Being Igbo

It cannot be easy being one of millions of honest, hardworking Igbo people these days. One would imagine that opinions regarding the nature and role of Igbo leaderships and their dispositions to Nigerian politics are so varied that most Igbo would reserve their opinions  on the humiliation meted out to Senator Ike Ekweremadu by thugs […]

It cannot be easy being one of millions of honest, hardworking Igbo people these days. One would imagine that opinions regarding the nature and role of Igbo leaderships and their dispositions to Nigerian politics are so varied that most Igbo would reserve their opinions  on the humiliation meted out to Senator Ike Ekweremadu by thugs in Germany in the name of defending Igbo interests. The Senator is more a victim of unspeakable naivety and ignorance over the state of anarchy with pervades Igbo politics today than the pummeling he received at the hands of fellow Igbo, many, in all probability, living on the margins of legality in a foreign country. For a man never far from the searing flames of daily skirmishes for shifting  spaces between irredentist movements, a plethora of groups claiming to speak for the Igbo, politicians clinging precariously to power behind intimidating barricades against the people they  lead and unyielding pressures for immediate gratification in his daily dealing with his people, you have to ask what the Senator was thinking by turning up at an event organized by a diaspora community hardened by distance and perverse bitterness against their nation that is a characteristic of most diasporans.

Heads must have been lowered a bit deeper with the news that scam rings involving mostly  Nigerians with Igbo names in the US have been busted. A well-known but apparently not-too-young-to-scam-big Igbo entrepreneur is  then indicted for fraud. Those holding back from reeling out miles of records of crimes involving Igbo world-wide then saw an opening to reveal crimes that have been patented by the Igbo: drug peddling, cyber frauds, prostitution rings, cultism, organized crimes that generate intense hostility from host communities and negative attention from law-enforcement agencies, human trafficking and many more. To be sure, Igbo criminals have compatriots and collaborators from other ethnic groups and nationals, but many Igbo will rue the tendency for that domineering gene among the Igbo to take the lead affairs in crimes.

Igbo is arguably the most fragmented and dispersed group in Africa. Its multiplicity of centers of influence creates the impression of a people with a strong sense of identity and purpose but lacking in quality leadership. Igbo is strong in mainstream Nigerian politics, yet it has  many fractions  which insist that its fate lies outside the Nigerian nation. It has a choice place of control or dominance in many sectors of the Nigerian economy, and you will find it in the top brackets of most genuine achievements. Yet it occupies a place of pride  in all trades of ill repute and odium. Igbo presence in every village in Nigeria provides one of the strongest and most  basic fabric that holds the nation together, yet its politics is the most insular of all the major groups. Every now and then, people who act in the name of Igbo provoke parts of the nation in manners that put millions of Igbo who have laboured to carve useful places in local communities in Nigeria in serious danger.

Igbo chauvinists brag that they are a chosen people. They believe that they are too good for Nigeria, a nation that has  held them back and fed-off their inherent ingenuity and enterprise. In Nigeria, they are shortchanged and made to stand in line with inferior groups. Left alone, they will lead Africa and the world towards the discovery of new frontiers in democracy and affluence. Their young take to crimes and extreme politics out of frustration of being caged in mediocrity and poverty.Its enviable asset of intellectuals and thinkers either pander to this facile narrative or choose the discomfort of silence.

There are many groups in Nigeria today  whose thinkers and leaders will make strong cases for leaving the federation entirely as a solution to their many problems. In fact, there are likely to be groups that will tell you they will choose to live in a country they do not share with the Igbo than continue to share in the sins of being the same nationality with the Igbo. There are Igbo who understand the lie that the Igbo will find peace, prosperity and justice only if they are outside Nigeria, but they know better than to say so. They know that it is the same Igbo politician that flees his people just like all other Nigerian politician; the same criminal that operates at home and abroad; the same rabble-rousers that will demand new arrangements; the same people that  will look for new enemies who will be the leaders and citizens of the new Igbo heaven. Many Igbo also understand the reality that geography and demography have conspired to make the Igbo the most dependent group on Nigeria today.

Igbo needs a nation that creates opportunities and reflects its diverse nature in the manner citizens are governed and treated, both by the state and by citizens. It should join the queue. Most Nigerians have the same need, and Igbo will find among them eager collaborators unless they persist with the strategy of insulting every group it chooses to label as the enemy. If they will look up from the absorbing enterprise of being the best and going it alone, many Igbo leaders will find willing  partners among the Fulani who are looking for answers over where to go to find peace and earn an honest living. They will be amazed at the similarity of ideas between them and some Yoruba people who have long given up on Nigeria as a viable option. They will find communities that will prefer to leave a union that compromises their religious faith to accommodate people like the Igbo who, in addition, accuse  them of being beneficiaries of a system that in reality impoverishes them. They will find a sea of discontent, and may even be surprised to hear that many communities see the Igbo as the most advantaged group in Nigeria.

If it could ever listen as a group, friends of the Igbo will advise it to search deep for answers to the humiliating tendency of their kith and kin to bring shame to a people which  prides  itself as the epitome of hard work and enterprise. Activities which paints all Igbo, and all Nigerians, with a broad brush  of criminality rob the Igbo of any claims to a righteous calling to lead itself or the nation into a better future. Igbo needs to stop living in denial: its entire value systems have collapsed, and it cannot re-create them in the chaotic and damaging manner it approaches its politics.

The Igbo is not alone in suffering the collapse of its social and moral values, much as it thinks it is unique and has peculiar problems. Nigerian Muslims and their leaders  have a lot to account for in the rise of Boko Haram. The Nigerian nation which the Igbo helped build into its sorry state is in dire need of re-invention. The first step the Igbo needs to take is to be humble enough to accept that it has serious problems as a group, problems it shares with many groups in Nigeria. It should work with them to solve these problems. Now, just  in case there are those who think this is a plea to get the Igbo to stay in Nigeria, this needs to be said: the Igbo is doing no favour to Nigerians  in remaining part of the nation. If it will solve Igbo and Nigerian problems for the Igbo to go, they should go, the same way any group that feels held back should.