The opinion expressed below would ordinarily not have mattered much if they were shared in a private conversation. There were posted in public space however. They must therefore be corrected before they assume the undeserved status intended for them by the writer.
There is really no Igbo question. There is the Nigeria Question. The Igbo are not the only group of Nigerians that are uneasy with the ethos of the Nigerian state. Other groups have been at one time or another and many still are, at this time. No one needs reminding of the enduring call from many parts of Nigeria for a sovereign national conference. The calls have not gone away. Having incorrectly defined the question, it is little surprise that an inaccurate, convoluted narrative followed.
I believe that bondage is extreme and not exactly appropriate for Nigeria's situation. Oppressed it seems to me is more appropriate. That all groups are oppressed in a country does not mean that they are for the same reasons and to the same extent. They usually are different reasons- class, ethnicity, geography, and religion for example. When oppression happens to a group because of who they are, it more unbearable because one cannot cease to be who they are. They di not choose to be who they are. They cannot un-choose who they are.
There is broad agreement in Nigeria for example that the northern states of Nigeria are relatively less "developed" than the southern states of the country. That this is so does not make more bearable the reality that this relative regional underdevelopment is no longer the responsibility of some and not all groups of northern Nigerians, and there is little likelihood of change. All groups may be oppressed but some groups are less so than others. Privilege can be unequal within and across different oppressed groups. In such a situation the extant inequity of the situation becomes a basis for resentment and a possible driver of palpable disaffection. Pain is more bearable if the cause of your is not outside the pained body.
History does not do things to people. It is people- self and others, and events that do. The Igbo are egalitarians. That is not to say that their society does not share with societies everywhere the co-existence of the rich and the poor. Theirs is a society in which what one gets to become does not inevitably depend on to whom or where the one was born. This is why the Igbo despite all real and imagined odds against them in Nigeria, have much of the success they have rightly been given credit for. They are fiercely competitive. All they ask for is a fair playing field. For the Igbo, privilege must be earned by enterprise and industry, not birth or circumstance. The Igbo believe for example that work pays, equal work should pay equally, and less work should not pay more that more work if personal and societal successes will not be minimized. This grain of their way of life, it seems to me, is one reason for their disappointment and frustration with Nigeria.
There is no fracture between the Igbo elite and their masses. There may be one between some of their opportunistic politicians and their masses. This is an important distinction. Is it not reasonable to expected that serious allegations against a former state Governor and Obasanjo be proved to be false before they are used to discredit the allegers. Disaffected Igbo who try to keep the Biafra issue in view are nothing like the Boko Haram insurgents who are an existential national security threat and have been for years now. It is an obnoxious false equivalence. It is shocking that anyone in good conscience is unable to discern the self-evident false equivalence of this common characterization.
Igbo intellectuals have developed a "coherent marginalization thesis". It is based on facts and experience. While some Nigerians may choose to deny the thesis, they cannot deny the facts- the injustices of state creation and the targeted economic policies of the immediate after war years for example. There is no denying that many of the policies were developed to hold some (Igbo) back and allow others to get ahead. Why the hurry so soon after the war and the skewed implementation as happened to be the case?
Should there be consequences for losing a hard fought war? Not if the post war proclamation by the victor was "no victor, not vanquished". A fraudulent promissory note was apparently issued to Nigerians by that proclamation. Was the fraudulent promissory note the result of a complicity or a conspiracy of Alfa characters in the federal government at the time? Everyone must decide for themselves.
There was a war. It is a fact that starvation was publicly professed to be and used as a legitimate weapon in that war. The federal side choose it to. The disingenuity is its denial after the war. Gowon did offer aid through a land corridor but only under his government's coordination and supervision. He rejected all management of the process by independent third parties including the International Red Cross and many voluntary relief agencies. He sought a military advantage through it. Gowon's humanitarian aid was rightly believed to be a potential Greek gift. No adversary in any war would have accepted it. Gowon would not have if he knew what he was doing. How many non-combatant men, women, and children died in that was? Was it a million, two. More? Less? It does not matter. Too many people died. It is outrageous that anyone would make an issue of the numbers of innocent people who died because of the federal government's starvation as a weapon of war policy. A similar argument would be to argue that Boko Haram insurgents are not evil because only a few scores and not thousands of innocent people died as a result of their insurgency?
Ojukwu was Biafra's leader. There is no one anywhere who knew the man who will argue that he did not expect Nigeria to try to stop Biafra's exit from Nigeria. He was well aware of the U.K.'s position on Nigeria and her influence on and support of the Gowon government. He might have believed for some time that the West Provinces would follow. He knew that belief was forlorn before he made his move. It is denied by some today that it was Ojukwu and not Gowon that freed Awolowo from Calabar prison. Ojukwu could have kept the man in prison up until what ever happened. He chose not to. The above and other disappointments and misinformation frayed feelings, hampered trust after the war, and made moving forward together more difficult.
Nigerians who do not fear the Igbo know that the Igbo are a freedom loving, can do, competitive people. It is these qualities that are mistaken innocently or not as they being an aggressive, arrogant, and clannish people. They are a much travelled people. They marry, are married and make home anywhere and everywhere. They are personal achievement driven. They buy, sell, invest, trade, and build anywhere and everywhere. The Igbo are the most invested in fixed assets outside their homeland. You do not do all the above if you have a short-term orientation to the life and relationships that you have, and the country in which you live.
As important as the presidency is, the Igbo desire the office more for its symbolism and what an Igbo president will do for Nigeria's political/economic and other development and growth than anything else. They know that to hold the office could not mean that they would be much better off than they are as individuals or as a people. Anyone who disagrees with this fact should look to see what Igbo Governors and Ministers have done for the Igbo on one hand and non-Igbos on the other, compared with what Non-Igbo parallel political office holders have done for their "people". The Igbo pride themselves in individual success that is achieved "in spite of" rather than "because of". They respect and value that variety of success much more highly. The Igbo language is stuffed with phraseology that esteem self-made success and denigrates the opposite. It is in this context that the Igbo case of their marginalization should be understood and appreciated. That case has never been about "give me this day my daily bread" as it seems to be for some others.
It is too soon it seems to me for anyone to gloat over the end of the Jonathan presidency and the failure of the Igbo to see it coming. The Igbo did not see the Jonathan presidency as an Igbo presidency and therefore its end as a loss to them. They had no illusion that an Igbo was going to succeed Jonathan. Their concern about the Buhari presidency was mostly to do with the man's pedigree and their real and imagined group political knowledge and experience of him. Buhari now has a chance to change any perceptions of him he believes might be unfair and wrong. Political battles in politics are characterized by swings and turns. Things change. Quite often times one outcome directly leads to an opposite outcome. Overtime the correlation of election outcomes are negative. You win the next election because you lost the last one. You lose the next election because you won the last one.
Chinua Achebe was grossly misunderstood by anyone who believes that he meant to "hit the Yoruba hard" when he should be building alliances. He never considered himself to be a politician much less an Igbo one. He joined the Aminu Kano's Peoples' Redemption Party in 1978, in the full knowledge that he was expected by those who did not know him to join the Nigerian Peoples' Party. His "There Was A Country" was his attempt to document Nigeria's history as he say and lived it. Many of his critics were falling over themselves criticizing him without research-based knowledge of that history or even reading the book. Many still may have not. They will have to buy it first. He never believed that it was for him to forge an alliance of the Igbo and any other group. What he wanted and was grossly disappointed about was Nigerians and many other colonized peoples' failure by choice not hindrance, to make life more abundant for their people, as people of European ancestry and now some Asians have done by properly and rightly taking their destiny in their own hands.
Is the Nigeria project working? Not for the largest number. Can it work better? Yes but only if mass disaffection and frustration are seen for what they truly- a cry for credible and productive change for the better.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jibrin Ibrahim
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 1:44 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Igbo Question
Resolving the Igbo Question
Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy Column, Daily Trust, 30th November 2015
In 1843, the German historian and theologian Bruno Bauer, wrote the polemical book, "The Jewish Question", following strident demands by Jews for emancipation. He argued that Jews could achieve political emancipation only if they relinquish their religious consciousness, since political emancipation requires a secular state, which he assumed did not leave any "space" for social identities such as religion. Bauer contested the assumption that a people can seek emancipation based on religious particularism, while following the French Revolution, the world was moving in the direction of equal rights for all. In his response to the debate, Karl Marx queried the notion that one group could seek emancipation while the reality was that every group was in bondage.
The Igbos, we are told need emancipation from an oppressive Nigeria which has been oppressing and marginalizing them since independence. Karl Marx would ask them if all groups in Nigeria have not been oppressed and marginalised as well. In addition, he would point out what history has done to the Igbos since colonisation, transforming them from an egalitarian society to one of the most unequal societies in the world in which abject poverty cohabits with the opulence of some of the richest people in the contemporary world. I fear for a Biafra in which these two groups will confront each other. Above all, I fear for a Nigeria in which similar inequalities exist and the masses from all ethnic and religious groups have been systematically oppressed and marginalised since independence.
The current movement for Biafra is a very serious one because it represents a complete fracture between the Igbo elite and their masses. In the Internet, former Governor Peter Obi is accused of using Nigerian soldiers to massacre an estimated 5,000 militants of MASSOB in the period 2006 to 2009 under the direction of former President Olusegun Obasanjo who was said to have given the 'Shoot-at Sight Order'. During the period, "Nigerian soldiers were said to have been on rampage at Onitsha, Nnewi, Oba, Ihiala and environs shooting, killing, and maiming anything that has a suspicion of being MASSOB." If today the disaffected and poor Igbo youth, just like the Boko Haram fighters, are defining their governors and elite as central to the problem, there is no surprise that no one has a clue in terms of responding to Lenin's question – what is to be done.
What the Igbo intellectual class has done is to develop a coherent marginalisation thesis, which the Igbo lumpen proletariat took and is running with. The thesis focuses on the issue of state creation, the Igbo presidency and the impact of the civil war. We recall Chinua Achebe's book – "There Was a Country", in which he made unambiguous comments of the complicity of the Nigerian state and its leaders at the time, Yakubu Gowon and Obafemi Awolowo in starving over two million Igbos to death, why should not be surprised that the Igbo youth are be furious at what was done to their grand parents. Why should they have listened to General Gowon when he responded denying the charges and claiming that it was Ojukwu who refused the offer of a humanitarian corridor? Even the number of two million starved to death, who is checking its veracity. Gowon's "no victor, no vanquished" sounded generous but maybe all it did was block debate on the issue for too long.
There is no doubt that the civil war of 1967 to 1970 was the most serious threat to the existence of Nigeria as a country and it led to the loss of one to two million lives, depending on whose figure you accept. It should be recalled that just before the war, Western leaders had warned that if the East goes, the West will follow. That threat was not put into action and Awolowo, the Western leader was released from jail to serve as Finance Minister and Deputy Leader of the Federal Executive Council.
The fact of the matter is that the Igbo elite has a strong empirical basis to read Nigerian political history as one of failure and frustration for them. It's a narrative that sees a proud and hard-working people, "the Jews of Africa", that have been forced to play second fiddle to the other for too long, especially the Hausa-Fulani ruling circles. Following the coup and the subsequent massacre of Igbos in 1966 in the Northern region, and the subsequent declaration of secession by the Eastern region in May 1967, the Igbo elite had assumed that other Nigerians would not fight to keep them in the Federation. They were wrong. Other Nigerians fought to preserve the Federation and the result was the thirty-month civil war and the heavy death toll.
In his book, "Igbo Leadership and the Future of Nigeria" Arthur Nwankwo argues that "Nigerians of all other ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo". Nwankwo tells us that the Igbos are more cosmopolitan, more adopted to other cultures, more individualistic and competitive, more receptive to change and more prone to settle and work in other parts of the country than other Nigerians. This reality, he says, is overshadowed by the myth other Nigerians persist in spreading that the Igbo are aggressive, arrogant and clannish. This purported attitude of other Nigerians towards the Igbos he points out has led to the development of a "final solution" aimed at neutralising and marginalising the Igbos after the civil war. This is seen to have occurred in two ways.
After the civil war, there was a coordinated policy of pauperising the Igbo middle class by the offer of a twenty-pound ex gratis award to all bank account holders irrespective of the amounts they had lodged with the banks before the civil war. This was followed by routing the Igbos from the commanding heights of the economy by introducing the indigenisation decree at a time when the Igbos had no money, no patronage and no access to loans to compete for the companies. In addition, landed property owned by the Igbo was declared to be "abandoned property" particularly in Port Harcourt. In the public service, the Igbo elite were marginalised by the refusal to re-absorb most of their cadres who had attained high positions in the armed forces and the federal public service.
It is in this context that many within the Igbo elite have come to understand the policies of "no victor, no vanquished" and "reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation" announced after the war, as a lie. There is room to debate these issues today as they feed into persistent demands for the creation of an additional state in the South East and the clamour for an Igbo Presidency, which increasingly appears to be a mirage. Of course since the end of the civil war, there has been a remarkable Igbo economic and commercial élan. The marginalisation did not work at the economic and commercial level and the success of the Igbo come back is one of the remarkable stories of our time. It might be precisely because of this success that bitterness persists among the Igbo elite on why other Nigerians appear to believe that they should continue with the politics of second fiddle. The problem has been that as they Igbo elite became more successful, they refused to change their narrative about the Nigerian State and today the initiative is out of their hands.
The biggest failure of the Igbo elite is the incapacity to play the political game. To be major players in politics requires team and coalition building. If the Igbo elite really wanted to get the presidency, they should have developed a more inclusive narrative about the Nigerian State, they needed to convince and reassure the others not frighten them about a revenge mission. Chinua Achebe hit the Yorubas very hard at a time he should have been thinking about an alliance with them to confront the North. Teaming up with Goodluck Jonathan produced petty rewards for a few but it rolled back the schedule for an Igbo Presidency. With this failure of the elite, the Igbo lumpen have seized the initiative of following the path of disintegration. Its time to talk frankly.
Senior Fellow
Centre for Democracy and Development
16 A7 Street,
CITEC Mbora Estate,
Jabi/Airport Road By-pass,
P.O.Box14345, Wuse
Abuja, Nigeria
Tel - +234 8053913837
Twitter- @jibrinibrahim17
Facebook- jibrin.ibrahim
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