BY CHIMAROKE NNAMANI
How did the Igbo get to this? Who sold this massive con job? Who are the snake oil salesmen? Why the perceived mistrust of the Yoruba? We never fought? Our properties were never seized? Our businesses thriving in their Homelands? Blossoming intermarriages with multiple offsprings? Common language etymology. They stayed out of the Nigeria/Biafra war until the Benin expedition. Fajuyi died for Ironsi’s sake. Bola Tinubu gave his financial life line to Igbo Ben Akabueze.
President Obasanjo had highly dependent Igbo mentees including myself. Called me son and seriously shared confidential information with me. That I will carry with me to the Lord’s vineyard. Our properties were returned immediately in the second quarter of 1970 with collected rent and interests. The ‘ontogeny’ of our revered kolanut is Yoruba. My brothers, where is the disconnect? Okpara and our Forebears saw it.
The NCNC/ NPC alliance was a colossal failure for the South East. Ditto NPN/NPP. History repeats.
AG/NCNC alliance 1956/57? Was aborted. Could have provided Chief executive to either party. The AG/ NCNC alliance in United Progressive Grand Alliance, Awolowo & Okpara mired in Pre 66 Coup imbroglio. The UPN/NPP alliance could have done the same. The threat of Ekwueme Presidency, writers claim, added Fillip to the collapse of the 3rd republic. When you shift power to Yoruba, you don’t go to Kwara or Kogi, you go to the South West. But the weakness of the South East zone is patently obvious such that they throw any bones at us and we bite.
“The Igbo have to retrace the steps of Okpara and Awolowo, the United Progressive Grand Alliance. An Igbo-Yoruba Alliance. It is not late for the Igbo to reflect on and carefully X-ray the looming reality of a President Bola Ahmed Tinubu”
We must always be expected to show gratitude for any pittance. After all we were spared with “no victor, no vanquished”. We should be happy and not worry. We can always resort to spare parts and hugging containers. For this ongoing political expedition, my Igbo people have suffered the consequences of sociopolitical insularity. Confused by mediocres and cry babies. Emergency Politicos.
Whose ticket out of the burden of inferiority and underachievement is ethnocentric preachments? The 2 political parties with emotional capture of my people will lose the Presidential election. One a pure exercise in self-driven political catharsis, the order of a known abuser and denigrator of my people. The Igbo are out of the power echelon of an African State they helped found. Products of self-injury and own goal. We need a restart. Based on a paradigm shift. Careful but calculated risk.
The Igbo have to retrace the steps of Okpara and Awolowo, the United Progressive Grand Alliance. An Igbo-Yoruba Alliance. It is not late for the Igbo to reflect on and carefully X-ray the looming reality of a President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. A marathon politician Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, City boy they call him paid his dues over decades, performed creditably in governance and politics. With an A-Game, decades of hard work, patience, resilience and tenacity. And a lot of swagger and Chutzpah, Tinubu is it.
A consummate and well navigated City boy. A winner always. Only saw him complain once, and probably his last. The rest is history. That alliance, handshake across the Niger that is, and a resultant Southern Coalition will build a great Nigerian partnership with our Northern brothers and sisters cutting across tribes, religions and all differences. A land where truly all tongues may differ but the voices will coalesce and resonate in a crescendo of synergy, amity and good conscience. The answer to the Igbo power conundrum maybe.
Nnamani, a former governor of Enugu State (1999-2007), is a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Enugu East).
CAVEAT: Views and opinions expressed here are those of the writers and are not in any way those of The Point Newspaper – Editor
