An Igboman In Aso Rock: A Rejoinder

By

Obugi Ahamadu

obugiahamadu@hotmail.com

 

 

Mr. Okoye,

 

I hope you are well. I read your write up on Gamji.com with some interest. It is good that we should all contribute our quota to the market place of ideas. Like you, I am Igbo. I love the Igbo people with all my heart, but I must also say that just like any other ethnic group- German, English, Hausa, Yoruba, Zulu- we have our devils living among us. So I must take particular exception to your characterization of Dr. Alex Ekwueme as the solution to the leadership crisis in Nigeria.

 

I can only guess that you work for an oil company in Warri. That is only a guess, I may be wrong. If that is the case, you, along with Dr. Ekwueme and the rest of the Igbo members of Nigeria's ruling class, are not marginalized. Your essay assumes that all Igbos will instinctively and blindly support Dr. Ekwueme or any Igbo for the Presidency just because they claim to be Igbo. This use of ethnicity as a tool of politics by the ruling classes in Nigeria has worked so well that its use has become ritual, a reliable appeal to primordial instinct guaranteed to suppress any intelligent questioning of what our real problems are and suppress any sophisticated attempt to identify the real enemies of the Nigerian people. I want to tell you that the ritual of tribal divide and rule is loosing its efficacy. Like Bob Marley said....."you can fool some people some time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

 

The problems of poverty, corruption, unemployment and lack of public amenities in Nigeria were created by the successive Governments in Nigeria, civil and military. The high officers in government in Nigeria have been the same since independence, no matter who the Head of State has been and what tribe he is from. You know their names, those Ministers, Governors, Ambassadors, Permanent Secretaries, Parastatal Directors. They are not exclusively from one tribe in Nigeria, no matter what the ill informed propaganda of ethnic apologists will try to tell you. The ruination of Nigeria has been to well done, too complete to be the work of one ethnic cabal or to be an accidental happening. It has been a joint effort of all our elite, be they Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Efik, Nupe, Tiv, Kanuri, Ogoni or Esan. By omission or commission, they have joined hands steal from the poor in Nigeria, the poor being the majority of the population. They steal our oil money, they steal our customs duties, they steal our airline, they steal our shipping line, they steal our coal, our cocoa, you name it, they steal it and sell it abroad and stash the money in London, New York and Switzerland. So you will understand when I contend that there are only two marginalized tribes in Nigeria: the poor and the middle class.

 

I do not have the time or even the intimate knowledge to go into details, but the essentials are clear. So when an Igbo insists that Alex Ekwueme is our messiah simply because he is Igbo or a Fulani insist on Buhari just because he is Fulani, or a Yoruba insist on Abiola just beacause he is Yoruba you have to wonder if they realise that these are the same people that have been ruling us since independence and one only has to look at the Nigeria they have created to know that they have no interest in the well being of the Nigerian people. What did Alex Ekwueme do to protest, not to talk of acting against, the pervasive corruption that characterised the Shehu Shagari Presidency? Fact of the matter is, Nigeria is under the domination of an inter ethnic ruling class groomed and installed to protect British economic interests in Nigeria, and just like when they first set foot on Nigerian soil, those interests have everything to do with the wealth present in Nigeria and nothing whatsoever to do with the people who just happen to inhabit the geographical area where the wealth is located. We are (un)fortunate enough to see in our lifetimes the gradual transfer of power from the first generation of those chosen rulers to their children. A cursory investigation of the family backgrounds of many of the younger members of President Obasanjo's cabinet will confirm this. It will also intimate one to this sad truth: the so-called disagreements within the ruling class amount to nothing more than a minor familial squabble. If there was any principle involved Abraham Adesanya would have done more to ensure that his daughter did not serve in a government which the Yoruba people he claims to represent did not vote for.

 

Rather than focusing on the ethnicity of our President as we have been duped into doing by the ethnic propagandists of the ruling classes, let us instead focus on what they have achieved, or what they are supposed to achieve. As Americans say, let us break it down. Do Nigerians have:

 

Enough decent housing? Sufficient employment for its young people? Enough food that the working people in our country can afford on their earnings? Constant electricity, is it available? Do a vast majority have access to decent drinking water? Are our roads motorable? Can the Nigerian government credibly protect its people from armed robbers on its highways? If you have an injurious accident on those roads, will the health care system rescue you? Do 95% of Nigerians have access to a reliable phone system, or do they have to run a gauntlet of potholed roads besieged by armed hoodlums to get a simple message from Ibadan to Yola?

 

Those are the real issues,  and the basic ones at that. Now, a government with access to vast expanses of fertile land, $9-12 billion in oil and gas exports, an intelligent, hardworking population, if it can't provide these things, what is the reason for existence? Is it for the benefit of the people? Could it be that the inability of the Government of this nation to provide these benefits is rooted in the fact that the Nigerian Government and for that matter the Kenyan Government, the Malawian Government, the Gambian Government, all these successor regimes to the colonial governments, could it be that they are not, and were not, designed and founded on any intent to provide any economic or social benefits for the populations over which they rule?

 

Let me quote from your article. "Nigeria’s greatest problem from independence to date has a lot to do with the inability of the fledging illiterate electorates to elect a credible, educated, honest and focused candidate to manage the affairs of the nation. With the exception of the Right Honorable Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (who incidentally was only a ceremonial President), all other Presidents, and Heads of State of Nigeria to date were / are simply non-graduates."

 

I was really floored by that one. As if all British Prime Ministers are college graduates, or all American Presidents, or all other rulers of prosperous societies the world over. Besides, even if our presidents have not been "educated" as alleged, I can say with no fear of contradiction that our Ministers and Perm Secs and Directors of Parastatals have been and continue to be among the best educated government functionaries anywhere. In fact, the Dr. Bart Nnaji mentioned in your article, whom I can personally attest to is a brilliant, well educated man, this engineer was the Minister of Science and Technology at one time in Nigeria. So did he put Nigeria on the technological map? Does it surprise us then that in spite of the existence of this Ministry, Dr. Phillip Emeagwali had to develope his technological prowess in faraway USA? When it comes to education and intelligence, I think that our leaders are in fact too intelligent. How else can you explain the ability to loot a nation at will and still maintain dominance over a suffering people?

 

The only solution to the Nigerian Problem and the larger African Problem is the evolution of a leadership that loves its people, a leadership committed to helping Africans exploit other peoples instead of us being exploited, stealing and bringing home wealth from abroad instead of siphoning our own wealth and stashing it abroad. That is what competition is all about. The question is, how widely are you going to define your team? Is it just the tribe as these ruling oligarchs have been telling us for so long or are we all in this together? Just remember, when the Whiteman came and conquered Africa, he didn't distinguish between Yoruba, Igbo, Nupe, Hausa or Gwari. He just enslaved them all. The pity today is that our new slavemasters are not white......they are black and they are from all over Nigeria. They are Nigerians, the rest of us are just tribesmen. 

 

Just to further enlighten you about the true nature of the Nigerian Government and those who control it, you should go to the following web address: www.libertas.demon.co.uk/index.htm You will learn a lot. You will find that we are not yet an independent nation, that we have a ruling class who feel they are more British than Nigerian, who are dedicated to upholding the original intent of the British when they installed "government" over geographical Nigeria, an elite who in truth do not have much in common with Igbos, Hausas, Kanuris, Ogonis or any other indigenous grouping in Nigeria.

 

Let me not fly off on any tangents. We were talking about Dr. Alex Ekwueme as the likely messiah for Nigeria. Let me end this writeup by relating what was, from my perspective at least, a humorous article that appeared in the Guardian Newspaper about two days ago. The headline was something like this:

 

Alex Ekwueme Urges Nigerians Abroad To Return And Help National Development.

Apparently the man gave a speech at the wedding of a son of the late Nnamdi Azikiwe, the grooms name I think was Mojekwu Azikiwe. He urged those of us abroad to return just like Mojekwu did. Apparently Mojekwu studied abroad and returned to Nigeria "to help in national development". Impressive isn't it? Now, what job is Mojekwu doing to develope our Nigeria? He is a Director in the Bureau of Public Enterprises!!!!

 

Do you think the children of the middle class that fled Nigeria because they couldn't find jobs find this call from Ekwueme amusing? Do you think we, the children of teachers and nurses and mechanics and tailors who are lucky to find ourselves abroad, in nations where the ruling classes make provisions for the comfort of the poor, what do YOU think we make of this story? Let Ekwueme and Adesanya and Shagari and the rest of them  keep waiting........we are coming home soon!!