THE IGBOS AND THEIR PRESIDENTIAL PIPE DREAM

By Michael Nnebe (mnfargo@gmail.com)

Whenever Apostle Paul wants to attack his fellow Jews for their transgressions, he would first give his credentials as a Jew, a Pharisee, and one who studied under Gamaliel. In the same fashion I wish to state that I am an Awka man, kpomkwem! Both my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents were all from Awka, and I have traced my ancestry going back a thousand two hundred years to Nnebeuzo compound at Agulu Umana, in Eziagu local government area of Enugu State. Every four years we go through these routine noise-making, agitating for an Igbo presidency in the next cycle of Presidential election. A few political Igbo heavy weights will make their pronouncements, Ohaneze will concur, and MASSOP will threaten hell fire if this is not accomplished. Uchu gbakwa oru ma oshikete! Yoruba people will read these headlines and shake their collective heads saying, Otio, omo Okoro don begin again o. The Hausas will read the same thing and say, these Nyamiri people sef, wetin make them think say we go let them rule this country.

As sad as these comments may be, the truth is that neither the Yorubas nor the Hausas or indeed any other tribe in Nigeria represent a serious impediment to the aspirations of the Igbos in Nigeria. Our number one obstacle to the Presidency is the Igbo man himself. We have too many chiefs and hardly any Indians in Igboland, and the adage "Igbo enwe eze" is not a misnomer. We truly do not have a unified voice through any organization or individual, and often our politicians are among the finest in Nigeria that money can buy. This Igbo enwe eze mentality has made it impossible for us to unify ourselves under a single candidate in any Presidential election in Nigeria. When Ekwueme came out in 1999, save for the contrary wish of the military, he was arguably the best chance for an Igbo man to attain the highest seat of democratic power in Nigeria.

The Igbos failed to stand with him. After many lobbying and cajoling most other Igbos dropped out to give Ekwueme the maximum chance of success. But, of course, one Igbo man, Jim Nwobodo refused to step down for him and went against him all the way. But Jim did not constitute a serious challenge to Ekwueme. What really made me cry as an Igbo man was on the day of the primaries in Jos when I counted six full fledged Igbo governors (including Odili) as they cast their votes for Obasanjo. Only Mbadinuju, the governor of Anambra state voted for Alex Ekwueme. Well, the rest is now history. I do not think that people's votes should be based on tribe, and I would forgive any man that voted his conscience, but we all know that conscience had nothing to do with what transpired in Jos in 1999. After Babangida's train of cash arrived from Mina, Solomon Lar was financially persuaded to postpone the primaries until nearly three thousand radical delegates (majority of who were ekwueme's supporters) were disqualified. The Igbo governors became the next in line to be bamboozled with money until they towed the finely defined line drawn by Babangida himself.

In early 2003 the Igbos held a historic all Igbo meeting at Okpara Square in Enugu. The only thing in the agenda was how to achieve an Igbo presidency in 2003. This meeting became crucial after the Housas have signalled that they will not back Obasanjo in2003. At this point Governor Orji Uzor Kalu was already in a daily war of words against Obasanjo, and he often fired at the man in Aso Rock with such reckless abandon that I was beginning to think that Orji was probably backed by the CIA or MI5 or Mossad. But he wasn't. Orji Kalu was just a courageous Igbo man, if only he meant well for the Igbos or even his own Abia State, but he didn't. He gave such a rousing speech at Okpara Square that when he finished he was carried shoulder high by Igbo youths who sand and screamed that Orji was the news Igbo face. Akuko! The gist of his speech was that the Igbos will no longer tolerate any Igbo politician that attempts to sabotage the Igbo dream of making an Igbo man the President of Nigeria in 2003.

As Orji spoke at Okpara Square, one of my friends in America was being recruited by Otumba Johnson Fashawe on behalf of Obasanjo to replace Orji as governor of Abia State. A few months after this scheme became known to Orji, and the seriousness of it, he ran to Aso Rock, knelt down for Baba and pleaded for all his sins to be forgiven. Surely he must have sworn to some oath because the PDP primaries took place just a few months after the all Igbo event in Enugu, and Abia State was the first state called to vote, and Orji Uzor Kalu again voted for Obasanjo even as Ekwueme's name was there on the ballot. Not only him, all the other Igbo governors again voted for Obasanjo. Now, even if they had concluded that Obasanjo would win, at least they could have made a statement in line with our agreement at Okpara Square and voted for Ekwueme.

Today Orji Uzor Kalu is once again making rounds across Igbo land and beyond, agitating for an Igbo President come 2015. Many other Igbo leaders including Ohaneze have all spoken on the need for an Igbo President in 2015. Well, the impulse to dream has been beaten out of me by my various experiences in the affairs of Igbo politics. The truth is that most of these bozos out there may not even win their own wards in a free and fair election yet they go about pulling wools over our collective Igbo eyes. Some of them have agendas to become Vice President so they canvass for our support, which presumably they will hand over to one Hausa man that will make them their running mate. Igbo politicians are failing their people in the most alarming way. Since Ekwueme, one Igbo politician in my opinion has emerged unblemished and with a reasonable potential, but like all Igbo politicians he has now squandered all those goodwill because he made one unpardonable mistake.

Ken Nnamani was arguably the last Nigerian that put a stop to Obasanjo's wish to remain in power indefinitely. What he did as the Senate President gained him my personal respect and admiration. Nigerians all over loved him for standing firm when he could have collected any number of billions he wished for to allow Obasanjo his way. I thought, here is one Igbo man that if he remains unblemished and tries somehow to stay relevant, could one day become the first Igbo President. But Igbos are often impatient, and when he pitched his tent with Babangida to run as his running mate in 2011, it became the very end of him politically. He could still be appointed to any post within PDP or even be made a minister, but in my opinion he has lost that abundant goodwill of majority of Nigerians in a Presidential contest.

To ask or even demand for Igbo unity is not asking for the impossible. In 2011 we saw how five Hausas came out in pursuit of their presidential ambitions within PDP. At the end of the day, they all submitted themselves to the Arewa Consultative Forum, who formed a panel to decide which of the candidates would be allowed to represent the North. Even the high and mighty like Babangida himself was humble enough to bow out for Atiku as recommended by the panel. This can never happen in Igbo land, but we will make the loudest noise in our agitation for an Igbo President. Noise alone cannot grant any people their collective wishes.

The Igbos have this collective habit of not honouring their own. Ojukwu was largely forgotten in a rented house at Independence Layout Enugu until a few years before he died. Thanks to Bianca's insistence that those who benefited from him politically should put their money where their mouth is, and finally Casa Bianca was built at the GRA for him. Upon his death we spent hundreds of millions between the Federal Government and the Southeast Governors to give him a heroic burial. Who in Igbo land has ever considered Achebe in spite of his worldwide fame, now that he is dead we will most likely spend a lot to give him a heroic burial. Perhaps we are waiting for Ekwueme to die before we begin to recognize him. We may have to wait a very long time, for this is a man that has found favour in the eyes of the Lord, and may be with us for a long while. While we still have him, we should begin to immortalize him. I have not seen a single significant monument or institution in Igbo land named after him.

And here is another kicker, I have never really taken time to study the claims of Igbo Jewish heritage and there is no biological or archaeological evidence to draw me to a favourable conclusion. But the behaviour of Igbos are not that different from that of the Jews. President Jonathan told us that he is an Igbo man. We don't have to take his word for it. But the man bears two Igbo names (Ebele, and Azikiwe) and we know that upwards of 40% of people from the South South are Igbos. From Delta to Rivers and every state in between, there are many Igbos and many more married to Igbos. I don't know the history of the President personally, but have we as Igbos researched it to find out if indeed he had any Igbo roots? Many Igbos have ruled out such possibility of his genuine Igboness. Rather like the Jews who ruled out Christ saying, "Has anything good ever come out of Nazareth?" Today Igbos are busy scheming with the Hausas to pull down possibly one of their own in 2015.

Is it then possible that like the Jews, the Messiah the Igbos have been waiting for is now sitting in Aso Rock and yet we did not know it, but instead conspiring to hand his head to Pontius Pilate. I am neither a fan nor a sycophant for Jonathan and nobody in Nigeria can pay me enough to write things other than what I believe, but a close examination reveals that this man has been quietly doing several things for the Igbos that no other Nigerian President has done before him. Every one of them from Gowon had promised to build a second River Niger bridge at Onitsha and never delivered. Jonathan went there once as President, promised, and now provided the money in this year's budget to start building it this year. Others have promised to dredge the River Niger, Jonathan has now finished the dredging, build and commissioned a Warf at Onitsha. For more than twenty years they have been promising to make Enugu an international airport, Yar'adua made it one but did not fund the upgrades until Jonathan came and funded it, and now you can fly directly from anywhere in the world into Enugu. And how fitting that Ojukwu's air ambulance was the first international flight in and out of Enugu. For the first time since the war, an Igbo man is now the highest ranking military man in Nigeria. I can go on endlessly while my brothers are out there in Mina and Taraba searching for a Northern replacement for Jonathan, all in the guise for an Igbo President.

Sometimes they make it appear as if this presidency thing is all there is to be. Why is it that I did not see a single Igbo person in the latest Forbes list of richest Africans that included 12 Nigerians? The Jews have never been President in America yet they control everything from Wall Street to Hollywood. Even the Presidency itself is controlled by the Jews, for no American President would deer go against the wishes of that tiny nation of Israel. My brothers, that is real power, and those are the sort of powers we should be striving for in Nigeria, but until we have such powers, and are better united than we are currently, until Abia State stops evicting other Igbo civil servants in Abia, and Enugu stop making other Igbos feel like they don't belong there, etc, etc, our Presidential ambitions would remain only a pipe dream.