Igbophobia and the Politics of Manufactured Enemies: A Reflection on Nigeria’s Fragile Cohesion

[John Onyeukwu]

Igbophobia and the Politics of Manufactured Enemies: A Reflection on Nigeria’s Fragile Cohesion

 How ethnic fear has become a tool of political survival, and a threat to the moral and economic foundations of our democracy.

 John Onyeukwu (Published on the Backpage of Business am Newspaper of Friday October 10, 2025)

Professor Moses Ochonu’s recent Facebook wall commentary on the rise of Igbophobia in Lagos is not merely a historical analysis, it is a moral warning. He exposes a growing political phenomenon where fear and resentment are deliberately manufactured to serve elite interests. This trend reveals a dangerous corrosion of civic ethics, democratic values, and the developmental possibilities of our federation. Nigeria, a country whose strength should lie in its pluralism, now risks becoming hostage to the politics of manufactured enemies. It is a sobering reminder that when leaders manipulate identity for political gain, they unleash forces that neither they nor the state can ultimately control. Such divisive politics chips away at the delicate trust that holds a multiethnic democracy together, replacing shared nationhood with suspicion, and citizenship with ethnic survivalism.

At the philosophical level, Igbophobia is not just prejudice; it is a betrayal of the moral contract that underpins citizenship. When political elites sustain their relevance by pitting one ethnic group against another, they corrupt the idea of justice and destroy the moral foundation of democracy. True citizenship cannot thrive where belonging is conditional and humanity negotiable.

The current wave of anti-Igbo sentiment represents the collapse of ethical leadership in public life. It teaches ordinary Nigerians that the measure of worth lies not in contribution, but in ancestry. Such a society quickly degenerates into moral chaos, where competence is sacrificed on the altar of conformity, and truth becomes tribal. The resulting moral vacuum fuels cynicism, alienation, and disengagement, the very conditions that allow bad governance to persist. Once truth and morality are subordinated to identity, integrity loses meaning, and civic dialogue becomes impossible. Over time, citizens stop aspiring to shared ideals and retreat into ethnic cocoons, leaving the public sphere hollow, intolerant, and vulnerable to manipulation by those who profit from division.

Politically, as Ochonu rightly observes, this phenomenon is not accidental. It is a well-calculated act of political engineering, tracing its roots to the 2015 election and the strategic alliance between the Southwest and the North that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power. What began as expedient power arithmetic has now metastasized into a culture of ethnic suspicion and targeted hostility.

The tragedy is that this politics of polarization yields short-term political capital but long-term national decay. Once ethnic mobilization becomes normalized, no group is safe. When the alliance fractures, as history suggests it will, today’s architects of bigotry will themselves become tomorrow’s victims. The cycle of hate has no permanent winners, only a country perpetually at war with itself.

What we are witnessing, therefore, is the weaponization of identity, a cynical use of ethnicity as political blackmail. It is as much about forging internal cohesion among the Yoruba elite as it is about demonizing the Igbo. Every identity movement that seeks power through exclusion must invent an enemy. The Igbo have merely become the convenient “Other” of the moment. Yet, this manipulation corrodes democratic competition itself, replacing policy debates with emotional warfare and reducing the civic space to a theatre of ethnic fear and elite propaganda.

From an economic standpoint, this politics of prejudice is ruinous. Lagos, the epicenter of this rhetoric, thrives precisely because it has been a magnet for all Nigerians. Its innovation, entrepreneurship, and resilience are the product of diversity. To turn that diversity into a weapon is to undermine the very foundation of the city’s success.

The informal economy of Lagos, the markets, the small enterprises, the property ecosystem, depends on trust, collaboration, and cross-ethnic cooperation. When fear replaces fairness, the market suffers. Investors retreat, cooperation declines, and communities withdraw into ethnic enclaves. Hate has an economic cost: it breeds inefficiency, discourages innovation, and shrinks opportunity. Over time, even state revenue and urban productivity are affected, as social fragmentation disrupts consumer confidence and local commerce.

At the national level, development cannot take root in an environment poisoned by ethnic hostility. Infrastructure, education, and industrial policy require trust and collective purpose. A nation divided in spirit cannot unite in strategy. The human capital that drives growth is crippled when identity determines inclusion. The prosperity that Nigeria seeks depends on a shared sense of belonging; without it, even the most ambitious economic blueprints will fail to take root or yield sustainable progress.

The most alarming danger is psychological. Nigerians are slowly being conditioned to view one another not as citizens, but as competitors for survival within a zero-sum state. Once this mindset hardens, even the strongest institutions cannot guarantee stability. The idea of Nigeria collapses long before the state itself does.

Democracy presupposes a shared moral space, a minimum trust in the fairness of rules. When identity becomes the rule and justice the exception, elections lose legitimacy, and national cohesion evaporates. A country that normalizes bigotry will soon find that it cannot sustain either unity or democracy. The real tragedy is that such division erodes the emotional glue of nationhood, the invisible sense of mutual obligation that binds people beyond ethnicity or faith. When citizens cease to believe that their fate is intertwined, patriotism dies, and the state becomes an empty shell. The result is not only political instability but moral fatigue: a society too fragmented to imagine a common destiny, and too distrustful to pursue collective progress.

To rescue Nigeria’s plural democracy, we must rebuild a civic philosophy grounded in fairness, not fear. Citizenship must be reclaimed from the ethnic brokers who profit from division. The media, academia, and faith communities must stop amplifying tribal anxieties and start cultivating empathy and truth. They must become the conscience of the nation, spaces where facts are protected from distortion and humanity is elevated above politics.

The Yoruba ronu bigotry that Ochonu critiques is not unique; every region has its variant. But what makes this moment dangerous is its institutionalization. It is now expressed through social media disinformation, political propaganda, and cultural revisionism, tools that can outlast their creators and reproduce hate even without active political orchestration. The normalization of prejudice through jokes, memes, and selective history is reshaping public consciousness, especially among the youth, threatening to make intolerance a civic instinct.

Nigeria must choose between the convenience of scapegoating and the courage of nation-building. The former may win elections, but only the latter will build a future. That future demands three things:

Firstly, a return to civic ethics and moral leadership that upholds truth as the foundation of governance. The nation must rediscover the moral courage to speak truth to power and demand accountability without bias. Leadership, at every level, should once again be measured not by rhetoric or tribe, but by integrity and a demonstrable commitment to the public good. Nigeria’s crisis is not just one of systems, but of sincerity. A new civic ethic must therefore be cultivated, one that treats public office as stewardship, not entitlement.

Secondly, a rejection of fear-based mobilization and a revival of issue-based politics that rewards competence over identity. For too long, politicians have weaponized ethnicity and religion to secure power, turning citizens into captives of suspicion. The path forward lies in a political culture where ideas, performance, and accountability take precedence. Electoral campaigns must become contests of vision, not venom, where candidates’ debate solutions, not origins.

Thirdly, the harnessing of diversity as a competitive advantage rather than a curse, investing in inclusion as a growth strategy. Nigeria’s demographic and regional variety can power innovation, creativity, and productivity if the right incentives are built into national policy. From local enterprise to national planning, diversity should be seen as an asset, a force multiplier for prosperity. A Nigeria that values every identity as a contributor to progress will not only grow richer but also fairer, stronger, and freer.

Until we do, the dream of a united and prosperous Nigeria will remain perpetually deferred, not by outsiders, but by the enemies we invent among ourselves, and the silence of those who should know better. Our undoing lies not in foreign conspiracies but in the internal fractures we refuse to heal, the prejudices we normalize, and the collective apathy that greets every act of injustice. Until conscience outweighs convenience, and courage becomes the national instinct, Nigeria’s promise will continue to flicker, brilliant yet unrealized, within the reach of a people too divided to grasp it together.

John Onyeukwu
http://www.policy.hu/onyeukwu/

 http://about.me/onyeukwu
“Let us move forward to fight poverty, to establish equity, and assure peace for the next generation.”
-- James D. Wolfensohn
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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Stockholm

People's Planet 

10th October ( My mother's birthday ! )  

Dear John Onyeukwu,

Ideally, I suppose that if a referendum could be arranged to decide the matter, it would be found that many Nigerians would prefer to be confined to prosper in their own  self-governing ethnic enclaves and thereby reduce inter-ethnic friction to a bare minimum.

In the meantime we have to contend with the realities of melting pot Lagos, Nigeria's commercial hub with its Ethnic Yoruba majority, just as Anambra has an overwhelming Igbo majority to the extent that Peter Obi won 95 % of the votes in that State in the last Presidential Election.  

Right now, the eye of the storm : Igbos in Lagos

Not asking for the impossible, but in the name of peace & love, only asking for a national miracle of dialogue and reconciliation  : If Peter Obi could kindly declare some unalloyed support / commitment to ensuring that President Tinubu wins his home state, Lagos State, in the next Nigerian Presidential Election, then “things” could simmer down considerably. But such an impossible miracle is unlikely, and if the temperature is not brought down significantly, dramatically, we could be in for more “flesh and blood breaking down”.

Therefore, many thanks for this timely, poignant appeal. The saying is “ A stitch in time saves nine”. That’s why your appeal - your memorandum of understanding, and your deep preach. forward-looking ethical moralising should be widely disseminated, because just like some of the other phobias such as once upon a time “ Negrophobia” - that’s what it was called back then, the viruses known as antisemitism (“the world's oldest hatred”), Islamophobia, tribalism (distinct from some of the bragging rights of ethnic chauvinism) violent, insane & indiscriminate ethnicity-based antagonisms, and of course rampant racism that is still spreading like a wildfire in The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, there is nothing as reprehensible and as vile as Igbophobia, no matter where it occurs in Nigeria or elsewhere,  and it has been growing in intensity at a very alarming rate, especially in Nigeria where most Igbo people live, as if to add more sorrow to tragic truths such as “ Home is where the hatred is “ 

I like to present myself as an unbiased observer when I say that unfortunately for igbos, as we all know, Igbophobia has been exacerbated by the Biafran war which has left some indelible scars, and any new intimations of separation, IPOB, secession,” Lagos is no man’s land” etc just resurrects ghosts that can so easily be exploited by politicians who are adept at fanning the flames of divisiveness to their own advantage, especially in their own home territories. Just now, Igbophobia is rearing its ugly head in Lagos more than anywhere else, perhaps - ” democratic competition”,  that's where Igbo presence and Igbo success is most visible outside Igboland and therefore liable to generate some envy, and  hostility / xenophobic feelings in those who more properly/parochially speaking  care less about titles such as “Cosmopolitan” since they believe themselves to be the real Lagos indigenes and don’t give a rat’s tail about what someone like our venerable Kwame Anthony Appiah has to preach about “Cosmopolitanism”

Reading some potent diatribes from someone as enlightened as Femi Fani-Kayode one gets the impression that Lagos is the equivalent of what in the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio is referred to as occupied territory. Conversely, try convincing a diehard Zionist disciple of Jabotinsky, that The City of David  otherwise known as Yerushalayim  “is a no man’s Land”  and you’ll probably have another war on your hands.

( To be continued) 

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Igbo-phobia and the Politics of Manufactured Enemies: A Reflection On Nigeria's Fragile Cohesion. How ethnic fear has become a tool for political survival and a threat to the moral and the economic foundation of our democracy - By John Onyeukwu.

According to John Onyeukwu's admission, his above titled article was prompted by his access to "Professor Moses Ochonu's recent Facebook wall commentary on the rise of Igbo-phobia in Lagos." To begin with, I want to draw the attention of Mr. John Onyeukwu to the fact that Professor Moses Ochonu and his pal, Professor Farooq Kperogi, were active members of this forum before they silently withdrew their engagements because of what I believed was due to their intolerance to criticisms and objections to their opinions by other members on this forum. Since I do not have access  to the original article of Professor Moses Ochonu's essay on 'the rise of Igbo-phobia in Lagos' that has either influenced or misled Mr. John Onyeukwu's into writing the way he has done in his above multiple titles, I wish to warn against what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  called the 'problem of a single story.'

For us, Nigerians in Diaspora, we have to rely on social media and probably from our relatives and friends in Nigeria in order to get acquainted with the political and economic situations in Nigeria. Mostly, I have read in online Nigerian newspapers about demolition of buildings not only in Lagos but also in Anambra, Enugu, Rivers and Niger-Delta States. The demolition of buildings in each state, and even in Abuja, which are still ongoing have nothing to do with ethnicity but violations of town planning laws. It is, for an instance, illegal to encroach on wetlands originally designed to retain excess rainwater, and filled it up with sand and gravels to erect buildings as it has happened in Lagos State. However, it appears as if demolition of illegal structures in Lagos are being regarded as anti-Igbo measure by ethnic irredentists whereas the demolitions in Anambra, Enugu, Rivers and Niger-Delta states are considered normal.

Shortly after the January 15, 1966, coup d'état in Nigeria, Professor Kenneth Dike, the then Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan said in a convocation address that 'the worst pedlars of tribalism in Nigeria are the intellectuals.' Elaborated, I will say, the educated elites competing for political and official positions in Nigeria often play the ethnic card in order to secure political office and official employment. If one visits any of Nigeria's big local market, may be in Sokoto, Maiduguri, Kano, Makurdi, Jos, Enugu, Onitsha, Aba, Port Harcourt, Benin, Ibadan, and Lagos, to mention few, one will find Nigerians of all tongues and mostly illiterates buying and selling amicably without any dispute whatsoever. When the educated Nigerians enter their midst, tribalism will break out. To the so-called educated Nigerians, the tribe of a person in office is more important than the ability of the person to perform according to what is required in that office. Of what use, for an instance, is the tribe of  Minister of Water Supply when the whole nation, including his/her own ethnic group, lacks potable water? Whereas everybody knows that potable water cannot, and can never, be produced by chanting ethnic incantation, tribal hypocrites always blame the tribe of the incompetent Minister of Water Supply and his/her officials who a times are a mixture of many tribes.

 

In the online Nigerian Vanguard of October 1, 2025, one Clifford Ndujihe wrote an article reminiscent of Professor Ochonu's "the rise of Igbo-phobia in Lagos." https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/10/nigeria-at-65-ethnicisation-of-poltics-the-ticking-time-bomb/ On reading through the article, I discovered that Mr. Clifford Ndujihe fell into the same tribal pit he was out to warn others not to fall into by falsifying history.

 By S. Kadiri    (To be continued)   

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 10 October 2025 23:51
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Igbophobia and the Politics of Manufactured Enemies: A Reflection on Nigeria’s Fragile Cohesion

 

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