The American Expose On The Igbo Presidency Project: A Case Of Two Ethnic Groups In Nigeria

By

Attorney Aloy Ejimakor

Washington, DC. United States

alloylaw@yahoo.com

 

 

This essay is a general rejoinder to all commentaries, by Igbos and non-Igbos, which share this recurring tendency of blaming Igbos, their missteps, and their famous “disunity” as the greatest obstacles to the current quest for “Igbo Presidency” of Nigeria. From the first post-civil war election that saw Shagari to power to the last one which ushered in the second Obasanjo administration, a vast number of pundits, journalists, and leaders of thought have joined in a widespread call for Igbo Presidency. Besides the call for “Yoruba Presidency” of the old, intended at the time as the proper placation for the deep ethnic pride hurt by the annulment of Abiola’s election, no other ethnic group has received such widespread verbal expression of support on this issue than the Igbos. It has become so commonplace today that any position directly endorsing the contrary view is likely to be immediately derided as both politically incorrect and insensitive to the political idealisms of our time. Why has this support not translated into electoral or even “major party nomination” victory for the Igbos? Is it really because of the reasons adduced by many, tending to blame the Igbos for their sorry lot? Or are there other constraints, not yet fully explored, that equally, if not more significantly militate against the Igbo Presidency Project (IPP, if you will)? I took time off my hectic schedule to hanker down to the arduous task of searching for clues to these posers, and just a few days ago, I found some; and lo and behold, it is no brainer after all. My method was simple, and here it is, if you want to replicate it. I asked two fellow American attorneys to review some news clippings on the “ethnic contention” for the Nigerian presidency, and then use the facts gleaned to predict the ethnic group mostly likely to produce the next President of Nigeria. These two guys, one white, the other black, are my pals and Law School mates from the Washington College of Law, American University in Washington, DC. I chose them because they knew next to nothing about Nigerian political history, and I trusted that with their training as lawyers, any conclusion they reached stood better chances of being reasonably based on the “facts as presented” and not otherwise. And to press the point home, I admonished them not to go beyond scope of the facts as presented by the contents of the newspaper clippings. But in order to further strengthen the integrity of their research, I presented them with two basic hypothetical of my own. The first was that I took considerable time and care to sanitize the clippings by whitening out mentions of the ethnic origins of all the prominent names that have been bandied around as front runners for the next presidency of Nigeria but I left the names intact as written. And the second was that I handed them a list containing the names of most of the ethnic groups that are found in Nigeria, including Hausa, Yoruba, Efik, Ijaw, Fulani, Gwari, Ibibio, Edo, and of course, the Igbo, and asked them to try to identify the ethnic origins of the names mentioned by reference to this list. And before doing this, I asked them whether they can tell the ethnic or regional origin of a Nigerian by name-profiling, and true to my initial assumption, they could not. Having thus confirmed, I charged them to work separately, and not speak with each other, or any other person on the “issue presented”; and left them the well alone to go about doing the “job”. Folks, two days ago, they turned in their separate conclusions drawn under strictly sequestered environment, and the conclusions and analysis giving rise to them are as astounding as they are illuminating. I will proceed to summarize their observations, analysis and conclusions under two separate headings partly titled “Attorney A; and Attorney B”.

 

Attorney A’s Observations

 

Attorney A, my African-American friend drew the following conclusions, and I will paraphrase and quote. First of all, he surmised, that from what he read, “Igbos must be the most popular” ethnic group in Nigeria; or that “Nigerians must be trying to expiate some visceral collective guilt by loudly proclaiming the exclusively desirability of an Igbo as the next President”. And then, his conclusion, that “I will bet my last dime that the next President of Nigeria will be an Igbo”. And, then the “shockers” – that “the Igbo man called Babangida is mostly likely going to defeat the incumbent Igbo man vice president, called Atiku, despite his incumbency factor, to become the next President”. The emphasis on his descriptive-“Igbo”, is mine and it is intended to underline both the technical fallacy and unique correctness of Attorney A’s startling conclusions. He told me that in the midst of his analysis, some nagging confusion that was too often to ignore played out in his mind, and that was, as he put it “why are Nigerians talking about obstacles for Igbo Presidency Project, while at the same time project TWO IGBOS as front runners for the top job”. And just to make double sure, I needlessly asked him, which “two Igbos”, and his responses was “of course your Babangida and Atiku”. And to this, I could barely contain my amusement when I told him that his confusion stems from the fact the two gentlemen are not Igbos, but from other ethnic groups in the Northern part of Nigeria. That he felt better, though mildly quizzical will be understating the obvious relief that suddenly pervaded him for coming to terms with an “erroneous” conclusion he drew because, as he now put it, “I thought these two guys, Babangida and Atiku to be Igbos because the desire expressed by Nigerians for the Igbo Presidency equals their enthusiasm for these guys for the job. So, counselor, tell me one thing: how come this vast number of Nigerians is rooting for Igbo Presidency and non-Igbo candidates at the same time?” As he looked askance at me for a response or a prompting, I began to inwardly struggle with a gnawing concern that this "new information" on the true ethnic origins of Babangida and Atiku may work some distortions into the logical flow of his analysis to the point of skewing the conclusions. Well, soon enough, I found that it did not when he stated pointedly, that “either that the increasing call for Igbo Presidency is hypocritical; or if the call is genuine at all, then there must be some deeply entrenched institutional obstacle to the Igbo becoming President of Nigeria despite what I said earlier about expiation of some guilt”. I pressed him to explain whether he feels that the “institutional obstacle” is attributable to Igbos as an ethnic group, or to Nigerians as whole, or to Nigerians more or less than the Igbos. Before he answered, he wanted to know if the Igbos have the real numbers to “pull an electoral victory for “their own man; and assuming that all Igbos vote for someone who is not Igbo as against all other Nigerians voting for the opposing Igbo candidate, whether the combined votes of those other Nigerians will be sufficient to give the Igbo candidate a victory”?. Well, folks, you guessed right, because I told him that the votes of Igbos alone cannot give them the presidency; and that the votes of all other Nigerians standing against the votes of the entire Igbos will surely give the other Igbo candidate the presidency. I pointed to our current President, Obasanjo as contemporary example. Once I said this, he yelled “Eureka, there you have it bro, institutional barrier it is for sure, and it lies more with non-Igbo Nigerians, as it lies less or none at all with Igbos standing alone” Well, “there you have it” folks, and as you struggle with the intellectual import of what Attorney A had to say, let me go on to share the summary of Attorney B’s observations with you.

 

Attorney B’s Observations

 

Well, this guy is white, and perhaps, because of that he went beyond scope of the initial inquiry to interject some other peripheral, yet important observations of his own. First, he wondered why a nation made up of “one race of black people should find it necessary to its difficult quest for national unity to misclassify its different linguistic groups and call them different ethnic groups”. I corrected him by saying that “strictly, racially speaking, I am not too sure that Nigeria can be said to be an all-black nation”. He asked me why, and I told him that two particular groups of Nigerians, the Fulani, and the Shuwa Arab are said to have come from the Middle East, of Arab stock. This surprised him a great deal because as he put it, he did not know that Nigeria has “native Caucasians”, meaning white folks. I immediately empathized with what he meant but for the sake of academic argument, I challenged “his sweeping mischaracterization” of the Fulani and Shuwa Arab as Caucasians, but he would not budge. And here is the reason he offered: “In America, people of Middle Eastern origin, of Arab stock, are classified without question as Caucasians, thus making them part of the larger white race”. And his preliminary conclusion, which I am tempted to agree with, is that “if the Shuwa Arabs and Fulanis migrated from the Middle East, and the rest of the other linguistic groups are purely of the Negroid stock, then Nigeria, in the strict definition of ethnic classification, is in reality made of only two ethnic groups, namely: Black Africans (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Gwari, Efik, and other blacks) and Caucasians (Fulani and Shuwa Arab)”. Despite my protestations that his definition of ethnicity is so overbroad that I am beginning to think “race”, he stuck to his guns by insisting that “Counselor, you can call it what you like - race, ethnicity, but the fact of the matter is that the group described as Igbos is merely another ‘linguistic’ group of the larger black or Bantustan race native to Africa and Nigeria that also includes other ‘linguistic’ groups that include the Hausa, Yoruba, and all other non-Fulani/Shuwa Arab black Nigerians”. He was not done yet, and I was understandably aghast when he postulated that “Aloy, consider this for a second, and you are likely to agree that black Nigerians are more ethnically related to black Americans as contrasted with the Fulani/Shuwa Arab Nigerian of the Middle Eastern stock who is more ethnically related to white Americans than to the rest of Nigerians”. Was I woozy, you betcha. And he noticed it when he smirked and began to make an effort to cheer me up some by positing that “the only way you can call this ‘one huge black family’ of different languages ‘different ethnic groups’ is by applying the narrowest and potentially divisive definition of the term to include differences in culture, religion, and of course, language, but in which case you begin to unwittingly play into the hands of the British which out of contempt, bigotry, and colonial ambitions sowed divisions amongst you by calling you different tribes when in reality you are not tribes but hardly different distinct language groups of the lower Congo Bantustan family of languages”. He went on to explain that “America partly forestalled its own narrow and divisive white ethnic issue by decreeing the use of a single European language, namely English”. And he continued, “Keep in mind that English was not chosen out of tin air. It could have been German or French or even Italian because each of them is but a hardly distinct semantic variation and corruption of their common forerunner, Latin, and therefore each of these languages possessed an equal appeal that is in comport with the primordial instincts of ‘One European ethnic group’ of different languages. Thus, a wholly different non-European language like Mandarin or your Igbo wouldn’t have stood a chance; just like you guys should have ensured that a wholly foreign language of another race of people like the British should not have stood a chance at becoming your first national language against one of your native Bantustan ones like Hausa, Yoruba, or Igbo. And considering that the use of one tongue fostered an enduring national unity in America that cut across racial lines, maybe you guys should have done the same in Nigeria by decreeing the use of one of your native tongues as the national language, and then English and the other native tongues as second languages”. I found myself nodding in agreement and gesturing him to continue, but he digressed when he stated that “In America, an electoral contest between a pure stock Fulani or Shuwa Arab immigrant from Nigeria against say, Reverend Jesse Jackson, an African American, will be deemed by Americans as a contest between a white (the Fulani or Shuwa Arab) and a black (Jesse Jackson)”. He pointed to George Mitchell, the former democratic majority leader of United States Senate, and a Middle Eastern Arab American as “someone seen as white by all Americans as a matter of assumption”; and the former governor and White House chief of staff, John Sununu, another Middle Eastern Arab American whose “white ethnicity was never open to debate”. And even Henry Kissinger, the celebrated former Secretary of State, “whose ancestors were of Middle Eastern origin, though assumedly not of the Ishmaelite stock, but Middle Eastern anyway, who can stand up and be counted as white”. I was beginning to be wary of his analysis, especially as I was afraid that he appears to be careening away from the main thrust of project I set him out to do. Well, it did not, and here is why: First, he drew the same conclusion reached by the former that the Igbo “linguistic group, or ethnic group, if you will, looks good to produce the next president of Nigeria”. And that it appears that their “favorite son, the Igbo guy Babangida is well spoken of, despite his ‘disagreeable’ record as a former president” When I asked him to elaborate on “disagreeable”, he told me to compare the situation to the one concerning “Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington DC who was elected mayor again, and then later a councilman, all after he served jail time for doing drugs, and lying about it under oath”; and former US president, Bill Clinton, “who continues to remain politically popular despite messing around with Lewinsky and lying about it under oath to the Independent Counsel”. I thought he was done, but he quickly rallied to prove me wrong by stating matter-of-factly that “you will agree that the best white candidate did not even stand a fighting chance against the overwhelming margin that saw Marion Barry to office as Mayor after his stint at the penitentiary. That is political irony for you”. As I already expected, and I am sure anyone reading this is wont to do, he went on to conclude that “unless there is a law barring the Igbo guy, Babangida from seeking public office, it appears that he is quite politically popular and therefore electable as the next president of your native country”. I stopped him right there to correct him that Babangida is not Igbo, but assumedly from a small “ethnic group” in the Northern part of Nigeria called “Gwari”. This is the point at which the interchange between he and I truly turned somewhat good naturedly argumentative, because he countered my characterization with one of his own position when he stated that, “you mean to say from another black Nigerian linguistic group that speaks this Gwari language, instead of Igbo language”. Well, to say I was mildly frustrated was to say the least. And when he noticed my combative countenance, he turned conciliatory by parting me on the back and assuring, “don’t sweat it pal, we seem to be saying the same thing. I did the job you gave me, and here, I will say it again that the ethnic Black Nigerian, the guy Babangida, whether he speaks Gwari, Igbo, or even Fulani or Shuwa Arab seems most likely to be your next president with all his warts and all”. To further explain what he called the “futility and fallacy” of ethnic characterization in Nigeria as it presently stands, he asked me to be mindful of the fact that his analysis would have remained the same even if “the Babangida guy was really borne of an Igbo-speaking couple that had managed to successfully fool all Nigerians to date by passing themselves off as Gwari, rearing the young Babangida in Gwari territory, and assimilating him in the culture and traditions, and even religion unique to the Gwari”. To ease my growing pains, he waxed folksy and said “Common on man, this is no brainer. Just ask yourself what would have happened if the Igbo-speaking guy called Orji Uzor or Rochas Okorocha suddenly presents irrefutable evidence believed by all Nigerians that their forefathers ‘biologically’ originated from the other Northern linguistic group you guys call Hausa. Don’t you think this new dimension will impact positively on their electability?” Here and there, he nailed the final coffin, and left me with thoughts as wild as they suddenly became deeper than any prior analysis of my own on the instant subject. I proceeded to set him free, if only to also free myself from his “radical” observations so that I can retire to begin to sort out my own conflicting thoughts.

 

Yet, before he bade me farewell, after downing his second cup of my very strong Nigerian-made Nescafe coffee and being momentarily distracted by ‘Osuofia in London’, he left me with these parting words, “that those black Nigerians who speak Igbo will never be president unless the other linguistically different blacks close ranks to support the Igbo for the top job”. He went on to say, that “the ethnic Fulani group, and the ‘biracials’ borne of union between the ethnic Fulani Caucasians and the ethnic Blacks dominated your presidency or choice of who became president solely because of the ‘institutional’ support of the ethnic Black majority from all parts of your country. Aloy, quite frankly, I don’t know why this is so, but one guess I can hazard is that it appears akin to the post-Civil War domination of US presidency by sons of the Confederacy from a South that had just failed in an attempt to break up United States. Yours is a mixed paradox of sorts, because the very region of Nigeria which had seemed initially to have believed less in ‘One Nigeria’ somehow got to be the one that has dominated federal power since Southern Nigeria won the war of independence against the British”. Well, you might have thought that it ended there but, in reality, it did not, except that this time, he seemed jocular when he winked at me and said slyly “Tell my friends the Igbos that if they ever want one of their own to become President, it is now that they need to plant a biological Igbo child in the favored northern parts to be reared and passed off as a member of these perennially favored groups you guys call Hausa or Gwari. If you do this without the rest of Nigeria knowing about it, you will see that in forty years from now, if that is the age of ‘majority’ for running for President of Nigeria, the Igbo son passing of as Hausa or even Gwari will stand as much chance as these Babangida and Atiku guys stand now. If you need a code name, here my friend, I have one for you: call it IPP - the ‘Igbo Presidency Project’. If you need historical reference to justify this ‘covert operation’, I am sure you may find comfort in the popular conspiracy theory which posits that Gorbachov was in reality a ‘biological Jewish boy’ planted by the United States to be reared as a Commie who was later to see to the demise of Soviet Union as soon as he became head of the Kremlin”. This was meant as a joke but I found myself deadpanning and wrinkling my brows in thought. Nevertheless, I thanked him and retired to the inner reaches of my home office to hanker down to the now simple task of arriving at observations of my own. He left with my favorite Nigerian movie, “Osuofia in London”, as his reward.

 

Before walking you through the summary of my own observations and analysis, let me say some things as a preamble. Firstly, in my opinion, Attorney B’s general characterization or definition of ethnic groups in the strict sense generally in use for also defining what constitutes a distinct race is correct, but may be more correct in America, as distinguished from Nigeria, because hybridization has obscured the intra-ethnic differences that would have made it possible to differentiate the Igbo African American from the Yoruba or Hausa African American. And what I call “African Americans”, for the purposes of this discourse, comprise of those who descended from former African slaves, and those borne of first generation US naturalized Africans and their offspring, because, in terms of political calculations, America has never distinguished the two. Think of Senator Obama, the Kenyan-American, whose cross-racial political appeal has reached a point that he is now widely believed to have the best shot ever as the first ‘black’ US President in the future. So, if Obama, The Black and Biracial ever became President of the United States as predicted, the entire nation will surely and comfortably refer to him more as the first African American President, and less as a Kenyan or even a biracial. And to say he is white because of his white mother is unthinkable, if not abominable. Therefore, applying the definition strictly postulated by Attorney B to the Nigerian situation would mean that our long standing ethnic classification is but a fallacy we unnecessarily imposed on ourselves in an ironically self-defeating twist to our quest for “One Nigeria”. In other words, if America, and indeed the entire white race does not see any ethnic differences between a pure black Nigerian-American or even one living in Nigeria and Senator “Kenyan” Obama, the “future President” of United States, despite his being half-white, why should we contradict our concept of “One Nigeria” by laboring to burden ourselves with the narrowest form of definition of our ethnicity in a way that has continued to divide even language groups as closely related as Igbo and Ikwerre on one hand, and Yoruba and Bini, on the other? And as if we have not done enough damage already, we have now gone too far to define them as “nationalities” - a characterization that is certainly more divisive and absolute than “tribe” and “ethnic”.

 

The other, and much more puzzling, but patently true definition is that Nigeria’s present characterization of her different “linguistic groups” as “ethnic groups” might be “uniquely correct” when viewed within the framework of the peculiarity of Nigeria’s political history and tradition. That history and tradition is one hampered by the narrowest definitions of ethnicity handed down by the British in their attempt to succeed at colonizing Nigeria, and we enthusiastically began to perpetuate it long after the British departed; and we refused to learn from India which rallied under Gandhi and Nehru to defeat a similar colonial gimmick in that subcontinent. But that is as far as making excuses can go because Nigeria can still rally, within the atmosphere created by the ongoing national conference, to make history and try something new for our national unity by reconsidering its unnecessary imprisonment to a retrograde tradition imposed on her by another race of people, represented by rank colonizers who never meant well for Nigerians. The will to do this is surely there, and it can be reawakened just like it was during Festac when there was a near-successful attempt to choose a common African language for all black people. Recall that when white people came on our shores to trade their guns and salt for our own flesh and blood they made no difference between Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba, and indeed all “blacks” native to Africa. Thus, in a tragic twist of destiny, “we” as one persecuted and enslaved family of “the same ethnic” group suffered and perished together at the hands of another “they” – one single “same ethnic” group, comprising yet again of different “linguistic” groups that included Arabs, Portuguese, British, French, Spanish, and what have you. Some might say that Nigeria’s own blight is not unique because, even America had at some point succumbed to the primordial temptations presented by this narrowest form of definition of ethnic groups when it profiled some German-Americans during the Second World War. But since the American experience is but a transitory and highly controversial war-time policy which it later regretted and apologized for, where is the ongoing war in Nigeria that continues to justify a similar narrow characterization that has led to this continuing ethnic profiling in the matter of the Nigerian presidency? Way too academic and idealistic? Hardly so, when you consider that northern Nigeria has successfully erased any marked differences between the Hausas and Fulanis, as two distinct races and even the “biracials” amongst them, such as Shagari and Buhari, when time comes to seeking the presidency of Nigeria. And this northern “homogeneous politics” (“one north” you might say) is strengthened by the fact that even the northern “minority pure stock blacks” like Babangida and Atiku can be said to squarely represent the new yearning for “power shift” back to the north. You can say that they achieved this because of the unity nurtured by the peculiar centralizing characteristics of the Islamic religion. But what about Yakubu Gowon – a Christian, and even Babangida, who was said to be a Christian in his youth before he converted to Islam? Or, you can run and hide under the reason that they all speak the same language – Hausa. Well, that may be true, but is Hausa not a second language to Gowon’s native Plateau tongue? And even Babangida, whose native Gwari or other tongue he was borne with might be different from the core Hausa. If you still believe that commonality of religion is a distinguishing factor in homogenizing the northern political ranks, then consider for a moment that Abiola, despite being a devout Muslim of international recognition, was shut out of Aso Rock allegedly by forces led by agents of the homogenized northern political interests. Consider also that commonality of religion and Westernized cultural traits between Yorubas and the Igbos is yet to translate to political alliance of federal or presidential impact. And the eastern minorities, despite their intermarriage with Igbos, commonality of faith, similarity of culture and flair for the Igbo language will rather find their own alliance with the far north than have anything to do with their next door neighbor, the Igbos. And take a moment to recall the joke, and grand scheme advanced by Attorney B, advising that the only way Igbos can ever hope to overcome the country-wide institutional resistance to their presidential ambition is to “to plant a biological Igbo child in the favored northern parts to be reared and passed off as a member of this group you guys call Hausa, or their equally favored spin-offs”. In plain terms, let us find out how the Sarduana achieved a “one north” that has defied numerous state creations (or “internal balkanizations”, if you will), and see whether we can replicate it for the whole country to achieve “One Nigeria”. Or failing that, let us understand for once that the reason the north continues to see power shift in terms of two directions only – north and south, is because each time any northerner captures the presidency, it is deemed a political prize for the entire north, and they expected Obasanjo’s presidency to be no less for the entire south, not just for the Yorubas alone.

 

Observations of my own

 

Now back to IPP – the Igbo Presidency Project; and let begin by saying that whether I agree with the dizzying observations and analysis made by my two pals, and regardless of the “non-scientific” nature of the background information, I recognize the following facts to be self-evident. First, Obasanjo was overwhelmingly elected in 1999 without the Yoruba vote, as compared to the far second Olu Faleye scored, despite garnering virtually all Yoruba vote that mattered. And I wager that Obasanjo would have been elected anyway even if, like Abiola, he committed faux pas and declared assuredly “I don’t need Yorubas to win the ‘presidential’ elections”. Several factors were responsible for this. Flash back to the formation of PDP without any recognizable pivotal role by Obasanjo, and you might agree that the presidential elections were probably decided in his favor way before the PDP Jos conventions, where Igbo delegates were said to have engaged in the so-called “sabotage” of Ekwueme that presumably saw to Obasanjo’s nomination. Those blaming Igbos and their Jim Nwobodos for stabbing Ekwueme in the back verge on political double speak when they keep silent on the opposite truth that Yorubas did not only oppose Obasanjo’s candidacy for the presidency, they relentlessly worked against it. And as compared to Ekwueme’s Igbo grassroots support, the Yoruba non-support of Obasanjo was supposed to be much more damaging because it was total and notoriously vocal to boot. And there is more. Assuming that all Yoruba and Igbo delegates to the Jos conference made political history for once by banding together to support Ekwueme in a two-way contest between him and Obasanjo, it is still unlikely to have worked any opposite result, except to the extent that it would have made Obasanjo’s nomination a close call. Put differently, Obasanjo, with the votes of delegates from the non-Yoruba Northern region, and the non-Yoruba and non-Igbo Southern region, would have clinched the nomination anyway. And he would have gone on to course to victory in the general elections on the same equation or formula, except that this time around the vacuum created by Ekwueme’s loss opened new electoral opportunities for him in the East. Recall Abiola saying that he did not need the Igbo vote to win the presidency or something to that effect. What he failed to say made the same sense, and that is, speaking strictly in terms of the true population of Yorubas and Hausas, Abiola did not need the votes of these other two either, standing alone as single entities, to win. Look at it this way. If Abiola won the votes of the Hausa and Yoruba, he was more likely to win than when he won the votes of Yoruba and Igbo and lost the Hausa vote. But instead of deploying political correctness or niceties to express what everyone knew to be true, he waxed somewhat insolent and bravado by singling out the Igbos for belittling, and thus created a new pocket of resentment exploited by the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN). Secondly, as compared to the “apex” conservative Igbo political class represented by Ekwueme and the PDP crowd, the “intermediate” neo-progressive class represented by Ogbonnaya Onu read the political pulse of Nigeria of the time much more correctly. That political pulse was one that institutionally favored an all-Yoruba candidacy for the presidency of Nigeria as an appeasement of sorts for the annulment of the victory of their “son”, Abiola; and this pulse was driven by the collective Nigerian guilt felt more at the highest levels of the northern political leadership, and less by their equal members in the East. Yet, the intermediate Igbo leadership, though lacking in any political guilt for the annulment, understood that Yoruba presidency had never been more expedient. The only question that remained was which Yoruba candidate deserved to be supported. Therefore, what the former APP did by “nominating” Ogbonnaya Onu, and Onu’s all too willing celebrated “stepping down” for the APP/AD coalition candidacy of Olu Faleye was not, in my opinion, “another case of Igbo lack of seriousness for the presidency”, but a tactical, yet costly electoral concession that other Nigerians, especially the Yorubas who supported and voted for Olu Faleye are unwilling to concede and reward. It is a political debt owed by Yorubas alone because they retroactively acknowledged and claimed the presidency as their own when they voted enmasse for Obasanjo in 2003.

 

And I do not believe the hype that the North foisted Obasanjo as a potential “puppet” that can be trusted to promote northern interests; rather the North knew that while Obasanjo may slant his presidency to correct inequities of the past and thus favor the South or Yorubas, he was less likely to do so than any of the other Yoruba front runners like Ige and Faleye. And the reason I see the Onu “capitulation” to Faleye as a political debt is because, at that time, it was not very clear that a prominent and highly electable renegade candidate from the North, especially one from one of the minority linguistic (or ethnic, if you like) groups would not have given Obasanjo a good trouncing and thus upset the political calculation of the “establishment” which was single-mindedly geared towards ensuring power shift to the South first, and to Yorubas, second. If you are skeptical, just pause for a moment and consider whether that is not what happened with the election of Abiola over Tofa. It is on record that more than Abiola, Tofa had the support, though mostly tacit, of the established kingmakers of Nigeria, including the military regime of the time, but for once, the Nigerian grassroots acted out of character to upset the applecart. Yet, in the end, the establishment had its way by seeing to the annulment of the results produced by that very truly fair election.

 

In view of the foregoing scenario, I cannot help wondering why pundits are so quick to point to Igbo disunity as the major obstacle to Igbo presidency but seem so unwilling to concede the efficacy of the equal logic that Obasanjo won the first time despite the absolutism of his electoral rejection by his own people – the Yorubas. This makes the important point, and that is, despite this much blamed “Igbo disunity”, an Igbo man can still be elected president with or without the Igbo vote and support provided other Nigerians closed ranks, like they did behind Obasanjo, to support the Igbo candidate wholeheartedly. This brings me in total agreement with my American friends that the greatest obstacle to Igbo presidency does not lie with the Igbo or their disunity, as some non-Igbo Nigerians love to say triumphantly and dismissively, but with an “institutionalized” aversion to the idea by the non-Igbo political establishment that controls the levers of federal power in Nigeria. If you doubt me, go and prevail on Babangida, Atiku, and perhaps Marwa and Buhari to abandon their ambitions and rally behind Orji Uzor, Rochas Okorocha or even Odumegwu-Ojukwu (despite his threatening antecedents), and see what will happen as a result. And what will happen will be more like what happened already when Obasanjo, a man just out of prison, and despised by his own people, was sought out by the establishment class represented by Babangida; the conservative north; the “intermediate” political leaders of the East in PDP; and the outgoing military, and then offered both the PDP nomination and Nigerian presidency on a platter. And while you are at it, recall that despite being public enemy number one to the apartheid regime, De Klerk and his fellow Boers wanted a Mandela they imprisoned for high treason as President, and they had their way in the face of stiff opposition by their erstwhile collaborators, the Inkathas, and their Buthelezi. That was the quintessential political debt owed and paid to a man who did no wrong other than crying freedom for his oppressed people. Therefore, what may be required to deinstitutionalize the Nigerian visceral resistance to the Igbo Presidency Project is not some covert planting of “a biological Igbo child” to be reared as a “northerner wanna-be”, but to isolate and harp on one major political debt the rest of the country owes the Igbos, in the hope that the resulting guilt will gather enough steam and momentum to bring the non-Igbo political establishment to “play ball” for a change. And truth be told, you do not need to look far to find those political debts because they are legion, in plain sight, and overdue to boot.

 

Attorney Aloy Ejimakor

Washington, DC United States

alloylaw@yahoo.com