SKC Ogbonnia
Houston, Texas
June 12, 2017
The early part of June 2017 saw Arewa Youths issue
a “Quit Notice” to the Igbo living in Northern Nigeria. This followed the
50-year anniversary of the Biafran war where both friends and foes of Biafra
took turn to tell their stories with objective emphasis on the Igbo. After a
careful analysis, it has been easy to dismiss the entire anniversary exercise
as orchestrated by the politicians as busy doing something very close to nothing.
Thus, I am prompted to ask: Did the Igbo Kill Jesus?
The Igbo people need no introduction. Though
their population is unknown, the Igbo are everywhere. Definitely well-known are
their ingenuity, resilience and, of course, overflowing technological and
scientific acumen. This informs the famous quotation by the then US Secretary
of State, Henry Kissinger, that the Igbo are as “the wandering Jews of West
Africa—gifted, aggressive, westernized…” These attributes are more than enough
to enable the Igbo to enjoy steady political power and development in Nigeria.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case.
Much of the blame at the anniversary was
heaped on the loss of the Biafran war. Yes, the Igbo have endured all sorts of
discrimination because of the war. But to continue to drum the linear excuse 50
years after the war only goes to fortify the rationale for the fetid question:
Did the Igbo Kill Jesus? Did the Igbo kill Jesus to appear so cursed not to
even remember where the heaviest of the rain started and how it is beating
them?
Let me resist the temptation of harping on
the missed opportunities before the war when Nnamdi Azikiwe and his Igbo
intelligentsia had a commanding influence in national politics—both in prestige
and ideology. Now in the post-war, it is not impolitic to suggest that the Igbo
have seen a fair share of political positions throughout the post-war
democratic dispensations beginning from the regime of Shehu Shagari to that of
Goodluck Jonathan. The tragedy, regrettably, is that there is no tangible
development in the East besides primitive accumulation of wealth by the
individual politicians themselves.
To sustain the unhindered looting of development
projects in the zone, the Southeast leaders in the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) perfected one of the most blatant political perfidy in recent memory.
Though they were keenly aware that the PDP would rationally zone its presidency
to the North in 2019, the Igbo leaders deceived their people with the false
premise that uniting with the South-South zone to support President Jonathan in
the 2015 election would guarantee a presidency of Southeast extraction in 2019.
It was not surprising, therefore, that Muhammadu Buhari’s eventual triumph over
Jonathan was generally seen as a rude coup d’état in the East.
This development, coupled with the abject
lack of development in Igboland plus President Buhari’s infamous outburst to
punish the Southeast and South-South zones for voting against him in the 2015
elections, heightened the renewed call for Biafra by innocent youths. Notably,
the agitators retained the natural map of Biafra and added parts of North
Central zone.
The more troubling, however, is the mindboggling
hypocrisy being exhibited by the Igbo politicians ever since. Outwardly, they (particularly
those in PDP) appear to fan the agitation. Inwardly, these political merchants
know that the innocent youths are merely being exploited as usual. After all,
the same politicians who are continuing to deploy the proceeds from looted
development projects in Igboland to acquire choice properties in Abuja and
Lagos would resist any plan to leave Nigeria.
This explains why the Igbo PDP leaders craftily
deflated the agitation and its exigent cause. For instance, instead of
capitalizing on the undeniable natural bond between Southeast and South-South
or the seemingly sense of unity among the two zones following the 2015
elections to launch Eastern Caucus at the National Assembly or emulate the
North to create Eastern Governors Forum, the “wise” men from the East succumbed
to making the cause of Biafra solely an Igbo-Southeast affair.
What the looters did was to simply embrace the
age-long state bandwagon to distort the Biafran history to the Igbo
disadvantage. The so-called Igbo leaders or any sensible elite for that matter
cannot claim ignorance of the fact that natural Igbo territory is beyond the
Southeast. Moreover,
Biafra is not even an Igbo word to begin with. In fact, it
was Frank Opigo, an Ijaw—not Igbo—who christened the new nation at time of its
birth in May 1967. How soon can they forget that the last Head of State of
Biafra, Phillip Effiong, is not from the Southeast? What does it take to remind
them that the former Secretary-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, a Biafran war
commander, and current Secretary-General of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB),
Joe Achuzia, is not from the Southeast?
What curse would make them to join to
act as if though Chukwuma Nzeogwu, who led the coup commonly blamed for the
civil war, was not an Igbo from the South-South? What does it take to
acknowledge that a good number of influential figures from the South-South
subscribes to the Biafran cause? Even if Biafra has suddenly become an
exclusive Igbo agenda, how can any reasonable Igbo elite circumvent the
knowledge of natural Igbo settlements in the South-South and North Central
zones?
Obviously, there are crises of leadership in
Igboland as there are excuses. As my father, Ilogebe Ogbonnia, the Ikeoha,
would always say, “a habit of excuses is the best friend of failure.” The
latest excuse is the term “Restructuring”, whatever that means. The loudest
perspective is that the Igbo will witness the desired development once the
country is restructured along tribal lines—as if the local governments and
states in Igboland are headed by the Hausas or Yorubas. The political
racketeers now want us to believe that the over $100 billion in federal money
that entered the Southeast zone since May 1999, for example, was looted by the
non-Igbo.
Make no mistake about it, the merits for restructuring
or independent states can be profound. But could lack of restructuring suddenly
be responsible for the failure of Ndigbo to use occasion of the 50-year
anniversary of the Biafran war to chart a clear roadmap for the future? Is lack
of restructuring truly to blame for the failure of Ndigbo and the South-South
to emulate the North in creating concrete unifying agendas in the East 50 years
after the war? Further, is lack of restructuring responsible for the perpetual
failures of South East Governors Forum or Igbo umbrella groups, such as World
Igbo Congress and Ohaneze Ndigbo towards unity of purpose?
Not long ago, 1991 to be exact, the Igbo people of
Awka and Onitsha Divisions witnessed a form of restructuring in new Anambra
State for rapid development. A purposeful visit to Awka, the state capital, is
a painful testimony of what to make of the timbers and calibers of Igbo people
that hail from such a richly endowed state.
The dawn of 2017 was a cool breeze in the entire
Nigerian polity with the emergence of John Nnia Nwodo, a dynamic figure, as the
President-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo. But Nwodo’s reign is already trending as a
fall before the rise. The apex Igbo organization already appears hijacked by
faceless politicians. A day hardly passes without one manner of “Ohaneze
Youths” fouling the media space, shamelessly posing as shields to politicians
who have cases to answer with anti-corruption agency for looting funds
earmarked for development projects in Igboland.
The worst is that the folly does not stop with the
Igbo politicians. A host of the Igbo people, including their business men, have
not fared better in terms of common sense. It is a common knowledge that the
leading cause of armed robbery, kidnapping and, of course, the Biafran agitation
is attributed to lack of employment and development in the East. Yet, the Igbo
prefer to invest massively in other regions rather than their native land that
remains 75% underdeveloped.
Karl Marx once remarked that, “History repeats
itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” The first Head of State of Biafra,
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, never failed to wonder if in fact Mr. Marx had
Ndigbo in mind for continuing to repeat the tragic mistakes of the pre-war era
when they paid direly for investing in other regions at the cruel expense of
their homeland. Ojukwu has been rolling in his grave groaning that even
Olusegun Obasanjo, a perceived Igbo enemy, has joined to admonish the Igbo to
first demonstrate the ability to manage their meagre resources and the common
sense to invest in their native land before the dream of an independent Biafra.
It is no wonder, therefore, that the very economic boycott of Igboland by the
Igbo made it convenient for the Arewa Youths to respond to the Biafran
agitation by serving a Quit Notice to the Igbo living in the Northern Nigeria.
Given the Igbo predicament, and in view that the
people are said to be of Jewish ancestry, it might then be roundly apt to ask:
Did the Igbo kill Jesus Christ to appear so cursed to deserve the self-inflicted
marginalization they are going through? That is, what other omen could warrant
that the well-known “Igbo sense” would never be used for the collective
interest of my people? What other immortal sin could subject the Igbo youths,
for instance, to continue to extol the same corrupt politicians who have
mortgaged their future? What is behind the raging oddity that two
pea-brained and notoriously corrupt Yoruba elements, Femi Fani-Kayode and Ayo
Fayose, now appear to be the official spokesmen of Ndigbo? Biko, what excuses
would cause that there are no more consequences for bad behaviour in Igboland?
The apparent dilemma is tipping the critical
threshold for mass revolution. The alarming success of a recent Sit-at-Home
Order by the Biafran agitators must alert the sit-tight Igbo politicians that
the political logic of clinging on excuses to deceive the masses no longer
favours them. Effective leadership is measured by results, not excuses.
Therefore—for now—unless the answer to the central question of this piece is
positive, instead of the mindless freebooting of project funds in the area, it
is incumbent upon the Igbo politicians to capitalize on the widely-acclaimed
ingenuity to maximize available resources to start implementing strategic
action plans that mirror some of those critical development visions commonly
graced along restructuring or under a sovereign republic. True.
SKC Ogbonnia+
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