Who do we blame for the siege mentality of Igbo people at home and abroad but Igbo political and intellectual elite who label anyone critical of their politics an Igbo enemy in order to cover up their leadership failure? Since Zik’s return to Lagos in 1934 to fill the vacuum of a spokesman greatly missed by urban immigrants in a strange land, every political misadventure by Igbo political elite has been blamed on others.
Thus, for resisting internal colonialism in 1952 by Igbo at a period when Zik, an Onitsha Igbo was not considered a full-fledged Igbo man, Yoruba must be tribalists. For not following suit to declare the Republic of Oduduwa with just 50 foot soldiers in the army when Ojukwu declared the Republic of Biafra with 16 riffles, Yoruba and Awo were traitors and of course how else could Obi the messiah of Nigerian social media youths have lost the 2023 election during which Tinubu was said to have been foisted on Nigeria by “a concert of despicable forces” if not because of intense hatred for Igbo by Fulani and their Yoruba stooges?
In my professional career and academic pursuit, I have been a great beneficiary of Igbo mentorship. But once one makes references to these historical facts that sometimes bring the past to pain, to some angry Ibo colleagues who hate the truth, you are an Igbo enemy.
Let us start with Obi Nwakanma, Vanguard newspaper columnist who after dismissing my piece titled “Between Zik and Obi: Lessons of History, (September 22, 2022), as “revanchist drivel”, wanted me ‘to go back and take elementary courses in Nigeria’s political history”, a course I taught at the University of Lagos when he was probably in secondary school.
Although he accepted there was a parallel between Obi’s 2023 ‘obidients’ and Zik’s 1940 supporters who believed in his infallibility, he however insisted that Zik, who was the only non-Yoruba in the inaugural meeting of NCNC was the founder of NCNC and that “it was not Igbo politicians who preferred the 1959 NCNC-NPC coalition”.
I am not sure because of his above mind-set and rage, he paid any attention to my argument that: “Perhaps we again need to return to history to remind our angry youths how we got here and how the seed of today’s mutual suspicion was sown by self-serving Igbo political leaders.”
“The trending videos of Obi’s angry supporters threatening expulsion of anyone who fails to vote for their principal from the east, mob action against Tinubu’s supporters in Alaba Market in Lagos added to shameless assault on the person of Asiwaju Tinubu through hate songs by Seadog confraternity, are all but sad reminder of the past when Lagos Igbo urban immigrants were mobilized to buy off all the cutlasses in Lagos market in readiness to battle their Yoruba hosts.
Both Obi and Zik built their political fortunes in Lagos as leader of Igbo urban immigrants that freely deployed rhetoric to confuse their largely uninformed Igbo youths and unquestioning Nigerians.
Like most young men of his generation, Awo used to follow Zik to his lecture venues until he discovered Zik was a fake god in spite of his rhetoric and endless railing against the imperialists.
Unlike Awo, it was only after the formation of Egbe Omo Odudwa in 1948 which immediately came under Zik’s and his supporters’ vicious attack that the Yoruba aristocrats of the period saw Zik in his true colour, with the West African Pilot editorial September 8, 1948 declaring: “Henceforth, the cry must be one of battle against the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, its leaders at home and abroad, uphill and down dale.. There is no going back until the fascist organization of Sir Adeyemo Alakija has been dismembered”. This was followed by physical assault on the persons and the leaders of the Egbe and damage to houses and properties of some of them”. (Awo: The Autobiography of Obafemi Awolowo page 171].
Yoruba political elite were to later shift their support to Awo and his Action Group in 1952 thereby frustrating Zik’s attempt of becoming the premier of the West.
Awolowo’s answer to the North’s ‘feudal system’ was for the West and the East with some support from Middle Belt taking over power. But greed-driven Igbo political elite preferred an NPC and NCNC coalition which offered nothing to ordinary Igbo on whose back they rode to power while Igbo elite secured all important appointments in Balewa’s government from finance, to external affairs, agriculture, control of University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, etc.
Commenting on my piece titled Ethnic leaders as scourge of Nigeria dated October 6, 2022 Steve Osuji wrote as follows: “My Oga in two great media establishments, The Guardian and The Nation, Dr. Oluwajuyitan by his writing, poured malice and hatred on the Igbo in a way never done by a supposedly enlightened mind. He told plain, blatant lies just to drag Igbo in the mud. He says Igbo campaigned for a unitary system for Nigeria. This is a historical fallacy”.
Again but for his mind-set, I cannot understand his anguish over the following facts that: As the battle for 2023 draws near, Igbo political leaders, the ever-flirtatious beautiful bride of Nigerian politics that often behave like “a wife with five husbands” and their chauvinistic shrewd Fulani suitors, have started to do what they do best-polluting the environment with toxic diatribes.
This warning followed a claim by Ohaneze’s Mazi Okechukwu Isuguzoro, that “the North is the bastion of ethnic and religious politics” with warning that “Nigeria will not be secured and united unless an Igbo president emerges” and Northern Elders Forum’s Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed‘s response that ‘if any group is known to play ethnic and religion politics, it is the Igbo’.
I reminded the warring fair-weather couple that history finds both guilty. And the facts: In the December1954 Eastern Regional Election, NCNC won 72 out of 84 seats while their NPC suitors won 84 of 92 seats in their own northern stronghold. In the 1954 November election to federal House of Representatives, NCNC won 32 of the 42 Eastern seats. Similarly, ethnicity and religion determined the outcome of the 1959 election with east and the north winning their strongholds without opposition. The warring rivals are therefore not only tarred with the same brush, both see Nigeria only as a marketable commodity thinking only of what they can get out of Nigeria.
Awolowo’s offence was that he provided alternative view on how Nigeria should be run having realized back in 1945, that “Nigeria is not a nation; but a mere geographical expression”, and was convinced “the best constitution for such a diverse people is a federal constitution”.
But Zik and his group wanted a unitary system which will sustain Igbo internal colonization of the minority Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio, Anang and other minority groups in the east. It will also allow Igbo citizens to freely carry their trading activities unhindered to any part of Nigeria. What Ahmadu Bello wanted was not different from what Zik wanted- a Nigeria the north can control. He therefore at the 1950 Ibadan conference insisted on 50% of member of the federal legislative house.
Because of their rivalry over identical worldview, the eastern leaders were believed to have lured the military into politics in January 1966 with General Ironsi’s Decree 34 of 1966 changing the country into a unitary state
The north seized the initiative from their Igbo rival in July 1966 and by 1967 the bitter rivalry led to a civil war. Unfortunately, the battle for the soul of Nigeria by the two rivals only left northern and eastern states a scorched land.
Citizenship is not the answer to ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom”, in a country where an Igbo Bishop of universal Catholic Church from Anambra was rejected by Igbo people of Imo State.
Dear angry young colleagues, “the fault is not in our stars”. Reaffirming facts of our history does not make one an enemy of Igbo. “
