Nigeria must decide what they want from the Igbo
Before August 9, 1965, the Singaporeans were seen as an irritation in Malaysia. Then Singapore was one of the 14 states of Malaysia. Singaporeans were viewed as arrogant, stubborn, and domineering. While the United Malays National Organisation wanted affirmative action or “quota system” for the Malays, the People's Action Party of the Singaporeans insisted that the best thing for the country was a merit-based policy on all issues, so as to bring out the best in the nation and create a spirit of excellence.
This constant disagreements and tensions resulted in racial riots. It got to a point, the Malays could take it no more. So on August 9, 1965 they convened the parliament, with no Singaporean parliamentarian present. At that sitting, the legislators voted unanimously (126 - 0) to expel Singapore from Malaysia.
When the Singaporeans heard that they had been expelled from the nation, at first they were devastated. But they took their fate in the hands and started building a new nation. And indeed, by applying merit and the pursuit of excellence, Singaporeans built a country that moved from Third World to First World in record time, overtaking Malaysia in all ramifications.
Interestingly, despite this sad way of parting, Malaysia and Singapore have remained good neighbours. In spite of the success Singapore has recorded, it has not made Malaysia not to record its own success.
There are many similarities between the story of Singapore and Malaysia and Igbo and Nigeria. The Igbo are not happy with the quota system policy used in the admission into federal schools and federal positions. They want competitiveness in every sector, which will lead to the best being selected, for the sake of excellence.
The Igbo are seen as arrogant, noisy, domineering, greedy, over-ambitious, to mention but a few. Many Nigerians see them as irritants. They get killed frequently, especially in the North, at the least misunderstanding. Sometimes the cause of the provocation is someone from Denmark, Cameroon or another part of Nigeria.
There are many Nigerians who will easily tell you: “We will never allow an Igbo person to rule Nigeria.” There are many who believe that the problem of Nigeria is from the Igbo, and that once the Igbo are done away with, Nigeria’s problems will disappear.
Given this scenario, the Igbo want a true federal system that will make Nigeria look like what it was before 1966, with each state or region taking charge of most of its affairs and moving at its own pace. Sadly, anytime it mentions restructuring or true federalism, there are forces that resist it vehemently and insist that such will not be allowed.
Ironically, despite this view by many Nigerians about the Igbo, anytime any person or group from Igbo land asks that the Igbo be allowed to leave Nigeria to form their own country, the resistance from most Nigerians is fierce. This reaction creates a contradiction. If the Igbo are irritants and troublemakers, why not expel them from Nigeria the way Singaporeans were expelled from Malaysia? But if you see them as valuable and believe they must be part of the Nigerian state, why not treat them as equal partners in the union? What does Nigeria really want from the Igbo?
Recently news broke that the Department of State Services embarked on a recruitment exercise, with 165 recruited from the North-west. The report said that 51 people were recruited from Katsina State alone, the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari and the Director General of Department of State Security, Mr Lawal Daura, while the number of people recruited from the five states of the South-east was 44 and the number recruited from the six states of the South-south was 42.
Compare that with the academic performance of the different zones of Nigeria. The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Education of 2016 produced the following number of applicants from the six zones:
South-east (five states) = 335,883;
South-West (six states) = 320,691;
South-south (six states) = (299,632);
North-central (six states plus the FCT) = 259,846;
North-west (seven states) = 163,240;
North-east (six states) = 96,220;
The six states that produced the highest number of candidates were:
1. Imo – 104,383
2. Delta – 78,854
3. Anambra – 77,694
4. Osun – 72,752
5. Oyo – 72,298
6. Enugu – 69,381
The six states that produced the least number of candidates were:
31. Adamawa – 15,615
32. Jigawa – 12,664
33. Yobe – 10,045
34. Sokoto – 10,006
35. Kebbi – 8,947
36. Zamfara – 5,295
The states that were given a minimum of 130 cut-off mark out of 200 in the 2013 examination into the Unity Schools were:
Anambra – Male (139) Female (139)
Imo – Male (138) Female (138)
Enugu – Male (134) Female (134)
Lagos – Male (133) Female (133)
Delta – Male (131) Female (131)
Ogun – Male (131) Female (131)
Abia – Male (130) Female (130)
For the same examination, the states that were given cut-off marks of less than 50 were:
Borno – Male (45) Female (45)
Jigawa – Male (44) Female (44)
Bauchi – Male (35) Female (35)
Kebbi – Male (9) Female (20)
Sokoto – Male (9) Female (13)
Taraba – Male (3) Female (11)
Yobe – Male (2) Female (27)
Zamfara – Male (4) Female (2)
The six states that scored above 50 percent in the 2015 West African Senior School Certificate of Education were:
Abia (63.94%),
Anambra (61.18%),
Edo (61.05%),
Rivers (55.69%),
and Imo (52.49%).
The states that scored below 13 percent in the same examination were:
Kebbi (12.08%),
Katsina (10.81%),
Gombe (7.41%),
Jigawa (6.37%),
Zamfara (6.23%),
Yobe (4.37%).
These are verifiable results that have remained virtually the same for decades. And they give an idea of the number of candidates that are involved in education from each state and zone as well as their academic performance.
The point of this essay is not that it is only the Igbo that excel in many sectors. Other ethnic groups, especially from the South, also excel. But the focus of this essay is the Igbo. From the attitude of other ethnic groups, it seems that they are comfortable with the status quo. If not, they should not be focusing on the Igbo as their problem.
The call for restructuring of the country has been promoted as the solution to Nigeria’s problem. However, there are strong forces that are hell-bent on ensuring that restructuring of the country never succeeds. They have been erroneously schooled that restructuring will impoverish them.
The danger in this hard line against restructuring is that if restructuring fails, the alternative may not be palatable. Nigeria has moved in a self-destructive path for long. Nigeria has been wallowing in retrogression for long, because some stakeholders are afraid that pulling it out and setting it on the path of progress will cost them their feeding bottle. But nothing lasts forever.
Two weeks ago, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, met his seemingly impossible bail conditions within 48 hours. When the bail conditions were made public, the belief of many was that no serving Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria would want to associate with him. But the South-east caucus of the Senate met and quickly chose one of them to stand bail for him. All other conditions were also swiftly met.
If those conditions were given in December 2015, no Nigerian Senator would have wanted to be associated with Kanu. Since his coming into office, Buhari has continued to display a type of croynism and prebendalism that have never been witnessed in Nigeria. And the worst beneficiaries of these are the Igbo. He has been making it clear by his words and actions that the North and the Igbo are not equal partners in the Nigerian project. He has been distributing Nigerian resources and appointments to his kinsmen and region as if they are his personal property. This brazen nepotism has made even the fiercest Igbo critics of Kanu’s call for secession to develop sympathies
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I am not Igbo. I am proud of my Urhobo. However, as a student of history, I wish to show just what these great people came/come against and yet thrive.
Okay, the incessant killings in the North will be glossed over so as to make this article not overly long. The civil war will also not be discussed.
However, post civil war, as I explained in my post MINORITY REPORT: THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED AGAINST YOU, the rich in Nigeria have major roots in the Indegenization decree of 1972 and 1977. I reminded how the banks gave people of other tribes, predominantly Hausas and Yorubas loans to buy up companies owned by foreigners. Now imagine the Federal government forced Chevron to sell 51 percent of its shares and that Access Bank will give you loans to buy the shares. How rich will you be in a year? 5 Years? That is how many Yorubas and Hausas got to own UAC, all those Dunlop, Leventis, Cadbury etc.
Now while this was ongoing, Gowon told the Nigerian banks to give twenty naira to any Igbo man that had money in the bank before the war. That is, if you had 5 naira before the war, you will be given the 5 naira. But if you had a hundred naira, you get just twenty naira in full fulfilment of the banks duty to give you your money.
Ask yourselves “why would the banks give Igbos only twenty naira? Did the banks collapse? So why pay less than you were given?
So while the banks were giving loans to Hausa and Yorubas to buy Oyibo companies they did not build, Igbos were being cheated out of their rightful moneys.
Now not also that these people lost Houses and business across the land. It is safe to say that as at 1970/71. the richest Igbo had 20 naira that may be the equivalent of maybe one million.
Let us look at how Dangote made his money. He Dagote (a great man and pride to Nigeria) has an uncle called Dantata who owned huge chunks of the groundnut pyramids of the 50’s and 60’s. He gave Dangte a loan and Dangote paid it back in record time. CLAP CLAP. The add is that Dangote has had his “brothers” in government, from IBB to Abacha and Abdulsalaam. When they now agreed to democracy, he was rich enough to have funded Obasanjo and so government policies, be it monopoly afforded him for rice, sugar, flour and of course a large share of subsidy etc to ensure he is the wealthiest Nigerian. (note many had same opportunity but did not use it. We kowtow to Dangote’s investment capabilities)
However, for the Igbo man, where will he see an uncle that will loan him money? The richest man in their family has how much as at then? So while Fani Kayode can inherit property of his father and grandfather and great grand father, a Chidi cannot inherit anything from his grandfather who had business in Kano or even Port Harcourt. Neighbours have made his dad’s storey building theirs, and even someone as educated as Saro Wiwa lived in an Igbo war emigrant house as his. (a sore point of the Niger Delta and Igbo Unity). WAEC building was Ojukwu’s dad’s building and like that building, thousands and the land with it….lands worth billions today were taken from Igbos and each and every Igbo had tops 20 naira, destroyed homeland, stolen and destroyed wealth away from the east. ALso his brother is never president that will give him oil block or fuel lifting. Of 33 oil lifters, only one Igbo man and because he was in Obasanjo’s good graces. Do we talk of how Igbo civil servants were displaced in the federal civil service even after 3Rs were declared after the war?
YET LOOK HOW PROUD THEY STAND TODAY!!! Look what they have achieved for themselves….FIRST GENERATION WEALTH…top second generation. From being unable to send their first sons to school so he could help look after the shop, to producing first class brains in all departments of modern learning.
So today, as you accuse Igbos of wanting their Biafra or of Baby Factory, or liking money and ready to do anything for money, remember that just forty years ago, while the banks were dashing your uncles loans to buy all the companies of Nigeria, it stole from the Igbos. Know that appointments have not favoured them. Note that they remain persecuted and many speak such ill and hate towards a people forced by need to survive to be extra-aggressive towards their sustenance. Maybe if you took their history into consideration, you will not be so critical of them, but instead say “what a resilient people” and give God the glory that FOR NOW, we and such a great people are compatriots.
Igbo Kwenu!!!
First published in November
- Azuka Onwuka
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