I don’t understand the Igbo race anymore. Though I am proudly Igbo, I have yet to grasp what is in us that demystifies many heroes, even Afro-haired professors.
Our Lord Jesus was described as the rock of offence (1 Peter 2:8) as well as the reason for the rising and falling of many (Luke 2:34-35). Perhaps, being a kinsman of the Igbo as logically claimed with proofs, the Igbo have been responsible for heroes turning villains.
Take Bayo Onanuga and Reuben Abati for instance. These were my heroes; men I looked up to in the noble profession of pen-pushing.
As a cub reporter, I admired Onanuga and his The News crew. These were men full of bravado, who could stare into the barrels of blazing guns and still told the news undeterred.
Sadly, never did it occur to me that my hero harboured too much hatred for the Igbo, driving him to self-destructive extremes.
Onanuga, a non-Lagosian like the Igbo, rode on the back of 2023 to expose his hatred for the Igbo, threatening the people with even powers he does not possess. Thankfully, he only managed to incite certain ineffective misguided elements to the Igbo 30 days within which to leave Lagos.
Onanuga was unrepentant and took his ethnic irredentism a notch higher when he wrote on X that he owed nobody apologies rancid rants against Ndigbo. He flaunted his tribalism card of being Yoruba first before Nigerian and labeled the Igbo as an existential threat to the Yoruba, a very hollow narrative because the Igbo have never been interested in taking over Yorubaland; they don’t need it.
Like Onanuga, Reuben Abati has allowed his bitterness against the Igbo to rob him of professional decency, displaying asininity in high places.
According to him, he heard, not that the late TOS Benson told him, that he could not buy land in Igbo land because the Igbo don’t sell lands to non-natives.
As a seasoned journalist, Abati could have investigated what he heard. Abati could have tried to buy land in Igbo land to be sure he would also be denied. Abati could have asked his Igbo friends, if any, to clarify what he believed TOS had said. He did none of those, otherwise, he would have found out that the same people who allegedly refused to sell land to TOS actually donated land to him instead of giving a false narrative to condemn an entire race.
I have witnessed and even experienced some Yoruba, refusing to rent out their property to the Igbo. That can never make me conclude that the Yoruba don’t rent out properties to the Igbo. Because I have also witnessed and even rented many properties from the Yoruba.
Of course, there are many bad Igbo as could be seen in other ethnic groups but using the few to characterise an entire race is ignoble and unacceptable.
Abati was pricked by the salutary statement by Senate President, Gosdwill Akpabio, that the enterprising Igbo build houses and establish businesses anywhere they reside in Nigeria. So, he chose a disgusting path to counter and rubbish what Akpabio said.
Abati’s bigotry betrays his envy and jealousy of the Igbo industriousness. He wanted to stir up more hatred for the Igbo but the plot has boomeranged. Instead of shamefully apologising, he still preferred to ride the high horse of infamy.
In my community in Imo State, we have many non-natives living happily with us. One of them, a Yoruba, was married to our daughter before he ran into trouble with the locusts that have invaded the South-east region. He was actively involved with security setup in the town but lost his life to the police, most unfortunately. My people mourned him like our brother, who he had become, repatriated his corpse to his hometown, and contributed immensely to his before his appreciative family. Is this not the Nigeria we all desire?
Yet the likes of Abati, despite their ‘Heathrow o wa’ exposure still live in the Stone Age, sowing seeds of division.
The good thing is that Abati does not speak for the Yoruba. There are far too many Yoruba that have seen through his puerile Igbophobia. My only worry is how a personality like Abati intentionally elected to join the mob of motor park touts and area boys, who lack the intellect to interrogate issues before lapping onto them.
If Abati intended to set up the Igbo for a fresh xenophobic attack by other Nigerians, he failed woefully. Rather he has presented the Igbo an opportunity to dispel those stale witches’ fables. It is now an established and proven fact and truth that many non-Igbo, including the Yoruba and Hausa, own properties in Igbo land.
Strangely, even with this settled truth, Abati still insists on tarring the entire race with the same dirty brush of intellectual dysentery.
Nevertheless, people now know that he deliberately peddled a fallacy against the Igbo. Abati is a merchant of hate speech and a devious instigator despite his abhorrent attempt to cow Ojy Okpe, his colleague on the live programme on Arise Television.
Okpe had followed the reactions, trailing his unfounded and unverified comments about the Igbo. She took him up on that but his haughty self flunked the opportunity to redeem any semblance of honour left of his tattered image, as a purveyor of falsehood.
Rather than appreciating the golden opportunity Okpe presented to him to redeem himself, like a loose cannon, Abati went bananas and began to heckle and threaten the lady Looking at his ‘handsome’ face, I don’t know what Duke Nduka Obaigbena thinks of his crude recruit, who has become an embarrassment to that classy television station, as this is not the first time Abati would be bringing the station to ridicule through his unguarded speech and posturing.
Abati must know that trouncing about on live television like salted flagella can only drag more mud his way as is being witnessed. Neither threat nor arrogance can wash away his sins against the Igbo about whom he knows so little.
In fairness to Abati, he is one of those little Nigerians puffed up by a systemic fraud prevalent in this disorganised mere geographical expression called Nigeria, seemingly heading somewhere but nowhere. In sane climes, he could have long been consigned to faulty historical relics..
It would be needless expecting Abati to be who he is not. His challenge to be proven wrong is not worth taking. The most credible evidence would be for him to try purchasing land in Igbo land and be denied. I would eagerly sell my piece of land to Abati if he approached me.
So, Abati should not be massaging his ignorance by throwing a challenge. If he is a gambler; let him gamble with himself and leave other Nigerians alone.
He only manifested his hatred for the Igbo, which had remained latent all the while. The craft of Igbo-bashing is spreading but funnily, the more it spreads, the more the Igbo are entrenched and prospered in all their endeavours, causing insomnia to the Abatis of this coarse land.
Truly, those who stumble on the Igbo in Nigeria the will continue to fall and be crushed. The Abatis, and some of those before them have bitter tales to tell, as they are already stumbling on the rock and being crushed.
The Igbo situation is akin to what is happening to the Jews with whom they share so much affinity. Most times I am appalled to read what supposedly knowledgeable people say about that great nation and the mischief of their Arab neighbours.
However, irrespective of how anybody or nation feels, the ‘tiny’ nation of Israel holds the destiny of mankind. Even if the entire world teams up against her, Israel can never be conquered unless Jehovah, who so promised, is no longer who He is.
Instead, the curse shall continue to follow those who curse Israel. That is why several terrorist leaders are being deleted systematically. Soon and very soon, Iran will run itself aground too.
A similar scenario awaits all enemies of Ndigbo. Okpe calmly summed up everything and I cannot agree any less: Not browbeaten by Abati’s swaggering tirade against a superior race, Okpe said: “The conversation is that a whole tribe cannot be painted with one man’s experience.”
This is the ‘nonsense’ Abati and his ilk must be told.
Shalom!