“I still believe that the one thing that will bring peace, absolute peace, to this country, the type of peace we want attached to development, is to liberate [Ndigbo] and there is no better act of liberation than accepting that they have an equal right[s] in Nigeria.” — Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu
Any Nigerian who is not disappointed and at the point of despair in our politics today must be breathing different oxygen from the rest of us. They must be extraordinary narcissists. Messrs. Femi Fani-Kayode and Bayo Onanuga are two Nigerian hate mongers whose recent outbursts fall short of reason. This columnist came to admire Onanuga’s contributions to journalism that I spent my career life practicing. But as he dragged the job into politics, he failed woefully to meet the minimum standard required. For FFK, he has become incapable of being reasonable in his utterances and he continues to remind us of how low we have gone in our value system.
What FFK and Bayo have been up to hard selling their flag bearer, amounts to extreme misandry and excessive ethnic patriotism. In the process, they exposed how bigoted they are. Either the duo is part of the grand design to keep the ethnic Igbo down or they can be turned on easily for a fee. The good thing is that these two men are standing alone in their jingoism.
In the February 25, 2023, presidential election, what the Yoruba voters did, the way they voted for merit ahead of ethnic sentiments conspicuously disassociated them from these two bigots. Their voting pattern showed clearly that the likes of Onanuga and FFK are jingoists on their own.
However, if we don’t make room for jaundiced characters like FFK and Bayo, we would have been ignoring our pluralistic society. Nothing best captures the grand conspiracy against Ndigbo in the current political gerrymandering than the report of investigations of the Lagos State Police Command on the pre-gubernatorial election threat by one MC Oluomo, a man so happy and proud to be identified as a chief thug in the 21st century because he is making money on it.
The chief thug had threatened anybody, particularly Igbos, who would not vote for the Lagos APC on Saturday, March 18, 2023, to stay away from voting if they want to be alive. Federal and state governments looked away from the threat until public outcry increased and the police said they were investigating it. Within 24 hours, they had finished the investigation and the report was released. The verdict was that MC Oluomo was just joking with the Igbos.
The Police report was released on Friday and Saturday, the voting day, and the Police were proved wrong. Chief Thug was not joking as he carried out his threats in such a way that even some Igbo look-alike Yoruba got Igbo treatments in the hand of his thugs, killing, injuring, and disenfranchising many.
The Police that investigated the joke was nowhere near protecting the citizens. For the Police, those who were not sleeping on duty were copiously helping MC Oluomo’s team in either buying votes, carting away the ballot boxes, or protecting the criminals from irate voters bent on exercising their franchise.
In a normal country where rule of law reigns, all those killed or injured could sue Nigeria Police Force for deceiving and exposing them to the danger they could have averted if the Police did not release their dubious report.
But the truth which is coming out very glaring is that the Police were just acting out their role in a major drama script written and practiced with Prof Mahmoud Yakubu as the chief character, to ensure that Igbo political voice in the country remains suppressed if not extinguished. How else can a nation explain that the National Security Adviser, a retired Army Intelligence General, was on National Television before the election to give marching orders to operatives on election duties but when the time came for them to act, they chickened out?
Before now, Ndigbo have been at the forefront of national bashing for the way they play their politics, especially their obvious indifference on election days. Most of them have been accused of watching African magic in their living rooms on election day, clearly showing a lack of interest and concern about such a major matter as deciding who rules them. Such an unflattering attitude is seen as refusing to appreciate the words of former American President Lyndon Johnson who rightly described “the right to vote as the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their destinies.” Not voting in an election is like ignoring history and placing no premium on one’s future.
But findings show that Ndigbo got to this stage when it was discovered that there has been a grand design by the rest of the country to checkmate them politically.
When the current political dispensation came in 1999 Ndigbo voted massively for the Yoruba man Olusegun Obasanjo who was even rejected by his people. But then nothing changed in their (Igbo voters’) lives. They followed it up by voting for a Fulani, the late Umar Yar’Adua, and later an Ijaw man in Goodluck Jonathan. Yet no respite came their way.
When the issue of the president of Igbo extraction, the argument became they can’t get it because they don’t reach out to others. Is reaching out more than voting for candidates from other groups before getting their turn? Obasanjo did not do any special reaching out when South East voted for him, ditto Yar’Adua and Jonathan.
In the PDP Ndigbo invested all their political future but no one still looked their way after 23 years, even when it was obvious that with justice and equity, an Igbo should be considered. But as the God of justice and fairness watched these ill-treatments, he decided to awaken the political system and place it for resetting by projecting former Governor of Anambra State Peter Obi in 2023.
As Obi went around the country as a presidential aspirant in PDP meeting party delegates, he confronted the real position of Nigerians on Ndigbo. Most of the delegates who listened to him were unanimous that he was the best for the country but…? It’s that but that prompted Obi to contest for president elsewhere, knowing that PDP was not looking his way. In addition to coming from ‘the unwanted’ area of the country, Obi was also too financially frugal for inordinately corrupt party delegates.
As Obi inherited a marginally significant Labour Party and turned it around, the jokes on Ndigbo continued. Obi is good and obviously, the best among the pack but his presidency will divide the country and resurrect Biafra, they say. Refusing to make the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, his weeping stick during the campaigns, was interpreted as an endorsement for Biafra. When he provided the best program for the North, they came up with an imaginary story that he would be opposed to developing newly discovered oil in the region.
While tagging him “Igbo” and or “Christian” candidate, he declared repeatedly that nobody should vote for him because he is Igbo or Christian but based on his antecedents, competence, capacity, and character. When the Igbo or Christian tags were not sticking, they said he had no home support, they got some Igbo leaders including his home state governor and one of the wealthiest men in his state to declare publicly that he was not going to win and should step down in favour of their interest.
As February 25, 2023, came and Obi enjoyed unprecedented support across board, among all the tribes and religions, including his home base. Again, detractors turned around to say Ndigbo are putting all their eggs in one basket with the crazy way they supported Obi, refusing to give a 25 percent vote to any other candidate in the South East. When they were giving similar voting patterns in previous elections to Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan, and Atiku Abubakar, such observations were not raised. Who is surprised, to hang a dog you must find a bad name for it.
Ndigbo are largely accused of apathy in their politics; people who are seen as being only interested in making money got activated and fully entered the arena of Nigerian politics, thanks to Peter Obi. They became the target of attacks and all kinds of threats, ostensibly to cow and prevent them from exercising their legitimate voting rights, even after they had duly registered and provided with the Permanent Voters Card, PVC.
The conspiracy of silence by both government and the Nigerian elites in the obvious prejudiced attack on Ndigbo in Lagos shows nothing short of hate for a people making visible, legitimate contributions to national development, perhaps, more than any other ethnic group.
For those who hate or dislike Ndigbo for being who they are, or who detest the late Biafran leader Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu or Mazi Nnamdi Kanu for standing up for justice for their people, I leave you with these immortal words from Ojukwu on the kind of unity Ndigbo desire in Nigeria: “For unity to be meaningful it has to be creative, not the unity of Jonah in the whale but the unity of holy matrimony. The first can only lead to defecation, the second to procreation.” God, help us.