Igbo political elite often play the victim. After initial claim of disenfranchisement across Lagos and call for a military takeover if Obi was denied of victory, it was wild jubilation on Monday as they invaded Alausa with Obi party’s flag following INEC announcement of his victory with about 500,000 votes in Lagos over Tinubu who secured less than 5000 votes in Enugu.
But then nationalism among Igbo political elite has always been driven not by altruism but by selfish interest. And no one puts this better than Chinua Achebe in his classic, ‘No Longer at ease’- “we are strangers in this land, when calamities befall the owners of the land, we return home leaving the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods” Here, Chinua Achebe, as in his other classics, focuses on transformation Igbo experience in strangers’ land while maintaining a dead silence on dislocation and despoliation of host communities.
Thus the buying off of cutlasses in Lagos market by Igbo urban immigrants in preparation for war against their Yoruba host with whom they had lived peacefully before Zik’s return to Nigeria in 1934 was over alleged threat to Igbo leaders.
The derailment of Zik’s ambition to join the colonial legislative council due to Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Dr Olorunnibe’s NCNC intra-party revolt was sold to Igbo urban immigrants as Yoruba tribal war requiring Ozumba Mbadiwe’s call on Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa to cede Lagos from Western Region.
Even the March 5, 1941 Nigerian Youth Movement bye-election, during which Awolowo supported Ernest Ikoli, an easterner from present day Bayelsa against Oba Samuel Akinsanya, his fellow Ijebu man while Zik and his West African Pilot supported the latter, ended with Awolowo being labelled a tribalist by Zik to justify pulling down of the first Pan-Nigeria Movement.
Many Igbo political and intellectual elite including some of my close friends have said it to our face “You Yoruba are very tribalistic “just because we believe Obi’s chances in the 2023 presidential run is very slim in spite of assurances of his promoters starting with some of our mischievous elders including Olusegun Obasanjo, Pa Adebanjo and Pa Edwin Clark who claim to promote his candidacy “for equity justice and one Nigeria”.
They are not telling the truth that in the 1959 election, Igbo-dominated NCNC came first but by-passed Yoruba AG that came second to become beautiful bride to NPC that came a distant third; that during the 1979 inconclusive election, Obasanjo according to Aremo Segun Osoba, by-passed the electoral college constitutional provision, to rig Shagari into office with Richard Akinjide’s twelve two third of a state formula. Igbo NPP immediately offered itself as a beautiful bride to Shagari’s NPN; that in 1993, Igbo supported Bashir Tofa against MKO Abiola. And when Abiola against all odds won by a landslide, some Igbo leaders led by Arthur Nzeribe became instrument with which Babangida annulled the most credible election in our nation’s history.
Until 2022, Obi like most prominent Igbo politicians was in PDP. And without rapprochement or handshake across the Niger with the West, the rejected corner stone, Obi divorced PDP in 2022 and hoped to win Nigerian presidency in 2023.
Obi’s other pillar of support was ‘the obidients’, predominantly made up of ‘Igbo children of anger’ who because of the falsehood they had been fed with tend to hold everybody except Igbo leaders, their scourge, responsible for the plight of poor Igbo in Nigeria.
They seem to suffer from selective perception accepting no other views except perhaps that of Professor Pat Utomi who told them Obi is the best of all presidential candidates because he was such an entrepreneurial genius that he built a house as student of University of Nsukka where the Sultan Of Sokoto lived as a young military officer.
For them it does not matter the Anambra Obi governed for eight years is today like a war-ravaged state. Asking the line of business of Obi as a student since Igbo multi billionaires including Cosmas Maduka, Kalu Uzor Kalu and Owelle Okorocha and Andy Uba who we were told started as street hawkers never had such an easy break-through, does not really matter.
Of course the third group is made up of our own Yoruba children, with ages ranging between 20 and 35. The anguish of those who wondered where Yoruba parents missed it stems from the fact that the Yoruba are a people of culture. Their Ifa divination/Yoruba philosophy speaks of a child brought to the world who does strive to be better than his father as having been brought to the world in vain. A Yoruba child is never a slave to even his father’s belief system. Thoughts in Yoruba philosophy according to late Professor Sophie Oluwole, is progressive. For the Yoruba, ‘Ogbon odunni, were eremiran’ meaning today’s truth is tomorrow’s fallacy. How can a Yoruba youth become an unthinking ‘obidient’?
But much as Asiwaju Bola Tinubu might want to play the statesman card, what happened in Lagos last Saturday is not democracy. It is a conspiracy and revolt of urban immigrants against their hosts. And this is part of what federal arrangement tries to prevent in all multi-ethnic societies.
And to the extent that Igbo political elite have since independence opposed federal arrangement and today toy with idea of citizenship when outsider cannot secure a plot of land in their Igbo country, it will be suicidal to dismiss the fear of those who claim the grand plan of immigrants who exploit our liberalism because of our level of our cultural development is to ultimately enslave us in our own land.
A journey through memory will confirm that from the onset, Obafemi Awolowo canvassed for a federal arrangement patterned after Switzerland which back then had four million people with 22 cantons each with its own parliament and government. The Romansch racial group with only 44,000, enjoyed a regional autonomy and government. Canada with half of Nigeria’s 27m population back then in the fifties had nine provinces.
Awolowo and Yoruba leaders made useful contributions to both the Richards and Macpherson constitutions, which were promulgated to ensure one tribe does not enslave others.
And when Awo became premier of the West in October 1, 1954, he started the agitation for the creation of Midwest despite misgivings by his party who rightly predicted Midwest would be hijacked by Igbo. In 1955 he called for the creation of the COR (Calabar/Ogoja and Rivers as well as a Middle Belt state. Tragically, both Hausa Fulani and Igbo political elite rejected all demands up to the London 1957 constitutional conference.
It is part of our history that Hausa Fulani and Igbo that sent Awo to prison in 1962 openly boasted that by the time he returned from prison, he would be too old to question how they govern Nigeria.
And if there is any doubt both the Hausa Fulani and Igbo are opposed to a federalism but share a common world view on how Nigeria should be governed, it is on record that the first thing Igbo political elite did when they had a temporary advantage in 1966 was to rail-road Ironsi regime towards turning the country into a unitary state with Decree 34 of 1966. And since their rival for the soul of Nigeria seized the initiative after July 1966 coup, Nigeria has been run as a unitary state. The current 1999 un-debated constitution has been dismissed by many as Abdul Salami Abubakar Decree 24 of 1999.
It is time we confront our demon by returning to the ‘Path to Nigeria freedom’ we have avoided for 62 years.
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