When vision is not in place some features must be in place. There must be rat race. In this situation, everybody is for himself and what becomes of the larger society is of little interest. No one needs the gift of clairvoyance to tell what the conditions can be in such a setting. Definitely, a sense of ownership would be near absent or very loose to say the least.
Look at Nigeria and tell us truthfully what you see and the meaning you make of it? Truth be told, the centre isn’t holding. Not because it was structured to be so. Rather, what has happened is that with eyes wide open, our functionaries have been working in opposite directions. That is why negative indices have been thrown up, making life very difficult.
Let›s take the point a little deeper. The Igbo were defeated in a civil war and since the war ended have been treated as a vanquished people. Their territory was not only balkanised in the most atrocious manner, a race with a very huge population has systematically been turned into a minority. Could anything have been more frustrating? They were until recently shouting marginalization, it would appear they are punch drunk and from the look of things have thrown in the towel. There is something near a surrender to fate. The attitude seems to be what we see take.
This very industrious group that ordinarily ought to be a great asset to any society, where such a group is found tells whoever cares to hear that they are not interested in how Nigeria is run. They don›t hate this country. In fact, of all the ethnic groups in the country, they have practically done far more to live out the Nigerian dream. Rather than receive encouragement, they have been subjected to various acts of alienation and frustrations. It is such that they doubt if they are truly wanted in the country today. Talk about a civil protest, you hear them say without holding a meeting that if there is any plan to protest against poor governance or save Nigeria, Igbo won›t be part of it. This is the prevailing view and mood. I don›t have space to go into the implications of the ‹siddon look› option for them and then the country. My thinking is they›ve anyone reading is capable of doing the simple analysis and drawing the right deductions.
People in the South South aren›t happy either. They gave and are still giving this country much of the wealth but have got nothing, absolutely nothing positive in return. The country gave them degradation and poverty on a massive scale. Their sense of worth has be impaired to a very great extent. For them currently, life isn’t a song worth singing at all. In our warped ways of doing things we expect them to be happy and to express belief in the set. Who in his right sense embraces what has capacity to eat him up?
Not even an insane person will do, because mad people even run from fire. They can sense a dangerous trailer vehicle approaching and make haste to clear the road. Human stimulus reacts negatively to threats and our country is just full of that. People of the North Central region can›t find sense in any bonding since they have been dispossessed of their lands and killed daily in huge numbers by foreign militias imported into the country for supremacist ambitions.
Every country in its nascent level requires high degree of sense of ownership from her citizens to pull through obstacles to build a true nation state in which life would be abundant for her people. Truth is we don›t have that. Elders in Umuiku, my village in Abia State, often say that a «goat owned by nobody dies of hunger.» We have allowed few misguided people to turn our beloved country into this proverbial goat and it is bleeding and good enough all of us can attest to the terrible state of things.
Confusion and instability are stoking the land and this is because good men chose to leave the stage to fools, mediocres, the less gifted and outright blind people. Can the blind lead the blind? Someone asked “won’t both the leader and the led find home inside very dirty gutters?” Vision produces direction and passion, so when it is lacking, the crab philosophy fills the void, there is this perpetual war of attrition and struggle for the common patrimony and partition takes precedence far and above reasonable, noble actions.
A closed economy is not totally responsible for all the crimes plaguing the country. Far many of our troubles are instigated by farcists in our midst masquerading as democrats, agents of salvation and good governance. They spoil the brood just to take and sustain every advantage. How many of us concerned citizens have taken time to ponder and ask ourselves: if we had so many agents of good leadership, why is the country the way it has turned out to be after more than 63 years of self-government? Every year the government reels out names of «very distinguished» citizens and bestows honours on them yet the country has only made progress, only in the reverse. What then is the issue? Who can tell?
Let›s leave it at that and bring it down to the issues on the topic, Ndume, Onanuga and protest, and all parts of the drama currently playing out for Nigerians to watch. Senator Ali Ndume has been in the Nigerian Senate for about 20 years. It is not certain we have heard his voice very stringently on very critical national issues as he is relentlessly giving dirty blows to the President Bola Tinubu-led federal government. Before this new revolutionary turned coat he had been known to mainly champion and promote sectional northern interest.
He was the one who forced the Tinubu government which is barely a year old in office to pull out a whopping N90 billion naira to subsidize religious pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims. Doing this at a time the country was passing through one of her very worst economic troubles. At a time borrowing is very high if not the all time highest. It was the time Senator Ndume insisted we spend public funds on what ought to be purely a private undertaking. He threatened repercussions if not met. Of course a captive president bowed. Few months after, the same Ndume is on a public drama platform hitting the President below the belt, calling him names, accusing him of insensitivity and of bringing “sufferings” to Nigerians. How could we have spent hard gotten cash on religion and not expect suffering? It totally baffles.
Ironically today the same emasculated citizens are the ones beginning to see and to call Ndume a hero. At the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where I took many courses on politics we were taught to know that the minds of most citizens are empty, they are filled by whatever wind is blowing past at the moment. Hunger and deprivation leave human beings out of rationalization and keep them very vulnerable. This is a tested and proven theory. Most hungry people will fall for anything, including activities that could bring their death if the price is right.
They are indeed very susceptible to any kind of influence. This explains why Senator Ndume can in a twinkle of an eye turn into a «national hero››. Ndume is not fighting for the country to develop, else he would have become a hero a long time ago. He is part of a tiny group of northern power manipulators who put presidents of Southern extraction on the edge all through their tenure.
They won’t remove Tinubu but they will leave with the image of a badly bruised president who must agree to well defined terms if he is to get another term. Smart politics but at the detriment of who? Your guess is as good as mine.
Dogs don›t eat dogs, Bayo Onanuga is a journalist just as yours truly that would have been a ground to to excuse his obvious mishandling of a highly sensitive position as that of a president›s spokesman but the interest of the country supersedes that of individuals and groups. Today, Igbo are gradually divesting from Lagos and this is because of acts precipitated by men like Onanuga in the times before the 2023 election turned out to be an eye opener that many haven›t yet bought into the concept of Nigeria for all. Many still believe our area is our own. Such men attributed EndSARS protest to Igbo in Lagos and members of Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).
It is on record that Onanuga was one of those few Yorubas who issued ethnic profiling statements during that period which dovetailed to attacks on Igbo who made efforts to go out and vote their choices. As the president›s spokesman he has continued with his acerbic style with the latest being the accusation that Peter Obi is the mastermind behind an alleged plan by young people to stage a protest against the federal government in August.
Some of us have had the privilege to practically do the job Onanuga is currently doing even though at a much higher level yet the principles of operation are basically the same. What is the basic assignment of a spokesperson? To make his principal and the organization he superintendents have a connection with the target group, in this case the citizens. There can›t be intimacy and understanding that should flow from it if the two can›t agree on basic matters.
The chief task of the spokesman is not to make statements attacking foes. It is to achieve harmonious relationships drawing from clarity of issues, currying understanding especially in very difficult situations and winning friends. If all a spokesman does is to increase the gulf then he is not fit for the office. If by his vituperations he succeeds in winning more enemies to his boss and organization, what that confirms is that he is the number enemy of the one who engaged him, the institution and by extension the people whose interest they were supposed to serve.
Many would wish Onanuga knew a few things. One of them would be that his boss needs the Igbo to weather the storm. The greatest challengers of the Tinubu government are not Igbo but the north whose sense of entitlement is touched by the activities they see. Not the Igbo who have since resigned to fate. A good power manager will court the Igbo at a time like this and not widen whatever gap that existed.
Attacking Obi at this time would seem like cutting the nose to spite the face. A very wrong and misguided act. What we expect Onanuga to do would be to ask his boss to constructively engage the people of South East, possibly placate them with a political solution to the issue of Nnamdi Kanu. The southeast will come alive and that would give some filip to the current central government to move ahead far more strongly. A good spokesman opens up alternatives to policy matters, especially matters arising from feedback. Perhaps Onanuga wants to make his name through the nasty path style of the Mafia. This will be too dangerous for the political health of his boss.
Finally, those of us who read the heartbeat of Igbosl get it correct. If Peter Obi is sponsoring a protest it should be expected that Southeast where he hails from should be at the centre for intense mobilization but the position in the region is no participation in any kind of protest. There seems to be this agreement they have no stake at all in Nigeria. They didn›t set to take this position but this is what inept and short-circuited leadership spanning decades has brought on the country. The big question remains: «Who will bell the cat?»