Which Biafra?

The Igbo are celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the declaration of Biafra, their dream country. I hate to engage in discussions on primordial sentiments because they are mostly diversionary. However, “to leave an error unrefuted” as somebody said, “is to encourage intellectual immorality”. For me, the Igbo should be grateful to Nigerians for helping […]

The Igbo are celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the declaration of Biafra, their dream country. I hate to engage in discussions on primordial sentiments because they are mostly diversionary. However, “to leave an error unrefuted” as somebody said, “is to encourage intellectual immorality”.

For me, the Igbo should be grateful to Nigerians for helping them to solve their population explosion problem. Imagine what will happen if all the Igbo in Nigeria living outside South East are to go back to their small enclave called South East. Interestingly, they are at home in many places especially Lagos State where they have been winning elections and occupying important political positions. But will the Igbo allow the Yoruba, no matter their population, to win election and occupy important public offices in any South East state? 

The Igbo make good money and earn decent living even in places like Kano, which explains why they always come back even after ethnic violence. The occasional misunderstandings between Igbo and other Nigerians, bad as they are, are some of the challenges of state creation in Africa. Undoubtedly, they contribute to the development of their host communities. This is understandable because it is a simple rule of business that you make money by solving the problem of others. Surely, the Igbo are not on civilisation mission in other parts of Nigeria. It is in the process of satisfying their needs that they satisfy the needs of their host communities, in the same manner other Nigerians living in Igboland earn their living. But the Igbo benefit most because for every one northerner in Igboland, there are over thirty Igbo in Northern Nigeria.

The problem of the Igbo is not domination or neglect but failure of leadership. Of course, leadership in this context is defined in relation to followership not tribal associations or holding public office. I was surprised when a journalist asked Professor Pat Utomi: “How do you feel about the pan-Igbo socio-political group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, saying it will convince Kanu to accept restructuring?”. I thought he was going to say “that is nonsense, how can the tail wag the dog?”. But he said “when brothers meet, they will have conversations. The direction of the conversation is not a matter for the market place” (Sunday Punch, May 7, 2017, page 15)

The REAL leadership of Igboland has gone to “money miss road”. The Igbo elite are now parroting the illiterate arguments of their uninformed REAL leaders. First, the complaint that the North West has seven states, South West has six and South East has five. Does this make sense? NO. It is a stupid argument and I will tell you why.

States were not created on the basis of ethnicity. This is why large ethnic groups like Tiv and Igala do not have states of their own. States were created arbitrarily by the military, for which virtually all Nigerians are complaining, largely through the demands for additional states. It is not as if the Igbo are isolated and maltreated, as they want the world to believe. In fact, the Igbo benefited from the arbitrariness with the choice of Asaba as the capital of Delta state. As you may know, Asaba was a small Igbo settlement in a state where the Igbo are still the minority. It was chosen because there was a very powerful Bendel Igbo woman in the military arrangement of the time. If the Igbo want people to take them serious they must go scientific i.e they should build their arguments on STATISTICS especially population, landmass etc.

The Igbo want to build their arguments of domination on the basis of geo-political zones. But the geo-political zones have no legal backing. They are contraptions created by people who are ignorant of Nigeria. Are the Bini of Edo state not closer to the Yoruba in the South West than Efik or Ibibio in the South South? What do the people of Plateau, Niger and Kwara have in common that they should be placed under North Central? In which way is Southern Kaduna closer to Sokoto or Kano that it should be placed in North West rather than North Central.

The other ridiculous argument is that the Igbo were not given sensitive ministries despite their population. What make the Igbo more entitled to some ministries than other Nigerians? Where did the Igbo have the idea that ministries are to be shared on the basis of ethnicity? As renown local and international business people, did the appointment of two Igbo as Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Industry not good or fair to the Igbo?

Now the kitchen cabinet argument. That there is no Igbo in the kitchen cabinet of President Muhammadu Buhari. What is kitchen cabinet? What is the criterion of selecting kitchen cabinet members? Why did the constitution mention a minister for each state but is silent on kitchen cabinet? The mediocre Igbo leaders have no solid arguments to present, so they resort to their normal strategy of shifting the goalpost. And the Igbo elite follow them helplessly.

It is part of the goalpost shifting strategy that when you refer most Igbo to appointments of Igbo in Delta State they will tell you that, “those are Bendel Igbo. We are talking about the core Igbo”. Interestingly, they consider Kanuri, Nupe, and virtually all ethnic groups in the North Hausa.

Now the big one. Civil War. When the Igbo soldiers killed notable military and civilian leaders from the north and south west, were they expecting a thank you letter? When the Igbo declared their independence unilaterally, dragging South- South minorities against their wish, screaming and kicking, not out of love for them but for the Igbo to have access to the sea, what reaction where they expecting from the federal government? Did the Igbo reflect on the consequences of their actions, and were they ready to suffer them? How can some people ignite problems and blame others for the consequences of their actions? Why did the South South people opt out of the contemporary demand for Biafra? It is time the Igbo owned up. They made a wrong move and failed. It is unfortunate that many Nigerians, Igbo and non-Igbo, lost their lives as a result of poor judgement of Igbo leaders. This is enough lesson. Blaming other Nigerians will not solve the problem.

Unfortunately, Igbo elite are more interested in re-writing history, showcasing the Igbo as victims. I have never come across an Igbo writer who attempted to show how the Igbo were unfair to others. For example, listen to Emeka Aniagolu, who introduced himself as the son of Justice A.N Aniagolu: “Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogu and his comrades-staged their coup in the hope of decapitating that comprador class in order to give Nigeria, and hence, Nigerians, true national leadership they were yearning for and deserved.”(The Nation, Sunday May 28, 2017, back page)”.

From the argument of Aniagolu above, one wonders why no Igbo was killed in the coup because there are more comprador class among the Igbo than Northerners. Perhaps, to help them sustain their self-delusion, some Nigerians have been arguing that whatever the Igbo did to Northerners, they had no reason to fight back. Listen to Segun Ayobolu, a columnist with The Nation newspaper in his piece on Biafra at 50: 

    “The massacre of Igbo in the North was clearly unjustifiable even as the pattern of killings with Northern political and military leaders as the major victims in the January coup was equally inexcusable. True, the rather enthusiastic celebration of the assassination of the premier of the North, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, particularly by Igbo traders in Northern urban centres as documented by the late Pofessor Billy Dudely in his classic, ‘Instability and political order’, was provocative. But it did not legitimise the retaliatory killings against innocent Igbo citizens. In the heat of the moment, the fury of the young Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu was understandable. There are those who argue that Ojukwu had no choice but to play the role history had bestowed on him as the defender and protector of his beleaguered people.”(The Nation Saturday, May 27, 2017) 

It is part of the “ALWAYS VICTIM STRATEGY” that the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, advised Igbo not to allow themselves to be provoked into taking up arms against Nigeria. “No matter the intimidation, harassment, and marginalization of our people, we must never be provoked into armed struggle”. (Daily Trust, Sunday May 28, 2017) We hear you Sir. But this is not new. One of the Igbo governors in the Second Republic was always complaining about the perceived Igbo domination, that he was called the “weeping governor”.

It is unfortunate that, for the Igbo, there is no Nigerian problem. It is always the problem of Igbo, or the problem of other Nigerians. They are right to complain of infrastructural neglect. But virtually every Nigerian community is complaining of the same neglect, but the Igbo want to project it as if they are isolated and victimized. They complain of attack by Fulani herdsmen and create the impression that the herdsmen were sent to destroy the Igbo. But the Fulani herdsmen are everywhere in Nigeria and their problem is a Nigerian problem, as much as armed robbery and kidnapping are Nigerian problems. Suffice to add that the Igbo are participating actively in the armed robbery and kidnapping. A criminal is a criminal whichever ethnic group he belongs.

I love the Igbo because the man whose simple style of writing I relish and imitate, albeit poorly, is Igbo. A legend called Chinua Achebe, the author of “There was a country” (as if you don’t know). I also believe in one Nigeria because multi-culturalism is not an obstacle to the creation of a great nation, in the same way, cultural homogeneity is not a guarantee for peace and development. For details ask the people of Somalia. However, if the concensus among the Igbo is that they need their country, they are free to go. Enough of Igbo intimidation. The Igbo are not in charge of oxygen.