Ndi Obere Okwukwe.
Kevin Ani
Ndi Igbo Ibe m,
I agree with the main thrust of the article below in so far as it
highlights the need for political self-analysis and clarification among
Ndiigbo. However, I do not agree with the great media hype about the
impact of the so-called transitional programme on Igbo people and
politics. While the Igbo should self-analyse and all that, I would argue
that overall, the result of this programme so far proves nothing and
changes nothing in fundamental terms. Afterall between 1979-83, Dr
Ekwueme, an Igbo and Alhaji Shagari, a Hausa/Fulani ruled Nigeria while
the Yoruba, their Awolowo and the UPN were excluded. The high heavens
did not fall then. The high heavens will not fall come May 29 either.
Maazi Onyeoziri should stop speaking in coded language/tongues and throw
his weight behind the immediate resucitation of the People's Democratic
Congress under the distinguished leadership of HE Gen. Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu (rtd), the great African hero of our time.
________________________________________________________________________
*POLITICS, we are told, is the activity by which people determine their
fate. And for a people to be able to determine their fate, they have to
have the capacity for autonomous political action so that they can
minimally protect themselves against the domination of others. In other
words, if you cannot play the maximum politics of dominating others, you
should, at least, play the minimum politics of defending yourself
against the domination of others by protecting your own autonomy.
In the pre-civil war era, Igbos not only had the capacity to protect
their autonomy, they advanced beyond that to dominate others. The civil
war was in part a presumed attempt to check the Igbo propensity to
dominate.
But since the war ended, Igbos have found themselves not only incapable
of joining the politics of domination which their other majority
colleagues are playing, but have lacked the capacity to even protect
their autonomy. For instance, in the Second Republic, whereas the
Yorubas and the Hausa - Fulanis protected their home bases, the Hausa-
Fulani reached out to dominate to both Igbo areas and their brother
minority states. The situation has traditionally been worse for the
Igbos under military regimes because Igbo political interest has always
suffered most under military rule. But if we explain this in terms of
the lack of effective Igbo representation in the strategic officer core
of the military, explaining Igbo political failure under civilian era
has been more difficult to understand. But the latest crash of Dr.
Ekwueme's presidential bid, the multiple impositions from the North, and
the dazzling performance of the Yorubas in the just concluded transition
politics, dramatize rather eloquently that the Igbos have lost the
capacity to determine their fate by minimally protecting their autonomy.
Although domination is the best guarantee of one's autonomy, but for one
who has even lost the capacity for autonomy, the first level question to
ask now is how to recapture that capacity for autonomous politics and
protect oneself from being enslaved by others.
Perhaps, l should leave this important question to be tackled in the
next installment of this column. Let me rather use the rest of this
article to establish the point beyond doubt that the Igbos have
continued to be victims of domination which is the result of their
having lost the capacity to protect their political autonomy.
Igbos can no longer participate in the higher politics of who decides
who is to rule, what is to be shared, and how it is to be shared. All of
these are in the domain of politics of domination. All that Igbos manage
to content themselves with now is to join the scramble for how much of
what is to be shared actually gets to them, because the bigger decision
of how much to get of what is there is made outside of their control.
And even in that scramble for how much to get of what is available, the
Igbos come out worse than their former majority colleagues. This is the
basis of the much talked about Igbo marginalization. The Igbos get the
least of political offices, the least of administrative positions, the
least of socio-economic allocations whether you talk of good roads,
sizeable industries, or substantial federal presence. The long over due
dualization of the Benin-Asaba road will continue to be on the drawing
board because the decision on the issue has always been outside Igbo
control. After all, who has ever heard of an Igbo Minister of Works and
Housing? The same argument goes for building a second Niger bridge which
has been tossed up and down. These are decisions that are economically
important to the Igbos but whose control is beyond the Igbos. It is
almost not accidental that even the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) which
boasts that it is not part of the regular government bureaucratic
politics still finds itself unable to show effective presence in the
Igbo areas, and the bit it has done in that area already came only after
a lot of hue and cry. Who would believe that eight years after Abia
State was created, its capital city Umuahia has not been linked to the
national power grid. How is even industrial development possible in such
an area without basic electricity?
The Igbos are never in a position to negotiate what cabinet positions
they get. They get what is allocated to them, and you wonder why Igbos
cannot get such strategic portfolios as Defence, Internal Affairs, Oil,
Works and Housing, Federal Capital Territory, Industry, Power and Steel?
You wonder why Igbos always end up in Information and Culture, Youths
and Sports, Science and Technology? Who decides, and why can Igbos not
be part of who decides? Why must they be subjects or victims of others'
decision?
The just concluded transition politics saw some Igbos attempt to get
into the politics of who decides. That attempt was smashed with a sledge
hammer in part because Igbos have not done the first things first. They
have not consolidated their capacity for autonomous politics before
getting into the politics of domination. If you are looking for any more
evidence that Igbos have lost even the capacity to defend their
autonomy, you can see it in the fact that decisions that are important
to them are still made outside their control. The Igbo Governors-elect
were made outside Igbo control, just as the Senate President said to be
allocated to Igbos is also being made from outside Igbo control. Are you
looking for any more evidence of the loss of capacity for autonomous
politics? Well then, compare what has happened to the Igbo transition
politics with that of the Yorubas. The Yorubas have established beyond
anybody's doubt that they have the capacity to protect their own
autonomy. The question of who becomes a Governor-elect in any of the
Yoruba South-Western states was decided in Yoruba land not outside. It
is this capacity for autonomous politics that will continue to protect
the Yorubas against being victims of others' domination. They are now in
a much stronger position to bid for the politics of domination - that is
deciding for others because they can decide for themselves.
In other words, because politics is the activity by which people
determine their fate, the Igbo politics collapsed because it was
incapable of protecting their autonomy so that they can determine their
fate more than to dominate others. That politics could not afford them
the means to decide their own fate talkless the fate of others. Igbo
politics is not viable because it cannot do for them what politics is
supposed to do for people, namely, enable them determine their own fate.
Therefore, until they organize for a more viable politics, they will
continue to be victims of others' domination.
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Kevin Ani
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