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Do the Igbo have a common cause they are fighting in Nigeria today? The question may sound funny but it is not. It is not clear to me that there is a common cause that aligns with Igbo challenges in Nigeria. If there were, it is doubtful that Igbo political leaders are invested in such a cause. It is also difficult to see them employ the right advocacy tools and actions that guarantee success in fighting for the cause.
Fighting political causes requires a leadership that is willing to make personal sacrifices for the common good. Most are in the game to help themselves. It needs political leaders ready to mobilize their regional stakeholders (economic, political, cultural and social) as well as leaders of other ethnic groups facing the same challenge. Igbo political leaders prefer to hide behind powerless socio-cultural groups. Those who win political causes follow a strategy that raise awareness of the challenge using specific tools such as public protests, petitions, legal challenges, and parliamentary interventions. Igbo political leadership is not well grounded on dedicated use of these tools. They lack the passion, perseverance and persistence needed to successfully prosecute and win a long-drawn political cause.
Why is this so?
As Chinua Achebe correctly diagnosed, the problem of Nigeria is leadership. Similarly, the Igbo cause in Nigeria today is complicated by its political leadership. There are two realities that this leadership refuses to face, realities that are central to winning any common cause they choose to fight in Nigeria. Until they grasp the nettle, current efforts to extract equity concessions from Nigeria through civil action and political agitation will continue to falter. As we indicated last week, Igbo political leaders have boxed the group into a corner, and the group is finding it difficult to locate the path to follow to attain political freedom.
Knowing the path to follow means understanding and employing the right tools to knock down what is currently perceived as economic and political marginalization. The Igbo are currently divided over two opposed responses to what it perceives as marginalisation, namely, violent civil unrest and political servitude. It is doubtful that any of these tools can lead the group to political emancipation.
How did the Igbo arrive at this pass?
Take separatist agitation. From every indication, the violent civil action that separatists launched mirrors the 1967-70 regional rebellion. Their “cause” not only derives its name but also its methods and heroes from that unfortunate era. Is it possible to succeed with the use the 1967 tool that was crushed during the war? Was it this same tool that Ndi-Igbo employed in the Second Republic to successfully return to political reckoning? Why do the separatists disdain a seemingly successful Second Republic political strategy and adopt a failed Civil War military strategy to fight what they perceive as the Igbo cause?
Ndi-Igbo did not employ political servitude to take an important seat on the table of decision-making in 1979. They owe their success to two personalities, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) and Dr. Alex Ekwueme of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). Their independently executed strategies led to Igbo Vice Presidency as well as occupation of a parliamentary speaker seat. After travelling their different routes to arrive at the table of decision-making in Nigeria, did Azikiwe and Ekwueme align to a common cause, even after the NPN-NPP Accord was signed? Here is the clue to what currently ails Igbo political leadership.
Quite often, many commentators are wont to refer to how Zik’s disciple (Chief Jim Nwobodo) scuttled Dr. Ekwueme’s presidential quest at the 1999 PDP convention in Jos. These commentators often gloss over the cause of Nwobodo’s revenge – Ekwueme’s 1983 use of NPN federal power to forcibly snatch the mandate that old Anambra State voters gave to NPP’s Nwobodo. They will forget to mention that a fine governor (Jim) cried like a baby on national television because of the heist. The NPN brigandage had only one motive which was to give Ekwueme a political footing among his Igbo people, after the NPN-NPP Accord broke down.
In 1979, the Igbo frittered away the opportunity to re-establish a pre-civil war dominance in Nigerian politics because of an ego battle between Nwobodo and Ekwueme. The NPN disrespect extended to Zik himself, with Igbo intellectuals like Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, in a fit of exuberance, describing Zik’s heartfelt lament over the NPN hijack as the “rantings of an ant.” This was when it became fashionable for Igbo leaders to resort to political servitude as a tool of relevance in Nigerian politics. In doing so, they knew full well how impossible it is to use political servitude to achieve a goal that aligns with core Igbo beliefs and values. Servitude of any kind runs against Igbo republican ethos.
To be fair, the use of servitude to work against Igbo political interest did not start with the likes of Ekwueme and Okadigbo in the Second Republic. It began with the likes of KO Mbadiwe in the First Republic. The difference with both eras was that Zik could keep the economically dependent Mbadiwe in check. Zik was also fighting a national rather than a regional cause, first to liberate colonial Nigeria from white rule and, second, to liberate independent Nigeria from growing ethnic nationalism. The Civil War made him realize that he did not succeed with the second battle, hence his decision to prosecute the Second Republic political battle from a regional front. It proved more challenging for him to fight an economically independent force as well as the federal might that Ekwueme represented. The Ekwueme-Okadigbo exertions presented the most formidable challenge to the Zik school of thought (and strategy) on Igbo survival.
The seeds of intellectual opposition to Zik, planted during the First Republic, eventually germinated during the Nigerian Civil War and is now harvested in our post-civil war republics. It began with Igbo intellectuals who advised Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu during the Civil War actively countering the wise counsel offered by Dr. Azikiwe. Zik’s position was that the Igbo should not go into a full-scale war with Nigeria. He preferred pushing the saber-rattling and propaganda to the point where Nigerian authorities would willingly approach the negotiation table. Azikiwe subsequently used his contacts to secure diplomatic recognition for Biafra through his personal friends. However, once he realized that the intellectual hawks around Ojukwu were contradicting his counsel and having their way, he wisely packed his bags and left for another “medical checkup” abroad. This move possibly saved him from suffering the fate of Colonel Victor Banjo and Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna who were executed on Ojukwu’s orders.
In the Second Republic, Dr. Ekwueme and Okadigbo presented a different intellectual challenge to the Zik School. War intellectuals were activated by a misguided idea that the Igbo could survive outside Nigeria and had the wherewithal to prosecute and win a war. They had the ears of the maximum leader who was also the sovereign. Post-war intellectuals needed to reach out to the people who exercised sovereignty in a democracy. Unable to persuade the people to vote against Zik even after pardoning a war hero and deploying him to the battle, they gravitated to personal survival through political servitude, thereby throwing the obstinate but disadvantaged Igbo under the bus.
In summary, the foundation of Igbo political decline was laid during the Civil War when intellectuals forced a change of objective into an ego battle among their leaders. This selfish battle continued to the Second Republic, when the Igbo were handed a political advantage on a gold platter. Ekwueme cemented it in the 1983 electoral tsunami that he orchestrated in old Anambra against the voters. It was no surprise that Nwobodo executed a sweet revenge against Ekwueme at the Jos Convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Today, with the demise of the prime actors, the ego battles have ceased. Unfortunately, the smoke remains in the inter-state battles that governors of the zone inherited. Ebonyi will not entertain any united front to fight a so-called Igbo cause. Imo and Abia cannot trust Anambra to lead such a cause. Enugu will grudgingly tolerate Anambra’s overbearing political and business class as well.
The ego battles of yesterday put a knife on the thing that held Igbo together and things fell apart. How to pick up the pieces is now the challenge, and the reality, that Igbo political leaders refuse to face.
