The “Igbo-Must-Go” episode that played out in Lagos in recent weeks was no happenstance. It was premeditated. It was a well-worn bellicose strategy aimed at whittling down what is perceived as Igbo influence in Lagos. The belligerent undertone of the campaign spoke volumes. The campaigners were baying for blood. The target was the then forthcoming hunger protests. It was imagined by the hate-mongers that the Igbo could overrun Lagos, if their boisterousness was not put in check. Lagospedia, the group that launched the vicious anti-Igbo campaign, was, therefore, hobbled together by the goons of the Bola Tinubu presidency as a response to the anticipated Igbo participation in the hunger protests.
The Igbo, as already proclaimed by the likes of Bayo Onanuga, must be uprooted from Lagos. They must never be allowed again to determine who wins or loses election in Lagos. The defeat of Bola Tinubu in Lagos by an Igbo man in the February 25, 2023, presidential election has remained an undying embarrassment to Tinubu, the supposed owner of Lagos, and his gang. They have vowed never to allow that happen again, and the time to actualize that plan starts now. Lagospedia, the group some people have chosen to describe as faceless, is the official executor of the “Igbo-must-go” war cry. But is the group truly faceless? That is very doubtful. But whatever may be the case, the Presidency-propelled gangsters merely billowed in the wind at the end of the day. Their targets were not available for the planned bloodbath. They could not get to the killing range because the Igbo, wherever they are in Nigeria today, have a certain perception of Nigeria and its present government. That perception shapes their actions and inactions, depending on what the circumstance dictates.
Non-Igbo Nigerians should be perceptive enough to know that the Igbo are detached from the Tinubu administration and all that appertain to it. The reason is straightforward. In 2023, an Igbo man called Peter Obi stood for the presidential election. The majority of the voting population of Nigeria stood behind him. They voted for him. And he won the election. But the cabal that controls the affairs of Nigeria, peopled mainly by northerners, chose to do otherwise. They said that it was risky to entrust an Igbo man with power. The Igbo, they said, were wild enough in a Nigeria that has put in place all institutional checks to shackle them. What then would happen if they control the levers of power in Nigeria? Such scenario, they felt, was better imagined than experienced. Consequently, they thwarted the Peter Obi victory. They will not have an Igbo as President of Nigeria, at least not now. That was what happened in 2023.
But the Igbo did not look the other way. They took political notice of what transpired and decided to watch and pray. That is the mood the Igbo nation is in at moment. That mood will not permit them to complain about a government that they had no hand in installing. The Igbo are expecting nothing from the imposed government of Tinubu and they are getting nothing. They are not bothered about the setup. They are merely tagging along with stoic indifference. Why then should they rise against the government alongside those who put it in place and are benefiting from it? The answer to this question is the heart of the matter here.
It is important to underline the fact that neither a village square nor a town hall meeting was held by the Igbo prior to the protests. No form of sensitization took place either. The Igbo just took a common position on the matter without prompting. No one needed to preach to the other. There was unanimity of purpose, something that is very rare to achieve in a human setting, especially among the republican Igbo. Yet it happened in Igbo circles across the country.
A good many Nigerians are still wondering why the Igbo were indifferent to the protests. In fact, quite a number of commentators have had to interject on this matter. In trying to know why, many of them have ended up beating about the bush. It is only the Igbo man that can truly understand his disposition towards matters Nigerian. Others can only hazard a guess, and that is what they have been doing in the matter under consideration.
Now, back to the not-so-faceless Lagospedia. I argue that those behind this group are very well known. Just as it has a name, so does it have a face. It is the brainchild of a section of the Yoruba who feel that the Tinubu presidency will be imperiled if the influence of the Igbo in Lagos is not whittled down. Bayo Onanuga betrayed this inner conviction of his people when he said that he is against the Igbo because they are a threat to the Yoruba. That is exactly what Lagospedia signifies. It is an amalgam of south-westerners who resent the Igbo so much so that they believe that these strangers should be dislodged from Lagos for the Tinubu presidency to have a breathing space in the territory. They may not have executed their devious plot now because the Igbo disappointed them. But they are still alive and strategizing. They are waiting in the wings to rise against the Igbo once the situation is ripe. Some of the Yoruba elite who are denouncing them now are being hypocritical. They were, in truth, behind the plot.
The Lagos scenario reminds us of what transpired in the North in 2017. It was the year a certain group called Coalition of Northern Youths gave the Igbo a three-month ultimatum to leave the North. They said their grouse was hinged on what they perceived as the silence of the Igbo elite to the agitation by the Indigenous People of Biafra for a separate republic. Then, the quit notice to the Igbo was made to look like the fancy and fantasy of northern youths. But it was not. Instead, it was, in truth and in fact, the plot of the northern elite. They merely fronted the youths as a ploy.
The same thing is true of the “Igbo-Must-Go” campaign in Lagos. It is an elite conspiracy. Lagospedia is just the outward manifestation of a well-oiled ethnic drive aimed at dislodging the Igbo from Lagos and elsewhere in the South West, and ultimately weakening their reach and influence. The plot is still being nurtured. But now that the resentment against the Igbo has assumed a life of its own, what next should we expect? Will the Igbo be forced out of the federation or will they be permitted to go in peace?