By Professor Sam Amadi
What is the relationship between changing the name of Charley Boy Bus Stop and falsely accusing Mr. Peter Obi of working for Abacha and therefore tarnished? The answer is: they are Igbos.
Let us make it clear. Last week a Local Government in Lagos State changed the name of a famous Bus Stop in Gbagada, Lagos from Charley Boy to Olamide. Charles Boy is the show biz maestro who made name for social criticism and artistic excellence. Charley Boy used to be the king of the boys in Lagos before migrating to Abuja. He is an icon who lifted many youths and helped them find direction in art, entertainment and social activism.
But in 2023, he crossed the rubicon. He supported Mr. Peter Obi, an Igbo politician who won the heart of youths and became the unofficial president of those who wanted a radical change of the status quo. Obi did the unexpected, and perhaps, unwanted. He defeated the Asiwaju of Lagos in Lagos State, his fiefdom. The audacity of Igbo and Yoruba supporters, many of them very intelligent and accomplished, drew the ire of the custodians of Nigerians social order. Sooner than later someone will pay the price.
It did not take long and the casualties of this audacity in February 2023 started arriving. First was a young man who had every virtue and competence to be the Governor of Lagos State. But he has the misfortune to be ‘blood-stained’. Her mum is Igbo. To stop his political momentum he was tagged ‘Chinedu’. He cannot be Governor despite his many excellencies. Then later, in the governorship election, Igbos and every other person who looked ‘Igbo’ (whatever that means) was debarred from voting. Funny enough, some full-blooded Yorubas were also stopped from voting because they looked Igbo.
Nigeria has one great gift. It easily forgets its horrors and bad history. It also cannot see what it ought to see. This industrial scale disenfranchisement of Igbos did not merit the attention of Nigerian institutions and political leadership. Even leading Igbo intellectuals and political leaders played dead-brain. Of course, you get cancelled as a genuine Nigerian intellectual or political leader if you complain about ill-treatment of Igbos. Leading Igbos have internalized this psyop and see all evils but does not say any evil (I run the risk of being cancelled for saying this loudly).
Today, someone is tagging Mr. Peter Obi an Abacha supporter and therefore stained. Are you kidding me? Abacha supporters for going with other traders to plead for release of their goods and being found competent with others to help decongest the ports? What about the man who carried Nigerian money for Abacha and negotiated the return of the loots? He is the head of Budget and National Planning for Tinubu. Nigeria has cleansed his stain and approved him. But the man to remain stained is that man who went to complain of violation of his right by Abacha and was asked to work with the complaints to solve their problem.
Buhari has just been canonized a national legend. He was massively voted and supported by the leading southwest intellectuals and politicians, associated of MKO Abiola who Abacha deprived of his electoral victory and slammed into prison where he was allegedly killed. Even Abiola’s children and closest friends have made peace with Abacha and collected national honors from him. But Peter Obi has to be the scapegoat. This is a pretty sense of justice. Like we say in Nigeria, people know what they are doing. Better still, as the critical scholar of Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer, would put it, the Nigerian bourgeoisie uses ideology out of cunning to achieve strategic interests not that it do not know the truth.
Mr Charley Boy joins the list of casualties. He has refused to hold back his attack against the ruling party and support for Mr. Peter Obi. The price is loss of well earned monument. Charley Boy has taken it in his stride. He believes that his legacy is in the heart of men and women of goodwill and in the soul of time. But we cannot forget what this means. Beyond intolerance. It is a reminder of what Nigerian politics is all about. at least unofficially. Achebe called it “a national consensus”. That is a seeming agreement to constrain and contain the Igbos. In my 2011 lecture at the US Holocaust Museum, I argued that the purpose of the Nigerian civil war was not to exterminate Igbos, or chase them out of Nigeria. No, it was to constrain and contain them. This is why when the biafrans were defeated, Nigeria pulled back. The deed is done. That is why ‘no victor, no vanquished’ was not diligently prosecuted.
Saying Nigeria has an Igbo problem is one of the hurting truth that Nigerian needs to endure, in fact, embrace, to achieve its wished-for greatness. But it is never jolly to embrace a hurtful surgery. Nigeria’s Igbo problem does not mean that ordinary Nigerian citizens hate their fellow Igbo citizens. Not at all. Many of these citizens like their Igbo compatriots. They admire them and often assist them like family. We are actually a family in Nigeria. But a troubled family with terrible past. Like all such families a dose of truthful and sincere leadership heals the wounds and release everyone from the tyranny of troubled pasts. That is what Peter Obi’s presidency would probably done. But the hope remains.
The meaning of this post is for Nigerians to understand their complex relationship to their brothers in the southeast part of the country. They love them, no doubt. But there is a national narration and memory that they have fo Overcome to show them just love.
To Igbo themselves you have to make choice to be fully and equally Nigerian or to be moderately and unequally Nigerians. I think you should be fully Nigerian. You should fight with other Nigerians to build a better Nigeria that benefits everyone, including yourself. You have to continue to aspire to the full life Nigeria offers. Aspire to be President, to be Governor or legislator everywhere in Nigeria, and leave it to the good sense of your compatriots to trust you to lead. If they refuse to trust you, do not relent to aspire.
Because “Onye Ajuruaju A Naghi Aju Onweya.”
(c) Sam Amadi, Thinker, Strategist and 2019 Imo Governorship Aspirant. Former Chairman/CEO NERC
