Notes On Igbophobes, Igbo-Haters And Igbomaniacs (3)

BY DOUGLAS ANELE

Douglas Anele

Concerning the serious weakness in the Igbo character that ended our discussion last week, Prof. Chinua Achebe captures it succinctly in his eponymous work, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, by affirming that as a group its success “can and did carry deadly penalties: the dangers of hubris, overweening pride and thoughtlessness which invite envy and hatred or, even worse, that obsess the mind with material success and dispose it to all kinds of crude showiness.


There is no doubt at all that there is a strand in contemporary Igbo behaviour that can offend by its noisy exhibitionism and disregard for humility and quietness.” This deadly character flaw has over the years led to insensate generalised hatred of Ndigbo by Nigerians from other ethnic groups, especially those who see them more as unwanted uppity competitors rather than as compatriots.

It must be pointed out that the character problem Prof. Achebe refers to can also be found amongst the Fulani, Hausa, Ijaw, Yoruba, etc. Nonetheless given the ubiquitous presence of Igbo people all over the place, their own hubris, showiness and noisy exhibitionism tend to be more noticeable, offensive and widespread.

Unfortunately many nouveaux riches of Igbo extraction like Obi Cubana and his close associates seem not to have learnt the lesson encoded in the Igbo proverb that oke soro ngwere maa mmiri, ahu koo ngwere o gaghi ako oke (if a rat plays with the lizard in the rain, if the body of the lizard dries off, the same will not be the case for the rat).

The preceding remarks points to a negative side of the Igbo character. But as a nuanced thinker Achebe also notes that in other countries an ethnic group as industrious as the Igbo would trigger healthy competition and the rebirth of achievement and learning.

Unfortunately in Nigeria “it bred deep resentment and both subtle and overt attempts to dismantle the structure in place for merit in favour of mediocrity under the cloak of a need for ‘federal character’ – a morally bankrupt and deeply corrupt form of the far more successful affirmative action in the United States.”

Accordingly, those looking for the main reason why Nigeria has become a horrible caricature of what a nation should be need look no further because, as the renowned novelist wryly remarks “The denial of merit is a form of social injustice that can hurt not only the individuals directly concerned but ultimately the entire society…whenever merit is set aside by prejudice of whatever origin, individual citizens as well as the nation itself is victimised.”

In short, all the policies meant to pull down the Igbo have boomeranged. Nigeria is now a giant with the feet of soft clay, a big-for-nothing agglomeration of peoples afflicted with a succession of some of the most selfish, incompetent and shameless leaders in the world.

The late Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, was a prominent unapologetic Igbophobe and Igbo-hater. For instance, he vehemently kicked against the sizeable number of Ndigbo in northern Nigeria and the preeminent positions they occupied in different aspects of life there.

Again the Sardauna championed some of the discriminatory policies of the First Republic that favoured northern Nigeria to the detriment of the south generally and Ndigbo in particular. Indeed, in an interview with a British journalist shortly after independence he affirms that as premier he would rather employ a foreigner than an Igbo, a fellow Nigerian, to fill any vacant position in his region simply because the Igbo, according to him, are ambitious and have a tendency to dominate others.

Apparently Ahmadu Bello was not interested in merit or in employing qualified Igbo to foster national unity. His main focus was to exclude the ‘uppity’ Igbo from being employed in the north. As we observed earlier, after the Biafran war members of the dominant faction of the northern conservative military-civilian establishment in the corridors of power continued the Sardauna’s apartheid policy against the Igbo.

For them, Ndigbo are lower class citizens that should ingratiate themselves before Fulani caliphate colonialists in order to make any headway economically and politically at the federal level. And the obnoxious quota system was a readymade tool to ensure that merit was sacrificed on the altar of “federal character” as defined and implemented by those running what Prof. Ben Nwabueze describes as the “invisible government” controlled by the northern elite.

Of course, without lowering standards it would have been virtually impossible for northerners to compete and outperform Ndigbo in various aspects of human endeavour that depend on individual initiative, creativity, industriousness and self-reliance. This is very evident especially since 1970 in the education sector where cut-off marks for admission at various levels of formal education run by the federal government are deliberately lowered to accommodate underperforming northern candidates whereas their Igbo counterparts with far better scores are denied admission.

The same discriminatory system is applied in employment into federal ministries, departments and agencies. All the same, Ndigbo have continued to play the role of primus inter pares with respect to the informal economy of northern Nigeria (and other non-Igbo majority areas) in spite of those obnoxious discriminatory policies and periodic violence targeted against them.

On the other hand aside from recent increase in the number of cattle dealers in the south-east due to deliberate pro-north policies of selfish bulimic factotums of the Fulani oligarchy like Orji Uzor Kalu, Hope Izodinma and Dave Umahi, majority of northerners in Igboland are barely managing to survive as beggars, low-grade artisans, gatemen, petty traders, okada riders and keke operators who mostly live in very squalid conditions.

Consequently if all the northerners in Igboland were to pack and relocate to their respective states, it would make a tiny mark, not a dent, on the socio-economic condition of the Igbo towns where they lived whereas if people of Igbo extraction had left the north en masse some time ago as proposed by a rag-tag collection of irascible northern youths the negative economic impact on the north would have been serious.

This claim will irritate northern Igbophobes and Igbo-haters who often shamelessly and falsely claim that Igbo people put unnecessary obstacles that prevent members of other ethnic groups from establishing and progressing in Igboland. Igbophobes and Igbo-hatersmaking such claim conveniently ignore the fact that Ndigbo living outside Igboland face even greater obstacles than the imaginary bottlenecks they are complaining about butstill continue to soldier on because of two main reasons: one, their indefatigable can-do attitude and, two, they take the concept of One Nigeria seriously.

That said, with the decades-old divisive policy of Igbo exclusion by the northern ruling cabal and their acolytes from the south now taken to a whole new level by the current nepotic administration of President Muhammadu Buhari it is time for Ndigbo to begin a critical re-examination of what it really means to be an Igbo in Nigeria.

It is probably true that majority of Nigerians from other ethnic groups are Igbophobes and Igbo-haters. This is particularly true amongst a segment of northerners who still think that having lost the civil war Ndigbo should be satisfied with whatever situation they find themselves in the country and be grateful.

Notes On Igbophobes, Igbo-Haters And Igbomaniacs (2)

BY DOUGLAS ANELE

Douglas Anele

Most Nigerians do not know that at independence and before Alhaji Tafawa Balewa’s government began implementing the merit-destroying northernisation policy Igbo people also dominated the officer corps of the Nigerian army whereas northerners populated the junior ranks and Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) cadres.

The historian, Max Siollun, in his book Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture (1966-1976), corroborates this when he reports that “in the ethnic stratification of the officer corps, between 65-70% of the army majors were Igbo.”

Expectedly the northernisation programme led to a steep drop in the quality of new intakes into the army as northern leaders insisted on an ethnic quota system of recruitment. As a result 60% was given to the north, 15% each to the eastern and western regions, while the remaining 10% went to the mid-west.

That is not all: the British colonial administration ensured that the bulk of critical military infrastructure and installations were located in the northern region, which consolidated the military advantage of northern Nigeria over the south. Alexander Madiebo, in his highly informative work, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, draws attention to the potential dangers of citing most military installations in one region.

He also informs that “in the name of ‘ethnic balance’ military hospitals were staffed with doctors trained in Kano for about three years in preference to doctors of southern Nigeria origin with internationally recognised diplomas.”

The warning by Madiebo about the lopsided military installations in the north played out with deadly effect during the civil war as the newly formed Republic of Biafra under Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu from the very beginning could not muster up to one-tenth of the military resources available to the Nigerian side.

After the war, successive northern military dictators reinforced the policy of exclusion against Ndigbo in the army which ensured that the Igbo never returned to the enviable position they occupied before the quota system of recruitment was introduced.

Northern consolidation of its stranglehold on the military, including the exclusionary attitude of post-war military governments towards Igbo people,is understandable. One of the proximate consequences of armed conflictis that extremists amongst the victors always insist on treating the defeated side with negative triumphalist impunity in order to exact maximum revenge, a situation that encourages animosity and lays the psychological foundation for future conflict.

At any rate, it is not surprising that a sizeable number of Ndigbo still bear grudges against northerners and the Yoruba for the genocidal Biafran war whereas most Igbo-haters are convinced that the Igbo deserve whatever ill treatment they have been getting for the same reason, all of which are inimical to the growth of genuine national consciousness and feeling of oneness in the country. In my opinion, for Igbo people generally the deep psychological wounds of the civil war have not completely healed more than fifty-one years after it ended.

An important point Igbophobes and Igbo-haters often overlook when accusing Ndigbo of dominating everywhere in the 1950s and 1960s before the second military coup is that the Igbo got their preeminent positions largely on merit.


In other words, it was not the outcome of an arbitrary quota system implemented to favour Igbo people in particular. That is why there is no documented evidence of a discriminatory arrangement or quota system which gave them undue advantage over members of other ethnic groups, unlike the northernisation policy we talked about earlier which was deliberately and decidedly pro-north.

Let me say it without equivocation: Ndigbo as a group have a reputation for industry, hard work and hunger (some say obsession) for individual success rooted in self-confidence and can-do attitude.Any non-Igbo reading this will probably dismiss my claim as prejudice arising from ethnic chauvinism.

But the facts are there and the truth should not be concealed or coated with politically correct platitudes to create a false impression of belief in One Nigeria or just because those who dislike Ndigbo for no good reason might not be comfortable with it.

More than members of any other ethnic group in Nigeria Ndigbo are everywhere contributing substantially to the development of their places of domicile. In most major towns and cities outside Igboland, after the indigenes Igbo people come second demographically and in terms of building meaningful lives for themselves and others living in the same area.

If you do not believe what I just said then ask yourself this question: What would Abuja, Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos and other prominent towns across Nigeria have been without the Igbo? The honest answer is that those cities would be emaciated shadows of what they are right now.

That is the main reason why Prof. Tekena Tamuno, the noted historian, describes Ndigbo as the makers of modern Nigeria. To reiterate: generally the Igbo, sometimes referred to as the Jews of Africa, are the most industrious, success-driven, ambitious and resilient people in Nigeria.

Of course, this does not mean that every Igbo has the right combination of these qualities or that the attributes in question are non-existent in the Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri, Nupe and so on. There are industrious and lazy people in all ethnic groups, but Igbo culture seems to be more radioactive to indolence or persistent laziness in individuals than the rest.

But what is responsible for the Igbo character, that is, the ensemble of attributes that made Ndigbo stand out and succeed acrossNigeria despite daunting challenges? Prof. Chinua Achebe provides an insight into the issue when he explains that aside from their numerical strength “Igbo culture, individualistic and highly competitive, gave the Igbo man an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots in securing credentials for advancement in Nigerian colonial society.

Unlike the Hausa [and the] Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion, and unlike the Yoruba he was unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind of creature, fearing no god or man, was custom-made to grasp opportunities, such as they were, of the white man’s dispensations.”

What Achebe is describing here can be rendered in more prosaic terms as the behavioural and psychological advantage a typical Igbo derives from the social character of Igbo peoplein general or, in other words, the essential core of the character structure of majority of Ndigbo which emerged from the basic experiences and mode of life common to the people themselves.

Without any iota of doubt there are many Igbo with a different character structure from what was referred to a moment ago as the Igbo character. Still, the personal character of such a deviantis a variation of the essential general character traits and arises from the accidental variables of birth and life experiences as they differ from one individual to another. The same thing, that is, the phenomenon of deviancy, applies mutatis mutandis to members of other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.

Notwithstanding the intellectual and psychological advantage Igbo culture confers on the individual which promotes the drive for success and achievement, a serious weakness in the Igbo character which sometimes threaten to overshadow the positive attributes deserves serious attention.

Experts in the relevant disciplines affirm that there is a natural inclination for successful human beings to be arrogant, condescending to the less successful, unduly overbearing, and blind to their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

employed in the north. As we observed earlier, after the Biafran war members of the dominant faction of the northern conservative military-civilian establishment in the corridors of power continued the Sardauna’s apartheid policy against the Igbo.

For them, Ndigbo are lower class citizens that should ingratiate themselves before Fulani caliphate colonialists in order to make any headway economically and politically at the federal level, and the obnoxious quota system was a readymade tool for that.

Apparently without lowering standards it would have been virtually impossible for northernersto compete and outperform Ndigbo in various aspects of human endeavour that depend on individual initiative, creativity, industriousness and self-reliance.

This is very evident especially in the education sector where cut-off marks for admission at various levels of formal education are deliberately lowered to accommodate underperforming northern candidates whereas Igbo candidates with far better scores are denied admission.

In the informal sector Ndigbo have continued to play the role of primus inter paresin the economic development of prominent northern towns and cities in spite of obnoxious crippling policies together with periodic violence or pogrom targeted against them.

On the other hand aside from recent increase in the number of cattle dealers in the south-east due to opportunities provided by selfish bulimic factotums of the Fulani oligarchy like Orji Uzor Kalu, Hope Izodinma and Dave Umahi majority of northerners in Igboland are barely managing to survive as beggars, low-grade artisans, gatemen, petty traders, okadariders and kekeoperators who mostly live in very squalid conditions.

Consequently if all the northerners in Igboland were to pack and go to their respective states, it would make a tiny mark, not a dent, in the lives of the people whereas if people of Igbo extraction had left the northen massesome time ago as ordered by a rag-tag collection of irascible northern youths, the negative economic impact on the north would have been serious.

This claim will irritate northern Igbophobes and Igbo-haters who often shamelessly and falsely claim that Igbo people put insurmountable obstacles that prevent members of other ethnic groups from establishing and progressing in Igboland.

They conveniently forget that Ndigbo face even greater obstacles than the ones they are referring to and, yet, they continue to soldier on because of two main reasons: one, their indefatigable can-do attitude and, two, they take the concept of One Nigeria seriously.

That said, with the decades-olddivisive policy of Igbo exclusion by the northern ruling cabal and their acolytes from the south epitomised in the odious nepotism of President Muhammadu Buhari, it is time for Igbo people to begin a critical re-examination ofwhat it really means to be an Igbo in Nigeria.

---------------------------------VANGUARD

Notes On Igbophobes, Igbo-Haters And Igbomaniacs (1)

BY DOUGLAS ANELE

 

DOUGLAS ANELE

An Igbophobe is someone who for obscure or unconscious irrational reason(s) has a morbid fear or distrust towards an Igbo. On the other hand, an Igbo-hater is a person who hates or thoroughly dislikes Igbo people generally for certain reasons, to the extent of preventing them from gaining employment even on merit.

According to my definition, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, late Sardauna of Sokoto, manifested the mentality of an Igbo-hater when explained to a foreign journalist that he would not employ Ndigbo in the northern civil service because the Igbo are too ambitious and always want to dominate others wherever they find themselves. In other words, an Igbo-hater hates the Igbo for being successful in spite of all odds.

One would describe an Igbomaniac as an Igbo or an avid admirer of Ndigbo from another ethnic group that has an exaggerated opinion of the positive character traits of Igbo people while downplaying the negative ones; someone whose attitude towards them is mirrored in Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s remark that “the God of Africa has specially created the Igbo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages.”

As an Igbo, a self-conscious one at that, sometimes I try during personal silent moments to understand why the Igbo, despite their famed industriousness, unsurpassed accomplishments, capacity to turn nothing into something anywhere they are domiciled, creative imagination, and fearlessness have consistently played second or third political fiddle especially to the Fulani and the Yoruba.

I recognise that the pace of Igbo decline in the geopolitical architectonic of Nigeria has accelerated since the defeat of Biafra over fifty-one years ago, but I just cannot fathom why the so-called Igbo leaders as a whole seem very unwilling to unify and do something concrete about it.

In his little book, The Trouble with Nigeria, Prof. Chinua Albert Achebe claims that Nigerians will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo. Now, although Igbophobes and Igbo-haters might detect a whiff of hyperbole in that assertion or dismiss it by claiming that the globally acclaimed novelist was making mountains out of molehills, there is doubt in my mind that any objective observer of Nigerian history since independence to date would definitely conclude that the most prominent ruling elite or power blocks outside Igboland have deliberately put manmade obstacles to prevent Ndigbo from actualising their potentials as a people let alone acknowledge that Ndigbo are the makers of modern Nigeria and give them their due in that regard.

In other words, instead of seeing the Igbo as extremely important equal partners in the flawed Nigerian project and work alongside them to build a solid, economically viable and politically stable nation, the most powerful wing of the military-civilian establishment in the core north, south-west and south-south see Ndigbo as rivals that must be contained and, if possible, suppressed and subjugated.

Without a doubt, the intentional policy of Igbo marginalisation is one of the reasons why Nigeria is stymied in a futile Sisyphean cycle of mediocrity and chronic underdevelopment despite her impressive human and material endowments.

Of course, this does not mean that giving Ndigbo the position they really deserve will automatically turn Nigeria into an El Dorado. On the contrary, the point being made is that punitive immediate post-war policies against Igbo people several of which still remain today, such as the twenty pounds policy; the Indigenisation Decree of 1972; the hideous Abandoned Property programme; banning Igbo dominated businesses such as importation of okrika (second-hand clothing)and stockfish; ceding of mostly oil-bearing parts of Igboland to other non-majority Igbo-speaking states; sinister exclusion of the Igbo from the most consequential loci of power and authority particularly in the security apparatchik; as well as deliberate refusal by northern heads of state and their enablers to cite capital-and-labour intensive industries and infrastructure such as refineries, seaports, international airports, industrial and power plants in Igboland have had serious negative boomerang effects on the country.

But some foolish, selfish and morally disabled Igbo sons and daughters in positions of authority and influence have contributed to the sorry state of Igboland. Since 1970, with the possible exception of late Chief Sam Mbakwe, Mr. Peter Obi, and to some extent Dr. Chris Ngige, most of the governors that had emerged in the south-eastern states deserve life imprisonment with hard labour for the grossly incompetent manner they have managed available scarce resources in their states.

Despite the criminal neglect of Igboland by successive administrations at the federal level, Igboland would have been the cynosure of all eyes in terms of economic development powered by massive investment in human capital and infrastructure had these people made optimum use of the funds from federal allocation and internally generated revenue.

Any reasonable Igbo with a simulacrum of self-respect and dignity will feel ashamed and disappointed at the quality of governance by political leaders in Igboland especially since 1999. In my home state, Imo, there has been a blizzard of poor quality leadership which has grown progressively worse culminating in the astonishingly crooked emergence of Hope Uzodinma as governor.

Let me put it this way: irrespective of the truckloads of exculpatory rubbish in the media by crumb-eating puppets and hirelings of governors of Imo State from 1999 to date, there is conclusive evidence of lack of good governance and recycling of mediocrity throughout that period. Presently, it is unrealistic to expect Uzodinma to provide responsible leadership given his ignoble antecedents – you cannot give what you do not have.

His willingness to serve as a factotum to Fulani caliphate colonialists who dredged him up from the forth position and made him governor has sealed his fate as one of the worst governors to preside over Imo. Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, like his Imo counterpart, believes that ingratiating himself with President Muhammadu Buhari and his fellow Fulani caliphate supremacists would help his political ambition after his tenure as governor.

Unknown to him, no sensible person will trust completely anyone willing to betray the collective interests of his people for temporary selfish political and pecuniary advantage. Therefore, Umahi will eventually regret his bad political choices that placed his people at the mercy of those oppressing them.

Concerning the governors of Abia, Anambra and Enugu states, the major difference between them and the ones mentioned earlier is that they have not caved in completely to the pressures from Fulani conquistadores to take over the ancestral lands of their people – not yet.

Unfortunately, they have also not spoken out with the characteristic courage of the Igbo against violent attempts of Fulani terrorists, surreptitiously backed by some in, and outside government, to make large swathes of their states’ homeland for nomadic Fulani.

Needless to say, it is the leadership vacuum across Igboland in the face of a resurgent Wahhabi Islamism moving down southwards that necessitated the emergence of Nanmdi Kanu and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPoB) whose message of liberation from the threatening Fulani enslavement resonates with a vast number of people throughout Igboland.

Had the governors and other political leaders from Igboland lived up to their responsibilities, Kanu and his organisation would not have been so popular at the grassroots and beyond.

Back to the question of the resentment and hatred of the Igbo by a significant number of their compatriots from other parts of the country, Prof. Achebe argues, correctly, that the hatred and resentment arose from the unequalled successes Ndigbo achieved in the professions, education, and economic advancement before independence and the outbreak of the civil war.

In fact, at independence, the Igbo dominated the top echelons of federal public service and statutory corporations, which led to the accusation that they were monopolising essential services to the exclusion of other ethnic groups.

---------------------------------VANGUARD