We are concerned with ethnic relations induced by politics in Nigeria and its fallouts, and in particular the Igbo condition in Nigeria as a major victim of the fallouts and so we interrogate such issues and similar or related matters.
In our earlier offerings, for those that read or follow us on this column we have sufficiently interrogated the issues of politics of “mainstream” which is barely disguised euphemism for a loser who decides to join the winning side for some selfish considerations which may be purely for material or other socio-economic and political benefits.
Recall this column holds Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe responsible for the Igbo’s past and present culture of principle-less or non-ideological politics. Simply put: politics of opportunism. And we trace this political culture to 1947 when Azikiwe broke with his youthful intellectual fervour and revolutionary standpoints in politics that clearly clothed him a nationalist leader.
This dream as surmised by Zikist Muokwugo Okoye was aborted when Azikiwe embraced British imperialist designs and schemes that seemingly accommodated Azikiwe’s selfish political and economic interests. This betrayal severed the revolutionary and ideological cord of his party, NCNC, represented by the philosophy and activism of the Zikist Movement.
Since then, Azikiwe became ‘anything goes’ politician and was a ready tool for all manners of political accommodation, compromise and appeasement. It was this political culture that stands on no fixed ground that Azikiwe introduced the Igbo to, and that has been their lot and the lot of other ethnic groups in Nigeria.
Democracy was returned in 1979 with Azikiwe playing the beautiful bride to political forces at play. He did not align with Awolowo’s UPN or Ibrahim Waziri’s GNPP or Aminu Kano’s PRP for the abolition of Nigeria’s exploitative autocratic governance template in favour of a more inclusive political structure. His party rather formed an alliance with NPN’s Shehu Shagari, where he had, in similar fashion under NPC, in 1956 and 1960/63, become governor-general/president.
The 1979 NPN/NPP alliance assured Azikiwe of empty political positions shared out to followers, but no substantial gains by way of abolition of the obnoxious system that enslaves and exploits his Igbo group smarting from the debilitating pains of Biafra War, especially the exclusionist governmental policies.
The trajectory of Igbo politics is ordered by Azikiwe political template. The question is; has this politics of ‘mainstream’ championed by Azikiwe and upheld by the Igbo politicians benefited them as against the Yoruba’s politics of protest and opposition? To a large extent, the Igbo seem to be losers!
The Igbo seem, in their politics, to be inured in the ever present hope of joining the victorious party for individualistic shortterm gains instead of positive group long-term benefits. And at the end, both the group and the individuals are losers with disappointments/regrets trailing the opportunism.
It was in the background of this political scenario that Odumegwu Ojukwu raised the issue of this culture of political opportunism in an interview with theNewswatch published October 5, 1992 where he lamented that political opportunism has neither served the Igbo well and counselled alliance between the Igbo and the Yoruba to break the yoke of political domination by the North in Nigeria.
In the interview, Ojukwu had reasoned that the East (Igbo and other ethnic minorities) have always worked with the North as they think that by such alliance they will get a bigger share of the national cake but that has remained forlorn hope.
Ojukwu surmised that since 1956 when this political culture began, he knew the developmental conditions of the three regions vis-à-vis the Nigeria condition and can compare their positions. His verdict was that the East has deteriorated not solely due to the loss of the Biafra War but due to its bad politics. To him, the position of the North was “magnificent”.
Then for the West (Yoruba) he concluded thus: “I look at it and say, these people have been in opposition all the time but they are better than us who are partners with government”.
Then he reasoned; “There is something (wrong) somewhere. Let’s see whether we can repair this, or perhaps, try the other way and see.” In conclusion, Ojukwu suggested a political understanding termed “Handshake Across the Niger” between the East and West to stop the political domination by one group.
He thundered, “Everybody spends time telling us that the North has monopolized power since independence as if the struggle for power were a church bazaar.
No, they, the people of the North, have regained power, largely because of their own political astuteness, because…of our own (South) political stupidity… If you’re not going to struggle to take power in a democratic situation where you know that the biggest thing is numbers and you fragment yourself and other people mobilize their numbers and take, then stop crying like middle aged women.”
Ojukwu joined politics in 1982 after President Shagari had granted him pardon and facilitated his return from exile to Nigeria. Ojukwu joined NPN and sought senatorial mandate and got his fingers burnt in a web of intrigues and political subterfuge that saw his party working with his opponent, to rig him out.
NPN didn’t want him in senate! Did he learn his lessons? It is doubtful because throughout his political career he never practicalized his idea embodied in the interview.
Until his death he led APGA but never considered it politically expedient to align with Yoruba political mainstream represented variously by AD, AC and ACN to actualize his dream “Handshake Across the Niger.” It is against the foregoing that one can understand the present political debacle of the Igbo in Nigerian politics. The Igbo’s politics is for individualistic pursuits.
This fuel ‘mainstream’ politics. Governor Rochas Okorocha in APC has not been successful in structuring his politics for inclusive political interests not to talk of the larger Igbo and capitalizing on his mistake, opposing interests in APC have exploited his narrow politics to rubbish whatever agenda he has vis-à-vis his future ambitions to the point of irrelevance.
The same scenario is playing out in PDP where the same tendency, instead of looking ahead to the vortex of political struggles of reclaiming Nigerianstate from the political tendency that seized, structured and exploited it against its constituent parts allowed certain political distractions to blur their vision of getting a moderate politician on its platform elected president and thereafter hold him to account to restructure Nigeria that allow its peoples aborigine freedoms.
A restructured and competitive Nigeria should be the goal of every Igbo politician and on that standpoint support and hold every party or politician that promises that to account. Win or lose, this should be Igbo political manifesto.
Anything outside this vision is eternal political slavery and damnation. And like the Jewish freedom fighters against Roman colonialism who eschewed selfish gains and even embraced supreme sacrifice, raised a banner declaring, “we choose death rather than slavery.”
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