Igbo versus Yoruba:- The Igbo-Yoruba feud

Topics:

• The Igbo-Yoruba feud
• Time to end the bad blood between the Yorubas and Ndigbo -Femi Aribisala

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The Igbo-Yoruba feud

By Chuks Iloegbunam - Vanguard, Nigeria.

Mr. Iloegbunam is the author of Ironside, the biography of General Aguiyi-ronsi.

THE feud between the Igbo and the Yoruba ethnic groups is contrived, just like the feud between the Igbo and the Ikwere. Whenever these feuds take centrestage, the impetus is invariably traceable to the divide-and-rule imperative, which inevitably profits the oligarchy of northern Nigeria. Every other explanation adduced in the explanation of the phenomenon can only be peripheral. It is important to make this point from the outset, before going about the business of explanations - for the benefit of those who may genuinely be ignorant of a crucial factor in the continued inability to resolve some of the more critical of Nigeria's contradictions.

Femi Aribisala, one of the more perceptive of the motley coterie of columnists currently on the national stage, discussed the origins and manifestations of this feud in an incisive article entitled Time To End the bad blood between the Yorubas and Ndigbo (Vanguard January 12, 2016). "What is the basis of all this hate?" Mr. Aribisala asks."In the sixties, the Igbo were slaughtered in pogroms in the North. However, the principal exchange of hateful words today is not between Northerners and Easterners, but between Easterners and Westerners. Why are these two ethnic groups so much at loggerheads?"

The straightforward answer is that it serves the interest of the "core" North to keep the South permanently in mutually assured destructive contention on largely immaterial issues. It happened between the Igbo and the old Rivers State in the wake of the Nigerian civil war. It was suddenly and conveniently "discovered" that the Ikwerre were not and had never been Igbo. The people went into a flourish of re-spelling: Umuomasi became Rumuomasi; Umukrushi became Rumukrushi; Umuola became Rumuola; Umueme became Rumueme.In truth, all these represent no more than distinct dialectal spellings of Igbo root names typical to the areas around Port Harcourt. But the re-spelling exercise was used to manufacture an entirely new ethnic group.

The acclaimed writer, Professor (Captain) Elechi Amadi, who led the group that lent intellectual weight to this fad,went further to celebrate in fictional terms the political marriage between Rivers people and Northern Nigeria. Yet, he did not see it fit to change his name to Relechi Ramadi. Of course, the contrived ethnic dissonance achieved its purpose. While the fight raged relentlessly on "Abandoned Properties", mostly mud houses built in the 1930s and 1940s, the "core" North moved in and harvested the oil rewards.
Their members became instant millionaires by being allocated shiploads of crude, which they sold off at the Rotterdam Spot Market. Further, they appropriated 99 percent of the oil blocs. Then they seized Professor Tam David-West, a Rivers man, "tried" him for causing the country "economic adversity" and handed him a tidy prison term.But the picture is becoming clearer. Had the black gold been found in the "core" North, would the Rivers man have been allocated even one percent of the oil blocs?

It was not the Igbo that killed Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro. It was not the Igbo that killed Ken Saro-Wiwa.

It was not the Igbo that banished Delta nights with the interminable flare of gas. It was not the Igbo that ordered the November 20, 1999 expeditionary attack on Odi that left 2500 Ijaw citizens killed and the town reduced to rubble.

The Igbo was accused of desiring nothing but the expropriation of Delta oil and gas. But geophysicssince proved that the entire Igbo country sits on oil, and holds in its bowels the largest concentration of gas on the Africa continent. That is the way everything goes and turns round.

The Delta people, previously cajoled into believing that they had been liberated from Ndigbo, are beginning to know differently. They have discovered their real oppressors. President Jonathan, a Rivers man, was denied a second term in office. His single tenure was covered in a mountain of mendacity by the manipulators of sectional press and political blackmail. The traditional "political allies" of the Southern minorities felt affronted by being asked to vote a second term for one of those they claimed to have "liberated" from Igbo clutches and talons!

It is on the same plane that the feud between Ndigbo and the Yoruba sits today.True, prophets abound who received messages directly from God that President Jonathan would lose his reelection bid. But realpolitik always made it obvious to informed non-prophets that no two of the ethnic tripod of Nigerian politics could bind together without carrying theday of national ballot. That is what the entire feud currently playing out between the Yoruba and the Igbo is about. Suddenly, it was discovered that Ndigbo are in cahoots to adulterate Yoruba culture! Suddenly it was remembered that, during the 1950s, Chief Awolowo had cheated Dr. Azikiwe of the West Regional premiership by playing the ethnic card. In the circumstance, verbal missiles have been hitting antipodal zones with the destructive insistence of heavy artillery concentration.

While this distraction was in ascent, a leeway was created for imbuing the Chosen One with the political sagacity that he so pitifully lacks. While this distraction runs, the entity suffers because a divided South guarantees less than enough mobilization for a national front to push for positive movement and needed reforms. This is where Aribisala's lament becomes more apposite: "[The Yoruba and the Igbo]prefer a Nigeria that practices fiscal federalism. Both want a country with a weaker centre. Both want a Nigeria that rewards merit, with a state-structure based on resource-control. Both groups want a Nigeria committed to self-determination. These are grounds for cooperation as opposed to discord. If the North is not to continue to take the South for granted, it must not be allowed to continue to operate in the confidence that the East and the West will always be divided."

That is the problem. The North does not operate in the confidence of eternal East-West dislocations. It surreptitiously incites and nurtures them, remotely controlling surrogates who celebrate sinecures at the expense of self-determination and fiscal independence! That is why, despiteAribisala'srealism, Northern pragmatism will ensure that the contrived Yoruba-Igbo discord does not abate. If anything, it is set to escalate. One only needs to critically examine the true nature of the Government of Change since served Nigerians on a platter of media overkill, to fully understand the state of play. Despotism is staging a comeback, propped up by a - not the - Yoruba media, which objectifies its permutations and predilections through a virulent antipathy for Ndigbo.

This ensures the attenuation of pressure from the Chosen One. There is firmly in place an abundance of menopausal professors of Law rabidly justifying the unfolding, visceral string of disobediences to court injunctions. The allegiance to true fiscal federalism, a central plank of the Yoruba profession of a continued corporate Nigeria, has all but been deliberately diminished. And, generally obfuscating every space for rational thinking and committed leadership, is the conundrum of trial by media. Those who have been setting the national clock back by decades confuse themselves by thinking that they are getting one back on the PDP. That is false. What they are doing is simply intensifying the artificial war between the Igbo and the Yoruba, in order that those born to rule would hold permanent sway. Yet, there is a redeeming feature in this morass of crassness - the very fact that everything goes and turns round.

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Time to end the bad blood between the Yorubas and Ndigbo -Femi Aribisala

Written by By Femi Aribisala - Vanguard.

THE Yorubas and the Igbos, two of the most resourceful, engaging and outgoing ethnic groups in Nigeria, are becoming implacable enemies. Increasingly, they seem to hate one another with pure hatred. I never appreciated the extent of their animosity until the social media came of age in Nigeria. Now, hardly a day passes that you will not find Yorubas and Igbos exchanging hateful words on internet blogs.

The Nigerian civil war ended in 1970. Nevertheless, it continues to rage today on social media mostly by people who were not even alive during the civil war. In blog after blog, the Yorubas and the Igbos go out of their way to abuse one another for the most inconsequential of reasons. This hatred is becoming so deep-seated, it needs to be addressed before it gets completely out of hand. It is time to call a truce. A conscious effort needs to be made by opinion-leaders on both sides of the ethnic divide to put a stop to this nonsense.

Ethnic stereotyping

Both the Yorubas and the Igbo stereotype one another. To the Igbo, the Yorubas are the "ngbati ngbati" "ofemmanu" who eat too much oil. They are masters of duplicity and deception; saying one thing while meaning another. To the Yorubas, the Igbo are clannish and money-minded. They are Shylock traders who specialise in selling counterfeit goods.

But the truth is that stereotypes are essentially generalisations and exaggerations. In a lot of cases, they are unreliable and untrue. Stereotypes must be recognised at their most effective as a joke. They are the stock-in-trade of seasoned comedians; the garnish for side-splitting anecdotes at weddings and social gatherings. Stereotypes should not be taken seriously. We should laugh at them without being offended by them.

The more Nigeria develops as a melting pot of nations, the more we should be able to laugh at ourselves. The greater inclination to do this denotes increasing strength of character and self-confidence. However, with the advancement of social media, the banter has gone way beyond the jocular and innocuous to outright malice and unadulterated hatred. Increasingly, what you hear are abusive and pejorative labels of "Yariba," "Yorubastards" and "Yorobbers;" as well as "Eboes," "Zooafrans" and "Biafrauds."

As the insults fly with abandon, you begin to wonder where all this comes from. What is the basis of all this hate? In the sixties, the Igbo were slaughtered in pogroms in the North. However, the principal exchange of hateful words today is not between Northerners and Easterners, but between Easterners and Westerners. Why are these two ethnic groups so much at loggerheads? How did we get to this pass?

Malicious stereotyping often involves denigrating the strengths of others. The Igbo are very enterprising; a very valuable resource in a developing country like Nigeria. But then this is castigated as mercenary. The Yorubas take great pride in education; another valuable asset in today's modern world. But then they are derided as using this to get one over on others.

The saving grace is that the two groups live side-by-side in peace and quiet in different parts of the country. Moreover, the animosity between them, especially among the younger generation, has not prevented their boys and girls and men and women from falling in love. Yoruba men marry Igbo women; and Igbo men marry Yoruba women. Meanwhile, "a lutta continua."

Awolowo factor

The Igbo tar the Yorubas with the brush of Awolowo, who they label as "the father of ethnicity in Nigeria." In that narrative, it is conveniently overlooked that the broadmindedness of the Yorubas enabled Azikiwe, an Igbo man, to win a regional election in the Yoruba heartland in 1954. Instead, what is harped on is the fact that Awolowo mobilised Yoruba politicians to nullify that victory by decamping from Azikiwe's more nationalist camp to Awolowo's more ethnically-focused camp.

One of the newspaper headlines that sticks in my memory from 50 years ago is the one that said: "If East Goes, West will Go- Awo." After a visit to Ojukwu in Enugu at the height of the acrimony over the mass killing of the Igbo in the North in the mid-1960s, Awolowo declared that if the East was allowed to secede as a result of acts of omission or commission, he would also lead the West into secession.

This flashed a green light for Igbo secession. But when the East seceded, Awolowo failed to mobilise the West to follow suit. Not only did the West not join the East in secession, it joined the North in fighting against the East. Awolowo then became the Commissioner of Finance and Vice-President of the Federal Executive Council of the Nigerian government that prosecuted the war against Biafran secession.

The Igbo have rightly deemed this a great betrayal. But their case against Awolowo did not end there. As finance minister, Awolowo was the brainchild of the strategy to blockade Biafra; leading to mass Igbo starvation and deaths. With the end of the war, it was also alleged that Awolowo orchestrated the policy whereby the totality of individual holdings of Biafran currency was converted to Nigerian legal tender at a flat maximum amount of only 20 pounds.

This effectively pauperized the Igbo. Since it also coincided with the period when Nigerian corporations were being privatised, it had the effect of locking out the Igbo from strategic sectors of the Nigerian economy; gobbled up in the main by the Hausa-Fulanis and Yorubas.

Brothers in adversity

The Igbo case against Awolowo has become the Igbo case against the Yorubas. In the process, it is easily overlooked that prominent Yorubas, like Tai Solarin and Wole Soyinka, defended the Igbo right to self-determination during the Biafran War. The properties the Igbo left behind in Yorubaland during the Civil War were not expropriated by the Yorubas, as they were in some other places. When Odumegwu Ojukwu came back from exile in Ivory Coast, all his father's properties in Lagos remained intact.

Under President Obasanjo, a Yoruba man, the Igbos were given the control of Nigeria's economic and monetary policy. The Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Governor of the Central Bank, Charles Soludo; and Director-General of the Stock Exchange, Ndidi Okereke-Onyuike, were all Igbos. So were the Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili; and the Director-General of NAFDAC, Dora Akinyuli.

Indeed, Obasanjo favoured the Igbo more than his native Yorubas. He appointed an Igbo, Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, as the Minister of Defense and another, Air Marshal Paul Dike, as Nigeria's first Igbo Chief of Air Staff. While the Igbo visit the transgressions of Awolowo on the Yorubas, they do not visit the favouritism of Obasanjo on the Yorubas.

The sins of Awolowo were brought again to the fore in 2012 by Chinua Achebe in his book: "There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra." The blogs came alive as blame was traded on both sides of the East-West divide. Awolowo was now cast by the Igbos as the father of the Yorubas; and they were determined to visit his sins on his Yoruba sons to the third and fourth generations.

Mistakes galore

Blunders continue to be made on both sides, fanning the flames of hatred. Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State blundered by deporting some destitute Igbos back to the East in the dead of night in 2013. This created uproar in the sizeable Igbo community in Lagos. Even though Fashola expressly apologised to Ndigbo for the faux pas, a ridiculous discussion nevertheless ensued about the rightful ownership of Lagos.

Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State, put his foot in it when he declared that Lagos, as a former national capital, was "no man’s land and so belongs to all of us." This incensed ethnic jingoists in Yorubaland who, forgetting the traditional hospitality of the Yorubas, asked the Igbo to leave Lagos and go back East.

But nothing quite compares to the broadside that came from the Oba of Lagos. During the 2015 election, Oba Rilwan Akiolu summoned Lagos Igbo leaders to his palace; only to threaten them: "If anyone of you, I swear in the name of God, goes against my wish that Ambode will be the next governor of Lagos state, the person is going to die inside this water. What you people cannot do in Onitsha, Aba or anywhere you cannot do it here. If you do what I want, Lagos will continue to be prosperous for you, if you go against my wish, you will perish in the water."

It mattered little to His Royal Highness that Ambode's close rival was not an Igbo but Jimi Agbaje; another Yoruba man.

Timeout

The Yorubas and Ndigbo do themselves great disservice by seeing themselves as arch-enemies. Within the framework of Nigerian politics, this has limited the freedom of action of both ethnic groups. If one is prominent in this political party, the other is more likely to align itself with another party. This means the one can always be manipulated against the other. Instead, the political space should be opened up by the possibility that the Yoruba and the Igbo can form an alliance. That eventuality is not implausible especially because they actually have common interests.

Both groups prefer a Nigeria that practices fiscal federalism. Both want a country with a weaker centre. Both want a Nigeria that rewards merit, with a state-structure based on resource-control. Both groups want a Nigeria committed to self-determination. These are grounds for cooperation as opposed to discord. If the North is not to continue to take the South for granted, it must not be allowed to continue to operate in the confidence that the East and the West will always be divided.

In politics, there are no permanent enemies and no permanent allies. Fifty years down the road, the politics of the Nigerian Civil War should not be allowed to continue to cast a shadow over Yoruba-Ndigbo relations. In the Second World War, Germany was the arch-enemy of France, but now both countries are the staunchest allies. Japan invaded the United States; but now both are on the same side. These turnarounds can and should be duplicated in Southern Nigeria.

As a first step, there is need for a grand gesture. A well-publicised meeting between the Afenifere and the Ohaneze, where declaratory statements should be made about burying the hatchet. Thereafter, standing committees should be established to deal with flashpoints; such as the dismantling of Oshodi market in Lagos. The hatred between the Yoruba and Ndigbo has gone on for far too long. Let there be love shared among us!