by Jibrin Ibrahim
Marginalisation, defined as the outcome
of domination, is the most favoured word used by the Nigerian elite to
describe their perceived political reality and above all to seek for
more access to the national cake.
Three issues are on the table today on
the Igbo question, the question of state creation, the Igbo presidency
and the impact of the civil war. Chinua Achebe’s recent book – “There
Was a Country”, in which he makes unambiguous comments of the complicity
of the Nigerian state and its leaders at the time, Yakubu Gowon and
Obafemi Awolowo in starving over two million Igbos to death has
generated a huge debate over the past two weeks. General Gowon has
responded denying the charges and claiming that it was Ojukwu who
refused the offer of a humanitarian corridor and many furious Yoruba
intellectuals have lambasted Achebe for what they consider to be unfair
attack directed at Awolowo. What we can say is that Gowon’s “no victor,
no vanquished” attitude blocked debate on what really happened and I
think we should all thank Professor Achebe for placing the question on
the table in such a dramatic manner.
There is no doubt that the civil war of
1967 to 1970 was the most serious threat to the existence of Nigeria as a
country and it led to the loss of one to two million lives, depending
on whose figure you accept. It should be recalled that just before the
war, Western leaders had warned that if the East goes, the West will
follow. That threat was not put into action and Awolowo, the Western
leader was released from jail to serve as Finance Minister and Deputy
Leader of the Federal Executive Council. His former political secretary,
my good friend Odia Ofeinun has written this week explaining that a key
document for the debate which has been suppressed all this time is the
book by the 1966 coup leader, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, in which he
states that the objective of the coup was to make Awolowo Nigeria’s
prime minister. He has also started a debate on the complicity of the
political and traditional leaders of the then Mid-West.
The fact of the matter is that the Igbo
elite have a strong empirical basis to read Nigerian political history
as one of failure and frustration for them. It’s a narrative that sees a
proud and hard-working people, “the Jews of Africa”, that have been
forced to play second fiddle to the other for too long, especially the
Hausa-Fulani ruling circles. Following the coup and the subsequent
massacre of Igbos in 1966 in the Northern region, and the subsequent
declaration of secession by the Eastern region in May 1967, the Igbo
elite had assumed that other Nigerians would not fight to keep them in
the Federation. They were wrong. Other Nigerians fought to preserve the
Federation and the result was the thirty-month civil war and the heavy
death toll.
In his book, “Igbo Leadership and the
Future of Nigeria” Arthur Nwankwo argues that “Nigerians of all other
ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than
their common resentment of the Igbo”, a phenomenon, he tells us, that
Chinua Achebe had earlier dubbed “the Igbo problem”. Nwankwo tells us
that the Igbos are more cosmopolitan, more adopted to other cultures,
more individualistic and competitive, more receptive to change and more
prone to settle and work in other parts of the country than other
Nigerians. This reality, he says, is overshadowed by the myth other
Nigerians persist in spreading that the Igbo are aggressive, arrogant
and clannish. This purported attitude of other Nigerians towards the
Igbos he points out has led to the development of a “final solution”
aimed at neutralising and marginalising the Igbos after the civil war.
This is seen to have occurred in two ways.
After the civil war, there was a
coordinated policy of pauperising the Igbo middle class by the offer of a
twenty pound ex gratis award to all bank account holders irrespective
of the amounts they had lodged with the banks before the civil war. This
was followed by routing the Igbos from the commanding heights of the
economy by introducing the indigenisation decree at a time when the
Igbos had no money, no patronage and no access to loans to compete for
the companies. In addition, landed property owned by the Igbo was
declared to be “abandoned property” particularly in Port Harcourt. In
the public service, the Igbo elite were marginalised by the refusal to
re-absorb most of their cadres who had attained high positions in the
armed forces and the federal public service.
It is in this context that many within
the Igbo elite have come to understand the policies of “no victor, no
vanquished” and “reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation”
announced after the war, were not actually applied. There is room to
debate these issues today as they feed into current demands for the
creation of an additional state in the South East and the clamour for an
Igbo Presidency. Of course since the end of the civil war, there has
been a remarkable Igbo economic and commercial élan. The marginalisation
did not work at the economic and commercial level and the success of
the Igbo come back is one of the remarkable stories of our time. It
might be precisely because of this success that bitterness persists
among the Igbo elite on why other Nigerians appear to believe that they
should continue with the politics of second fiddle.
To be major players in politics requires
team and coalition building. The Northern political class used to be
very good at that but they have lost it in recent years. For the Igbo
elite to play it successfully, they do need to convince and reassure the
others. Chinua Achebe might have done this cause harm by his recent
assertions which really angered the Yoruba elite and now jeopardises the
possibility of a common southern political front which appeared
possible for the first time in our political history. He has however
done Nigeria a lot of good by demanding that we look more closely at the
history of the civil war and learn more of what we did to ourselves. As
I eagerly wait to get my copy of the book by Achebe and the publication
of Ifeajuna’s book, I am enthralled at all the revelations that have
been coming out over the past few weeks and I believe understanding our
recent history better is the best path to nation building. Next week, I
take a look at the Hausa-Fulani and the Marginalisation of Nigerians.
DailyTrust
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