Do We Really Need An Igbo President?

By Chukwuemeka Umunnakwe, 234 Next

The amalgam of tribes which make up Nigeria are locked in a fierce contest to best one another when it comes to grabbing juicy political offices. Needless to say, these ethnic rivalries are more focused on the offices occupied by the members of these ethnic groups than what the occupants actually do in these offices to better the life of the ordinary Nigerian.

The Nigerian President wields enormous influence no doubt and his office arguably is one of the most powerful democratic offices in Africa. Due to this, which I daresay has been so clearly perpetuated that at times it rivals the absolute monarchy of 13th and 14th century England, the tribes that make up Nigeria are engaged in bickering, struggles and fights to ensure that they produce the President. The tribes also view the office, rightly or wrongly, as capable of having a far-reaching and positive impact on the economic and infrastructural advancement of the tribe fortunate to produce the President.

The craze to produce the Nigerian President has found no more passionate campaigners than the Igbo political elites of the south east region. A good number of Igbo people have been led to believe by their political class that a true integration of the Igbo people in the body polity of Nigeria will occur when an Igbo citizen assumes the office of the President. The Igbo elite and political class have entwined the political, social, educational, infrastructural and economic development of the Igbo tribe with the quest to occupy this office.

Do we, the Igbo people, really need a Nigerian President of Igbo descent? Judging from the performance of past Nigerian presidents in their respective regions, can we honestly affirm that an Igbo president is the silver bullet to the myriad of problems facing the Igbo today? Have we, the Igbo tribe, properly articulated our problems and the solutions to these problems?

Today, the south east reels from lack of basic infrastructure; electricity is epileptic in major cities like Onitsha and Aba and we lack properly equipped hospitals and decent social amenities. The public education is in a shambles while public health is virtually non-existent. Many public institutions crucial for an orderly society are moribund. The state judiciaries have not witnessed any significant investments since the return to civil rule in 1999. Court houses are derelict, court rules are antiquated, libraries are not equipped, judges sit in extreme conditions due to absent electricity and the state universities are glorified secondary schools lacking the requisite manpower and infrastructure.

Unemployment is rife in the south east. The youth that manage to get an education resort to trading while others migrate to Lagos, Abuja or any other part of the country or outside the country, in search of greener pastures. Those unable to get jobs resort to crime. Kidnapping is the new wave.

The south east has the most expensive state schools (secondary and university). There is no free education at the primary or secondary school levels, neither is university education subsidised. Literacy levels have continued to dwindle. There are few major industries in the south east and we continue to witness both manpower and intellectual flight from here to other parts of Nigeria. These are issues that our political class ought to be tackling but they are too concerned about feathering their nests.

Once upon a time, the south east was the most industrially-advanced region in the whole of Africa. Our economy was one of the fastest growing in the world. We were innovative and technologically-driven. However, somewhere along the path, we deviated. We lost our core principles and values of hard work, integrity, independence and intellectual pursuit. Our values became eroded and we imbibed a wanton love for money and material trappings.

We inculcated the habit of worshipping known criminals who made money through atrocious methods; we lost our respect for education and instead placed a high premium on illiterates with bags of money. We elevated illiterates and perennial underachievers to be governors, members of the legislature, commissioners, traditional rulers, among others.

It is time we looked inwards. If we must survive as a people, we must isolate ourselves from the politics of ‘Igbo president' or juicy federal appointments. We must focus on the real challenges facing us. We must articulate an ideology for our advancement which will bind us as a people. There must be a sense of higher duty, higher calling and higher responsibility in our daily existence as a people.

We do not need an Igbo President before our Governors can construct independent power projects, build hospitals, schools, libraries, good roads and provide security. We do not need an Igbo President before the south east states can pool resources together to build an airport, sea port, or railway facilities in our region.

I believe that as an integral part of Nigeria, the Igbo people are entitled to produce the President for the country. We must place ourselves in a strategic position of strength from where we can negotiate. Presently, we are negotiating from a position of extreme weakness and, understandably, we are not being taken seriously. We must first put our house in order. We have to earn the respect of other tribes before we can seriously contest for the Presidency. The Presidency of this country is not for the asking. The rest of Nigeria must see the benefit of having a President of Igbo extraction.

Mary Slessor and history in Osinaike’s drama

By Akintayo Abodurin/234 Next

The debate about the place of history in literature was rekindled at the 28th play reading session of the National Troupe of Nigeria (NTN) held inside Cinema Hall II, National Theatre, Lagos, on April 22.

How much of historical facts can a writer include in a work? Is a writer free to adapt history? If yes, to what extent? These were some of the issues generated from Muyiwa Osinaike’s ‘Mary Slessor: Abolition of the Killing of Twins in Nigeria’, read at the occasion.

Started 14 years ago as a critique session to help playwrights improve their works-in-progress before publication, Osinaike’s script generated healthy debate at the forum. The fact that his subject is a familiar one did not help matters, as people tore into the playwright for his perceived interference with history during the discussion.

Perhaps judging from the title of the work, people expected Osinaike, founder and Artistic Director of Black Marble Dance Academy, to focus more on the activities of the European missionary. His own ‘Mary Slessor’ instead, centres on the abolition of the killing of twins in Okoyong, a village in Calabar. His plot concentrates on the King of the village who discovers, towards the end of the play, that he has a twin brother. The brother, a missionary, walks into the village at the end of the play and causes an uproar because of his tattered clothes. Villagers think their king has gone mad, and started to look for ways to cure him before they realise it is the twin. Osinaike also portrays Slessor as a crown agent, and not the altruistic missionary of popular belief.

Sustain the suspense

Deputy Director, Dance, of the National Troupe, Arnold Udoka, was the first to comment after the reading. He noted that the playwright did a good job structurally but “didn’t sustain the suspense.” He advised Osinaike to re-examine the play’s ending and how the brothers meet. The choreographer also observed that most of the names in the play are more Akwa Ibom than Okoyong. He gave instances: “The use of crown should be Ntinya. You may have to establish Mary Slessor as a character, because she owns the play. Likewise, twins are called ‘Amananba’ and not ‘Amaniba’, which means ‘mother of twins’,” he added.

This is not history

While Udoka’s issue with the play focused on its structure, typos and interpretation of names, Mike Anyanwu, NTN’s head of Corporate Affairs, was concerned about the accuracy of historical facts presented in it. “This is a beautiful Nigerian comedy of errors, but the play falls far short of a play that should be titled ‘Mary Slessor’. It is not about Mary Slessor and she wasn’t a crown agent. This is falsification of history, it’s not true history. Mary Slessor was purely an evangelising missionary, rather than a political exploiter under the British,” Anyanwu said.

He added, “Apart from Mary Slessor, every other character is not drawn from history, they are fictitious. This is not history, sir!” Anyanwu advised Osinaike to change the title “because it doesn’t reflect the true historical activities carried out by Mary Slessor in that region.”

It is history

Chair of the session, Funmi Domino, would, however, have none of that. He defended the playwright saying, “There is no strict order in a work of imagination. The playwright has the liberty to use history as he pleases. A writer has the creative licence to change the turn of history. He may not chronologically follow events as recorded by history. This is not an anthropology text where historians have to record events as they unfold accurately.” He later disclosed that he was also irked by some parts of the play. Domino said he thought Osinaike was an evangelist himself out to preach, with the way he disparaged traditional religion.

Acting Director General of the National Troupe, Martins Adaji, also appeared to support Osinaike, albeit indirectly. “Don’t let’s mix the freedom of the playwright with historical facts. This is a director’s play; it gives us the liberty to embellish and put what you think is good enough. The play has the potential of blossoming into an epic play. If a play has corrected an historical error, it’s a good play,” he said.

Josephine Igberease, another official of the NTN, advised playwrights to “be definitive. Let’s know if you are being historical”, while writing a script.

Artist and scholar, Sola Fosudo, enjoined Osinaike who will direct ‘We’ , a presentation of the Dance Guild of Nigeria for the country’s Golden Jubilee, to consider the title of the play because an average reader would like to know more about Mary Slessor’s history. “The playwright should put more songs in the play and consider some sub-plots to go with the linear plots,” he added.

Film critic, Shuaibu Husseini, wondered why Osinaike changed the original title of the play from ‘Amaniba’ to ‘Mary Slessor’ when there is no link between the missionary’s activities and her eventual recognition by the Queen of England in the play.

But rather than be discouraged by the comments, Osinaike, who wrote the play in 2001 when he went for a research work in Akwa Ibom, took it all in good spirit. “I will go back to the sites and research again and get Mary Slessor right. I’m not going to change the title. I will research Mary Slessor in Arochukwu and in other areas. By the time I finish, I will have a compendium on Mary Slessor. If it’s going to take me another year, I will go.”

Nigerians take seats in British Parliament

By Tosin Sulaiman/234 Next

Three politicians of Nigerian descent will take their seats in the British House of Commons tomorrow, following hard-fought campaigns in the recent general election.

Helen Grant of the Conservative Party was elected in Maidstone & The Weald in the south east of England; Chi Onwurah of the Labour Party becomes the new MP for Newcastle Central in the north east; and Chuka Umunna, also of Labour, will represent Streatham in south London.

They are the first candidates of Nigerian heritage to be elected to Westminster and will join more than 600 other MPs when the House of Commons formally reconvenes tomorrow. Their presence and that of 24 other minority MPs means Westminster has never been more diverse. In the last Parliament there were only 14 black or Asian MPs.

The new faces include the first three Muslim women to win parliamentary seats, one of whom is also the first Bangladeshi MP. In addition, the Conservative Party has its first two Muslim MPs and its first Asian female MP. The number of women elected to Parliament also increased from 126 to 142, although women now make up only 22 per cent of MPs.

Ms. Onwurah, who was born in Newcastle to a Nigerian father and British mother, polled 15,692 votes, almost twice as many as her Liberal Democrat rival who came second with 8,228 votes. The Conservatives were third with 6,611 votes. The turnout was 56.4 per cent, down slightly from 57.3 per cent in the 2005 general election.

Ms. Onwurah, an engineer by profession, is the first black woman to represent the north east of England, as well as the first female MP of African descent in the House of Commons. Her father is from Awka in Anambra State and served in the Biafran army shortly after she was born.

After the results were announced, she said: “I want to thank, above all, the voters of Newcastle. Tonight they have chosen a message of a positive future.”

Mr. Umunna, an employment law solicitor, received 20,037 votes, with the Liberal Democrats in second place with 16,778 votes and the Conservatives in third place with 8,578 votes. The turnout rose by 22.4 per cent to 62.8 per cent.

Speaking after the results were declared, Mr. Umunna said: “this has been an extraordinary night.” Addressing his opponents, he said the campaign had been tough on all the parties.

“We have really been tested in this campaign, which has been perhaps the toughest for us since 1992,” he said, referring to the year in which his party took the seat from the Conservatives. Since then, it has been a safe Labour seat.

Getting emotional

Mr. Umunna ended by thanking the people of Streatham, saying: “for me, it’s quite an emotional thing I suppose. I was born and bred in this constituency and the fact that so many of my neighbours, my close friends and people that I’ve known in the community for a very long time have chosen to entrust me to represent them is something that makes me deeply humbled.”

Mr. Umunna is of mixed Nigerian, Irish and British descent. He told NEXT before the election that he was inspired by his late father, Ben Osi Umunna, who stood for the governorship of Anambra State in the early 1990s but narrowly missed out.

Mrs. Grant, who is the Conservatives’ first black female MP, helped the party retain Maidstone & The Weald with 23,491 votes, compared to 17,602 for the Lib Dems and 4,769 for Labour. The turnout was 68.9 per cent, up from 65.8 per cent in 2005.

Brought up by a single mother on a council estate, Mrs. Grant, whose father is Nigerian, went on to study law and set up her own firm, Grants Solicitors, in 1996. She joined the Conservative Party in 2006 after what she describes as a “brief flirtation” with Labour. On her website, she attributed her election victory to “two and a half years of good old-fashioned hard work and positive campaigning.”

The Conservatives’ other Nigerian candidate, Kemi Adegoke, failed to capture the safe Labour seat of Dulwich & West Norwood in south London. The seat was held by Tessa Jowell, a former government minister, who polled 22,461 votes, against 13,096 for the Lib Dems and 10,684 for the Conservatives.

Mrs. Grant, Ms. Onwurah and Mr. Umunna will be among 232 new MPs in Westminster following a general election that resulted in Britain’s first hung Parliament since 1974. It forced David Cameron’s Conservative Party, which received the most seats but not enough for an overall majority, into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who came third behind Labour.

Esiaba Irobi, the Intellectual terrorist

By Nnorom Azuonye/234 Next


I don’t really feel qualified to write about Esiaba Irobi. I have not met anyone quite qualified enough to write about Esiaba Irobi, The Minstrel. He represented something different to everyone he met. To many, he was the consummate artist and academic. To others, he was a benchmark for hard work and diligence. There were some who saw him as a spirit of anarchy. He was also a rude man who wrote many sexually-explicit poems with insane titles, my favourite being ‘A Short History of my Penis.’

I will attempt to write about the Esiaba Irobi I know. A good man. A laughter factory. A prophetic writer. A man who started out as my teacher, then became my friend, and ended up as my brother.

When I heard that Esiaba passed away via several messages, I stopped functioning. Everyone, all at once asking if I could confirm it, friends like Molara Wood and Toyin Adepoju, among others, wanted to be sure before calling the news by its name. I promised to find out from Esiaba’s wife, Uloaku.

The phone call to Berlin was the most frightening call I have ever made, and in the spirit of The Minstrel, I was optimistic that Uloaku would chuckle and tell me there had been a big mistake. It turned out to be wishful thinking. Esiaba was gone. At first I was very strong. I even tapped into my strong belief in reincarnation and shrugged, “Well, Esiaba, it has been a tough journey for you. Go on, sir, reset your life and start over.” Then I added, as we Igbo say when a person is going to our ancestors, “Esiaba, son of Irobi, your world, seven worlds, you will live your earthly life again. In your next life, you will not fall ill in mid life, you will marry young, and raise your family in joy and good health. Go in peace, my brother.”

It was really going well until I told my wife that Esiaba had died. Amaka had also grown close to Esiaba. When he called our home, they would laugh on the phone as he performed poetry and songs down the line on international phone calls. My wife broke down on me and cried. That’s when they gushed; my first tears for Esiaba. Yes, I am a poet too, and I am not afraid to have a good cry if it will stop my chest from exploding.

Nsukka

Esiaba Irobi was my lecturer in the Department of Dramatic Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from 1987 to 1989, when he left for the United Kingdom. Esiaba was more than a lecturer to me; he was an inspiration. Every course he taught me - Theatre History, Improvisation, Basic Acting Skills, and Introduction to Playwriting - opened my mind to the possibilities of the theatre.

Esiaba was not just a theorist, he showed us how to do what he taught. His performances were mesmerising, his energy was overwhelming. As an actor, he transformed even the lamest word in a play into a living entity inhabited by a spirit of dance. I had the privilege of understudying Esiaba as Elesin in Wole Soyinka’s ‘Death and The King’s Horseman’, a role he carried with commensurate pomp and passion, under the out-of-this-world direction of Eni Jones Umuko. Esiaba connected, raised and sustained the ritual impetus of that play, helped along with the magnificence of Nwugo Uzoigwe’s Iyaloja. The air in the Arts Theatre at Nsukka was so taut through the performances that it could have strangled people.

The plays

As a playwright, Esiaba wrote some of the angriest, action-packed, issue plays that packed theatres full every night. ‘Nwokedi,’ ‘The Fronded Circle,’ and ‘Hangmen Also Die’ changed the theatre tradition at Nsukka forever. Those of us who dared pick up our pens to write plays were under the heavy influence of Esiaba Irobi. I had small parts in ‘Nwokedi’ as a politician and member of the Ekumeku, but in ‘Hangmen Also Die’, I played the role of Chief Isokipiri Erekosima, who embezzled three million naira compensation meant for ordinary citizens for the destruction of their livelihoods by oil spillage. Erekosima spent half a million of that money on his coronation alone, as the Amatemeso of Izon State, and some on expensive lifestyles and education for his children abroad - because the standards of education in Nigeria had fallen. He was to meet his ancestors when the unemployed graduates-turned-criminals kidnapped, tried, condemned, and hung him from a tree. ‘Hangmen Also Die’ was produced in 1989, directed by Esiaba Irobi himself. Even back then, he foresaw the current crisis that has ravaged Nigeria’s Niger Delta region.

In 2003, I interviewed him; and to the question ‘Who is Esiaba Irobi?’ he replied,

“He is from the Republic of Biafra and has lived all his life in exile in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the USA. Everything he wrote in ‘Hangmen Also Die’ has come to pass, including the hanging of the boys, the killing of the chiefs, the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in a prison in Port Harcourt. The recent revolt by riverine women against foreign oil companies in Nigeria reminds us strongly of Tamara in the play and also resonates with the reason for the iconoclastic philosophy of The Suicide Squad.

“‘Hangmen Also Die’ is the most prophetic of all of Esiaba works. It is a picture of the future. Our future as a country: Area Boys. Bakassi. Armed Robbery. Anarchy! The worst is yet to come. Nigeria will break apart like a loaf of bread in water, it will capsize like a leaking canoe on the River Niger!”

The poetry

I first encountered the power of Esiaba’s poetry at the Anthill, Nsukka, run back in the day by Gbubemi Amas, Big George, and co. He would sing his words and on occasions, break into powerful choruses and dance. He would break sweat performing a poem, and would ensure the poem was etched on the minds of members of the audience.

Following the publication of his seminal poetry collection, ‘Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin,’ it was my honour to host him in London on April 1, 2006. Other poets that read on the same night were Toni Kan, Obemata, and Molara Wood, their readings punctuated with mine. It was all very good, but when Esiaba, the masquerade of the night, stepped up to the stage, he turned the night on its head, with songs, with calls and responses, and with his lyrical pieces rendered with penetrating, seering conviction. Esiaba wrote about some of his characters as people who used words “like a loaded pistol”, but it was he, The Minstrel, a powerful wordsmith, who used words like a loaded pistol. When mixed together and shaken, his words would produce the effect of an atomic bomb, powerful enough to eradicate Nigeria’s terminal diseases, which populate the country’s past, ruling, or aspiring leadership.

Celebrating Esiaba

In 2009, Esiaba got married to the lovely Uloaku, who joined him in America in the summer. They moved together to Berlin, where he took up position as a Distinguished Research Fellow, Freie University, Berlin, Germany 2009-2010 in the “Interweaving Performance Cultures” programme at the University’s International Research Centre.

The painful thing about Esiaba’s life is that he was a man who had a habit of being happy always, no matter his situation. He worked very hard at his craft, and tried as much as he could to enjoy his life. Every time I was on the phone with Esiaba, or sat across the table for a bite or a drink, he had no idea how to be in somebody’s company and not have a funny story to tell, a poem to read, a song to sing, or a political or philosophical idea to banter over. I was quite aware that he was well-respected in literary and academic circles, and had won some awards here and there, but it always surprised me that somehow, Esiaba had never really been publicly celebrated for all his achievements and vision.

Therefore, I asked myself: should we wait for Esiaba to win at least one of the two Nobel Prizes for Literature he used to tell us he would win, before we celebrate him? Or should be celebrate him anyway? I chose the latter, and in the planning of the first Sentinel Literature Festival - December 1 to 4, 2009 - we set aside the final day as ‘Esiaba Irobi Day.’ The plan was simple: on that day, admirers and some of his former students would read their favourite Esiaba poems, then there would be a musical interval, and then the man himself would incinerate the place with a 60-minute performance.

I have never seen anyone as excited about an event as Esiaba was about the ‘Esiaba Irobi Day’ at our festival. I am sure he won’t mind my sharing some of his thoughts for the evening: “My sisters who live in London and my beautiful and lovely wife will cook/provide the food… I suggest very strongly that you change the picture of mine you have chosen. I will send another more exciting photograph which you can use to create a one-page advert in colour. You can then send it as an attachment - INDIVIDUALLY - to everybody who is interested in poetry in the UK…We can also target some Ngwa people who are not literary sensibilities, but who will be coming for the food and the wine and the photograph-taking and to see their rambunctious brother performing in London with a band called The Republic of Biafra!… A lot of Igbo people - if you can find a listserv containing their names-will also want to come…

“I also suggest that you push the event through Toyin Adepoju’s facebook. And the Wole Soyinka Society… Jackie Mackay knows a lot of people in the literary milieu of London. You should try and befriend her. She can help to swell the AUDIENCE on December 4, 2009. We should also think of special invitations to people like Peter Badejo, Osy Okagbue, Yvonne Brewster, Nigerian actors/ theatre directors, etc. The idea of Special Invitations and a kind of DISTINGUISHED high table and brief speeches about the poet will... make them come as well as bring other people… I am planning to have food - Igbo cuisine on December 4. In addition, we can also have some wine, bread, cheese and charge a sensible gate fee for this huge event. I am planning to put on a really powerful show complete with my band: The Republic of Biafra. My son, Nnamdi, will play his saxophone in the band.”

Published and forthcoming works

Esiaba also copied an e-mail he wrote to Jacqueline Mackay to me, and there, I thought we were about to celebrate Esiaba, only for me to learn he was dedicating the show to Ms Mackay. In this e-mail, he wrote, “I will not be “reading” but actually “performing” in the African oral tradition... excerpts from the following published and forthcoming collections: Frozen Music (1985), Handgrenades (1986), Infloresence (1987), Tenants of the Desert (1988), What is Tender about Ted Hughes? (1989), Is This a God I Smash? (1990), Tell Me I am Lying! (1991), The Kingdom of the Mad (1997), Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin (2004), A Calendar of Love (forthcoming), A Short History of my Penis (forthcoming), ZEZE and other LOVE poems (forthcoming), The Tree that Weeps (forthcoming)… It will be a great day and I will make it clear to everybody - before I begin my performance - that this event is specially staged for a great woman who has a lot of love for everything African, including our literature, arts, cuisine, and young men with dysfunctional penises!”

He had it all planned in his head, but due to some unforeseen problems with his travel documents, he could not attend the festival and we had to cancel day 4.

In March 2010, I was delighted when Esiaba wrote me a heartwarming e-mail in which he said his health was on the mend, and he and his wife now had 5-year multiple visas in and out of Britain. Then the masterstroke: he informed me that his wedding ceremony had been fixed for the middle of June and that he would very much like me to organise a poetry event to serve as his bachelor’s eve party. Like the festival show, Esiaba had big plans for his wedding poetry event, and after our last exchange on Wednesday, April 28, I started making plans to realise his big show in London, only this time, he did not just pull out due to problems, he actually did a Michael Jackson on me.

The Sentinel Poetry Movement is a part of what has defined my life since 2002, and one thing I have said at every opportunity, is that Esiaba Irobi was the one that suggested that I grow the idea from the small exercise on my website. I am happy that in his lifetime, Sentinel published Esiaba’s own poetry, and essays; and essays on Irobi’s works by others such as Pius Adesanmi and Afam Akeh. I am also proud that although the big event never happened, there was at least that evening in 2006 when he sang and danced as part of a Sentinel Live Event.

Eulogies

On hearing of his death, many have said wonderful things about Esiaba. The poet, Remi Raji, describes him as “one of the finest, but rarely sung writers.” The truth is that we all wait for the West to adopt and celebrate our best. Esiaba was never going to be a darling of the western world. Our people are singing him now that he is dead. I, however, deeply appreciate some comments on my Facebook page from people I knew were genuine Esiaba friends. Osita Okagbue writes, “With Esiaba, some laughter has left; a joy for life and people has gone! I’ll miss your laughter, our friend, colleague, and my academic nephew.” Gbubemi Amas says, “This is very sad news for anyone who loves life.” And among other tributes, Abdul Mahmud, who writes as Obemata, remembers him this way; “Esiaba was such an engaging poet; memories of his performance at the maiden Sentinel Poetry Live years ago in London are as abiding as the fraternal love and respect he showed to some of us who interacted with him that night”. That was Esiaba, a respecter of kindred spirits. A lover of life.

I am as devastated by Esiaba Irobi’s passing as many of my colleagues, and Esiaba’s students are, but nothing we feel today can compare with what Uloaku, his wife of less than one year must feel, or what his Saxophone-playing son, Nnamdi, must feel. I also hope that Uloaku is well in the know about his unpublished works, and will work tirelessly to make sure they see the light of day. These include such books as ‘How to make love to a Negro all Night and Survive it’, ‘A White Man’s Guide to Black Woman’, ‘Theorizing African Cinema: Ontology, Teleology, Semiology and Narratology’ (Routledge, London), ‘Before They Danced in Chains: African Metalanguages in African-American Performance Aesthetics’, and his novel, too long in the making:‘The Intellectual Terrorist.’

Nnorom Azuonye is the Founder/Editor of ‘Sentinel Literary Quarterly’, and publisher of ‘Sentinel Nigeria’ magazines

Anambra Politics

By Sam Amadi, 234 Next


The governorship election in Anambra early in 2010 is the real test of Nigerian democracy.

Success in navigating the landmines in Anambra secures strong ethical foundations for consolidating democracy in 2011. The Ekiti election, notwithstanding the feisty rhetoric and the incendiary mobilisation, was child's play compared to what is tugging at the hems of Anambra elections.

There is already a prophesy of high-level warfare in Anambra as we count-down to the election. Many informed analysts believe that the seed of the doom of 2011 will be sowed in the Anambra election.

What is frightening about Anambra politics is that it is played according to the best book in Mafioso operations. It is highly funded and the combatants are organised more like crime rings than political factions, with lethal capacity to inflict grave damage on each other and on the system. Political factions in Anambra politics are essentially militant groups fighting for right to control the resources for further opportunist operations. So, Anambra optimises what politics has become in Nigeria: a vicious war for economic survival and supremacy.

The combatants take no prisoners because the stakes in a petro-state Nigeria are huge. So, how did this militaristic political mercantilism begin?

Since the beginning of the Third Republic Anambra has posed a special challenge to democracy in Nigeria. In 1999, the governor of Anambra was a captive of moneybags and failed woefully to provide the most basic social services. Such was the failure of that government that the otherwise indifferent PDP under Obasanjo decided to deny Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju, a second term. He was the only governor in the party that did not stand for reelection. Mbadinuju's government did not pay workers salaries for almost the whole of his tenure. It was inevitable that the government ended on a murderous note and the governor is still embroiled in the alleged heinous murder of the former chairman of the state chapter of the Nigerian Bar Association and his wife.

Anambra continued in this violent and decadent trajectory in 2003 when Dr. Chris Ngige was elected as governor. Like his predecessor he was the product of a godfather - Chief Chris Uba- a largely uneducated moneybag. Uba as a wise investor demanded control of the state treasury. For whatever reason Ngige refused to hand over the power of the purse to his godfather. The result of that defiance was the most historic development in Nigerian politics. The godfather- in the typical manner of cult-leaders- kidnapped the governor and extracted a resignation from him. The governor survived through a counter-terrorist maneuver and so was birthed illiberal violence as the governing procedure of politics in Anambra. Ngige did not stay long. The musical chair moved and the man who actually won the election took over. But the gene was out of the bottle.

It is alleged that the root of the problem of politics in Nigeria is the materialism of the Igbo people and their failure to be like the rest of Nigerian people and allow a college of elders determine their politics. This interpretation of political violence in Nigeria is expanded to ridicule Igbo social capital. In the minds of these interpreters Igbo politics is flawed by its individualism and the muscular self-expression of the average Igbo. To substantiate the claim that the lack of a leader amongst the Igbo is at the root of the murderous farce in Anambra these interpreters point out that almost every politician in Anambra has picked a nomination form for the governorship election. What kind of place is it that every Okeke and Okafor claims the right to be governor at the same time?

This interpretation is nonsense. The problem of politics in Anambra is not because the Anambra politician is essentially greedy, materialistic and ambition. The problem is not because of the lack of the social capital of solidarity and cooperation amongst Anambra politicians as some of these analysts and commentators think. It is true that the average Anambra citizen like most Igbos is individualistic and profit-oriented. It is true that the average Anambra citizen has a disposition to reject hierarchy and assert his or her right to be heard and to be factored in the equation. As Arthur Nzeribe would put it, "everything has to be negotiated". This can be said to be the essential Igbo political economy. Every citizen is a factor and must be factored in the equation of governance.

Given this DNA of Anambra politics does the crisis of politics in Anambra arise from the genetic constitution of Anambra society that exemplifies the Igbo political economy? No! I don't think Anambra political pathology arises from its ultra republican and mercantilist genetics. It arises from Nigeria's unrelenting imposition of authoritarian temper and structure of political organisation in Igbo land. Anambra is the most critical staging post of that onslaught. The dominant Nigerian political culture has privileged order above freedom and hierarchy above intelligence.

There is no doubt that excessive individualism and profiteering are serious problems to social organisation in Anambra and in Igbo land. But this is not what is causing the tragedy in Anambra. If every Anambra citizen wants to be governor and there are clear guidelines and rules to determine who wins the primaries and the actual election there will be no problem. The issue is that there are no rules and the Nigerian political elite prefers consensus based on hierarchy and other personalised considerations. And selection based on hierarchy and sentiment is antithetical to republicanism.

Anambra is a problem because Nigeria is not yet truly a rule of law state. The crux of liberal democracy is proceduralised rule-making and rule-enforcement. In liberal democracy procedure is king. And the procedure that matters is that which decides between conflicting interests based on fair rules already established. That is classical rule of law. Now, if you map such a procedure on Anambra politics the crisis may become an opportunity for deepening democracy.

Anambra is a looming disaster because the mode of politics in Nigeria is imposition based on sentiments and hierarchy. An authoritarian logic is managing a republican culture.

Dr. Sam Amadi lives in Abuja