Among the dominant Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba ethnic groups, marginalisation is a buzzword, a fashionable phrase that gives cold comfort in hot political weather. The cry of marginalisation is heard more often among the Igbo but is not exclusive to the group. Other ethnic groups employed it in the past to protest what they saw as exclusion from the table of policy making.
Recently, the Arewa Economic Forum cried marginalisation and gave it two names – Yorubanisation and Lagoslisation. Chairman of the Forum, Ibrahim Dandakata, told newsmen that President Tinubu was marginalising the north in his appointments, after the region worked hardest to enthrone him.
Similarly, the Yoruba ethnic group adopted the marginalisation mantra in all of the 16 years that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governed Nigeria. It did not matter that a Yoruba was in power, as president and military commander-in-chief, for half of that period.
Like the Yoruba, the cry of Igbo marginalisation is also seasonal, depending on how the wind blows for their political leaders. But this is where the similarity ends. The difference between the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba marginalisation mantra and the Igbo tune is the strategic response that each group deploys to counter what it perceives as an emerging exclusion.
This difference is clearly a matter of political strategy, a skill that unfortunately appears to be in rapid decline among Igbo leaders. Stephen Covey outlined this difference in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He gave the example of workers clearing a forest and a manager that climbed a tree to survey the bush and subsequently informed them that they were clearing the wrong path. Similarly, Nigerian politics is a jungle of fertile land with marginalisation as the bush that must be cleared for planting and harvest of political wealth. How politicians approach the cutting down of this bush makes all the difference among stakeholders of the dominant groups.
While other groups see the jungle as a fertile land that requires the use of brains and brawn to clear, plant and harvest wealth, Igbo stakeholders see the task like the elephant and the blind men. Two examples will suffice. Political leaders appear to have accepted that, to earn a living, it is a bush that they must clear and cultivate for stakeholders outside their region. Separatists, the more vociferous marginalisation warriors, see it as the bush that Nigeria has refused to cut down for the Igbo to cultivate and earn a decent living. The labours of the political leaders destroy any hopes of a united front to confront the bush clearing, while the challenge of the separatists inadvertently make the region poorer and more insecure. In other words, the Igbo are yet to outline and pursue a common, workable strategy to clear the bush.
It is worth restating that Igbo political leaders, including the young Turks among them, somehow approach the task of clearing the marginalisation bush like our modern day trade union leaders. Most of them charge forward with cries of aluta but end up as opportunists in search of crumbs from the political table. Rather than become political gladiators for their group, they are happy to transform into bag carriers and praise singers of other lords whose groups planned and successfully executed a political strategy that propelled them to the head of the table.
And they are clearing the wrong path as well. The marginalisation bush they are busy clearing is not an Igbo Cause. It is the consequence of Igbo political leaders taking their eyes off the political ball. And this has nothing to do with the fact that the Igbo lost a war. It has everything to do with the fact that we lost the strategist and were encouraged by our neighbours to pour scorn on his memory.
Since the turn of the Republic in 1999, the only cause that Nigerians have come to associate with the Igbo is separation from those accusing the State of marginalisation. But this is a lie. Marginalisation implies that the Igbo, as a group, are excluded or denied access to certain areas of life or living in Nigeria. These areas are broadly identified in the literature as economic, political and social. Do the Igbo suffer economic marginalisation, discrimination in amassing wealth or getting employment? Do they suffer political marginalisation, prevented from gaining access to the political process (such as voting in elections and not being allowed to become legislators or members of the policy making machinery of the federal government)? Do the Igbo suffer social marginalisation, not able to participate in any form of social or leisure pursuits in any part of Nigeria? On the face of it, these questions suggest that, for the most part, those who are fighting what they consider as marginalisation for the Igbo focus solely on the economic.
As already indicated, economic marginalization occurs in two ways, namely disparity in amassing wealth and disparity in employment. As far as one can tell, the Igbo have always found a way to outdo most other ethnic groups in the ability to amass wealth. Except in a few cases where they joined other groups in the current penchant to get rich quick, the wealth they amass is often a product of their brain and brawn. earned, merited wealth. The wealth, if we can call it that, which they gather from a disadvantaged position, is the one that is gained through corruption. Corrupt wealth is often a product of access to political power, which the Igbo politicians complain that they do not have. But no one took political power from the Igbo. They managed to box themselves into a corner. As for employment, I have always considered that this is the easiest challenge facing the Igbo, because it requires being present and using all the instruments of equal opportunity employment that the laws provide to police public sector employment.
How did the political leaders box themselves into a corner? Simple; they lost the access to political power. How did this happen? Keep in mind that Nigeria began life as an independent nation with the Igbo at the commanding heights. The Igbo was President and commander in chief of the armed forces, president of the Senate, and leader of a national party that controlled the cabinet (the NCNC had more cabinet ministers than NPC which was the ruling party). Granted, there was an intervening war that knocked the Igbo off the top of the economic and political ladder. Nevertheless, the Igbo regrouped and clawed their way back to economic and political reckoning. In the Second Republic, although the Igbo approached from a clearly regional platform, they nevertheless sat as partners of the ruling party, with a Vice President and Speaker of the House of Representatives of Igbo extraction. The Igbo achieved this feat in less than a decade after the War.
From the foregoing, it can be said that the so-called Igbo marginalisation must have either been orchestrated during the military intervention of 1983 to 1999, or by politicians in this Republic that began in 1999. However, it is an argument that cannot be sustained. Neither the Obasanjo nor the Yar’Adua-Jonathan administrations can be accused of marginalizing the Igbo. The only thing that Nigeria has not done for the Igbo is to allow a president of Igbo extraction to emerge. This is neither tragedy nor evidence of marginalisation.
Nigeria has 250 ethnic groups. If therefore only two groups – the Fulani and the Yoruba – have continued to dominate the presidency from 1999 to date, it is not the fault of any disfavoured group, including the Igbo. It is rather the product of strategic thinking that the dominant groups brought into politics. While we can say that the Fulani was gifted their strategy by the white men that colonized us, it can be argued that the Yoruba derived their strategy from studying the Igbo. History shows that in strategic group positioning and political brinksmanship, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe can be considered head and shoulders above Chief Obafemi Awolowo. This has never been in contest. The Yoruba ascendency to political power became manifest only after Zik and Awolowo died.
The question therefore is why the death of Zik led to Igbo decline in Nigerian politics (wrongly interpreted as marginalisation) while the Yoruba ascended after the death of their revered leader? This is the subject that we shall turn to next. For now, let us conclude that the effect of the Igbo decline in Nigerian politics is the only thing that remotely resembles marginalisation, political marginalisation. It manifests in two realities, namely, inability of the Igbo political class to get a “fair share” of the corruption wealth, and policies that appear to target and discourage Igbo entrepreneurship drive. The Igbo appear powerless to challenge and overcome this only because its stakeholders failed to build on the foundation that their political progenitors laid.
The Igbo owe an apology to Nnamdi Azikiwe, the nationalist who brought them together and fused them into a formidable political fighting force.