Ponder over Igbo presidency

Does this go to suggest that the nation is built on falsehood? I doubt unless events in the few years to come convince me. Activities to celebrate our centenary anniversary kicked off couple of weeks ago in Abuja and would climaxed on January 1, 2014, which is one hundred years Lord Lugard amalgamated or fused […]

Does this go to suggest that the nation is built on falsehood? I doubt unless events in the few years to come convince me.
Activities to celebrate our centenary anniversary kicked off couple of weeks ago in Abuja and would climaxed on January 1, 2014, which is one hundred years Lord Lugard amalgamated or fused the North and the South to give birth to Nigeria.
In this hundred years, various components of the country have at one time or the other produce the presidency except the Igbo and yet we are happy chorusing, One nation bound in freedom , peace and unity. Even the last paragraph of the second stanza of the anthem, to build a nation where peace and justice shall reign, elevates our hypocrisy higher.
Where is the peace and where is the justice reigning, in Nigeria or in the moon, that one hundred years of our existence and fifty three years after independence, one of the major components ( a tripod) of the nation has not accessed the presidency and people someway are talking about unity, faith, peace and progress.
2015 is around the corner, this is crucial in the anal of the nation’s political development and I think it is a time to write the wrongs that have been done to the Igbo nation; it is the time for the race to produce the presidency by whatever arrangement. On equity it is her turn; going by history it is her turn; by conventional wisdom it is her turn; by natural law and justice; it is her turn and by contribution to the nation’s development it her turn.
President Goodluck Jonathan should drop his second term ambition as neither history and equity is on his side. This time around, the Igbos are not going to be deceived the second time. In 2011, the Igbos adopted Jonathan because Azikiwe is one of his names. This name appeared only in his bill boards in the South East but in the north, he never used Azikiwe as one of his names. So, who is deceiving who, enough of the deceit? This is the time to stop this name dropping to hoodwink the zone.
The syndrome of the civil war defeat probably caught up with our parents but my generation and children must have a different story to tell. We are not fighting or being violent but by peaceful negotiations we would win the hearts of all Nigeria.
It is against this background that Njiko Igbo, a fledgling socio-political organization is mobilizing and bringing every Igbo at home and in the Diaspora under one canopy and reaching out to other groups and regions towards the realisation of the race to produce the president in 2015.
The mission of the group is to prove to other Nigerians who believe that Igbos always sing discordant tunes when it comes to serious issues that affect them and that is the reason their hairs in the past were shaved in their absence, that is decisions that affected them were discussed without their inputs or not carried along on major national issues.
That era is all over as through Njiko Igbo and other interest groups in the region, we have learnt to come together and take our destiny into our hands. When any prominent Igbo is having any ceremony or event – wedding, funeral etc you see all the prominent Igbo congregate at such events. It was not so in the past era where others decided for us. So, we have realized that a broom stick can easily be broken but a bundle of broom is very hard to break. We want to be together, our differences had robbed us our relevance in the past.
As we are united we can easily win the hearts of people of other zones on the project. In the past, we wholeheartedly supported the North to produce the presidency that is, in the first and second republic. Remember the NPN/NPP accord that helped Alhaji Shehu Shagari to form the second republic government. It was the same in the first republic of Tafawa Balewa’s government.
We also supported the emergence of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to become the president even when his people of South West turned their backs against him in 1999. In 2011, the South East zone gave President Goodluck Jonathan the highest percentage votes, higher than his South South region.
Even though we are scattered and sizeable everywhere, we know that it is not only the votes of the Igbo that  will give them the presidency and that is the more reason we are forging a common front reaching out and presenting our agenda before every Nigerian.
We are very plain in our agitation. We are playing our cards on the table for all to see.  We know that there are two ways of getting power – peaceful negotiation and coercive diplomacy. We have all these options on the table but what is not in on our agenda and would not be is coercive diplomacy or violence. We have tried it in the past and would not repeat it even though the Niger Delta employed violence before attention was given to them and they got the presidency.
Nigerians are very reasonable and very godly and religious. We always talk of equity, justice and fair play because these are the tenets and cardinal principles of our religious beliefs or faith whether as Christian, Muslim or Traditionalist. 
If we are not hypocritical about our faith, which hinges on equity, justice and fair play, it presupposes that this zone should be given the chance.
We know power is not given on platter and violence is not on our table, that is why we are reaching to other zones and stakeholders putting these arguments before them and many conscientious are buying into it. 
 Brady Chijioke Nwosu, National/Diaspora Publicity Secretary of Njiko Igbo and  former Imo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirant for the2007and 2011 elections, writes from Lagos.