“When ethnic or religious prejudices are weaponized for political purposes, we are confronted with a lethal potentially destructive situation.” – Yemi Osinbajo
Two acclaimed political leaders hailing from the South West, without mincing words, recently aired their views on unreasonable and politically motivated prejudices against Ndigbo in Nigeria. They are former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. The duo condemned the bigoted and utterly jaundiced regard for Ndigbo in Nigeria.
Obasanjo who spoke in Awka, the Anambra State capital, as a special guest to mark one year in the office of Governor Charles Soludo, condemned the stigmatization of Ndigbo, advising haters to perish their Igbophobia for the greater unity of Nigeria. Vice President Osinbajo, on the other hand, spoke recently at a lecture at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Plateau State, where he shared a personal story of an early experience of classism against Ndigbo in Nigeria. He related it to the xenophobic attacks on Igbos in Lagos in the gubernatorial election. The VP then advised that the most prosperous places on earth are countries that have learned to harness diversity while building ever more inclusive institutions.
The law professor further said that discrimination against people based on their identity is explicitly condemned by most legal codes including the Nigerian constitution.
Unfortunately, rational voices like that of Obasanjo and Osinbajo drawn from experience and exposure in various segments of power including top political positions as President (1999-2007) and Vice President, are easily drowned and submerged by the vocal noise of corrupt advocates who salivate at the enthronement of exclusive institutions for their selfish benefit not minding its detriment to the larger society. And it’s the absence of such rational heads in the driver’s seat over time that has placed this country precariously in a situation where peace hardly finds habitation.
The bitter pill that is hard to swallow–yet we have come to live with it regrettably–is that so long as there is an organized conspiracy to stop Igbo from being President of Nigeria, so long will peace be eluding this country. The basis for lasting peace anywhere, family, association, community or country, and even globally is justice, fairness, and a sense of belonging to all.
This is a reality we must imbibe and the earlier the better. The conspicuous phobia against the ethnic Igbo by some of the elite of Nigeria is indeed the cog in the wheel of true and unadulterated peace in this land. So long as there is such extremely baseless and irrational hatred for Ndigbo, for so long will genuine peace continue to flee Nigeria. A face that does away with the nose cannot boast of having a proud facial expression.
During every religious festivity, political and religious leaders in their annual ritual of goodwill messages, always sue for peace and harmony among the people but fail to practice it in their deeds. Nigerian leaders always forget that paying lip service achieves nothing in the end but only creates the basis for deception and chicanery. To say, therefore, that you support something but do nothing, in reality, to prove your support is tantamount to duplicity, tokenism, and unctuousness.
The slave driver factory owner who sues for peace with the rebellious workforce but refuses to remove the yoke he places on their necks should not be surprised at their defiance, and should also know that he is deluded in his quest for a solution. That will amount to seeking peace and abhorring or loathing justice. Imagine shouting for peace every day but actions and deeds are antithetical and oppugnant to it. Such an attitude is typical of the hypocrisy of a section of the Nigerian elite who propagandize peace but go forward to sabotage it by uniting to prevent a deserving Igbo from becoming the president by merit, justice, equity, and fairness. Nobody or a country who wears injustice like a badge hopes to sleep with two eyes closed or have the kind of peace that rests the mind. A human being seeking eternal glory and salvation yet indulges in mortal sin knows that he is not entitled to his heart’s desire.
If Nigeria has not made up its mind about what it wants of the Igbo, it should let them be or do away with any expectations of peace. The Igbo have been very flexible in their demands, having patiently waited for others to take before them even though by number and contributions to the commonwealth they are not the least. So, why is it difficult to give the Igbo their due in the nation’s political space where they are making immeasurable contributions? If the dislike has become pathological, inveterate, and ghoulish, for God’s sake, why not excuse them to part ways?
The majority of Igbo prefer to be part of a larger Nigeria where they have made a more positive developmental impact than any other group. Certainly not as slaves but as deserving Princes to the throne.
That Biafra is still in the heart and mind of every Igbo person today is the fault of Nigeria and its needless aversion and disinclination against Ndigbo. The best way to distract or remove the mind and eyes of a child from what he is looking at and admiring is to place before him a juicier alternative.
If a civil war was declared and ended in 1970 on a “no victor, no vanquished” understanding. Fifty-three years later, the people are still trampled on, being denied equal access to the national cake, and yet they are obsequiously preaching peace, certainly, sincerity is on a flight from here.
If any other tribe, no matter its size and contributions to Nigeria’s development had produced a political phenomenon in Peter Obi’s class and put up the kind of showing at the presidential polls, there shouldn’t be the debate of who should be succeeding President Muhammadu Buhari.
If Peter Obi is not of the ‘unfortunate’ tribe and successfully marketed himself to the admiration of Nigerians of all classes, tribes, religions, and geography, his mandate would not be an issue for debate. If Peter Obi is not a child of the wrong mother in the family and has done what he did during his campaigns and climaxed it with the outstanding outing at the February 25 polls, nobody of conscience would have had the guts to attempt to stop the will of the people.
Above all, if Peter Obi is not Igbo, it would not have been possible to see a unity of purpose among Mahmoud Yakubu of the Independent National Electoral Commission, the Inspector-General of Police and his men, and the Director-General of the Department of State Security and his team. Their unity of purpose on the events of February 25 was made easy because of the usual amity and consensus when the Igbo is the target.
In 2015, threats of thunder and brimstone were coming down on Nigeria in words and deed, including forming a parallel federal government if rigged out. No one was harassed or threatened because no Igbo was on the ballot. Today, all kinds of threats and blackmail are flying against Obi and his running mate Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed including treason allegations for seeking legal redress.
State captors of Nigeria are taken aback that a candidate of Igbo extraction was nationally accepted at the polls. As though Every arsenal is now turned on Obi to tar him with the ethnoreligious bigot brush. Obi’s candidacy was generally accepted as pan-Nigeria and his illuminating message of competence, character, capacity, and antecedents that resonated with the people is what they are targeting to destroy and trying to eulogize the person whose history and antecedents are nothing to be associated with by a country in dire need of ethical and irreproachable leadership to march forward. The person they are marketing, ignored and refused to factor in our differences picking the same-faith presidential team in a highly plural society like Nigeria, yet it is Obi they want to crucify because of where he comes from.
Every conspirator and conniver against Obi who is ignoring the God factor in the Nigeria project should know that one Nigeria is not sacrosanct. Expecting peace to reign in the ocean of injustice is tantamount to living in denial. I see a country on the edge of a blade, without balance it will surely fall.
In conclusion of this conversation, I present this subtle reminder to Nigeria that what makes for enduring stability in any political environment, must have justice and equity as the modus operandi. Fairness may not mean everybody getting the same thing because that is utopian but it means that everyone gets what they need.
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor whose tenure brought peace and stability to the realm. On the secret of peacebuilding, he said, “That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee,” God help us.