FEATURE ARTICLE

'Remi Oyeyemi
remyhoyes@aol.com

Forwarded by LAOLU AKANDE

Of Amnesia and Myopia:
The Igbos in Nigerian politics

efore the advent of the disruptive Europeans, the Igbos of all the tribes in the Bight of Benin is the only one with a traditional system most akin to Republicanism. Also evident in this Republicanism are traits of Athenian democracy that ensured that every man was part of the decision making process. The Igbos has three basic characteristics. They are very aggressive, adventurous and industrious. Their leaders were usually conscious of the followers and tried to carry them along in their decisions. This traditional system explained why the indirect rule introduced by the British lords was a colossal failure in Igboland. The Igbos political decision making system is from below to the top and not the other way round.

These basic characteristics of an Igboman have been of great help in his battle for survival in Nigeria's socio-economic cum religio-political landscape. These characteristics made an Igboman highly adaptable wherever he finds himself. They are the engines that have propelled him to all nooks and crannies of Nigeria and have isolated him as a consummate businessman. Some historians have theorised that the aggression and adventurousness of the Igboman could be traced to the fact that it has limited land space. This lack of space had reportedly imbued their spirit of aggression, adventure and industry.

Yet these characteristics, as positive as they are, have been the major reason while the Igboman has been a subject of perennial suspicion by his immediate neighbours - the minority tribes to the south, west and north of Igboland. These minority tribes have not taken kindly to the aggression of the Igboman the intent of which is perceived as the occupation of their (minorities') land. This might be a legitimate fear by the minorities, but it might also have been exacerbated by envy elicited by the industriousness of the Igboman.

Of all these neighbours, the northern minorities in the Benue-Plateau valley are the most tolerant. The Igbos has had more contentious relationship with the western and southern minorities who perceive them (the Igbos) as implacably dominating and unscrupulously acquisitive. Though this perception and characterisation of the Igbos may be open to debate, it has been argued that one of the reasons the Biafran Project failed was because of lack of support from the minorities, south and west of Igboland. It has been posited that the minorities south of Igboland (usually referred to in Nigerian political parlance as Eastern minorities) were scared of their fate in an Igbo dominated country had the Biafran Project been a success.

Indeed, the Adakaboro insurrection was identified as a derivative of this thinking by some historians, while some Mid-Westerners are still seeking explanation why their region was the first to be invaded by the Biafran soldiers. The lack of consultation of these minorities by the Igbos before the declaration of Biafra was also isolated by the former who contend that such an act confirm their fear of being unfairly dominated or treated in a country in which the Igbos would be the preeminent majority. In fact, several times in the past, some leaders of the minorities, mostly of the Eastern extraction have boasted that if not for their contributions Nigeria could not have survived and stayed together. In other words, they were responsible for making the Biafran dream impossible!

It could be argued that the political affiliations of the western minorities (or if you like the Bendelites) and the Eastern minorities since 1960 best explains their deep suspicions of the Igbos. Their (minorities) leaders have at different times supported Yoruba dominated political parties such as AG, UPGA and UPN as well as Hausa-Fulani dominated ones like NPC, NPN, and GNPP against the Igbo dominated political parties such as NCNC and NPP. As pointed out earlier, the minorities to the north of Igboland are more tolerating of the Igbos than other surrounding neighbours and it was not a surprise that the Igbo dominated NPP won the election in Plateau State in the second republic.

The Igbos no doubt has a political need to be relevant in the Nigerian polity. The Igbos no doubt has been denied some of their dues as Nigerians. They have suffered as a result of the civil war without much sympathy from other Nigerians. The Igbos might probably still be bitter against some of the minorities in the west and south of Igboland for not cooperating enough on the Biafran Project. They no doubt have made some heinous errors in the past. But for an intelligent and smart people like the Igbos whose efforts to attain particular dreams (whatever they are) within the Nigerian polity are perpetually stillborn, it is baffling that every step they take seems to distance them from their promised land.

With the early March conference at Umuaiah it is amazing that the Igbos have not recognised what they need to do to realise their dreams. They are still looking back with an empty memory and etching their future on quicksand. They are incapable of identifying their long term interest and unable to demonstrate the necessary vision required for its realisation The Igbos are unable to demonstrate the courage and candour required to bring about the desired success.

This would be to let their charity begin at home by apologising to their neighbours for the wrongs done in the past. Seek to rebuild relationships that have been damaged with those neighbours, assuage their fears and earn their trust and confidence. Tell them the importance of a united Eastern Nigeria in the Nigerian political equation and the advantage of having to negotiate as one block. Demonstrate that they are not as unscrupulous or as "greedy" and "dominating" as they have been tagged. Convince them that they are only trying to eke out a living from wherever they settle and would try to be the best guests they can be. That their utmost objective is not to dominate others but peaceful coexistence that would enhance commerce and industry.

But why are the Igbos incapable of taking the right political decisions that would liberate them and possibly Nigeria? Why are they unable to take the right step in the right direction? Is it because their motive for that conference is not about the interest of the Igbos but that of others? Is it because there is some vendetta implicit in the nature, purpose, membership and timing of that conference? Is the conference in the interest of Nigeria or the Igbos specifically or others yet unknown? Is it a function of bankrupt conspiratorial political leadership as well as booming vampire political dealership? Or is this a result of honest chronic political amnesia or pathological myopia?

Most Igbo political leaders have made careers out of antagonising the Yoruba leaders and people. Their major excuse has always been that the Yorubas betrayed them during the Biafran crisis. Though as infernal and miry as this capricious allegation was and still is, the Igbo leaders have never been able to establish that there was an agreement between the Igbos and Yorubas regarding the creation of an independent nation of Biafra.

What they have mischievously held on to and gratuitously interpreted to be a promise was Chief Obafemi Awolowo's statement to Colonel Emeka Ojukwu that if the Igbos were forced out of Nigeria, the Yorubas would be obliged to follow suit. The Igbo political leaders impishly and blatantly used this to misinform, "miseducate" and mislead an average Igboman for narcissistic ephemeral political gains. Ojukwu or any Igbo leader never informed Awo or any Yoruba leader of note about plans of Biafra. At the time Ojukwu declared Biafra, though there had been tension for months, the contentious issue was the Aburi Agreement, which the Igbo leadership and the rest of Nigeria interpreted in different ways.

The fact that the rest of the country was willing to meet at the conference table to discuss issues bothering the Igbos pointed to one thing - that the Igbos would not be "pushed" out of Nigeria. However, Ojukwu had other issues bothering him including the dream of leading a nation. All ambitions are legitimate. What was heinous about Ojukwu's action was the wrapping of a personal ambition in the garb of a people's grief and use that as an excuse to wage war. Without doubt, the Igbos had legitimate grouses with many issues, some of which are still germane in today's Nigeria, but nobody pushed them out of Nigeria. Rather, the Igbo leaders decided to push their people out of Nigeria.

Even then the Igbo leaders had and still have legitimate right to decide what they deem fit in the interest of their people. What is obnoxious about their conduct is their dishonesty and lack of candour. To hold someone else or another group of people (in this case the Yorubas) responsible for a decision they considered to be in the interest of their people but which later turned out not to be well advised, is rascally. Most Igbo leaders have vilified albeit unjustifiably, Chief Awolowo for this concocted half-truth in an attempt to shroud in a cocoon of deceit their ill-advised decision about Biafra.

They also blame Chief Awolowo for using the ultimate weapon - food, during the civil war. What exactly did they expect him to do against someone who invaded his backyard and in the course of that killed some members of his family who has never bothered anyone? Last week, I mentioned the invasion of the Midwest by the Biafran soldiers. The Igbo leaders have never explained why that region should be their first port of call, because if my geography lesson is still of any help, Bauchi is not in the Midwest. Neither is Kano or Kaduna where innocent Igbos were murdered in their hundreds or thousands.

From Midwest, Ojukwu and his Biafran soldiers advanced to Yorubaland. It was in Ore, Ondo State where one of the fiercest battles of the war was fought to stop Ojukwu and his henchmen. Why should Yorubaland and the Midwest be the theater of the war supposedly caused by mass killings of Igbos in the North? The Igbo leaders are unwilling to explain why Yorubaland should be their target. I find it difficult to imagine that an intelligent people like the Igbos no matter their objectives or plans, would invade Yorubaland and expect the Yorubas to welcome them with shouts of Halleluyah! Or they expect Chief Awolowo to order his people to roll out the drums for the conquerors, assuming they succeeded? Instead of the Igbo leaders to accept making an error in judgement and explain to their people why and how their mission (whatever it was) failed, they looked for a scapegoat in the Yorubas, blaming and demonising them.

It was easy to blame Chief Awolowo for doing what he had to do in defending his people while the Igbo leaders conveniently avoided responsibility for their political myopia. However, their perennial amnesia became a severe one when the Igbos sheepishly followed and praised Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe who abandoned them and ran abroad with a flimsy excuse as the war raged. A leader in need is supposed to be a leader indeed. It was because of the same Dr. Azikwe that Chief Adisa Akinloye and his followers gave Chief Awolowo the premiership of Western region when he (Dr. Azikwe) refused to negotiate with them when he clearly knew that he did not have enough seats to form the government. Not all the Igbo leaders who knew and still know the truth would admit that Dr. Azikwe's refusal to negotiate with Chief Akinloye had drove the latter into Chief Awolowo's arms as Chief Sam Mbakwe once admitted to this writer.

Clearly, because of that terrible mistake (some called it greed or egotism) on the part of Dr. Azikwe, he damaged the political lifeline that would not only have made the dreams of Igbos and possibly that of the Yorubas, of a modern day Nigeria that would have been a force in the comity of nations, realizable. This provided the foundation for unjustifiable demonizing of the Yorubas and their leadership on which the Igbo leaders dishonestly and maliciously built at independence and roofed at the demise of Biafra.

After the 1959 elections, neither the AG, NPC nor NCNC had enough seats in the Federal Parliament to form the government. It is on record that Chief Awolowo offered to work as the Finance Minister under the leadership of a Dr. Azikwe's government. But Azikwe went into partnership with the NPC to become a ceremonial head of state rather than on-hands head of government. Nigeria's future and the authentic dream of an average Igboman to be free and uninhibited was as a result, mortgaged. During the second republic there was the second chance, yet Dr. Azikwe's NPP went into alliance with the Hausa-Fulani owned NPN and frustrated the progressives resurgence under the PPA platform.

All these actions by the Igbo leaders have destroyed possible mutual understandings between their people and the Yorubas. It has engendered unjustified bitterness of uninformed average Igboman against the Yorubas. It has made Igbos repeated victims of fiendish political bridegroom who keep using them for his own end and order the almajeris after them when it serves a purpose. It has deprived the Igbos the trust of their immediate neighbours and earned them the suspicion of those who share the same worldview with them. It has made them perpetual backburners and glorified second-rate citizens in their own country. Nevertheless, is this what the Igbos really deserve? Did the Umuaiha summit lend any credence to the political amnesia and myopia of the Igbos? Can a people be so intelligent and yet so undiscerning?

As I was saying, the Igbo leaders have successfully sold lies to their people to set them against the Yorubas with whom they share philosophical affinity. The intention of those political lies was to appropriate particular gains that have remained perpetually elusive to the ordinary Igboman within the Nigerian political milieu. But after forty years of such lies, it is time for the ordinary Igbos to ask from their leaders - whither the gains?

For more than fifty years, the Igboman was a perennial victim of the Northern political hegemony. From time to time, the innocent Igboman was mercilessly slaughtered all over the Northern cities and villages. His properties, acquired through seminal industriousness and hard work was repeatedly vandalized. Every time this odious calamity befalls the Igbos, they never received sympathy from their northern friends nor did they have any recourse to indemnity. There have been so many Akalukas all over the North of Nigeria whose heads have been cut off and their lives cut short not necessarily because of their choice of faith(s), but because they are Igbos. Of recent, the Yorubas have come to suffer the same fate too.

On the contrary, the Yorubas have always treated the Igbos as true compatriots. The Yorubas have allowed the Igbos unfettered freedom in their land to enable them (the Igbos) truly realize their potentials without any socio-political inhibitions. The Yorubas have always recognised and respected the sanctity of lives and accorded the Igbos the same kind of protection, which their daughters and sons enjoyed. The Yorubas enabled an engendering atmosphere for prosperous commerce and permitted them to freely practice their faith(s) without molestation or harassment.

Not only that, an average Igboman believes in hard work just like an average Yorubaman. Unlike an average Hausa-Fulani man who has no blue blood in his vein and believes that his daily meal must come from the one Allah has chosen. To an average Igboman just like his Yoruba counterpart, every man is a chosen man. It is a matter of chance, ability and choice. An average Hausa-Fulani man is obedient, respectful, unquestioning and dogmatic. An average Igboman like his Yoruba counterpart is obedient, respectful but questioning and non-dogmatic. An average Yorubaman like an average Igboman is philosophically broadminded, though at times irredentist, while an average Hausa-Fulaniman is philosophically narrow-minded, chronically irredentist and irretrievably shrouded in a blinding cocoon of religious fundamentalism.

Among the Hausa-Fulanis, there is nothing untoward about marrying an eight-year-old. It is perfectly normal. In Yorubaland and Igboland, it is a noxious crime. Among the Hausa-Fulanis, there is nothing shameless about sleeping and waking at the door of someone who was a little well off and expected to be fed. In Yorubaland, it is a thing of profound ignominy. It bothers on denigrated manliness, emaciated self-respect and family opprobrium. It is not different in Igboland.

Among the Hausa-Fulanis, a physically impaired person is free to roam around and beg for a living. In Yorubaland as well as Igboland, it is the responsibility of the family to care for and nurture in a very respectful manner as not to bring shame to the entire extended family. The Hausa -Fulaniman looks solely towards the Middle East for its faith and civilisation. The Igboman just like the Yorubaman looks not only to the Middle East, but he also looks inward as well as towards the West, the North, the South and everywhere else for his faith and civilisation.

Yet, every time there is the need for the Igbos to make that critical political choice to liberate themselves from the degrading shackles of socio-political anomie, their leaders always lead them further down the drain, away from their dreams and their freedom a la Umuaiha. The Igbo leaders, kneel-walking with their hands behind their backs, always cart their people away like commodities to the enslaving Hausa-Fulani moneybags whose interests, worldview and philosophical inclinations are diametrically opposed to that of the Igbos.

For this, despicable crumbs are passed to the Igbo leaders, who, gallivanting up and down the banks of rivers Niger and Benue, would glamourise the crumbs as the cream and gloat about the Yorubas being in opposition. But is it the crumbs that the Igbos deserve or the cream of and in their fatherland? Why are the Igbos continuously failing to align themselves with the Yorubas to have direct access to the cream, if not the seat at its distribution table?

It is amazing how a people could be gifted with so much intelligence and knowledge and yet knows so little on how to go about realising their dreams and freedom. It is befuddling how a people could be aware of so much and yet exude such an exasperating ignorance. How can a people with so much pride perennially glorifies in second or third fiddle? It is incredibly nauseating for a people to experience repeated humiliation, denigration and at times, destruction and still be attracted to the source of such debilitating calamities. What genre of a permeating amnesia could be flabbergasting more than this?

Every time the Igbo leaders crawl to Kaduna, Sokoto, Kano and Bauchi and cringe to crunch the crumbs, it would usually be followed by another round of massacre of the Igbos by the Northern politico-religious fundamentalists at the flimsiest excuse, and the vicious cycle continues. What could have been the cause of such chronic amnesia and myopia among the Igbo leadership? Is robust intelligence a symptom of amnesia and myopia? What has amnesia and myopia to do with greed and egotism? The Bible says, "where there is no vision, the people perish". Are the Igbos, despite their intelligence, industry, adventure and hard work destined for endless slavery, humiliation and decimation?

It is time for the Igbos to seek out people of philosophical like minds and work with them in their own interest and in the interest of Nigeria. It is time for the Igbos to extricate themselves from second rate citizenship mentality. It is time for them to seek out their legitimate dues and do away with crumbs. They should unbound themselves from the subjugating chains of amnesia and impeding walls of myopia. They need to demonstrate courage and candour and apologise to the surrounding minority groups for treating them with disdain and disrespect.

Finally, the Igbos need to convince the Yorubas that they could be trusted and that they are not without social and economic etiquette as well as political principles. They need to grab the hand of fellowship extended by the Yorubas, not by threatening to realise a pipe dream to rule Lagos state come next time, but by going into meaningful political partnership with them to permanently dislodge their hegemonic oppressors from the north of the Niger.

It is the only means the Igbos can realise whatever dream(s) they have within the Nigerian polity. Otherwise, their recent vindictive move a la Umuaiha would lead them to perdition. A word, they say, is enough for the wise.