We do not play politics. We are not masochists; rather, we are people who choose to hunger a little to remain alive instead of feeding fat to become respectable corpses.
This week, we hope to address whether the Igbo of Southeast Nigeria are too disunited to deserve and produce President in 2023. This intellectual exercise has become imperative in the aftermath of recent developments in the polity.
Never before in the history of this nation has the Ndigbo issue been on the front burner as in the present dispensation. It was all the more accentuated–albeit unwittingly–by President Muhammadu Buhari’s 95/5 per cent political patronage rhetoric as regards the Southeastern region. Moreover, the President’s glaring Igbo sidelining, in tandem with his voter compensation rhetoric willy-nilly has made Ndigbo an issue in the buildup to 2023.
Political glib talkers used to say Nigeria stood on a tripod with Ndigbo as one of the legs. Gone are those days; today, Ndigbo mean nothing, having been wilfully left out of the top-echelon appointments and federal character power equation.
That is why Presidency’s recent allegation of an orchestrated smear campaign to label President Buhari as pandering to parochial(ethnic and other tendencies) contrary to his initial public avowal of belonging to all Nigerians is curious and unbelievable.
If, as of when I last checked, “smear” still means “to damage reputation by false accusation” then those accusing the president of nepotism should deserve awards for uncommon patriotism. They are not at all smear campaigners.
The evidence is there that this administration is not equitable in dispensing political patronage. Just a few examples will suffice.
Recently, 37 top officers of the Nigeria Police Force were promoted and only one person was found worthy from the Southeast while the Northwest had more than a dozen slots.
No less laughable is the fact that the Police Service Commission, PSC, claimed that the promotion was based on merit. The ordinary meaning of the PSC claim is that where 12 Northwest personnel merited promotion only one Southeasterner was raise-worthy.
Also, reports show that under the last Army Chief of Staff out of the 210 officers promoted, all of 142 are from the North.
Again, all the top four fat cow parastatals, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigeria Customs Service and the Nigerian Ports Authority are headed by northern Muslims.
It is probably also on merit that of the more than a dozen military and paramilitary agencies, nobody from the Southeast merited to head any for more than five years. The drama that attended Mrs. Hillary Madu’s acting position as the Commandant-General of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps following the retirement of the Northern helmsman speaks volumes about the real agenda of government.
The hullabaloo that greeted the recent appointment of service chiefs without anybody from the Southeast has caused us to ask, “Who is an Igbo in Nigeria?”
Apologists of the government had heralded the emergence of Major-General Lucky Irabor as the Chief of Defence Staff as a positive response to the Ndigbo cry of marginalisation.
While Irabor does not sound Igbo, his middle name has been flaunted as a proof that Irabor is Igbo from Agbor in Ika local Government Area of Delta State. By their cultural affinity, the Agbor people are supposed to be Igbo, but hardly will you come across an Agbor indigene proudly identifying as Igbo. On the contrary, the Asaba people of the same state are proudly Igbo until tomorrow.
The Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Godwin Emefiele, the former Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, and Gen Irabor have top jobs in the present government; it looks as if the regime is patronising Ndigbo.
Irabor’s case which generated heated debates is peculiar because Irabor is not an Igbo name. His other names and native village somewhat doused the dispute.
In this circumstance then, who is an Igbo in the political Nigeria? Unlike Ghana, Nigeria is mostly patriarchal. So, to be regarded as an Igbo, your father, not mother, must be an ethnic Igbo. Being domiciled in the Igbo enclave alone does not confer one with the Igbo status.
It is perhaps in the context of defining an Igbo politically that has generated all the concerns and maybe warranted the recent position of the former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim at a recent World Igbo Congress. Senator Anyim posited that for purposes of 2023, the political parties should regard Igbo as the Southeast and zone the Aso Rock race to that geopolitical region.
Senator Anyim’s suggestion did not in any way cast aspersions on the Igbo natives of outlying regions but was intended to perish the idea of using the Igbo of the Southeast peripheries to play chess in politics to the hurt of their mainland brethren.
Already, the Minister of Transportation, Hon. Rotimi Amaechi, recently activated his Igbo blood for the politics of 2023. His newfound Igboness has been a source of consternation and unrest to his Ikwerre brethren of Rivers State. Most of them today are Ndigbo-in-denial even when their names and language stare them in the face.
Yoruba and Fulani have their people in other geo-political regions but are not enmeshed in all these controversies of identity. Why is the Igbo case different?
Another Igbo issue that is germane to the identity question related is the continuous bashing of Ndigbo by every Tom, Dick, and Harry as a divided and uncoordinated people in politics. While dismissing this with just a wave is like living in denial, it would be pertinent to observe that political division is not peculiar to Ndigbo. No ethnic group or region without political power has remained undivided. If the other major groups like the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba can be without power and influence for as long as Ndigbo have been in the cold, their division might have been even worse.
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Aminu Wali, said in a recent interview that the Igbo were their worst enemies; he claimed they were self haters. He feared that their divisive tendencies might undermine their presidential bid.
My friend (and now my grammar police), Reno Omokri, in a recent article also took a similar position that the Igbo quest for Aso Rock, which all major ethnic groups plus Ijaw have tasted, might be mired in and finally scuttled by internal disunity. Both Wali and Omokri are merely speculative and not based on verifiable evidence.
Since the People’s Democratic Party lost the reins of power in Kano, Ambassador Wali has been at war with other leaders of the party, fracas Is a normal outcome when all of a sudden you are not in control. If Igbo traders can have hundreds of shops in one location and trade on the same or similar wares and co-exist harmoniously, is it true that such people don’t like one another? Have you seen how Igbos raise funds to help their distressed colleagues and relatives who happen to fall at bad times? Have you read the World Bank rating of Igbo mentoring system?
On the political front, did you see the Igbo solidarity for Peter Obi in 2019. His home state of Anambra, ruled by APGA, gave PDP more than 95 per cent of the votes and this was replicated in all Southeastern states. In my several decades of political reporting as a journalist, I have been privy to how presidents are made in this country. Take these examples.
In 1999, the Yoruba were not united when the military high command decided to free Obasanjo from prison to give him the ticket of PDP spearheaded by Dr Alex Ekwueme. Yoruba people were so angry that they even refused to vote for him.
Ditto in 2007 when Northerners were not united because President Obasanjo picked Umaru Yar’Adua to succeed him. Northwest, where Yar’Adua came from, gave more votes to Gen Buhari of another party. Is that unity? Most Northern leaders were furious, accusing Obasanjo of choosing an ailing successor, knowing he would die for power to revert to the South.
The Ijaw people of the South South were not even consulted when their son from Otuoke was selected to be Yar’Adua’s vice president and subsequently president.
In the 2015 gang-up against President Jonathan, a majority of the Northern elite did not want Buhari, but the northern establishment endorsed him and so he became president, not due to Fulani or Northwest harmony. In fact, in his state of Katsina, he is not totally loved by all because of the political rivalry between the Katsina and Daura emirates. Is that not disharmony? Did it stop him from getting it?
So, all the noise about Igbo unity (or lack of it) is a concoction to deny Ndigbo the position which they not only merit but deserve. If history supports it that presidency is never given because of the harmony or otherwise of the people concerned, why then is the Igbo case different? If we are really serious about one Nigeria and want to drown the dissenting voices of Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB, Nigeria should do the needful, give the Igbo a sense of belonging and stop searching for excuses.
Who knows, a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction might just be what the country is awaiting to get jump-started.