I can’t claim to know the late Torch Taire very well. But he was very close to my Oga, Mr Sam Amuka in many ways including proximity. They lived within a walking distance of each other, and they were, like the cliché, of identical plumage and therefore tended to flock together. My knowledge of him is therefore, largely vicarious since I visit Uncle Sam’s place fairly often. Anybody who knows Uncle Sam knows he is a completely detribalised person. So was Torch Taire.
In fact, it was said at a time that his closest friend was the late Pius Okigbo, the poet. Uncle Torch as I called him, had an intellectual bent and my few conversations with him were on my articles and the state of the Nation. In one of the tributes to him, a reference was made which reflected his character of not being afraid to go against the grain if it was his conviction. The point which was attributed to him in the tribute is relevant to my article today.
He had, according to the tribute, attended the book launch of Joe Igbokwe. As to be expected, the hall was largely populated by Ndigbo. One after the other, the speakers and launchers spoke about the marginalisation of Ndigbo and how they had not been integrated into mainstream Nigeria since the war.
When Mr Taire was called out to speak, it was alleged that he said he found that line of thinking strange because less than ten years after the war ended, and in the very first democratic dispensation, the South-East which was supposed to have lost the war, had the Vice President, the Senate President and the Speaker; that is numbers two, three and four top positions in any democratic setting were cornered by the South-East while his region, the Mid-West, which bore the brunt of the war and which it was supposed to have jointly won, was left in the lurch. So palpable was the silence that followed that you could, it was said, have heard a pin drop.
This line of thinking still persists and like Uncle Torch, I find it strange. Less than a year ago, the South-East relinquished its hold on the country and its economy which it had run for the better part of eight years. And I mean ‘run’ in every sense of the word because they sometimes did it in an ‘in your face’ manner. Most of the key and strategic departments were at one time or the other controlled by them. The South-West which was supposed to be part of the mainstream that ‘won’ the war and therefore didn’t need ‘integration’ could hardly get a look in.
Yet we did not have this level of marginalisation tension, this siege mentality in the country. And the last time I checked, Ndigbo dominated the retail economy in over three-quarters of the country including my native State of Ekiti and my adopted State of Osun. They also control the real estate in major cities in the country like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. So where is the marginalisation? They also more than hold their own in Industry, Education and the other professions.
Yet all we hear these days is that they are being grossly marginalised. It should be pointed out that they owe much of these feats as much to their sense of industry as to the friendliness and accommodation of their host communities. Ndigbo boast that their people are in every nook and corner of the country. It is true. It is also true that they do as well if not better than some of the natives in those communities. That does not sound like marginalisation to me. Yet the song goes on jarring the ears of the rest of us.
This refrain came up again two weeks ago when eminent Igbo leaders gathered in Lagos—where else—to collectively declare that the Igbos are being marginalised and they find it totally unacceptable. Some of those leaders I know from afar; a few I am on talking terms with; many of them I respect. Almost all of them made their fame and fortune outside Igboland. Isn’t it time for them to think of integration? The call two weeks ago was one of the calls that exacerbate the fault lines in the country.
For genuine progress to be made, we need elders who will make an office holder accountable to his oath of office irrespective of where he comes from. Nigeria should be his constituency and not his home state or home town. We need elders who will make President Buhari and his economic team sit up and fulfil their electoral promises to the rank and file not those who will be looking for strategic advantages for their kin. We have had enough of ‘he is our son let him do it’. It hasn’t gotten us anywhere.
Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi gave a brilliant speech a few days ago at the maiden edition of Engr Ikpong Ikpong Etteh’s annual distinguished lecture held in Lagos about the same time that the Igbo elders were gathered. The title was: ‘The new country we need’. He took a nostalgic trip to the past when people schooled and worked together without any ethnic bias, when Prof Tekena Tamuna, an Ijaw and Prof Kenneth Dike, an Igbo could be Vice Chancellors of the University of Ibadan and lamented the loss of a country that was once based on merit and brotherhood.
He identified the source of the problem to the two coups and the civil war after which, things were never the same again. In his words, ‘the descent of politics into ethnic quagmire was followed by a bureaucratic descent into ethnic quagmire and the descent in all spheres of human endeavour into ethnic quagmire.’
I expect our elders who know when the rain started beating us to put an end to ethnic posturing and strive to build a one Nigeria where peace and justice will reign. Many of our youths are so poisoned by ethnic toxins that they are unable to see any good in people outside their tribes. How can you work with, let alone sacrifice for someone you don’t trust?
If some of our elders cannot come together to set up pan Nigerian standards based on oneness, equity, justice, social and economic integration, then they should bow out. Until I hear a superior argument, I find this cry of marginalisation to be manipulative. P.S Chuka Momah, my friend and brother told me a fortnight ago that I sound too angry in some of my articles. My apologies to him if this falls into that category. You get the feeling that Nigeria is being deliberately destroyed for selfish reasons by those who should know better.
VANGUARD
END
By the way, his very good friend, and best man at his wedding, was the late Christopher Okigbo, the poet, brother of the late Pius…
Tribe, so called, is one of those irrelevant, nonsensical, and useless red herrings that has been successfully utilised by time wasters to drag this country further back ever since our so called independence in 1960.
Nonsensical because if you say you come from so and so tribe, ethnicity, and locality, didn’t your ancestors migrate there from somewhere else????
Oh oh!!!!!!!!
And useless, because, like its cousin in officialdom, the |State of Origin” isn’t tribe only used for the hopeless ethnic jingoism that has wrecked our country since independence? “Current Residential Address” and “Place (LGA) of Birth”, required in developed countries, is more than enough to assist government in planning for, and maintaining, our security, infrastructure, education provision, healthcare delivery, traffic management, agricultural development, housing adequacy, and services provision, while |State of Origin” may be used to plan and maintain which of these please?????
ONLY A BLACK MAN, AND RELIGIOUS BIGOTS THE WORLD OVER, CAN CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON SUCH USELESS CONCEPTS AS ETHNICITY… WHILE THE USA DASHES OUT GREEN CARDS TO IFE, MODAKEKE, UMULERI, AGULERI, HAUSA, IGBO, YORUBA, ITSEKIRI, URHOBO, EFIK, IJAW, TIV, SHIITE, SUNNI,ETC, THE BLACK MAN AND THE RELIGIOUS BIGOT WILL CONTINUE TO PASS THEMSELVES OVER IN THEIR OWN COMMON BACKYARD. THE LUO, A KENYAN MINORITY, WILL NEVER BE ALLOWED BY THE MAJORITY TO PRODUCE A KENYAN PRESIDENT, BUT THE SON OF A LUO CAN BE ELECTED THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA?!?!!?!? WE ARE TRULY A SICK PEOPLE!!!
“So called” because I don’t see an iota of positivity that has been demonstrated or evidenced in the history of any part of this country which can be attributed to whatever “tribe” the inhabitants claim to be. I mean, what aspect, of whichever little positive that may be said of any part of us can be attributed to our ethnicity please?
Furthermore, if ethnicity, or tribe, are marked mainly by language, which Nigerian language can boast of the capacity to depict up to 1% of universal reality please? Rather all our languages are useless creoles unable to distinguish between simple concepts such as the colours, red, yellow, orange, or pink, so how on earth could they be used to master the spectrum of light that traverses the visible universe from infra-red to ultra-violet thereby attempting to grasp the realities underpinning electrical/electronic engineering science, for example?
In other words, what is culture without a developed language please? Is this why so much pomp and noise is made of the coronation of a king supposedly the custodian of his ethnic culture, only for me to see him in Italian leather slippers, Swiss watch, French cologne,”traditional” attire MADE IN AUSTRIA, and let’s excuse the mandatory German, Japanese, and Korean automobiles and other essential accessories?? I mean, what kind of culture, or tribe, cannot adorn its king in locally made quality LEATHER SLIPPERS for heaven’s sake???
A useless one, I’d say.
And the funniest part is that even in the current so called democratic dispensation, while I proposed, to no less than 11 State governments, the setting up of elaborate ad deliberate LG-based linguistic committees consisting of traditionalists, linguists, and other egg heads, charged with creating a complete dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia, by manufacturing new words, so as to give new workable languages with which to kick-start a positive development-economic cultural and tribal renaissance, such proposition was met in each instance with a characteristic lazy mindedness and the lethargy and uselessness that has led us where we are today as a nation!!!
Oxford English Dictionary … how far with my application for that new word … “Niggargerian” … meaning ” to be mean, and wicked, even to ones self”?