The ‘Ngbati/Okoro’ Tussle

Even at the cafeteria you could hear shouts of ‘Ngbati’ or ‘Okoro’, depending on who was under focus.  My close friends are quite familiar with many of the jokes and verbal barbs that I have shared with them about Yoruba/Igbo relations. Even after many decades nothing has happened to dampen the spirit of brotherhood nurtured […]

Even at the cafeteria you could hear shouts of ‘Ngbati’ or ‘Okoro’, depending on who was under focus.  My close friends are quite familiar with many of the jokes and verbal barbs that I have shared with them about Yoruba/Igbo relations. Even after many decades nothing has happened to dampen the spirit of brotherhood nurtured in those days.
Anyone with a nodding acquaintance with SOC 101 (elementary sociology) would know better than to make sweeping generalisations about a people.
There may be trends and tendencies but there can’t be an absolute pigeon-hole into which people can be classified for the simple reason that there are many intervening variables governing human affairs. Generalisations and stereotypes are the preferred tools of the indolent who hate intellectual rigour.
It would also be stupid to assign percentages to situations unless one has carried out a replicable enquiry and come to an empirically verifiable conc-lusion. One of the most irri-tating assumptions among politicians and the moneyed elite is the careless use of percentages. You would hear something like “My people constitute 60 per cent of the educated people in Abuja”. I always ask: who counted your people? What is the population of Abuja? How did you arrive at the figure of 60 per cent?  We are very careless with figures. In our attempt to win an argument we simply throw in imaginary figures and expect the world to believe us.
I have been following the exchange of diatribes between several Igbo and Yoruba writers and commentators in the last couple of weeks. What saddens me is not the depth to which many of the commentators have sunken but the fact that many of the hate-dispensers were not born during the Nigerian civil war and could only have inherited the prejudices they flaunt with so much abandon from their parents.  I have said in this column in the past that there is a great deal of work to be done by parents in building a new Nigeria. Nurture your children to be citizens of the world, not tribal apologists who trade only in superlatives and chauvinism. Hitler traded in superlatives and chauvinism. We all know where it led him.
The danger in such exclu-sivity is that we reduce the object of our hate to a less-than-human status so that we can justify whatever we subsequently do to such people.
What triggered the current exchange of insults was the repatriation of 14 so-called indigenes of Anambra State to their state of origin by the Lagos State Government. Personally I have always advocated that Nigerians should be free to reside in any part of the country they choose as long as they respect the traditional norms of their hosts. I still stand by that. Before the action of Lagos State, there had been such repatriation by Anambra State itself, Akwa Ibom State and the Federal Capital Territory. According to Premium Times, the Obi administration (of Anambra State) had earlier repatriated beggars from Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom states (http://premiumtimesng.com/news/142192-throw-back-anambra-govt-arrests-repatriates-beggars-to-akwa-ibom-ebonyi.html).
The Leadership newspa-per of 4 December 2011 also carried a story entitled “Anambra Orders Arrest of Child Beggars”. Champion newspaper of the same date captioned its headline, “Anambra Govt Orders Arrest of Beggars with Chil-dren…29 Arrested So Far”.
I watched the video where Governor Fashola apologised to the Ikenga group, disclosing that his government had written to Anambra State Government before the exercise and that he was surprised by the claim that Igbos were being targeted (see http://newsdiaryonline.com/videofashola-speaks-on-alleged-deportation-of-igbos-from-lagos/). He shared copies of the exchange of letters with the Igbo group and assured them that there was no plan to rid the city of Igbo people.
Before watching Fashola’s video, I had read Don Adinuba’s article where he drew attention to the fact that Lagos State was the only one with an Igbo commissioner and other top government appointees outside Igboland. In the second part of his article he said, “I am rather worried at the proclivity of educated Nigerians to remain in Francis Fukuyama’s ‘primitive age of mankind’… Instead of leading from the front, they (Igbo elite) have chosen the convenient and cheap option of conformity and groupthink. They have allowed rabble rousers and politicians enthusiastic to manipulate primordial differences and capitalize on a culture of persecution complex to dictate the pace.”
Personally, I think what one sees depends on what one wants to see. I have chosen to see the half-fullness rather than the half-emptiness of the Nigerian tumbler. Thus I find it easy to celebrate people like Ukonu in Soyinka’s “You Must Set Forth At Dawn”; the fight against the election rigging in Western Region in 1965 couldn’t have been successful but for Ukonu and his colleagues from the East. Premier Michael Okpara was one of the leaders of the alliance between AG and NCNC in the West, creating United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA).
Prof Eme Awa and Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe taught the rest of the country what it meant to be principled. Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu is regarded as a member of the Lagos family despite his Eastern origin. Emeka Anyaoku is on the honours roll of Lagos State. On the other side, Col. Adekunle Fajuyi who was the Military Governor of Western State chose to die with General Ironsi rather than betray his supreme commander; Soyinka spent most of the civil war years in jail on account of his trip to Biafra to meet Ojukwu and other leaders. Is anyone sharing this kind of narrative? Or is the older generation more interested in handing down hate to their children to ensure that the “Ngbati/Okoro” tangle becomes a trans-generational war forever?
If you close your eyes so as to ensure that you won’t see bad people, chances are that your eyes will still remain closed when good people pass you by.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
— Søren Kierkegaard.