THE way Igbos voted in the 2015 general election has been widely misunderstood. The South East and the Igbo electorate gave their almost undivided votes to President Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Presidential and National Assembly polls, such that the in-coming All Progressives Congress (APC) will not be able to effectively zone any of the its political offices to the Igbo heartland.
Some Igbos have been despondent that by “putting all their eggs in one basket”, they have voted themselves “out of contention”, at least for the next four years. For the first time in our political history, no Igbo person will be President, Vice President, Senate President, Deputy Senate President, Speaker, House of Reps or Deputy Speaker, House of Reps.
Non-Igbos who like to criticise Igbo politics have also been having a field day, saying their “blind following” of President Jonathan has rendered them “irrelevant” in the new APC dispensation which General Muhammadu Buhari will preside. Those who hold these views are either too young to understand the post-war Igbo political history or they are simply indulging their ignorance and mischief.
In the first place, there are no losers of the general election. Agreed, some people will be in power and some will be watching from the sidelines. But since there is peace instead of killings and people running helter-skelter, since Nigeria is not sliding into a major crisis or war of disintegration as some had predicted, Nigerians are all winners. The architect of that general victory for Nigerians is President Goodluck Jonathan, who gamely conceded victory to Buhari even when he knew that the elections was “manipulated” against his party.
Secondly, after careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that having people from your area occupy plum national offices does not translate to development for that area. It only gives people the psychological satisfaction that “we are in power”. It gives a few people access to those in power. It also makes a few multi-billionaires out of a few privileged individuals. That’s about all.
Just take a look at this. The North has produced one Prime Minister, two presidents and six military heads of state. Yet, the North remains the poorest and most backward part of the country in almost all counts of development. Obasanjo ruled Nigeria as an elected president for eight years, yet the people of the South West swear they got nothing for it. The South-South finally produced a president, yet apart from the post-Amnesty bazaar, Governor Rotimi Amaechi insists that all federal projects in the zone were put there by “Hausa” or “Yoruba” presidents. The South East has produced a ceremonial President, one military head of state, a Vice President, seven Senate Presidents, two Speakers of the House of Reps and a Deputy Speaker. Yet, they still complain of marginalisation. These officials enjoy their offices and please their families and friends. That’s all.
What matters, therefore, is how an election advances the overall strategic interests of groups in the system. To understand how the Igbo group interest was furthered at the 2015 polls, we need to engage our political history.
At the end of the civil war, Igbos lost everything. While the other Majorities, such as the North and, to a lesser extent, the West maintained a hold on their Minorities, the Eastern Minorities were part of the campaign that defeated Biafra. The Eastern Minorities became willing vassals of the North. The Igbos themselves were also appendages of the North in that to remain “relevant” they always tried to maintain strong links with the Northern political establishment. Instructively, it was the West that remained in the opposition that benefited most from Federal largesse.
Struggling to please
With the Igbos and the Minorities (especially the Ijaws) struggling against each other to please the North which they regarded as their “traditional allies” it was left for the North to pick and choose. During elections they picked the Igbos for VP. But in terms of appointments and grander conspiracies they went to the Minorities. But both sides suffered neglect when it came to the distribution of the wealth of the nation to drive real development, though the oil wealth came from their parts.
When General Sani Abacha called the Constitutional Conference in 1994, the Igbo intelligentsia decided that only the geopolitical re-engineering of Nigeria would set the Igbos – and others free. They reasoned that unless the Minorities had their own geopolitical platform and identity, their unhealthy rivalry with the Igbo would never end. At the pre-Constitutional Conference talks (Mkpoko Igbo) in Enugu, the Igbo leadership hatched a plan to have Nigeria split into six regions or geopolitical zones, based on which political power would be rotated to eliminate sectional domination. In addition, ailing Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe also lent his support for the creation of an all-Ijaw state out of old Rivers.
At the Conference, the Igbos drafted Dr. Ekwueme to lead their delegates, with Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and Chief Sam Mbakwe as Conference co-chairs while Professor ABC Nwosu was the main intellectual lynchpin. The Igbo proposal caused a big friction between Ekwueme and the North because the latter felt it was an attempt to whittle down their power. The proposal was defeated at the Conference. But because Abacha wanted Igbo support for his self-succession, he approved the creation of the six geopolitical zones, including the South East and South-South. He also granted Zik’s wish for an Ijaw State, Bayelsa, which gave the Igbo-speaking people control of Rivers politics.
It was former Chief of General Staff, retired Commodore Okoh Ebitu Ukiwe, the man who wrote the original script for “power shift”, that started the move for partnership between the South East and South-South in 2001 when he formed the Council of South East and South-South (COSESS). Though the idea was enthusiastically embraced by the Minorities, some Ijaw leaders, such as Chief Marshall Harry and EK Clark opposed it, saying they were more “familiar” with alliance with the North.
But in 2010/2011 when Jonathan wanted to run for president after exhausting the unfinished term left by the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua, the Igbo leadership decided to give him total support. In fact, they barred themselves from running for president or vice president for that purpose. In the end, the Igbo votes helped give the presidency to Jonathan in 2011, just as the Yoruba votes helped give the presidency to Buhari in 2015.
Powerful political bloc
Today, the Minorities of the South not only have their own separate political home zone with which they produced the president of this country, the South East and South-South operating in the PDP/APGA alliance basket has become potentially the second most powerful political bloc in Nigeria with eleven states, compared to Arewa (North East and North West) which has thirteen states. The “middle Belt” states of North Central remain the swing states. In 2011 they went with the PDP, but chose to go with APC in 2015. The South East and South-South political bloc, if kept strong, can create an alliance with the South West and North Central, along with progressives from the Arewa states and ensure equity and sense of belonging for all Nigerians. That was the original purpose for which they envisioned.
The South East and South-South combined bloc can call the shots both politically and economically, being the oil-bearing zones of Nigeria. The realisation of this vision is a major victory for the Igbo, the Minorities and the nation at large. So, wherein lies the loss?
It is now up to the zones’ new political leaders such as Godswill Akpabio, Nyesom Wike, Willie Obiano, Emeka Ugwuanyi, Ifeanyi Okowa, Liyel Imoke, Seriake Dickson and the rest to take it further or let it go.
VANGUARD
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This is purely the writer’s political reasoning but in reality does it work? You will not only make yourself a political broken hearted harlot but also a laughable political bedfellow who does not even know who to cohabit with. A south-south man will never be comfortable being in the same ship paddled by a South East man. There is always a latent phobia harbored against the South East,may be one can call it a fall out of the civil war baggage. The writer has stated that E K Clark opposed a Southeast,Southsouth union saying that they are more familiar with the North. This is a polite way of telling you what you probably may not like to hear about who they think you are. Godswill Akpabio, Nyesom Wike, Linyel Imoke and Seriake Dickson are not different from Clark. They are probably worse. This should be considered as untenable political expedition.
What the South East should do is to go home, do a political ground work and come up with a blue print that would enable them be in the main stream of any political party in power. To achieve this they need to do a couple of things. (1) They should practice less of do or die politics. (2)They should set apart two agile individuals with credible profiles and political sagacity. People they can trust and who will not betray them. These two would have a common goal of working for the unity of the South east. The political think tank must always be one that should guide them to constantly put their geopolitical zone in a better stead no matter the political tide. Suffice to say that these two leaders must purge themselves of any political rivalry knowing that they are working for the common good of their zone. Each of these individuals would command their own separate followings who indeed bear total allegiance to their own people as a nation. As a matter of principle, the two would lead their separate group to each dominant party with the fair chance of either of them being in power. But a situation whereby the two need to come together to form a formidable bloc for the greater benefit of the zone must never be questioned.