KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

Of politicians and vision

M. O. Ene
egbedaa@aol.com
New Jersey, USA

Monday, January 21, 2002

I congratulate Dr. David Asonye Ihenacho on the debut of his "Home Truth" banner yesterday, Sunday, January 20. It's a refreshing addition to the growing and renewing stable of Nigeriaworld writers. I am particularly happy because he takes few prisoners, and he chews his words thoroughly and authoritatively. He will reach a wider audience with fresh perspectives. Oh, nice to see a face attached to the man. So, when next I am on the other side of River Hudson, I will tweak my cerebral sensors and refocus my ocular lenses.

The debut piece titled "Igbo politicians: Inept, visionless, or both?" did not disappoint. However, I am disappointed by the title, and the author has himself to blame for disappointing me: He gambled on the gangway of generalization. The Igbo politician is NOT worse than politicians of his immediate locality. On the contrary, they are better. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe cannot be faulted; he believed and worked and sacrificed for one Nigeria. Don't you wish vindictive and higher-up, non-Igbo politicians sometimes compromise for the general good… if you know what I mean. As far as vision goes, I think a partisan politician is shortsighted; a political philosopher is farsighted. Take your pick.

Truth is sacred, and we must endeavor to tell it at all times. Many Igbo prominent politicians are competent and visionaries who see things from a higher plane and for the general good. I have said it several times, and I will say it again: Ndiigbo are the only true Nigerians. They believe in universal brotherhood, and their actions are geared towards building a great community based on two major principles of Igbo religion: 1) Live and let live, and 2) Where you live, there you thrive. The fact that Igbo politicians are dealing with dyed-in-the-wool ethnophobists does not make them "inept, visionless, or both." The temporary triumph of evil does not diminish the intrinsic qualities of goodness. No one should know the fact better than a reverend gentleman.

The great Irish-American congressman Tip O'Neal said that all politics is local. The question then is: what is "local"? The Nigerian geopolitical terrain was, and still is, "local" to the Igbo. I do not see anything wrong in their belief that Nigeria could be made a home for all. So what stops Nigerians from building a great country? Simple: The forces working against Ndiigbo! These forces have frustrated everyone and forced the clamor for autonomy or outright secession. And things are falling apart. Someone should someday remind them that a goat sleeping on the ground is actually sleeping on its hide.

The analyses of anti-Igbo conspiracies are sound and illuminating. However, no one should blame the Igbo for the duplicity of his fellow Nigerian in politics. Do we really believe that now Defense Minister T. Y. Danjuma and his cohorts killed Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi because the Supreme Military Council, which he chaired, decreed unitary government? I don't think so. If the idea was so terrible, how come they failed to revert to the status quo ante? How come Aso Villa is still embracing it and not Dr. Alex Ekwueme's six-zone structure, which was submitted by Ohanaeze Ndiigbo? If political philosophy it is, someone has to do it. Aguiyi-Ironsi was a good man. Nigeria killed a good man, and we are now inventing reasons to excuse a callous, cold-blooded murder?

The events of 1966 have been over-flogged. No one really has any new thing to add, in spite of volumes of new perspectives and "unnecessary revisionism." We only revisit them when the likes of Reuben Abati try to force-feed us jaundiced junk in an attempt to push back the frontiers of repulsive revisionism. What happened in 1966 is sad, so sad that Ndiigbo suffered a pogrom of holocaustic proportions because a bunch of misguided military officers wanted to make Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo the prime minister, something he had tried to achieve with the use of force and for which he was serving a jail term in Calabar. It is the height of irony that the same man, released by an Igbo leader, initiated and orchestrated three decades of Igbo oppression and counting. I do not endorse forceful takeover of power or the killing of anyone -- which is against my creed. I do not see the actions of Aguiyi-Ironsi or Majors Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Emmanuel Ifeajuna and the other majors as indicative of Igbo political leadership. Besides, they were not politicians, and they were NEVER Igbo leaders.

On General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, history is still in the making. Here is a man who stood for what was right. He single-handedly foiled the January 1966 coup in the North, where it had succeeded. Without firing a shot, he got Major Nzeogwu and his then aide, Captain Hassan Usman Katsina (oh yes!) to back off or face his wrath. Again in July 1966, he insisted that military hierarchy should be respected -- assuming the mutineers had killed Aguiyi-Ironsi; i.e., that Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon should hand over power to Brigadier B. A. Ogundipe. The Aburi Accord of January 4-5, 1967 still stands as a testimony to the eventual triumph of good over evil. The Yoruba now stand on Aburi: Oduduwa autonomy. Niger-Delta's resource control is Aburi Accord! Have you spoken with an Ijaw or Tiv recently? How could we blame Odumegwu-Ojukwu for the East's collective tragedy? He gave Biafra his best. His best, warts and all, was not enough to beat back the evil machinery of unholy Anglo-Arab-Soviet alliance and aggression. Biafra failed; it does not make Igbo politicians the bad guys. No way, Maazi!

Not every misfortune that has befallen Ndiigbo came from their "leaders" trying to be Nigeria's political philosophers. Ndiigbo were mass-murdered by the Yoruba after supporting Chief M. K. O. Abiola, whom his Yoruba folks didn't really endorse but hijacked when he looked like a winner. Fast-forward: Ndiigbo wholeheartedly voted for General Matthew Aremu Olusegun Obasanjo; yet, again, his Yoruba people who didn't vote for him hijacked the presidency. Okay, but why are they using it to oppress Ndiigbo further? What have Ndiigbo done to deserve such denigration? Haven't they turned themselves into the threads that hold the country together? Gowon graciously accepted that much; while apologizing in Abakaliki, he stated that without Ndiigbo there would be no Nigeria. True.

The Igbo politician is a product of un-Igbo electoral system, but s/he is an Igbo first and foremost. Ndiigbo don't always have their first eleven out there; however, if there is something fundamentally wrong with the Igbo politician, then there is something wrong further down the line. And it must be addressed before blind … oops, visionless leaders overrun Nigeria. I believe that every society should get the leadership it deserves. Ndiigbo don't have the leadership they deserve. They should address the issue in an autonomous Aladimma nation (just as the Yoruba in Oduduwa, the Hausa Fulani in Arewa, etc.) following established traditional setups that produce choice champions, not cowards and clowns.

Every ethnic entity in Nigeria can fish for fabrications. Nigerian can go ahead and discredit the Igbo. They can kill and burn, but Ndiigbo do not have to supply the fuel. Over the years, we were fed fibs about Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe's premiership in Enugu, after the treacherous 1954 carpet-crossing con in Ibadan. For years we were told that Professor Eyo Ita was "edged out" to make way for Zik. This is absolute nonsense. There was no "ugly political conspiracy." Also, Ita's political problem and untimely death in a car accident did not destroy the alliance with the Ibibio-Efik axis of Eastern Nigeria. Every region had its minority problems: the Edo, Urhobo, Ijaw, etc. (West), the Tiv, Kataf, etc. (North), etc. The lies were peddled to sanitize the stench of ethnicity from out west. Enough already.

I know there is a concerted plan to put down the Igbo race. It is no news. However, I worry when Ndiigbo themselves begin to buy into the mindset of oppressors. Yesterday, Ndiigbo were busy destroying each other in newsgroups and in parochial organizations. Today, they are attacking their politicians and painting all of them with the same brush; and tomorrow, they will complain when these denigrated and discredited politicians go out there and do something stupid that would engulf the entire race, if only to prove their relevance. Dr. Ihechukwu Madubuike, former two-time federal minister, summed it up in "Igbo presidency as metaphor" on Wednesday, August 22, 2001:

"The impression has been created that an oppressive Nigerian system regales in demonizing the Igbo, stereotyping, intimidating and maiming him at the slightest provocation. He is the target and object of all forms of derision. He is the one to be publicly ridiculed, chastised, cajoled, removed from office, sidetracked from important state institutions where decisions affecting him are taken. The institutional portrayal of the Igbo as the fall guy of Nigeria (and its manipulative effect by some sections of the media), is perceived as a deliberate effort to create in the public consciousness the impression that the Igbo is not worthy of trust in politics as in commerce, and that the Nigerian state can exist without him. It is to reinforce a mindset that has been nourished on a menu that is anti-Igbo. It is to create a siege mentality and a feeling of inferiority complex and self-doubt among the [Igbo]. The method is as insidious and subtle, as it is dangerous and inhuman. By this method alone, the system might have succeeded in producing [Igbo] who hate themselves and who have turned their aggression against fellow [Igbo]."

Need we say more!

Dr. Ihenacho's latest piece captured the essence of concerted oppression of the Igbo race since the unfortunate and unnecessary Nigeria-Biafra War, from Awolowo to Obasanjo. It is so troubling that the men who won the war never got over it. If an oppressor can live with his thoughts, the oppressed does not have to beg for a break: You take a break. Yes, Ndiigbo need to take a break. As I  predicted, the "Wild West" is exploding again. I predicted in the 1997 Nigeria-Biafra Memorial Lecture that someone was going to do an Akintola number in Oduduwa Republic, and all hell would be let loose. I warned here in two 2001 articles that Chief Bola Ige was fishing in dangerous waters. Mark my words again: The Nigerian enterprise is in a pitch-dark tunnel right now. It will take another Igbo person (a political philosopher?) to point out the way. And Ndiigbo could again fight other people's war.

Nigerians should stop waiting for the "Igbo politician" to philosophize and to take the fall. Nigeria must be a land of law, not of rugged partisan politics. We all should step in and show the way. We have enough philosophy to go on; too much analysis often leads to paralysis. We cannot all label politics "dirty" and yet live by its rules. We can scream all we want; if we are not positioned on the passageways of power, we will continue to sing in the rain.

But before we all make a 100-meter dash into any of the new political parties (UNDP, UPGA, NCP, NLP, etc.) I think the biggest tribute Ndiigbo could pay to Bola Ige, who only recently on December 1, 2001 in Los Angles gave some Igbo professionals a piece of his famous acerbic mouth, is to "siddon look" while fine-tuning a definitive Igbo Charter for an autonomous nation in any comity of nations. But I doubt Ndiigbo would sit this one out. The Igbo sense of social justice is too sensitive, so sensitive that someone almost always jumps out in front of a moving truck of explosives. General Alexander A. Madiebo, Commander of the Biafran Armed Forces, cautions in his book: 

"But the Igbo appear to have learnt a lesson which will make it difficult for them to rebel as readily as they did in the past. It would appear that some people somewhere who always incited the Igbo into rebellion were never around whenever the confrontation began. If the Igbo can only give others a chance to fight their own wars, there may never be any more wars in Nigeria in which they will be involved directly."

Have the Igbo really learnt the lesson? These "people somewhere" are at it again, and we know where they are. They use plants in the media to cajole and to dare and to intimidate Ndiigbo to rock the system. They tell Ndiigbo on one hand that they have hit rock bottom, while on the other hand they scream that Ndiigbo have taken over Lagos and even sell lands! They say the Igbo have no leader; meanwhile, they don't have any leader standing. They say Ndiigbo do not have what it takes to lead; yet, their kinsman at the top stumbles with breakneck speed from one impeachable offense to another. They say Igbo politicians are selfish; well, Ndiigbo don't plot with outsiders to kill their own.

Nigeria has inept and or visionless politicians; Ndiigbo have their fair share, as do other nations of Nigeria. In fact, some of the examples in the piece under the microscope are better than their contemporaries. Who would forget the serenity of Sir Akanu Ibiam and the reliable robustness of Dr. M. I. Okpara? How do you begin to compare Ojukwu and Ejoor or Adebayo, who served his military inferiors? There is more to life than acquisitions, and Ndiigbo are not too far behind. Yes, Arewa and Oduduwa have a few big billionaires, but area boys, beggars, illiterates, and paupers do not overcrowd Aladimma. And about that stockfish (albeit expensive), and secondhand clothes (okirika), they are all over Ariaaria, Ochanja, and Ogbete markets. About "tokumbo" cars, one of these days NEPA is going to go NITEL way, and Ndiigbo would give the glorified auto assembly plants a run for their money.

Nigeria's problem is not lack of visionaries. We have them aplenty. The problem is that we have visionless fellow citizens who think the only way to survive is by putting Ndiigbo down; the likes of Modupe Adelaja, Reuben Abati, Jerry Gana, etc. spring to mind. We have fellow citizens who abhor level-playing fields and who, according Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, masturbate at the thought of Ndiigbo suffering. But all that is in vain. As soon as Ndiigbo refocus and rediscover their Chineke and the ways of ancestors (Ndiichie), they will reach the promised land because "our culture is our future."

 Those who want to occupy themselves with the denigration of Ndiigbo are welcome to continue. I just wish Ndiigbo don't buy into the mindset of those cowards who won't be around when the war starts. Obi Nwakanma submits in The Guardian op-ed of January 13, 2002:

The laws that have been written to subvert Igbo ascension had always come from the willing pen of the Yoruba, and fortified by the fear and hatred of the North and the suspicion of the rest of Nigerians against this group. But the truth is, the Igbo is a master race. The rest of Nigeria may fight it, clobber it, and even levy war against it, but its fate [is] determined: God has kept the Igbo to lead the black races of the world. Those who hold Igbo on the ground are simply wrestling with their chi.

Everything else is embellishment.