Contd. from last week
“the Igbo were being harassed and stopped from work and resuming their life in Port Harcourt. Asika encouraged them to seek the legal benefits of Awolowo who was the most powerful politician in government at the time. These Igbo businessmen met Awo, in Lagos, and after he heard them, Awo demanded that they go and pay one million pounds into his chamber’s account before he could take on their plea. The Igbo businessmen asked Awo where he thought they could get one million pounds, having just come out of a devastating war. He said it was their business and dismissed them.
“The men later met in ZC Obi’s home, and after rounds and rounds of discussions, they agreed at ZC Obi’s urging, that they would no longer pursue the matter. ZC Obi said, “Let us go back to work. Let us send our young men back to work. We shall build Aba until it gets into Port Harcourt, and no one will know the difference.” And that was precisely what they set out to do, and were about accomplishing that feat up till 1987. By 1979, the Igbo were powerful enough to be a serious factor in Nigerian politics. Between 1979 and 1983, the Igbo were not talking about marginalization. They were engaged in restoration. Mbakwe had asked Ihechukwu Madubuike as minister for education, to place as priority the establishment of another federal university in Igboland. Thus FUTO in 1980.
“Between him and Jim Nwobodo, they launched an industrial policy that quickly turned the East once more into an active economic belt. They did not wait for the federal government. Imo State University and Anambra State University of Technology were the first state universities to be established under state laws. I was reading the Imo State University Act that established the charter of the old Imo State University the other day, and I am still utterly impressed by the quality and precision of thought that went into organizing that university under the inimitable MJC Echeruo, one of Igboland’s sharpest minds of the 20th century. The same goes for ASUTHEC. Nwobodo went specifically to Harvard to make Prof. Kenneth Dike return to Enugu and establish ASUTHEC.
“Now, compare that Igbo, to this generation of the Akalogoli. Mbakwe took Shagari specifically to Ndiegoro, in Aba, wept publicly with dramatic impact, and forced Shagari to promise to establish the ecological fund to deal with places like Ndiegoro in Igboland. He compelled Shagari to understand that gas and petroleum were abundant natural resources from Imo State and that Imo deserved and must be given new shares/consideration, if the federal government did not want Imo to sue, and even begin to raise questions about the federal government’s s seizure of Eastern Nigeria oil and gas investments, like the PH refinery for which no compensation has even to this day been paid. Mbakwe pushed the oil issue and said to Shagari that the proposed petrochemical plant must be located in Imo, otherwise he would begin to build the Imo Petrochemical Industries himself. The grounds had been cleared by October 1983, and work started at the Imo Petrochemical Plant at Izombe by the time the military struck on Dec 31, 1983. It was Buhari who later relocated that plant to Eleme.
“Mbakwe began the first independent power company with the Amaraku power station under Alex Emeziem at the Ministry of Utilities. The father of my high school buddy at the Government College, Umuahia, was the project manager who designed and installed the power station at Amaraku and had begun work at the Izombe gas power station; all with engineers and technicians from the Imo State ministries of work and public utilities. They did not go to China to sign a contract. They just went to South Korea to procure the parts they designed and which they installed themselves! By 1981/1982 most towns in Imo State had electricity under the Imo State Rural Electrification project. Same with the five zonal water projects under the Mbakwe programme. The project manager was Engineer Ebiringa. They did not go to China or America or wait for the federal government; 85% of the Imo water project had been completed by the time the soldiers struck. There are still giant iron pipes buried underground in almost all the towns in the old Imo State under that project, which was designed to give Imo the first constant, clean water of any state of Nigeria. Only a phase of the Owerri water project was completed by the time Mbakwe was kicked out of office, but even so Owerri had the cleanest, most regular water of any city in Nigeria. Imo organized her public schools. Imo organized a first-class public health system. My father was commissioned under the Health Management Board as the government’s Chief Health Statistician to conduct the first broad epidemiological survey of Imo State in 1982. I saw him at work. They were serious and professional men, who took their duties very seriously because they were highly trained. The Imo State civil service was possibly the finest civil service in West Africa; finer than the federal service because they had a highly selected and well-trained pool of civil servants who delivered value to the people. They were not talking about marginalization. You may say what you like today about Jim Nwobodo, but he started the Independent Satellite newspaper in Enugu, which balanced the story coming out of Lagos. No one was talking about marginalization until Chuba Okadigbo, rightly used that word to describe the way the federal military government of Nigeria was treating the Igbo, in terms of access to real power. There were not enough Igbo officers represented in the organograms of the military governments, and yes, that word was apt, in that period. But we have taken it too far and turned it into an excuse for our intellectual and political indolence. The Igbo have waited for their comeuppance in Nigeria, but shit ain’t happening. Nigeria is moving on without us, for better or worse. We must now recalibrate and engage. Let us use the final gas in our tanks, all of us now, between 55 and 75 years, to complete the work of restoration that the last generation began but which we have abandoned because we dropped the ball. We may weep all we want and complain that Nigeria is unfair, but the universe is indifferent. I dare say, Nigeria cannot actually marginalize the Igbo. We better stop marginalising ourselves or risk our children and their children inheriting the slave mentality!! That’s the danger we court with this story of Igbo marginality, which is self-imposed, and self-indulgent!”
Reading Nwakanma, one is tempted to ask what is wrong with the present crop of Ndigbo, both the leaders and the led. They have been afflicted by inordinate dependence syndrome; even the so-called leaders are suffering from inertia.
Even the led are not better, instead of galvanising efforts to rebuild our land, we are busy burning it down, killing one another in a headless pursuit that is dead on arrival because of its planlessness, and selfish desires of jobbers, otherwise, by the time we wake up from the self-imposed nightmare, it would be too late to do anything.
Nwakanma’s expose is a timely call on our governors to synergise and shun individualistic pursuits for the good of Ala Igbo. Those who take orders from enemy territories and hurt their people should beware of the harsh judgement of history and consider where they would be when power deserts them ultimately. They should aspire to be honoured, even in death as Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Mbakwe and Okpara, and a few others are still being venerated.
ZC Obi is still saying, “Let us go back to work. Let us send our young men back to work. We shall build …and no one will know the difference.”
So, let us stop hoping on spurious help and promises from anywhere. Ndigbo, go to work!
As Nehemiah did in Jerusalem, let us mobilise to site and rebuild the broken walls of Ala Igbo. Let us arm ourselves with tenacity, love and unity, draped in the raw native entrepreneurial spirit the Lord gifted us with.
Surely, Sanballats and Tobiahs abound, but the Igbo, like their Jewish kinsmen, can be unstoppable until the walls are standing again. It is doable; shalom!