My Dear Igbo People.
Let me start by saying that an adult should never allow a pregnant goat to deliver a kid while tethered. This is because our approach to today’s environment gives me some cause for concern regarding the future of the Igbos in Nigeria.
Our Culture vs. Our Diversity
As a people, I know we will be the first tribe in Nigeria to lose our language, culture and tradition. Today, we have a lot of Igbos living in various parts of Nigeria whose children cannot speak or understand the Igbo language, customs, and tradition. Our embrace of Christianity has destroyed our way of life, customs, and tradition in exchange for Christian ways. We look down on our culture and refer to them as barbaric, demonic, or anti-Christian. Our customs which, mind you, significantly shaped the lives of our fathers and forefathers, have been reduced to meaningless activities with no significance or impacts. At the rate we are going, I would not be surprised that the Igbos would be the first Nigerian tribe to lose our cultural identity.
Coupled with the above phenomenon is our diversity. The Igbos represent the one tribe that embodies the true socialism, while representing the most diverse tribe in term of differing viewpoints and opinions. Lately, this diversity of thought and our socialized form of interaction is slowly being replaced by a new monolithic (all-or-none) mentality especially on political matters. This is becoming concerning. It was this approach that had ensured that we were never a part of the Buhari-led APC government – not that I am endorsing Buhari’s vindictive approach to governance, but just stating the facts as I see them. Cumulatively, we the Igbos no longer have tolerance or room for dissenting voices despite this being the norm. Our socialized way of community living is being eroded giving rise to this newfound brutal way for forcing compromise. We threaten, shout down and in some cases brutalize any dissenting voices among us. We are slowly becoming what we despise in other tribes who we accuse of killing and brutalizing their own. This phenomenon of the unknown gunmen is a direct manifestation of this new way of behavior among the Igbos.
My Point
But that is not my point. My point is that Igbos have shown time and again that we have very poor political skills. We may be the best at a lot of things, but politics is not one of our strengths. From the first Republic to today, we have found ways to always shoot ourselves in the foot and shut out of mainstream politics. For starters and as I stated very early in this write up, the Igbos represent the proudest human beings when it comes to our heritage, our culture and language, however, and in direct contract to the Igbo pride, we are the most likely to lose our language and culture due to our propensity to embrace and assimilate other cultures. Whether this is a good or bad characteristic is left to your personal judgement. But I ask, is this Igbo pride, swagger, self-determination, and self-confidence a strength or a weakness? If one believes that an overdone strength is a weakness – it then means that Igbos whenever we overplay our hands, our strengths and pride in our Igboness it become our weakness.
Mind you, as a Christian and am aware that when Christianity hit our shores, our fathers abandoned most of our tradition and opted for Christianity with all its glories and promises. There is no denying that our people have benefited greatly from what Christianity ushered into our lives, but at what cost? Such is our dilemma today! We seem to have lost our way – we lack direction of what and where the Igbos want to be. We seem to have this tendency to agitate just for the sake of agitation with no end goal or objective in mind. Take for instance the agitation for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction. I was very excited and active with that objective but wondered, if we achieved that goal, what were we going to do with that conquest? Were we agitating because we have never had the chance to rule Nigeria? Or maybe we believed we possess the skills within the tribe to set this flailing ship called Nigeria straight? Where some among us using this as an opportunity to get into the federal government and loot just like they have done in some of the Southeast states? You be the judge!
Peter Obi and the Underbelly of Igbo Mentality
There is an Igbo proverb that states that you can tell a greedy child by the way they pick breadfruit. After we failed in our effort to get our two major political parties to adopt someone of Igbo extraction as their presidential flagbearer the Igbos were hit by Peter Obi and the “Obedient” movement. Suddenly, there is this clamor by Igbos in every nook and cranny in support of Peter Obi and his Labor Party movement. We totally abandoned all our other affiliations and whatever goodwill we may have built in those arenas and assertively began pushing Peter Obi as the next messiah for Nigeria. Is this the right move? Is this where we should be at this time?
First, all over social media, it is about Peter Obi and the Labor party. This man has awakened the consciousness of most Igbos and our youth throughout the country. This Obi phenomenon has ushered into the political environment certain people who have been sitting on the sideline but have found a lifeline and their footing as part of Peter Obi and the Labor party. These individuals, mostly Igbos and our youth are now overwhelming every INEC office demanding to register and secure their PVCs. A corresponding claim when INEC does respond quick enough is to claim that there is a conspiracy to prevent Igbos from voting. My brothers, where were these persons all these years? Why have they chosen not to participate in this exercise all this time? Yes, some will say it was due to their dejection of the system that has yielded no improvement to the country since its founding. I get it! Regardless, we all have a personal responsibility to participate in the political process by performing one of the most fundamental civic obligations that we have as citizens. It does not matter that the country is corrupt! It does not matter that our elected officials are devoid of any empathy or that they all loot! What matters is that if we do not like what we have, we should vote to change it. All these while we may have had the opportunity to change this country, however we could not because of all these people sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the messiah to show up. It this case, our cynicism has become the biggest bane on improving our lives!
I am excited for this Peter Obi phenomenon, but wondered why our (Igbo) youth would wait for so long to participate in politics? We complain about how our Northern counterparts are registering minors to vote but cannot get our young adults to willingly register and vote. We had to close the Alaba market of mostly Igbo merchants and forced church attendee out of mass to go secure their PVCs while the other tribes willingly perform the same tasks with their own free time. In fact, do not forget that more than 20 million PVCs remains with INEC uncollected, I wonder if those PVCs belong to Igbos? Who will guarantee that these Igbo young men and women clogging up INEC offices today will eventually pick their PVCs, then stand in voting lines under the Nigerian sun to vote in 2023? Maybe we will close the Alaba market and all Igbo churches on election day to make sure our hapless youth vote in 2023? The fact remains that Igbos are long on words and short on action. We always talk a good game – but leave others to execute and pick up the pieces for us. We are so easily distracted by any shining object hence the reason we cannot concentrate long enough to plan well and make things happen. Meaning, rather than work within the confines of the space that we find ourselves, we will always opt for something beyond our reach or outside our environment. I am not saying that we cannot reach the office of the presidency, to the contrary, I do believe wholeheartedly that we have very able men and women who could better direct Nigeria. However, we lack planning and strategy, characteristics that would serve us well in the long run if we opted to play this game the right way. We have been conditioned to believe falsely that through rotation, the Igbos will get their turn at ruling Nigeria, but have just been handed a dose of reality. For an Igbo man to ever sit in Aso Rock, we must be willing to collaborate with either the Hausa or Yoruba or both. We must realize this shortfall work and toward mitigating for it. Until we find that collaboration, ascending to Aso Rock will continue to be a mirage.
My dear Igbo people, now that we have once again put all our eggs in the Peter Obi machinery, I hope we have plans for whether he wins or loses. We cannot be shut out of the government as happened with Buhari and the APC administration. We must plan to support Peter Obi if he wins knowing full well, he will have a hostile legislative arm of government. We need to encourage our people to actively participate in our elections until we achieve our vision of Biafra. Per chance this Peter Obi movement fails, we must make sure to sustain the movement past 2023, and make the Labor party the true check on any elected administration?
My dear Igbo people, we must learn to play politics the Naija way – understanding that only when we eventually win (both the Executive & Legislative) branch, could we have the power and access to begin make the kind of change we all espouse. A word is enough for the wise.
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