Fifty years after the civil war ended, Igbos do not yet feel a sense
of belonging, acceptance or safety in the Federation called Nigeria. The
sad part is that this belief is shared not just by the generation that
witnessed the war and its deadly consequences, but Igbos across all
generations, including the millennials who have been socialized into
believing that there is a gap between their people and other Nigerians.
Let
us not deceive ourselves about certain plain truths. The civil war is
perhaps the most remarkable incident in Igbo history in the last
century. The pain, the loss, all about it, is deeply imprinted in the
Igbo consciousness. Whereas the Igbo nation has shown great
resourcefulness since the war, and its people have proven to be
enterprising and determined to hold their own in every sphere of life,
including outstanding contributions to the making of the Nigerian state,
there are Nigerians who still regard and treat the Igbo suspiciously.
Anti-Igbo
sentiment may not be so openly expressed, but it is usually something
beneath the surface. There are landlords in many parts of Nigeria, for
example, who will never rent out their property to an Igbo man. The Igbo
tenant is easily stigmatized. I have heard people complain that Igbo
tenants are too stubborn or that when you rent a room to an Igbo man, he
will end up sub-letting that one room to all kinds of persons from his
village, putting pressure on the property’s limited facilities.
Some
landlords insist that an Igbo tenant could even start eyeing the
property, to buy it off the landlord, or if it is a shop, the Igbo
trader would end up renting the entire street, and could turn the street
into an Igbo neigbourhood. This stigma has been a source of agony for
many Igbos seeking accommodation, particularly in Lagos, but it is of
course completely baseless stereotyping. There are good and bad persons
from virtually every Nigerian ethnic group.
The stereotyping of
the Igbo person can also be found in the political arena. It is assumed
by some persons, and such statements have been made to my hearing, that
the only reason an Igbo man cannot be President of Nigeria is because
every Igbo man sees himself as a potential President, and should the
Presidency be zoned to the South East, the struggle for the ticket could
result in inter-community strife in Igboland.
The name of the
group is Igbo, but when other Nigerians want to be mischievous, or
perhaps out of ignorance, they refer to Igbo as Ibo, and when you try to
correct them, they may insist you don’t seem to understand. It is
I-Before-Others (IBO).
Igbos have also been held responsible for
all sorts of things, kidnapping, drug trafficking, child trafficking,
armed robbery – even when there are criminals from virtually every
community in Nigeria. Meanwhile, they are one of the most vertically
educated ethnic groups in Nigeria, and the most enterprising in all
fields.
A friend once said that if you enter any community in
Nigeria and you don’t have an Igbo man running a small shop there, or
engaged in some other kind of business, then you have no business
staying in that community. Igbos are also obviously the most integrated
ethnic group in Nigeria, which is why it is ironic that they are also
the most vilified.
I wrote what I considered a harmless piece
recently in which I referred to the declaration of Biafra in 1967 and
quoted excerpts from the Ahiara Declaration. I got a phone call from a
friend who declared that I should stop encouraging these “Biafrans”.
Nothing I said made sense to him.
“You don’t know those people”, he declared.
“I know people from all parts of Nigeria,” I said.
“You
don’t know Igbos. Has there been any problem in this country that you
know in which Igbos have not been involved? They have started again,
heating up the polity with threats of secession.”
“It is a sign that all is not well with Nigeria,” I retorted.
“Don’t
mind them. I don’t think anybody wants to secede. If Igbos really want
to secede, you think it is Nnamdi Kanu that will be speaking for them?”
“It takes just one illuminated soul to start a revolution.”
“Don’t
bring that line. Everything is not textbook, this man. Just tell those
Igbos not to include my people in whatever they are looking for. We are
their neighbours. They dragged us into the civil war. This time around,
they’ve gone to draw a map, including my people. Biafra does not extend
to the South-South. We are just looking at them.”
“Biafra is an idea.”
“I
don’t want to hear all these textbook things, I have told you. Which
idea? See, most Nigerians do not support Biafra. They think Igbos are
just playing games. I’ll send you some other articles written by other
Nigerians and you’d see what I am talking about. People are angry that
anybody will be talking about secession in 2017! Nigerians are fed up
with Igbos and their games. President Jonathan gave them everything but
on election day, many of them stayed at home and refused to vote. Now,
they are talking secession.”
“But Yorubas are also talking about Oduduwa Republic.”
“The Yoruba are not going anywhere. What they want is restructuring, fiscal federalism. Which Oduduwa Republic?”
“The people of the Middle Belt are also aggrieved.”
“Anybody
can be aggrieved. You can’t please Nigerians. And some of these things
are political. Obasanjo became President, Niger Delta carried arms;
Jonathan got there, Boko Haram kidnapped children, Buhari is there now,
and all the ghosts of Biafra are frightening everybody. But these Igbos,
tell them they are not going anywhere.”
“I am surprised you are talking like this.”
What is the matter with those people? They are all over Nigeria. They
are even selling land in Lagos. But no outsider is allowed to buy half a
plot of land in Igboland. You carry Igbo girl sef, na problem. Go and
check your email. I will send you other perspectives on this matter.”
Before
long, I received a mail indeed. The fellow had put together a
collection of anti-Biafra, anti-Igbo articles which he urged me to read,
with the rider that I should pay particular attention to the fact that
some of those articles were written by Igbos.
I ignored the rider.
Some of those articles could have been ghost written. What is clear,
however, is that all is not well with Nigeria. We are a country that
needs to be rescued from the centripetal forces tearing us apart, and
the leading forces today would include, as was the case before now,
ethnicity, religion, the politics of hate, and citizen alienation.
If
my review of the stereotyping of Igbos in Nigeria and the reported
conversation with an Igbo-hater does not fully convey the seriousness of
this situation, then the June 6 ultimatum issued to all Igbos living in
Northern Nigeria by a coalition of Northern Arewa youth groups should.
A
group called the Northern Emancipation Network, comprising 16 Arewa
youth groups, has asked all Igbos living anywhere in Northern Nigeria to
pack their bags and baggage and be out of the Northern region by
October 1, 2017. When the 19 Northern Governors met and dismissed the
threat as misguided, the young Arewa Igbo-haters issued a riposte and
more or less asked the Governors to shut up.
Their message is that
since Igbos no longer want to be part of Nigeria, they should get out,
because they, Arewa youths, do not want belong to the same political
union with Igbos. They are angry that on May 30, the Movement for the
Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the
Indigenous Peoples Organization of Biafra (IPOB) succeeded in shutting
down a part of Nigeria to mark the 50th anniversary of the declaration
of Biafra.
The arrogance of the Northern youths is insufferable.
It speaks to virtually everything that other Nigerians are uncomfortable
with about the Fulani North: a born-to-rule, hegemonic tendency.
It
is an assault on the Nigerian Constitution, to the extent that the
Constitution does not grant any individual or group, the right or the
power to determine where any Nigerian may live or work or die or acquire
property. All Nigerians are equal before the law. The Northern youths,
who do not think so, held a meeting, a press conference, and issued
statements.
The Governor of Kaduna state, Nasir el-Rufai asked the
Nigeria Police to arrest them for promoting ethnic hatred. The only
response we have had from the Police Headquarters so far, is from one
Jimoh Moshood, described as Police Spokesman telling Nigerians that the
Arewa youths “are not sitting in the market waiting to be picked up.”
Moshood,
if you actually said that, then you should be relieved of your position
forthwith. If you are a spokesperson and you have nothing intelligent
to say, the best option is to remain silent, otherwise whatever you say
will be used against you in the court of public opinion. So, the Nigeria
police only arrest people when they go to the market and wait to be
arrested? Is that the new police that we now have? The Northern
Emancipation Network called Igbos all kinds of names – “unruly,
reckless, insatiable, uncultured, confrontational, ungrateful” – and
since they issued their ultimatum, the polity has been heated up, ethnic
hate has been promoted, the Igbos of Nigeria have been further
alienated.
This was how the civil war of 1967-70 started. Nigeria
cannot afford another civil war. No country survives two civil wars.
Already, Igbos in the North are reportedly relocating back to the South
East or elsewhere in Nigeria. Young Nigerians from the North, the East
and the South started the civil war. The politics of ethnicity and the
rhetoric of hate ignited the fire that consumed the nation for three
years. The scars have not healed because 50 years later, the youths of
the North and the East are again lighting up the fire of hate. On June
6, the Northern Emancipation Network also asked Northerners in the East,
I hope this includes the peripatetic herdsmen, to return to the North!
The
Nigerian Government must take this on-going febrile conversation
between the North and the East more seriously than it appears to be
doing. The security agencies do not have to go to the markets to look
for what is not there. When there is a threat to the state, it is their
duty to identify the threat and act on it. All persons who are working
hard and making provocative statements to cause a national crisis should
be monitored and checkmated. With all the difficult challenges facing
this country, at this moment, our security alert system should be pushed
a notch higher.
If the security agencies fail to act,
particularly on the matter of the coalition of Northern youths promoting
Igbo hatred, the Federal Government would have committed a grievous
sin, likely to be interpreted as aiding and abetting. And there would be
persons who will legitimately ask: are we confronted with a hand of
Jacob and voice of Esau situation? Who is sponsoring the Arewa youths?
Who granted them the permission to use the platform of Arewa House to
spew anti-Igbo hate speech? Who is blocking their arrest by the security
agencies? What those boys have done is even worse than the threat of
secession by Nnamdi Kanu and his supporters.
But the message is
clear: Nigeria is not yet a nation. A country where any group or
association can threaten to expel another group is not yet a nation. The
common enemy is not the secessionists. The common enemies are the
political leaders, the tribal demagogues, the political opportunists,
the religious bigots, the paid shamanists, who continue to manipulate
Nigeria’s destiny to suit their own purposes. There can be no country
except the people love the nation and the state.
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