“A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.” – Mickey Mantle
Is the political elite in Nigeria operating as a team for the good of the country or as a survival-of-the-fittest gang? This week, we are addressing the above poser, given the continual, unjustifiable marginalisation of the Igbo people of the South East.
Imagine yourself in a class where you aimed for numero uno but ended up in the sixth position. Have you ever gone to a tournament for which you prepared so well to outdo every contestant but ended with the umpire as the undeclared rival in the competition? You hardly ever won, no matter your shine in the game.
The above parallelism describes the ugly fate of Ndigbo in Nigeria’s contemporary politics. They have become victims of persistent elite gang-up. This shameless gang keeps manipulating and choreographing the referees and the populace to achieve noxious goals.
If the population of this country were to be well and truly determined, the ethnic Igbo are among the top three in size, hence the initial tripod structure of our early days of nationhood.
This picture was there when the colonial masters laid the foundation of this country after the 1914 amalgamation. The eventual independence of Nigeria in 1960 recognised this arrangement, and the initial three-region federation was dominated by the Igbo of the east, Yoruba of the west, and Hausa-Fulani of the north. It was upon this tripodal structure stood our polity other minor ethnic groups supported the majors all over the regions.
The disruption of this foundation has become the unending political challenge of Nigeria, leading to the first military takeover of political authority in 1966 to the civil war (of secession) and multiple coups and now military-nurtured democracy where money and might, not the people, determine who gets what and where the government of the least suitable are in vogue.
But ever since the civil war, there has been sustained, deliberate, and calculated whittling down the [eastern] tripod. From the three regions to six with each region dominated by the tripod having a minimum of six states except the South East [of the Igbo] left with only five. Members of the House of Representatives in Kano and Jigawa [out of seven states of the Hausa-Fulani] are more than members from the entire South East. In the Senate, every zone produces a minimum of 18 members except South East 15.
Convinced that the agenda to shrink the Igbo clout in a federal Nigeria was going on very successfully under his watch, Muhammadu Buhari, as the president, described the South East as a dot in a circle. Having executed his agenda and handed over to the man who promised to keep his legacies [or absence of them], Ndigbo should expect nothing new if the judiciary upholds the charade, travesty, and electoral caricature of February 25. None should believe the present grandstanding in a desperate move to legitimise the Tinubu rule. On June 19, Tinubu made 21 appointments having one Igbo as a service chief and some people are hailing because of how low Buhari sank into nepotism. Today’s hailers seem to forget that the charity of an armed robber with his loot does not erase his crime.
Since the entry of the ruling All Progressives Congress in 2015, Ndigbo have been adequately downgraded and disrated in all spheres. Maybe to ensure that Ndigbo are put in their proper place [or so they think], the sections of the constitution encouraging fairness, balancing, and cohesive living like the Code of Conduct and the federal character principles are virtually snubbed in the APC era. Since 2015 and possibly until after 2027, no one of Igbo extraction may be worthy for any of the four topmost political offices: President, Vice President, Senate President, and Speaker of the House of Representatives. If we add the judiciary, it becomes the top five positions.
In 2015, the argument was that Ndigbo were not in the ruling party; in 2019, they still looked away. The number two and four positions went instead to the zone that eventually took the number one position in this dispensation.
In 2023, when they found many Igbo in the two chambers, with two active governors, they still turned a blind eye. All the efforts and the risk to the careers of the APC members of Igbo extraction who took to market APC products to their people could not attract any sympathy to give them any of the top four positions. The truth is that any politician of Igbo extraction who was able to win an election in the South East or South South is deserving of an award, whether he won it by hook, crook, or even via Supreme Court. What they did literarily was like collecting a banana from a monkey or collecting bone from a dog.
Not even Orji Kalu’s expensive tears, not even Rotimi Amaechi’s outburst, not even Ogbonnaya Onu’s eruption or David Umahi’s political hooking or street walking, or Nyesom Wike’s shaggy dog story could change the minds of APC’s apparatchiks to let an Igbo into the top four positions in the land. Neither could the history of the tripod or the justness of the Presidency being the turn of the South East or the mandate they are holding justly belonging to zone, none of these could sway them because the current leadership of APC is anti-Igbo.
As a result, some people have been taking a dig at some of these Igbo APC members, mocking them for being dumped by their so-called friends and allies. Some even say that they are suffering for betraying Ndigbo. On the contrary, it is the same factor that prevented the Independent National Electoral Commission from declaring Peter Obi winner in the February 25 polls that made the APC stop Orji Kalu from being Senate President or Ogbonnaya Onu or Rotimi Amaechi picking the presidential ticket of the APC.
None of them got what they deserved because they are Igbo, the political pariah of Nigeria. If Peter Obi were not Igbo and exhibited what he did with the Nigerian electorate, nothing would have stopped him from becoming the President of Nigeria today. Whatever perception you may have of Orji Kalu if he were not Igbo and made all his contributions to our polity, Senate Presidency should be his for the asking. If Tinubu can be President and why can’t Orji as Senate President?
Detractors say Ndigbo do not love one another. How many can endure political Siberia for as long as the Igbo without elevating sycophancy and boot-licking to high heavens? Even with a legitimacy-challenged regime like some officeholders who just relinquished do fall over themselves to get his attention.
If Ndigbo were not a loving people, as alleged, they would not do well in business. Clustering themselves in the markets, selling the same products, hustling for the same buyers and yet growing steadily and happily, such can only exist for neighbourly people who know and follow the rules of healthy competition.
The real reason why there is unanimity in the elite gang-up against Ndigbo by other co-owners of the Nigerian state in the political space is their inability to compete. It is this power domiciling with people afraid of hard work and competition that has led to the stagnation of our nation-state. This has made us, about 200 million people, the empirical home to the poorest people on Earth, far above China and India with over a billion population.
All the watery reasons for the Biafra issue and dividing the country that the elite use against Ndigbo is just an unsubstantiated story of the past. The fact that Nigerians, particularly youths and women of all divides, ignored these narratives and voted for Peter Obi, a newcomer to the presidential race, should be a warning to the old elite that the Nigeria of the future is moving on, putting the civil war behind.
Continuing to block Ndigbo from participating in the political space at the highest position on merit, using wicked gang-ups, amounts to taking a baby’s cherished toy and stopping him from crying. Continually and deliberately squeezing Ndigbo out of the political space for decades and steadily downgrading them, not just out of the number one position which they deserve by right and merit, is only fertilising agitations and swelling the ranks of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu; they hold that Nigeria is a zoo that does not have a place for the Igbo. They should be allowed to find a new home. In a society where justice and fairness are not ripe, agitations and rebellion are top-dressed and fructified.
Therefore, if the political elite does not want to imagine a future of teamwork and accommodation but prefers ganging up, they should also be ready to welcome gangsters. Igbo leaders ought to use their tongues to count their teeth. God help us.