The triumph of Biafra

The new terminology was called “marginalization”. Marginalization, as a social process, is thought to occur when a person, or a group, is made ‘marginal’ or inconsequential within the context of a much larger society. As far as conceptual clarifications go, that accounts for mere pedestrian interpretation of the term. For a more comprehensive defi-nition of […]

The new terminology was called “marginalization”. Marginalization, as a social process, is thought to occur when a person, or a group, is made ‘marginal’ or inconsequential within the context of a much larger society. As far as conceptual clarifications go, that accounts for mere pedestrian interpretation of the term.
For a more comprehensive defi-nition of the term, especially from the perspective of a party who felt comprehensively marginalized in the political context of the Nigerian state, we need not look further than the article by a certain Uchechukwu Chris Arinze on September 14, 2011, and carried by Sahara Reporters. The piece laid bare the Igbo interpretation of the term from their perspective, and also provided sufficient insight into the collective mind-set of the Igbo and what may count for their basic expectations in their coexistence with the other ethnic groups that make up the Nigerian federation.     
Arinze’s article – part of which I have generously quoted below – chronicled Igbo marginalization in virtually every segment of the Nigerian state to include the half-hearted implementation of General Yakubu Gowon administration’s three Rs – Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction – as post-civil war projects; the systematic exclusion of competent and credible Igbo sons and daughters from appointments and elections into sensitive and strategic positions; the politicization of the Federal Government projects in the South-East, like the second Niger Bridge project; the high-handedness on the part of security agencies leading to the wanton destruction of lives and property through extra-judicial killings, as in the Apo six episode and MASSOB clampdown, among others.
Today, however, less than four years after Arinze wrote his piece, it is doubtful if he still believes his beloved Igbos are still marginal in the management of the affairs of Nigeria. Today, the Igbo conquest of the Nigerian government appears complete in the manner not even Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu would have contemplated after the surrender of Biafran forces in 1970.  
If anything, it is the ‘victors’ from that unfortunate era, mostly in the South-West and the North, comprising the Yoruba and the Hausa Fulani – the other major ethnic groups that can be compared to the Igbo – that are beginning to feel the pinch. In the six years of the Jonathan presidency, all the concerns highlighted by Arinze have been addressed.   
In one of the earliest moves to consolidate his presidency, Major-General Onyeabo Azubuike Ihejirika was appointed the new Chief of Army Staff (COAS) by President Jonathan in 2010 as if to address the concern once made public by the late Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu that there were few Igbos in the upper hierarchy of the army. It did not matter that the appointment automatically led to the termination of the brilliant military careers of other military brass from competing ethnic groups who were his seniors at the time. That was the least of the President’s concerns. And in fairness to the man, his predecessors had done pretty much the same, albeit for slightly varied reasons.
The President merely continued with the long tradition of Nigerian leaders who consistently appointed army chiefs from the ethnic groups they regarded as their comfort zones, except for the remarkable example of our late Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa with General Aguiyi Ironsi, and yes, Olusegun Obasanjo.  But while the jury may have long returned its verdict as to the wisdom or otherwise of Balewa’s decision, in reality, President Jonathan also acquired or broadened his political base with the appointment of Ihejirika.
Whether part of deliberate strategy or not, for the sake of his political base, Jonathan actively cultivated the support of the Ndigbo and trivialized the contribution of minority groups in the North, misled to believe they were critical to his election in 2011. But it came at a price. The South-East have gotten the long overdue Second Niger Bridge with the flag-off of the project in March 2014, a platform he chose to announce that bridge, along with the controversial National Conference he inaugurated the same week, were among his two most appropriate “emblems of national cohesion”.    
The endless controversies associated with the Confab may have foreclosed any recent thoughts for a more cohesive nation, but we cannot escape the fact that the Igbos got their wish for the construction of the bridge, and few should begrudge them, in truth. It is the nature of the other occurrences in the polity, with regards to appointments and sharing of federal offices, which has attracted the greater controversy.
Recently, the Yoruba Unity Forum (YUF) in a press conference addressed by former Secretary to the Federal Government (SFG), Chief Olu Falae, has already expressed severe reservations at the trend. In an article carried by the online platform ‘Liberty Report’, Taiwo Adisa also postulated that the South-East has benefitted from 35 per cent of all federal appointments in the current dispensation despite only accounting for a mere 11 per cent of the entire Nigerian population under President Jonathan. The South-East, he wrote, “produced the Deputy Senate President, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Minister of Finance, as well as the Chief Economic Adviser to the President.”
Other positions he cited include the Special Adviser on Project Monitoring, Special Adviser, Technical on the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P); Chief of Army Staff (until recently); Executive Vice Chairman, National Communications Commission (NCC); Managing Director, Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON); Managing Director, Nigeria Sovereign Wealth Fund; ministers of power, labour, aviation and health; chairman, Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC); Director-General, Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP); Director-General, Debt Management Office (DMO); Director-General, Securities Exchange Commission (SEC); Special Adviser on National Assembly and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
The South-East, he concluded, also benefitted from a number of strategic ambassadorial postings under the administration, including postings to Canada, United Nations, India, Switzerland, Spain and Singapore, among others. His article was obviously published before the recent changes of the guards at PENCOM. So much for marginalization of the Igbos!  
In the short space of six years under President Jonathan, the South-East has metamorphosed from its previous state of ‘marginalization’ into the dominant region in the realm of federal patronage and appointments for which they have also responded by adopting the president who only happened to have the Igbo names Ebele and Azikiwe as their political son. They have also promised that in 2015, the entire Igbo votes are his to refuse, no matter what may be his record in office.     
The flip side of marginalization in the context of this discourse is, of course, domination, especially of one group by another. And nowhere is that more evident than in the composition of the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyiam, a prominent Igbo son. For a federal office, a casual visit to his office resembled a trip to the Palace of the Obi of Onitsha in terms of its ethnic composition.
If ever there were allusions to the propensity of the Igbo to fully dominate their ‘space’, nowhere is the criticism more apparent than in the office of the SGF where even the Tea Girls are said to hail from his ethnic group. It was the same mind-set that precipitated the events that degenerated into our bloody civil war. The same folly that is behind the schemes to create an additional state for the region despite their disproportionate population compared to the other regions.  
But Nigerian history since its inde-pendence, and even before it, is pregnant with lessons for any leader with sufficient intellect to learn from. What cannot be denied by both the victors and the ‘vanquished’ in the Nigerian Civil War –apologies to General Gowon – is that it was the unilateral decision to foist a unitary government on an unsuspecting nation by General Ironsi, in which the Igbo emerged as the dominant group in the federal bureaucracy and political establishment, that precipitated the events that led to the civil war. The suspicions are already widespread that President Jonathan’s much vaunted ‘transformation agenda’ amounts to nothing but the calculated attempt to bring the North in particular to its knees.  
The arrogance and attitude of those attempting to foist a hidden agenda on the delegates at the National Conference which reconvened yesterday would have done nothing to dispel those concerns.