Nnamdi Azikiwe "Address To The Igbo People"

 

This address was delivered at the Igbo State Assembly held at Aba, Nigeria, on June 25, 1949. In this address, Nnamdi mentioned the bad press, discrimination and marginalization of Igbos under the British government and called for Igbos to fight for their self-determination but under Nigeria and Cameroon, which will later lead up to the United States of Africa.

Harbingers of a new day for the Ibo nation, having selected me to preside over the deliberations of this assembly of the Ibo nation, I am conscious of the fact that you have not done so because of any extraordinary attributes in me. I realise that I am not the oldest among you, nor the wisest, nor the wealthiest, nor the most experienced, nor the most learned. I am therefore grateful to you for elevating me to this high pedestal.

The Ibo people have reached a cross-road and it is for us to decide which is the right course to follow. We are confronted with routes leading to diverse goals, but as I see it, there is only one road that I can safely recommend for us to tread, and it is the road to self-determination for the Ibo within the framework of a federated commonwealth of Nigeria and the Cameroons, leading to a United States of Africa. Other roads, in my opinion, are calculated to lead us astray from the path of national self-realization.

It would appear that God has specially created the Ibo people to suffer persecution and be victimised because of their resolute will to live. Since suffering is the label of our tribe, we can afford to be sacrificed for the ultimate redemption of the children of Africa. Is it not fortunate that the Ibo are among the few remnants of indigenous African nations who are still not spoliated by the artificial niceties of Western materialism? Is it not historically significant that throughout the glorious history of Africa, the Ibo is one of the select few to have escaped the humiliation of a conqueror’s sword or to be a victim of a Carthaginian treaty? Search through the records of African history and you will fail to find an occasion when, in any pitched battle, any African nation has either marched across Ibo territory or subjected the Ibo nation to a humiliating conquest. Instead, there is record to show that the martial prowess of the Ibo, at all stages of human history, has rivaled them not only to survive persecution, but also to adapt themselves to the role thus thrust upon them by history, of preserving all that is best and most noble in African culture and tradition. Placed in this high estate, the Ibo cannot shirk the responsibility conferred on it by its manifest destiny. Having undergone a course of suffering the Ibo must therefore enter into its heritage by asserting its birthright, without apologies.

Follow me in a kaleidoscopic study of the Ibo. Four million strong in man-power! Our agricultural resources include economic and food crops which are the basis of modern civilisation, not to mention fruits and vegetables which flourish in the tropics! Our mineral resources include coal, lignite, lead, antimony, iron, diatomite, clay, oil, tin! Our forest products include timber of economic value, including iroko and mahogany! Our fauna and flora are marvels of the world! Our land is blessed by waterways of world renown, including the River Niger, Imo River, Cross River! Our ports are among the best known in the continent of Africa. Yet in spite of these natural advantages, which illustrate without doubt the potential wealth of the Ibo, we are among the least developed in Nigeria, economically, and we are so ostracised socially, that we have become extraneous in the political institutions of Nigeria.

I have not come here today in order to catalogue the disabilities which the Ibo suffer, in spite of our potential wealth, in spite of our teeming man-power, in spite of our vitality as an indigenous African people; suffice it to say that it would enable you to appreciate the manifest destiny of the Ibo if I enumerated some of the acts of discrimination against us as a people. Socially, the British Press has not been sparing in describing us as ‘the most hated in Nigeria’. In this unholy crusade, the Daily Mirror, The Times, The Economist, News Review and the Daily Mail have been in the forefront. In the Nigerian Press, you are living witnesses of what has happened in the last eighteen months, when Lagos, Zaria and Calabar sections of the Nigerian Press were virtually encouraged to provoke us to tendentious propaganda. It is needless for me to tell you that today, both in England and in West Africa, the expression ‘Ibo’ has become a word of opprobrium.

Politically, you have seen with your own eyes how four million people were disenfranchized by the British, for decades, because of our alleged backwardness. We have never been represented on the Executive Council, and not one Ibo town has had the franchise, despite the fact that our native political institutions are essentially democratic—in fact, more democratic than any other nation in Africa, in spite of our extreme individualism.
Economically, we have laboured under onerous taxation measures, without receiving sufficient social amenities to justify them. We have been taxed without representation, and our contributions in taxes have been used to develop other areas, Out of proportion to the incidence of taxation in those areas. It would seem that we are becoming a victim of economic annihilation through a gradual but studied process. What are my reasons for cataloguing these disabilities and interpreting them as calculated to emasculate us, and so render us impotent to assert our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

I shall now state the facts which should be well known to any honest student of Nigerian history. On the social plane, it will be found that outside of Government College at Umauhia, there is no other secondary school run by the British Government in Nigeria in Ibo-land. There is not one secondary school for girls run by the British Government in our part of the country. In the Northern and Western Provinces, the contrary is the case. If a survey of the hospital facilities in Ibo-land were made, embarrassing results might show some sort of discrimination. Outside of Port Harcourt, fire protection is not provided in any Igbo town. And yet we have been under the protection of Great Britain for many decades!

On the economic plane, I cannot sufficiently impress you because you are too familiar with the victimization which is our fate. Look at our roads; how many of them are tarred, compared, for example, with the roads in other parts of the country? Those of you who have travelled to this assembly by road are witnesses of the corrugated and utterly unworthy state of the roads which traverse Ibo-land, in spite of the fact that four million Ibo people pay taxes in order, among others, to have good roads. With roads must be considered the system of communications, water and electricity supplies. How many of our towns, for example, have complete postal, telegraph, telephone and wireless services, compared to towns in other areas of Nigeria? How many have pipe-borne water supplies? How many have electricity undertakings? Does not the Ibo tax-payer fulfill his civic duty? Why, then, must he be a victim of studied official victimization?

Today, these disabilities have been intensified. There is a movement to disregard traditional organization in the Ibo nation by the introduction of a specious system of a form of local government. The placing of the Ibo nation in an artificial regionalization scheme has left an unfair impression of attempted domination by minorities of the Ibo people. In the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council the electoral college system has aided in the complete disenfranchisement of the Ibo. As a climax, spurious leadership is being foisted upon us—a mis-leadership which receives official recognition, thus stultifying the legitimate aspirations of the Ibo. This leadership shows a palpable disloyalty to the Ibo and loyalty to an alien protecting power.

The only worthwhile stand we can make as a nation is to assert our right to self-determination, as a unit of a prospective Federal Commonwealth of Nigeria and the Cameroons, where our rights will be respected and safeguarded. Roughly speaking, there are twenty main dialectal regions in the Ibo nation, which can be conveniently departmentalized as Provinces of an Ibo State, to wit: Mbamili in the northwest, Aniocha in the west, Anidinma and Ukwuani in the southeast, Nsukka and Udi in the north, Awgu, Awka and Onitsha in the centre, Ogbaru in the south, Abakaliki and Afikpo in the northwest, Okigwi, Orlu, Owerri and Mbaise in the east, Ngwa, Bende, Abiriba Ohafia and Etche in the southwest. These Provinces can have their territorial boundaries delimited, they can select their capitals, and then can conveniently develop their resources both for their common benefit and for those of the other nationalities who make up this great country called Nigeria and the Cameroons.

The keynote in this address is self-determination for the Igbo. Let us establish an Igbo State, based on linguistic and ethnic factors, enabling us to take our place side by side with the other linguistic and ethnic groups which make up Nigeria and the Cameroons. With the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Yoruba, Ibibio (Iboku), Angus (Bi-Rom), Tiv, Ijaw, Edo, Urhobo, ltsekiri, Nupe, Igalla, Ogaja, Gwari, Duala, Bali and other nationalities asserting their right to self-determination each as separate as the fingers, but united with others as a part of the same hand, we can reclaim Nigeria and the Cameroons from this degradation which it has pleased the forces of European imperialism to impose upon us.

Therefore, our meeting today is of momentous importance in the history of the Ibo, in that opportunity has been presented to us to heed the call of a despoiled race, to answer the summons to redeem a ravished continent, to rally forces to the defence of a humiliated country, and to arouse national consciousness in a demoralized but dynamic nation.

SOURCE

Nnamdi Azikiwe (1961). Zik: A Selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Governor-General of the Federation of Nigeria formerly President of the Nigerian Senate formerly Premier of the Eastern Region of Nigeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

The Unforgettable Stanley Macebuh

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Stanley Macebuh (1942-2010)

BY TONY NNACHETTA

I believe that I first encountered, not met, Dr. Stanley Macebuh, as he then was to me, somewhere in Enugu in 1977 or early 1978. He was yet a fresh name and as I read his column, the freshness of his distinct style intrigued me in equal measure with his peculiar surname. To me, here is a puzzle published weekly on the pages of the venerable, stodgy Daily Times, the old and unrepentant medium that I considered too old to bend or so harbour this kind of writer and his views. I had found that the man is supposedly sporting an Igbo heritage too. His reputation was budding and we spoke briefly. His accent was un-Nigerian and he had an aura which appeared natural and invited you to speak your mind. I did perhaps with sparks in my eyes, thrilled on meeting this revolutionary man then unknown to the Enugu crowd, in the flesh. We chatted about his recent writings, the military and their heavy-handed guide of our transition journey.

This must have been in relation to the no go areas of the 1977/78 Constituent Assembly. On reflection, this was no staple conversation for your typical undergraduate keen to impress our brand new intellectual and I guess it surprised him that I was not a Political Science major.

Our paths never crossed again but I recall that the week the Daily Times thundered one of its most famous editorials, “For the Avoidance of Doubt” in 1979, if my memory serves me well, my thought was on Dr. Stanley Macebuh (as he then was to me) for the cultured language and definitiveness of logic I speculated that he may have contributed to that piece of record. It was a stirring response to garrulous members of the ruling class masked as federal legislators. It must be 1983 when my own Eddie Iroh took me along to “some meeting in Ilupeju” where he is discussing a newspaper project and he endeavoured to convince me that he could leave his high profile career in national television to return to his print writing because the man talking to him is called Dr. Stanley Macebuh.

Months later, I, myself, was privileged to join history and write articles and analysis on both the only two business pages of the very maiden edition of The Guardian. Dr. Stanley Macebuh asked for me and I told him it would be difficult to leave my current employment to run the business desk and that I would only write with my inverted surname as nom de plume. He kept chuckling at the “Tony Attecann” byline and much later, “Joe Kadiri from Broad Street” It is a measure of the man that in an era when fax machines had not become standard, one had to handcarry his written contribution and travel, yes travel, from Broad Street and Victoria Island all the way to Rutam House in part homage to the unadulterated chutzpah Dr. Stanley Macebuh brought to the table.

As I looked around The Guardian those days, you could see and feel talent walking and working. I became a regular visitor also partly in solidarity with the several brilliant persons Stanley had brought under that roof some of whom are my dear friends till date. He would lead but make it appear easy and collegial. His impatience with cant was encapsulated in the seminal introduction of the simply Mr. Policy which rocked the Nigerian society for a year or so and the very tight language of the first Guardian years. By the time he was to leave The Guardian and move to his new office closer to me, he had become very close to me and emerged in my lexicon as the Bossman, a usage a few other friends of mine adopted. The Bossman could laugh at himself which I told him was one of his great strengths. I can still see him shaking at the shoulders in his peculiar laughter rhythm.

The others being an eye to talent, his fascinating intellect and his ability to restrain you with the most economical of words from proceeding on a course of action: “Leave it, I say, just leave it” to which he would add a grunt for effect. This pacificist trait has now gone all through his life and times and added to little regard for money as a store of wealth meant that the Bossman, ordinarily a man without guile, was unable to join any conspiracy or club by any other name, to look out for himself in several other ways in a malevolent world. I recall a true and bad example of this in a tripartite transaction for which I held an instrument which minutes before presentation was locked out at the entrance on the day BCCI was closed down in London. The Bossman was unperturbed and the funds never recouped.

Could he have been a sterner person and flourished such that the callow writers in the hours after his passing on would never have described the size of his bank account in the same breath as his towering achievement as a renaissance man? Perhaps, he could have compromised himself at the Obasanjo Presidency or struggled to remind President Yar’Adua that they shared a house and several meals and go way back in an earlier era? No, not the Bossman, a man woven by nature leaving out greed and envy, full of innate dignity without a bulk of ego. He remained true to himself, detached and stoic.

It is most likely the case that in the not too distant future there will be many who will be lost in search of Stanley Macebuh claim to fame. Quite easy to assist them: First, as the Latin would say, circumspice, look around you. Take a quick excursion on the practitioners of print journalism and in particular the purveyors of column and opinion writing today: You can separate them into the school that learnt directly from Stanley Macebuh, the others that successfully imitated him and the rest. He could be said to have been let down by this or that circumstance.

Many are known to have realised very belatedly that they could afford to offer the Good Lord a bottle of aerated bottled, chilled water if only they could decipher it was for the Lord and not just their irritating neighbour as the Good Book told us. That lesson will continue to ring in our ears. Stanley’s passing on is painful in a peculiar sense and but as himself, the Bossman would say in that pitched exception to his tone, “my friend… just leave it”. Fare thee well my friend, God grant you rest and may your kind increase.

First published May 2010.

Nnachetta, erstwhile commissioner for information and strategy Anambra State, served as a visiting member, The Guardian Editorial Board.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

ARCHIVES: Nigerian Marries Peace Corps Girl...

Clement and Catherine Onyemelukwe wedding in Lagos.

DECEMBER 27, 1964

LAGOS, NIGERIA (THE NEW YORK TIMES)—The granddaughter of a prominent American banker was wed to a young Nigerian today.

In marrying ciement C. Onyemelukwe of Lagos, Catherine Danforth Zastrow, a tall blonde former Peace Corps volunteer from Fort Thomas, Ky., has joined the small but growing number of American‐Nigerian couples who have settled down to life in post‐independence Africa.

Many have encountered serious problems. All have told of difficulties in adjustment. But most of the unions have survived.

Clement Onyemelukwe was born 31 years ago in the remote town of Nanka in Nigeria's eastern region. His father, a contractor, was barely literate in English, but saved enough money to help all of his three sons work their way through college.

Mr. Onyemelukwe took degrees in engineering and economics from Leeds University and the University of London. He then joined the Electric Corporation of Nigeria— Nigeria's giant public‐owned power utility —and rose swiftly to become chief engineer of the Transmission and Distribution Division.

“This is a real Horatio Alger story,” said Peter Zastrow, the bride's father, an engineer with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in Cincinnati.

Mrs. Onyemelukwe, born in Huntington, L. I., attended Highland's High School in Fort Thomas, which is in the Cincinnati area, and was graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1962 She has spent the last two years with the Peace Corps teaching German at the Federal Emergency Science School in Lagos.

Her maternal grandfather, the late Herman W. Danforth, was appointed the first president of the Federal Land Bank in Woodrow Wilson's Administration in 1917. The bank was formed to grant long‐term farm mortgages

Mr. and Mrs. Onyemelukwe have confided to friends that their decision to marry was a difficult one.

There was an initially adverse reaction from parents on both sides, especially from the Onyemelukwes. They felt their son should marry someone from their home district, or at least a girl of their own Ibo tribe.

But their resistance dissolved after they came to Lagos and met Miss Zastrow shortly before she finished her Peace Corps contract and returned home to announce her engagement.

“When Cathy first broke the news,” Mr. Zastrow said, “I was intellectually for it but emotionally against it.”

This sort of thing has to happen to this generation for better relations between countries,” Mr. Zastrow said. “They are very devout Christians —more Christian than many Americans.”

Catherine Onyemelukwe is the second Peace Corps girl to wed a Nigerian out of a contingent of more than 600 volunteers, almost half of whom are women.

Among the wedding guests were Mr. and Mrs. William Saltonstall, former headmaster of Exeter Academy and now head of the Peace Corps in Nigeria.

Others in attendance included English, American, and

A Difficult Decision Nigerian business leaders here. Sir Mobolaji Bank‐Anthony, Nigeria's most prominent industrialist, was master of ceremonies at the reception on the palm‐shaded lawn of Clement Onyemelukwe's suburban home. More than 500 persons attended.