, the selfless pride of those Igbo of the last generation, who always rose to the occasion when the Igbo summoned them to great causes, including giving their widows mite without question, for as long as “they Igbo have said…”

Now, what I’m trying to say, people, before I lose you, is that the Igbo have left the land, and the land has left the Igbo. There is incoherence. And an Incoherent people cannot run an independent nation, simple.

Bring proof to me that the Igbo have turned Igbo land into an oasis of prosperity different from elsewhere in Nigeria, and I shall agree that the current Igbo know exactly what they are saying. There is no Igbo state with a budget that is not bigger than the budget of the Republic of Ghana. Indeed, put together, the budget of all the states in Igbo land is bigger than the national budget of ten West African states. What have we done with it in terms of rebuilding public services? Creating liveable cities? Developing new infrastructure? Developing the Igbo world.

The North or the West has never run down our schools.
They did not dismantle the Government Colleges at Umuahia, Owerri, Afikpo, and the Queens School at Enugu.
They did not destroy our hospitals or primary schools.
They did not stop us from building our cultural infrastructure – Community centers; recreational centers, or building up our libraries; or public parks, or city centers, or trunk B & C feeder roads.
They did not destroy our civil service. They did not stymie the growth of our cities.
They did not forbid the Igbo from creating strategic means of employing their greatest resource – their highly trained manpower- and using them to create a powerful regional economy that would continue to startle West Africa.

The North or West did not say we should not build an efficient trans-regional transport metro system, by jointly developing the old Oriental lines, that would create a network of contacts all over the East and ease the strategic movement of people, or take advantage and rebuild, and expand the Rail system that connects Port-Harcourt, Aba, Umuahia, Okigwe, Ovim, Afikpo, Enugu, to Eha-Amufu. Even if the rail system is a federal project, there has never been a consortium of the Igbo states and consortium of investors that have mounted pressure to force the Feds to hands off the Eastern Rail system, to be run as a regional Terminus. We have never made the argument.

Mbakwe threatened in 1981 that if the FGN did not build an airport in Owerri, he would mobilize and build one. He did it. He threatened that if they did not build the Petrochemical plant in Izombe, he would build one by 1984. The land for the construction of the Imo Petrochemical Plant was already cleared when the soldiers struck on the last day of 1983.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

When Mbakwe arrived government house Owerri in 1979, the three major cities in old Igbo – Owerri, Aba, Umuahia still had houses operating “bucket latrines” and the cities still employed nightsoil men (ndi Oburu nsi) and ran waste landfills. The first statewide public safety and hygiene law passed under the Mbakwe administration gave every landlord and household in these cities 4 months and a tax rebate to change the infrastructure from the bucket system to the water system, failure of which the houses would be marked as public health hazard zones. This was fully accomplished in three months.

By 1982, there was a marked upsurge and population shift as more Igbo began to leave Lagos and other places to return to Owerri and invest and settle. Nobody told them to return, the conditions were simply made amenable. By 1984, Igbo business men, particularly in the North, were moving their money and opening accounts with the Imo state Progress Bank, and the capital was growing for both accessible credit and for capital borrowing for infrastructural development in the East.

I point this to simply suggest that there is nothing the Igbo wish to accomplish in Nigeria that anyone can stop, if the Igbo hold down their lines. But we’ve deceived ourselves for too long – we have now made Nigeria into the convenient excuse for our own failures and self-indulgence. Now, there is a man called Onwuka Kalu. He gave the first N100, 000 as donation towards the Imo state Airport Appeals Fund in Owerri in 1981/2. There is not a single plaque to honour this man’s gesture at that airport. It will not be the Federal government that will do it; it will be the initiative of those who put value to memory in Igbo land.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

But in the Imo/Abia/Ebonyi/Anambra/Enugu divisions that now pervade the Igbo mind, no one will remember. This is no recipe for a people moving towards transformation. Let me now, tell this whole truth: onweghi onye ji Ndi Igbo, Ndi Igbo ji Onwe ha (no one is to blame for the Igbo predicament but Ndigbo). Those who wrestle with Ala, the Earth goddess, often forget that no one has ever lifted the earth. Ala-Igbo is the earth, Anaghi Apa ala Apa! (No one can lift the earth). Period.

The Igbo of this generation are wrestling with the earth left to them by their ancestors. And they are busy blaming everyone else for their condition. We who have done, “Ihe Nzere” should tell the truth, or may our tongues cleave to our gums.

.
Professor Obi Nwakanma

https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

kernel001:


The

ozowarac:



A very nice write up.

kernel001:


We're products of the information we contain. Sir, may I crave your indulgence to school you on the Igbos, properly change the stereotypical narrative that had bewildered few of us.

First, you make mention of Igbos lacking in innovation and other metrics of a great clans. May I start by mentioning many of Igbos in the new order that has changed the face of the world.

1. Eboe Osuji = ICC President
2. Arunma Oteh OON= is the Treasurer and a Vice President of the World Bank.
3. Phillip Emegwalim- Father of Internet
4. Chimammada Adiche
5.Ngozi Okonjo
6. Oby Okwesili
7. Chukwuma Soludo.

In sports, do you have doubts, because the greatest footballers in Nigeria today are Igbos.
In Entertainment industry we're doing too well.
Commerce, even our enemies will give it to us.

Sir... You talked about hate, wow! Sir! Are you aware that Igbos has a helping methodology called Igba Booyi? It's a system where a person is asked to serve somebody without any form of legal documentation for years, and at the end of 4=5 years he/she is settled?
Igbos have shown more love among them, when compared to many.

IkpuMmadu:
Nwanna, Many years ago, the General, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu spoke about the “Biafra of the mind.” Only a few, I think, understood him. Well, they say, only the deep speak to the deep.

But let me attempt here to tease out Dim Ojukwu’s prescription: the greatest proof of Igbo survival and aspiration must be to model, wherever Onye-Igbo stands, the ethos of innovation, excellence, ingenuity, and ability that marked the Igbo endeavor in Biafra. We must also use Biafra as the stepping stone to a higher vision of the Igbo place in the world.

There is no single proof or evidence today that the Igbo of this generation are capable of transforming any nation to which they lay claim. I have looked; I have studied the Igbo situation, and I have listened to my Igbo kinsmen, and I think something is fundamentally wrong: the Igbo are trapped in a deadening hate, self-pity and nostalgia. It is the kind of nostalgia that is both defeatist and deadly because it continues to romanticize the past while the future speeds away.

The Igbo cannot wait until they achieve Biafra or a separate nation in order to build and secure Igbo land. Soon after the end of the war, Igbo survivors of the war, girded their loins and embarked on the work of restoration. With singular grit, they revived the economy of the East, and by 1979, just nine years after the end of the war, were ready to take on the rest of the nation again. We their children are a disgrace to the spirit of those men and women.

The Igbo are today a beggarly nation of impotent, lachrymal people now weeping about “marginalization” and waiting for Nigeria to collapse or let them go, so that they will go and make something of themselves. This is an over-indulged generation. The last of the Igbo are old and dying; the current Igbo are “inferior Igbo.” They are just waiting for Godot.

Now, you say, the only time the Igbo will work is if power remains in the South. I think this is too simple. Take a look around you, where are those Igbo men and women? Which Igbo today have the sagacity of Zik, or the courage of Okpara, Mbakwe, or Ojukwu, the capacity of Ojike or Okigbo, the fierce pride and stabilizing force of the old Igbo women, the organizational acumen of an RBK Okafor, the selfless pride of those Igbo of the last generation, who always rose to the occasion when the Igbo summoned them to great causes, including giving their widows mite without question, for as long as “they Igbo have said…”

Now, what I’m trying to say, people, before I lose you, is that the Igbo have left the land, and the land has left the Igbo. There is incoherence. And an Incoherent people cannot run an independent nation, simple.

Bring proof to me that the Igbo have turned Igbo land into an oasis of prosperity different from elsewhere in Nigeria, and I shall agree that the current Igbo know exactly what they are saying. There is no Igbo state with a budget that is not bigger than the budget of the Republic of Ghana. Indeed, put together, the budget of all the states in Igbo land is bigger than the national budget of ten West African states. What have we done with it in terms of rebuilding public services? Creating liveable cities? Developing new infrastructure? Developing the Igbo world.

The North or the West has never run down our schools.
They did not dismantle the Government Colleges at Umuahia, Owerri, Afikpo, and the Queens School at Enugu.
They did not destroy our hospitals or primary schools.
They did not stop us from building our cultural infrastructure – Community centers; recreational centers, or building up our libraries; or public parks, or city centers, or trunk B & C feeder roads.
They did not destroy our civil service. They did not stymie the growth of our cities.
They did not forbid the Igbo from creating strategic means of employing their greatest resource – their highly trained manpower- and using them to create a powerful regional economy that would continue to startle West Africa.

The North or West did not say we should not build an efficient trans-regional transport metro system, by jointly developing the old Oriental lines, that would create a network of contacts all over the East and ease the strategic movement of people, or take advantage and rebuild, and expand the Rail system that connects Port-Harcourt, Aba, Umuahia, Okigwe, Ovim, Afikpo, Enugu, to Eha-Amufu. Even if the rail system is a federal project, there has never been a consortium of the Igbo states and consortium of investors that have mounted pressure to force the Feds to hands off the Eastern Rail system, to be run as a regional Terminus. We have never made the argument.

Mbakwe threatened in 1981 that if the FGN did not build an airport in Owerri, he would mobilize and build one. He did it. He threatened that if they did not build the Petrochemical plant in Izombe, he would build one by 1984. The land for the construction of the Imo Petrochemical Plant was already cleared when the soldiers struck on the last day of 1983.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

When Mbakwe arrived government house Owerri in 1979, the three major cities in old Igbo – Owerri, Aba, Umuahia still had houses operating “bucket latrines” and the cities still employed nightsoil men (ndi Oburu nsi) and ran waste landfills. The first statewide public safety and hygiene law passed under the Mbakwe administration gave every landlord and household in these cities 4 months and a tax rebate to change the infrastructure from the bucket system to the water system, failure of which the houses would be marked as public health hazard zones. This was fully accomplished in three months.

By 1982, there was a marked upsurge and population shift as more Igbo began to leave Lagos and other places to return to Owerri and invest and settle. Nobody told them to return, the conditions were simply made amenable. By 1984, Igbo business men, particularly in the North, were moving their money and opening accounts with the Imo state Progress Bank, and the capital was growing for both accessible credit and for capital borrowing for infrastructural development in the East.

I point this to simply suggest that there is nothing the Igbo wish to accomplish in Nigeria that anyone can stop, if the Igbo hold down their lines. But we’ve deceived ourselves for too long – we have now made Nigeria into the convenient excuse for our own failures and self-indulgence. Now, there is a man called Onwuka Kalu. He gave the first N100, 000 as donation towards the Imo state Airport Appeals Fund in Owerri in 1981/2. There is not a single plaque to honour this man’s gesture at that airport. It will not be the Federal government that will do it; it will be the initiative of those who put value to memory in Igbo land.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

But in the Imo/Abia/Ebonyi/Anambra/Enugu divisions that now pervade the Igbo mind, no one will remember. This is no recipe for a people moving towards transformation. Let me now, tell this whole truth: onweghi onye ji Ndi Igbo, Ndi Igbo ji Onwe ha (no one is to blame for the Igbo predicament but Ndigbo). Those who wrestle with Ala, the Earth goddess, often forget that no one has ever lifted the earth. Ala-Igbo is the earth, Anaghi Apa ala Apa! (No one can lift the earth). Period.

The Igbo of this generation are wrestling with the earth left to them by their ancestors. And they are busy blaming everyone else for their condition. We who have done, “Ihe Nzere” should tell the truth, or may our tongues cleave to our gums.

.
Professor Obi Nwakanma

https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

sarrki:
I don’t like the word Igbo used

Real Igbos love development

They love Buhari

Only those that believe in Abagata eke hates him

Galaxyowerri:

Although, granted that the author of write up made some valid points that should be considered by we Igbos, but he is wrong in many others. Igbos have never lacked great personalities in diverse fields like technology, entrepreneurship, sports, entertainment, administration etc and trying to list them all today will be difficult because they are quite many. Igbos may have invested a lot in places like Lagos, Abuja, North etc where they feel will guarantee them maximum returns but they have equally invested heavily at home and has continued to do so. Aside Aba, most other SE cities has made great strides in the last decade. Cities like Owerri, Enugu, Onitsha, Awka, Abakailiki, Umuahia etc have grown astronomically. Owerri for instance is arguably the fastest growing city in Nigeria today. There are lots of real estates, hotels and entertainment centres that keep springing up on a daily basis. I was driving through the streets of New Owerri yesterday and I was marveled at the gigantic edifices I saw with an appealing environment that could be compared with what obtains in Abuja. Owerri is an underated city and would shock many in a few years time. Now, most of these investments are being done by Igbos. Aba is the only city in Igboland that has not only experienced stunted growth but has retrogressed badly and this is a problem of leadership, starting from Orji Uzor Kalu, to Theodore Orji and now Okezie Ikpeazu are all mediocre and failure personified and it's such an irony that a city that has the most hardworking and enterprising Igbos domiciled in it will be suffering from such perennial maladministration. However, I'm still disappointed that our people have not leveraged on our near absolute control of trade and commerce in Nigeria, and in recent times the rest of West Africa to make our region the hub for such goods. Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi should be the hub for Computers/electronics/consumer goods, textiles/leather goods, and motor parts respectively. Computer village Ikeja ought to be relocated to Onitsha and Igbos already have the capacity to ensure that. We should be using only international airlines that fly into AIIA Enugu, and for a people that have bulk of the travelers in Nigeria, we have the capacity to ensure that. However, I agree with the author that we don't have to wait until we get Biafra before proving our mettle regardless of the bottlenecks and obstacles the Nigerian state throws our way. An economically and technologically advanced Igboland will even be better positioned to challenge Nigeria against the anomalies that currently exist.

Galaxyowerri:

Although, granted that the author of write up made some valid points that should be considered by we Igbos, but he is wrong in many others. Igbos have never lacked great personalities in diverse fields like technology, entrepreneurship, sports, entertainment, administration etc and trying to list them all today will be difficult because they are quite many. Igbos may have invested a lot in places like Lagos, Abuja, North etc where they feel will guarantee them maximum returns but they have equally invested heavily at home and has continued to do so. Aside Aba, most other SE cities has made great strides in the last decade. Cities like Owerri, Enugu, Onitsha, Awka, Abakailiki, Umuahia etc have grown astronomically. Owerri for instance is arguably the fastest growing city in Nigeria today. There are lots of real estates, hotels and entertainment centres that keep springing up on a daily basis. I was driving through the streets of New Owerri yesterday and I was marveled at the gigantic edifices I saw with an appealing environment that could be compared with what obtains in Abuja. Owerri is an underated city and would shock many in a few years time. Now, most of these investments are being done by Igbos. Aba is the only city in Igboland that has not only experienced stunted growth but has retrogressed badly and this is a problem of leadership, starting from Orji Uzor Kalu, to Theodore Orji and now Okezie Ikpeazu are all mediocre and failure personified and it's such an irony that a city that has the most hardworking and enterprising Igbos domiciled in it will be suffering from such perennial maladministration. However, I'm still disappointed that our people have not leveraged on our near absolute control of trade and commerce in Nigeria, and in recent times the rest of West Africa to make our region the hub for such goods. Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi should be the hub for Computers/electronics/consumer goods, textiles/leather goods, and motor parts respectively. Computer village Ikeja ought to be relocated to Onitsha and Igbos already have the capacity to ensure that. We should be using only international airlines that fly into AIIA Enugu, and for a people that have bulk of the travelers in Nigeria, we have the capacity to ensure that. However, I agree with the author that we don't have to wait until we get Biafra before proving our mettle regardless of the bottlenecks and obstacles the Nigerian state throws our way. An economically and technologically advanced Igboland will even be better positioned to challenge Nigeria against the anomalies that currently exist.

IkpuMmadu:
Nwanna, Many years ago, the General, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu spoke about the “Biafra of the mind.” Only a few, I think, understood him. Well, they say, only the deep speak to the deep.

But let me attempt here to tease out Dim Ojukwu’s prescription: the greatest proof of Igbo survival and aspiration must be to model, wherever Onye-Igbo stands, the ethos of innovation, excellence, ingenuity, and ability that marked the Igbo endeavor in Biafra. We must also use Biafra as the stepping stone to a higher vision of the Igbo place in the world.

There is no single proof or evidence today that the Igbo of this generation are capable of transforming any nation to which they lay claim. I have looked; I have studied the Igbo situation, and I have listened to my Igbo kinsmen, and I think something is fundamentally wrong: the Igbo are trapped in a deadening hate, self-pity and nostalgia. It is the kind of nostalgia that is both defeatist and deadly because it continues to romanticize the past while the future speeds away.

The Igbo cannot wait until they achieve Biafra or a separate nation in order to build and secure Igbo land. Soon after the end of the war, Igbo survivors of the war, girded their loins and embarked on the work of restoration. With singular grit, they revived the economy of the East, and by 1979, just nine years after the end of the war, were ready to take on the rest of the nation again. We their children are a disgrace to the spirit of those men and women.

The Igbo are today a beggarly nation of impotent, lachrymal people now weeping about “marginalization” and waiting for Nigeria to collapse or let them go, so that they will go and make something of themselves. This is an over-indulged generation. The last of the Igbo are old and dying; the current Igbo are “inferior Igbo.” They are just waiting for Godot.

Now, you say, the only time the Igbo will work is if power remains in the South. I think this is too simple. Take a look around you, where are those Igbo men and women? Which Igbo today have the sagacity of Zik, or the courage of Okpara, Mbakwe, or Ojukwu, the capacity of Ojike or Okigbo, the fierce pride and stabilizing force of the old Igbo women, the organizational acumen of an RBK Okafor, the selfless pride of those Igbo of the last generation, who always rose to the occasion when the Igbo summoned them to great causes, including giving their widows mite without question, for as long as “they Igbo have said…”

Now, what I’m trying to say, people, before I lose you, is that the Igbo have left the land, and the land has left the Igbo. There is incoherence. And an Incoherent people cannot run an independent nation, simple.

Bring proof to me that the Igbo have turned Igbo land into an oasis of prosperity different from elsewhere in Nigeria, and I shall agree that the current Igbo know exactly what they are saying. There is no Igbo state with a budget that is not bigger than the budget of the Republic of Ghana. Indeed, put together, the budget of all the states in Igbo land is bigger than the national budget of ten West African states. What have we done with it in terms of rebuilding public services? Creating liveable cities? Developing new infrastructure? Developing the Igbo world.

The North or the West has never run down our schools.
They did not dismantle the Government Colleges at Umuahia, Owerri, Afikpo, and the Queens School at Enugu.
They did not destroy our hospitals or primary schools.
They did not stop us from building our cultural infrastructure – Community centers; recreational centers, or building up our libraries; or public parks, or city centers, or trunk B & C feeder roads.
They did not destroy our civil service. They did not stymie the growth of our cities.
They did not forbid the Igbo from creating strategic means of employing their greatest resource – their highly trained manpower- and using them to create a powerful regional economy that would continue to startle West Africa.

The North or West did not say we should not build an efficient trans-regional transport metro system, by jointly developing the old Oriental lines, that would create a network of contacts all over the East and ease the strategic movement of people, or take advantage and rebuild, and expand the Rail system that connects Port-Harcourt, Aba, Umuahia, Okigwe, Ovim, Afikpo, Enugu, to Eha-Amufu. Even if the rail system is a federal project, there has never been a consortium of the Igbo states and consortium of investors that have mounted pressure to force the Feds to hands off the Eastern Rail system, to be run as a regional Terminus. We have never made the argument.

Mbakwe threatened in 1981 that if the FGN did not build an airport in Owerri, he would mobilize and build one. He did it. He threatened that if they did not build the Petrochemical plant in Izombe, he would build one by 1984. The land for the construction of the Imo Petrochemical Plant was already cleared when the soldiers struck on the last day of 1983.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

When Mbakwe arrived government house Owerri in 1979, the three major cities in old Igbo – Owerri, Aba, Umuahia still had houses operating “bucket latrines” and the cities still employed nightsoil men (ndi Oburu nsi) and ran waste landfills. The first statewide public safety and hygiene law passed under the Mbakwe administration gave every landlord and household in these cities 4 months and a tax rebate to change the infrastructure from the bucket system to the water system, failure of which the houses would be marked as public health hazard zones. This was fully accomplished in three months.

By 1982, there was a marked upsurge and population shift as more Igbo began to leave Lagos and other places to return to Owerri and invest and settle. Nobody told them to return, the conditions were simply made amenable. By 1984, Igbo business men, particularly in the North, were moving their money and opening accounts with the Imo state Progress Bank, and the capital was growing for both accessible credit and for capital borrowing for infrastructural development in the East.

I point this to simply suggest that there is nothing the Igbo wish to accomplish in Nigeria that anyone can stop, if the Igbo hold down their lines. But we’ve deceived ourselves for too long – we have now made Nigeria into the convenient excuse for our own failures and self-indulgence. Now, there is a man called Onwuka Kalu. He gave the first N100, 000 as donation towards the Imo state Airport Appeals Fund in Owerri in 1981/2. There is not a single plaque to honour this man’s gesture at that airport. It will not be the Federal government that will do it; it will be the initiative of those who put value to memory in Igbo land.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

But in the Imo/Abia/Ebonyi/Anambra/Enugu divisions that now pervade the Igbo mind, no one will remember. This is no recipe for a people moving towards transformation. Let me now, tell this whole truth: onweghi onye ji Ndi Igbo, Ndi Igbo ji Onwe ha (no one is to blame for the Igbo predicament but Ndigbo). Those who wrestle with Ala, the Earth goddess, often forget that no one has ever lifted the earth. Ala-Igbo is the earth, Anaghi Apa ala Apa! (No one can lift the earth). Period.

The Igbo of this generation are wrestling with the earth left to them by their ancestors. And they are busy blaming everyone else for their condition. We who have done, “Ihe Nzere” should tell the truth, or may our tongues cleave to our gums.

.
Professor Obi Nwakanma

https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

kernel001:


We're products of the information we contain. Sir, may I crave your indulgence to school you on the Igbos, properly change the stereotypical narrative that had bewildered few of us.

First, you make mention of Igbos lacking in innovation and other metrics of a great clans. May I start by mentioning many of Igbos in the new order that has changed the face of the world.

1. Eboe Osuji = ICC President
2. Arunma Oteh OON= is the Treasurer and a Vice President of the World Bank.
3. Phillip Emegwalim- Father of Internet
4. Chimammada Adiche
5.Ngozi Okonjo
6. Oby Okwesili
7. Chukwuma Soludo.

In sports, do you have doubts, because the greatest footballers in Nigeria today are Igbos.
In Entertainment industry we're doing too well.
Commerce, even our enemies will give it to us.

Sir... You talked about hate, wow! Sir! Are you aware that Igbos has a helping methodology called Igba Booyi? It's a system where a person is asked to serve somebody without any form of legal documentation for years, and at the end of 4=5 years he/she is settled?
Igbos have shown more love among them, when compared to many.

IkpuMmadu:
[s]Nwanna, Many years ago, the General, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu spoke about the “Biafra of the mind.” Only a few, I think, understood him. Well, they say, only the deep speak to the deep.

But let me attempt here to tease out Dim Ojukwu’s prescription: the greatest proof of Igbo survival and aspiration must be to model, wherever Onye-Igbo stands, the ethos of innovation, excellence, ingenuity, and ability that marked the Igbo endeavor in Biafra. We must also use Biafra as the stepping stone to a higher vision of the Igbo place in the world.

There is no single proof or evidence today that the Igbo of this generation are capable of transforming any nation to which they lay claim. I have looked; I have studied the Igbo situation, and I have listened to my Igbo kinsmen, and I think something is fundamentally wrong: the Igbo are trapped in a deadening hate, self-pity and nostalgia. It is the kind of nostalgia that is both defeatist and deadly because it continues to romanticize the past while the future speeds away.

The Igbo cannot wait until they achieve Biafra or a separate nation in order to build and secure Igbo land. Soon after the end of the war, Igbo survivors of the war, girded their loins and embarked on the work of restoration. With singular grit, they revived the economy of the East, and by 1979, just nine years after the end of the war, were ready to take on the rest of the nation again. We their children are a disgrace to the spirit of those men and women.

The Igbo are today a beggarly nation of impotent, lachrymal people now weeping about “marginalization” and waiting for Nigeria to collapse or let them go, so that they will go and make something of themselves. This is an over-indulged generation. The last of the Igbo are old and dying; the current Igbo are “inferior Igbo.” They are just waiting for Godot.

Now, you say, the only time the Igbo will work is if power remains in the South. I think this is too simple. Take a look around you, where are those Igbo men and women? Which Igbo today have the sagacity of Zik, or the courage of Okpara, Mbakwe, or Ojukwu, the capacity of Ojike or Okigbo, the fierce pride and stabilizing force of the old Igbo women, the organizational acumen of an RBK Okafor, the selfless pride of those Igbo of the last generation, who always rose to the occasion when the Igbo summoned them to great causes, including giving their widows mite without question, for as long as “they Igbo have said…”

Now, what I’m trying to say, people, before I lose you, is that the Igbo have left the land, and the land has left the Igbo. There is incoherence. And an Incoherent people cannot run an independent nation, simple.

Bring proof to me that the Igbo have turned Igbo land into an oasis of prosperity different from elsewhere in Nigeria, and I shall agree that the current Igbo know exactly what they are saying. There is no Igbo state with a budget that is not bigger than the budget of the Republic of Ghana. Indeed, put together, the budget of all the states in Igbo land is bigger than the national budget of ten West African states. What have we done with it in terms of rebuilding public services? Creating liveable cities? Developing new infrastructure? Developing the Igbo world.

The North or the West has never run down our schools.
They did not dismantle the Government Colleges at Umuahia, Owerri, Afikpo, and the Queens School at Enugu.
They did not destroy our hospitals or primary schools.
They did not stop us from building our cultural infrastructure – Community centers; recreational centers, or building up our libraries; or public parks, or city centers, or trunk B & C feeder roads.
They did not destroy our civil service. They did not stymie the growth of our cities.
They did not forbid the Igbo from creating strategic means of employing their greatest resource – their highly trained manpower- and using them to create a powerful regional economy that would continue to startle West Africa.

The North or West did not say we should not build an efficient trans-regional transport metro system, by jointly developing the old Oriental lines, that would create a network of contacts all over the East and ease the strategic movement of people, or take advantage and rebuild, and expand the Rail system that connects Port-Harcourt, Aba, Umuahia, Okigwe, Ovim, Afikpo, Enugu, to Eha-Amufu. Even if the rail system is a federal project, there has never been a consortium of the Igbo states and consortium of investors that have mounted pressure to force the Feds to hands off the Eastern Rail system, to be run as a regional Terminus. We have never made the argument.

Mbakwe threatened in 1981 that if the FGN did not build an airport in Owerri, he would mobilize and build one. He did it. He threatened that if they did not build the Petrochemical plant in Izombe, he would build one by 1984. The land for the construction of the Imo Petrochemical Plant was already cleared when the soldiers struck on the last day of 1983.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

When Mbakwe arrived government house Owerri in 1979, the three major cities in old Igbo – Owerri, Aba, Umuahia still had houses operating “bucket latrines” and the cities still employed nightsoil men (ndi Oburu nsi) and ran waste landfills. The first statewide public safety and hygiene law passed under the Mbakwe administration gave every landlord and household in these cities 4 months and a tax rebate to change the infrastructure from the bucket system to the water system, failure of which the houses would be marked as public health hazard zones. This was fully accomplished in three months.

By 1982, there was a marked upsurge and population shift as more Igbo began to leave Lagos and other places to return to Owerri and invest and settle. Nobody told them to return, the conditions were simply made amenable. By 1984, Igbo business men, particularly in the North, were moving their money and opening accounts with the Imo state Progress Bank, and the capital was growing for both accessible credit and for capital borrowing for infrastructural development in the East.

I point this to simply suggest that there is nothing the Igbo wish to accomplish in Nigeria that anyone can stop, if the Igbo hold down their lines. But we’ve deceived ourselves for too long – we have now made Nigeria into the convenient excuse for our own failures and self-indulgence. Now, there is a man called Onwuka Kalu. He gave the first N100, 000 as donation towards the Imo state Airport Appeals Fund in Owerri in 1981/2. There is not a single plaque to honour this man’s gesture at that airport. It will not be the Federal government that will do it; it will be the initiative of those who put value to memory in Igbo land.https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

But in the Imo/Abia/Ebonyi/Anambra/Enugu divisions that now pervade the Igbo mind, no one will remember. This is no recipe for a people moving towards transformation. Let me now, tell this whole truth: onweghi onye ji Ndi Igbo, Ndi Igbo ji Onwe ha (no one is to blame for the Igbo predicament but Ndigbo). Those who wrestle with Ala, the Earth goddess, often forget that no one has ever lifted the earth. Ala-Igbo is the earth, Anaghi Apa ala Apa! (No one can lift the earth). Period.

The Igbo of this generation are wrestling with the earth left to them by their ancestors. And they are busy blaming everyone else for their condition. We who have done, “Ihe Nzere” should tell the truth, or may our tongues cleave to our gums.

.
Professor Obi Nwakanma
[/s]
https://etimes.com.ng/the-current-igbo-are-inferior-igbo-obi-nwakanma/

gidgiddy:


I don't understand people who write nonsense like this. What has all this got to do with the inalienable right of self determination of Igbos to have their own separate country? Was Nigeria an "oasis of prosperity" when they became a separate independent country in 1960?

So Igbos must first turn Igbo land into 'Dubai before they seek there independence?

Was American.s great country when it sought its independence from Britain? No, it eventually became great after the fact

People who claim to be educated but talk like fools

freedomforall30:


Those are Yorubas pretending to be Igbo writing these nonsense.

soulpeppersoup:

The igbos are never inferior to anyone or anything. They value their home and their people. Yes they have their short comings, that is the same for every tribe.

Modphase:
but I tot Igbos always claim they are beta than all others how come they have shortcomings like others too or even more than others self ?!

Fatherofdragons:


Look at how you guys are here exposing your flaws on a public forum, opening your yansh for the world to see. Making it seem as if na only igbos get problem

Imagine the topic of the op's write up

CONTINUE!!!

AnyoneButAtiku:


While the appraisal provided by the Prof is one that can easily be applied to any of the larger ethnic groups and is, invariably, difficult to fault; what do you offer in return beyond the most puerile of responses kernel001?

How does the personal accomplishment of each individual you mentioned up there, which was attained in a completely different milieu, invalidate the Prof's incisive analysis?