Nigeria has an Igbo problem, By Cheta Nwanze

[Toyin Falola]

 

Ololade Bamidele posted: " ...Nigeria has an “Igbo problem”, and no matter how many times people try to deny it, it is there. It manifests in so many ways. Think about Danladi Umar, Abubakar Malami, Remi Tinubu, and Muhammadu Buhari, just as examples. Nobody has as much as cens" Nigeria has an Igbo problem, By Cheta Nwanze Ololade Bamidele May 4 ...Nigeria has an “Igbo problem”, and no matter how many times people try to deny it, it is there. It manifests in so many ways. Think about Danladi Umar, Abubakar Malami, Remi Tinubu, and Muhammadu Buhari, just as examples. Nobody has as much as censured any one of them, and more people are taking a […] Read more of this post   Comment   Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Premium Times Nigeria. Change your email settings at manage subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://www.premiumtimesng.com   Powered by Jetpack

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

This topic is for the experts and the Chinua Achebeites 

The Igbo elites are  just like the Jews,  the Sierra Leone Creoles, the Mendes of Sierra Leone: 

Self-righteous, Sanctimonious,  Holier-than-thou, Stiff Upper Lip, Can Do No Wrong.

You criticise the Jews in any way and they say you're an anti-Semite

You criticise the Creoles and they say you are uncivilised and you are suffering from an inferiority complex.

You criticize Mendes and they say you are being “tribalistic”

The Jews will be forever morning the Holocaust, the Igbos, Biafra….

In my very close association with Igbos during the Sam Mbakwe days and the first year of the Buhari-Idiagbon era. my friends in Umuahia, Aba, and Owerri were always complaining about “ The Hausman” I informed one Ogugua Anunoby in this forum that when my  Igbo friends in Nigeria say “Hausaman ” they mean “Northerner & Muslim”; he wanted to know if I had asked all of them if that’s what they mean.

The Igbo problem is also political. and partly religious…

Saro nostalgia: Bobby Benson: Taxi Driver 

[Salimonu Kadiri]

My dear brother, Cheta Nwaze,

​Nigeria has no Igbo problem but economic and industrialisation problems masked as ethno-religious problems by the looting political and administrative elites. When it comes to looting of the resources of Nigeria and impoverishment of the masses, please note that there is no ethno-religious discrimination. The stealing officials cut across all ethnic and religious groups either Hebrew, Islamic, or indigenous religion.

About the coming Presidential election in Nigeria, you averred that the rule of rotational presidency between the North and South of Nigeria every eight years adopted by the PDP in 1999 has now been dropped when, according to you, it is the turn of Southeast (the Igbo) to produce presidential candidate in 2023. Due to what happened to M.K. Abiola who was the acclaimed winner of the scuttled 1992 Presidential election, the PDP decided to zone its Presidential candidates to the South. In the subsequent primary, Olusegun Obasanjo contested against Alex Ekwueme, who were indigenes of Yoruba and Igbo respectively, and of which Obasanjo emerged as PDP presidential flag bearer. It would have been correct to say that the Southwest was compensated for having deprived Abiola of his widely acclaimed presidential victory in 1992, if only the Yorubas had contested PDP's presidential primary. If my memory does not fail me, I think the late Abubakar Rimi declared zoning as being unconstitutional and contested the 1999 PDP presidential primary in vain. 

Against PDP presidential candidate, Olusegun Obasanjo, in the 1999 election, was Olu Falae nominated by a coalition party of Alliance for Democracy (AD) and All Peoples' Party (APP), based in the West and North respectively. Olusegun Obasanjo won the Presidential election even though he failed woefully in the Southwest and lost in his own polling unit. The next Presidential election was conducted in 2003 and it was apparently not zoned as 20 presidential candidates from different political parties from North and South contested the election. The 20 Presidential candidates in the 2003 election included Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, candidate of APGA party, who got 1,297,445 votes (3.29% of total votes' cast); Jim Nwobodo, candidate of UNPP party; Ike Nwachukwu , candidate of NDP party; Christopher Okotie. candidate of JP party; Arthur Nwankwo, candidate of PMP party; Emmanuel Okereke, candidate of APLP party; Kalu Idika Kalu, candidate of NNPP party; and Iheanyichukwu Nnaji candidate of BNPP party. Again, if we are to be truthful the Presidential election in which eight Igbo competed with twelve candidates from other parts of Nigeria can reasonably not be said to have been zoned specifically to the Soutwest or any other part of Nigeria. Further in the 2007 presidential election, nine of the twenty-five contestants were Igbo. Since 2003 and up till the last Presidential election, the Igbo people like other ethnic groups in Nigeria had contested as candidates in all Presidential elections on the platform of nationally based political parties so, on what ground is it being demanded that political parties should zone their Presidential candidates only to the Southeast in 2023?

If there has not been an Igbo President in Nigeria since it cannot be because other Nigerians hate or do not like Igbo collectively. On the contrary, the President General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, in the online Nigerian Guardian of 9 July 2013 had this to say, "We have the population and the Igbo are the only people with over a 25 per cent spread in any part of this country. We are not underdogs under any circumstances, we have the capacity to decide who can be president or who cannot be, because we have the numbers." Earlier on May 20, 2013, Levinus Nwabughiogwu interviewed former Federal Permanent Secretary, former Governor of Anambra State and former presidential adviser to Olusegun Obasanjo, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, in the online Nigerian Vanguard. Among the questions on the 2015 presidential election was, "Where does the Igbo nation stand in 2015?" Ezeife said : I see Jonathan as an eastern person holding the office of the President and put there by principally the Southeast.     

I agree with your observation that ".... Nigerians tend to do collective guilt. This means that more often than not, we blame the sins of one person on his entire natal group, be it his ethnic or religious group. The idea of holding an individual, not his group, responsible for his action is yet to be imbibed in Nigerians," you concluded. That is exactly what Nigerians are doing at moment in relation to President Muhammadu Buhari. His aloofness and incompetence are being extrapolated on all Hausa/Fulani and all Northern Nigerians. It is the same associative judgment that makes you to say that it is discrimination or marginalisation of the entire Igbo ethnic group if PDP or APC does not choose an ethnic Igbo person as their presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election. Actually, Nigerians should not care a hoot whether the man that rules their country is Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, Gwari, Kalabari, Edo or whether his face is carved up with tribal marks horizontally or vertically. Nigerians rather care for the man who will give them a fair share of amenities, of rights, and of opportunities. In other words, a man who is not possessed by the primitive passion of greedy acquisition of Nigeria's patrimony for himself, his family, his cronies and his tribal friends. We, Nigerians, were all born somewhere and Nigerian ruler must come from somewhere in Nigeria and must be competent. The important matter of how Nigeria should be governed should not be reduced to region, religion and ethnicity. Trained academic rogues and naive ethnic thieves say Nigerians are free from hunger even when they lack food to eat as long as their ethnic leaders in government are eating on their behalf. Of what use is it to me if the President is from my ethnic group and I am in perpetual hunger like all other ethnic groups in Nigeria? 

One of your reasons for not wanting an Igbo to succeed Buhari in 2023 is, ".... whoever attempts to remove the petrol subsidy in June 2023 is going to face mass action." Why are there no mass action now when Nigeria's crude oil refineries remain functionless after repairing them for $7.3 billion? Are we, Nigerians, so dumb to be discussing subsidy over imported fuel instead of discussing why our crude oil refineries experts are collecting fat salaries without refining any crude oil? Should Nigeria be importing refined petroleum at all?

S. Kadiri 

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: 04 May 2022 12:11
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria has an Igbo problem, By Cheta Nwanze

 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Insightful thoughts from Salimonu.

Thanks

Toyin

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