Nd'Igbo Do Not Need Leaders; They Need Opportunities

By Chris Aniedobe, Business Day

Many have billed the lack of a transcendent Igbo political leader as the Igbo albatross. Those who say that do not understand the Igbos. The Igbos are economically efficient, individualistic, non-ideological, rational, resourceful, and always have been and always will be politically risk averse. The average Igbo man feels that he has the skill, dexterity, perseverance, and luck to dare his own failure or his own success, sometimes in spite of the incipient odds of failure. That is why the Igbos are dispersed throughout Nigeria and the world with each person daring his own failure or success. But that which makes us successful as individuals fails us as a group because group dynamics is not always the sum of the parts that make it up.

Ndigbo are yet to evolve a group leadership model that will work for us. Until we attain such a model, we will not be successful in party politics because politics is a game of platforms. We see political parties as platforms for individual opportunities and not platforms for collective tribal political actions. This attitude has so far characterized our attitude towards politics particularly since 1999.

Although Ndigbo may come together during times of crisis, it probably is best at this point to acknowledge that Igbos do not need leaders, and do not believe in leaders in so far as those leaders do not create economic opportunities for them. That transcendent Igbo political leader may still come about but only in the context of a firm belief that tangible economic opportunities may come from his leadership.

Unfortunately, in the minds of a people that tend not to anchor their fate on their leaders, the failure of our political leaders have tended to reaffirm the belief in the Igbo mindset that so called leaders are really of no tangible consequence in their lives. Many of our so called leaders have shamefacedly exploited their offices for opportunities. Until then, a distributed leadership model, where the average Igbo man is in fact given a material leadership role in a highly coordinated system of known risks and guaranteed rewards may be the best leadership model for Ndigbo at this point in time.

While our political theorists deal with the issue of appropriate leadership models for Ndigbo, it stands as a purely elementary proposition that we do better as wealth creators than as politicians and rather than pursuing illusory political goals, we should expend our efforts at utilizing our superior economic skills for rapid regional economic resurgence of our Region.

But Let Us Just Stop Being Naïve about Nigerian Politics, Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand. It Never Did and it Never Will

The talk of Igbo Presidency 2015 is a distraction by people who have not taken a close qualitative look at Igbo assets. Those who believe that Ndigbo should be President in 2015 on moral grounds alone are offering up cheap political blackmail that rings hollow. To paraphrase Frederick Douglass, if NdiIgbo are not prepared to vigorously struggle for it, there is no point talking about it. Those who profess to favor Nigerian presidency of Igbo extraction and yet depreciate the need for deep agitation on a common political platform are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They must commit to the struggle all the way with the zeal of the Zikist boys who were prepared for either freedom or death.

Until the will is there to stamp our foot on the ground and be willing to lay down our lives for it, talking about Nigerian Presidency of Igbo extraction in the face of the considerable structural limitations that constrain us is a distraction. The political diffidence of Ndigbo is self-evident. Others have found out what Ndigbo will quietly submit to and know the exact measure of political injustice which can be imposed on Ndigbo and it will continue until they are resisted with carefully orchestrated struggle. Right now the will is not there. Ndigbo are happily foraging for opportunities in a platform independent manner and are engaged in anything but platform oriented struggle. There is nothing wrong with that. There is however, everything wrong with thinking that the Presidency will be conceded to us purely on moral grounds.

Not that Ndigbo do not need political power; it is that we cannot attain political power without a road map and that road map must take into account the structural defects of the Nigerian entity in so far as it has constrained Ndigbo, its largest ethnic group, to less than one sixth of the Federation. That road map must be drawn on the fabrics of true federation and true federalism. The execution of the road map will involve both words and blows; words in the sense that we must be willing to mount consistent and sustained assault on the anomalies in the practice of the Nigerian Constitution that preclude Ndigbo from attaining full rights and benefits of citizenship in their States of domicile; blows in the sense that Ndigbo must be prepared to assert their legal rights of Nigerian citizenship in any manner legal or necessarily legal to ensure that their fundamental rights remain inviolate. In fact, in any well conducted election, Ndigbo have the numbers to vote in an outcome determinative power in States outside Igbo land. This is a bargaining chip that other ethnic groups do not have but it is also a chip that must be well-guarded.

Remembering Zik in a Season of Mourning

By Max Amuchie/Business Day

On Tuesday, May 11 Nigeria was in a mourning mood. Many official activities had been either suspended or scaled down to observe the one week of national mourned declared by the government for the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, who died five days earlier in Aso Rock.

May 11 every year is set aside by Ohanaeze Ndigbo to remember the father of modern Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe, who died on that day in 1996. This year’s Zik symposium organized by Ndigbo Lagos took place at the Lagos Resource Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, a smaller venue compared to the more elaborate outing that the Zik memorial has been known for over the years.

Kalu Onuma, administrative secretary of Ndibgo Lagos, explained that the organizers opted for the Lagos Resource Centre instead of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in diference to the mood of the nation. Before Mbazulike Amechi, a member of the pre-independence Zikist Movement, who was guest speaker, mounted the rostrum, there was a film show on Azikiwe’s exploits as a nationalist and sports man. At the end of the film, many people in the audience shook their heads apparently disappointed about how Nigeria has followed a wrong development trajectory different from the dreams of the founding fathers like Zik. Amechi’s lecture was thought provoking as it was magisterial.
Nnamdi Azikwe

Amechi, popularly known as the ‘The boy is good’ in the days of the fight for Nigeria’s independence, talked about Zik’s background and how his cosmopolitan upbringing shaped his worldview. “Because he was born in the North, educated in the East and the West and could speak Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa and Efik Languages, Zik grew up and saw himself simply as a Nigeria child. We may mark this for Zik’s liberal attitude towards One Nigeria and his consuming passion for the unity of the country. His taking part in congregational prayers and modes of worship in the different Christian dominations also helped to prepare him for an enlightened liberal attitude to religion and human relations. Infact when he assumed the mantle of national leadership, he took time to study the Islamic Q’uran and he could quote the chapters and verses of the Q’uran as Muslim Maitama Sule of Kano can quote the Christian Bible.

“After his secondary education in Nigeria, Zik found his way to America in quest of the golden fleece. After harsh and daunting experiences in Storer College, Pittsburgh, he studied at the Howard and Lincoln Universities where he acquired degrees in political science,” he said.

He told the audience about Zik’s contribution to Nigerian journalism with his chains of newspapers. He declared: “Dr. Azikiwe returned to Nigeria in 1935 after a brief spell in Ghana (then known as Gold Coast). In Nigeria he found out that the people lacked education and political consciousness. In order to arouse the political consciousness of the people, he proceeded to set up newspapers. He established the West African Pilot in Lagos, Southern Nigerian Defender in Ibadan, Eastern Nigerian Guardian in Port Harcourt, Nigerian Spokesman in Onitsha, Daily Comet in Lagos (later transferred to Kano to aid nationalist Aminu Kano’s NEPU) and the Eastern Sentinel in Enugu.”

He said Zik picked youths who had no experience or formal training in journalism and trained them to run the newspapers. Most of them rose to become the great names in Nigerian journalism, including that one can find printed in letters of gold in the annals of journalism in people like Increase Coker, Ebun Adesioye, A.K. Blankson, A.Y.S. Tinubu, Abiodun Aloba, Stephen Iweanya, Herbert Unegbu, M.C.K. Ajuluchukwu, Tony Enahoro, Magaji Danbatta, Za’adu Zungur, Peter Osugo, Babatunde Jose and A.K. Disu. “This core of pioneer journalists represented the entire geography of Nigeria and reflected no ethnic or regional boundaries. This is a strong evidence that Zik saw Nigeria as one large family and not the hazy contraption of not very friendly tribes and tongues as we have now,” Amechi said ruefully.

The guest lecturer delved into the political history of Nigeria, how Zik teamed up with the late Herbert Macaulay, founder of Nigeria’s first truly national political party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (later National Council of Nigerian Citizens NCNC) and how Zik took over leadership of the party when Macaulay died in 1947

He took audience on the memory lane on the carpet crossing in the Western House of Assembly in 1952 that denied Zik premiership of the Western Region when legislators elected on the platform of NCNC crossed the carpet to join the defunct Action Group founded by the late Obafemi Awolowo.

Amechi talked about how Zik sacrificed the position of prime minister of Nigeria in order to persuade the north to vote for independence in 1960 because the British had said if any region voted against independence they would delay granting Nigeria independence on October 1, 1960. The north, according to him, had given as condition for going along with the south on the independence question the concession of the position of prime minister.

He talked about Zik’s effort to become president in 1979 with Shehu Shagari as his running mate and how that effort was thwarted by opportunists who convinced Zik to dump the agreement already reached with the National Movement which transformed into the defunct National Party of Nigeria, the ruling party in the second republic. He called on Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural organization to organise a befitting burial for all Igbo heroes who died in during the Nigeria Civil War

Amechi received a standing ovation after his lecture. Raph Uweche, president of Ohanaeze said there had had been effort in giving Igbo heroes burial. He thanked Amechi for his inspiring lecture.

Ben Obi, vice presidential running mate of the Action Congress in the 2007 election, spoke about Nigerian politics and the efforts he made to get Igbos in the scheme of things when he was special adviser to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Other speakers talked about the need for the elderly in Igboland to groom the youth to be future leaders.

Igbo Studies In America

By Okey C. Iheduru/Business Day

Washington, D.C., the United States capital, hosted a number of events and activities about Nigeria over the past week. Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan met with President Obama in his first official outing as head of state, and later participated in the nuclear weapons summit, interacted with heavy weights at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, and had an hour-long interview on CNN.
By all accounts, our acting number one citizen acquitted himself well and put the country back on the international arena. Shortly before Jonathan's arrival, however, the eight annual conference of Igbo Studies Association (ISA), appropriately themed Nigeria at 50: The Igbo Experience, was held at Howard University from 9-10 April 2010.

From its modest beginning in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1999, the ISA has become a prestigious annual event that now attracts eminent academics, media moguls, businesses, and politicians from North America, Europe, and Africa. There were about 84 academic papers, four plenary sessions, and fourteen concurrent sessions on topics ranging from Igbo language, literature, religion, spirituality, civilization, culture, health, environment, women, education, conflict management, entrepreneurship, youth and sports, and the old and new Igbo diasporas.

For many Igbo intelligentsia resident in Nigeria, ISA conferences are among the few venues where reasoned debate can take place without the suffocating stench of 419 money-bag politicians, silly chieftaincy and religious titles, and charlatans of all stripes that now bestrode a land once noted for honest individual achievements and sense of community. The goodwill message from Ohaneze Ndi-Igbo president, Ralph Uwechue praised ISA as 'a strong platform to showcase Igbo civilization and the contribution of our people towards the advancement of global civilization.' Prominent Igbos, such as Onwuchekwa Jemie, editor-in-chief of Business Day newspaper; and Ebere Onwudiwe of the Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja; Ihechukwu Madubuike, former education minister and Vice Chancellor of Tansian University, Umunya; T. Uzodinma Nwala of University of Abuja; Pat Utomi of Lagos Business School; and Senator Uchechukwumereije regularly attend these meetings.

Over the years, the keynote address has become the big masquerade of ISA conferences. Last week, Senator Chukwumerije's address, 'Journey in Reverse Gear: Tragedy of Self Denigration' did not disappoint. He traced the phenomenal success of Igbo identity-building and civilization before the tragic events of 1966 and the subsequent Biafra-Nigeria civil war, and proffered strategies to reverse Igbo marginalization and self-denigration that accompanied Biafra's collapse forty years ago.

There was also a 'special plenary roundtable' on 'Emergent Issues of Peace and Security in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects for Democratization and Development' featuring Judith Asuni of the U. S. Institute of Peace; Peter Lewis of the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University; as well as Utomi and Nwala. As usual, ISA poetry reading featured some of Nigeria's best in the craft-Obi Nwakanma, Chimalum Nwankwo, Dubem Okafor, Ikeogu Oke, and Tess Onwueme. But the trophy goes to Chris Ebighgbo, a Fine/Applied Arts lecturer at University of Benin who regaled the audience with traditional Igbo wooden flute and dignified step-dance, traditionally reserved for titled men who pranced about in tandem with the call of the flutist, demonstrating their war prowess and other noble deeds.

The second-generation Igbos in attendance was clearly attuned to issues of extra-territorial citizenship and loyalty. A group of Washington, D.C.-based Igbo high school students raised funds for summer work experience at the historic Igbo Village project in Virginia, USA. Records show that Igbo slaves-about 37 per cent of blacks in the state of Virginia prior to the American civil war (1860-1865)-built up that state. The Illinois-based Umu Igbo Alliance, comprising high school and college-age Igbos, marketed their upcoming July 29-August 1, 2010 'Igbo Ezue: Launching the Igbo Renaissance' where Igbo youth and organizations from all over the U. S. are expected to attend.

It is indeed a reflection of Nigeria's present predicament that the most credentialed gathering of Ndi-Igbo discussing Nigeria at 50 took place in far away America. Few universities in Nigeria can boast of one-fifth of the scores of Igbo scholars that assembled in Washington last week. Appropriately, the conference communiqué called on Ndi-Igbo to pay close attention to Igbo migration, specifically, the implications of brain-drain. The language of ISA meetings is English, not Igbo, an irony amplified by the conference communiqué's call for an

Igbo Language Academy 'as a matter of urgency' to help reverse alleged imminent disappearance of the Igbo language. Also, as Igbo villages decay and turn into kidnap counties for the well-to-do, Ndi-Igbo are busy re-creating Igbo village and youth culture in America. Is America the best hope of preserving the best of Igbo culture and civilization?

Over all, the 2010 conference brought out the very best in various actors. The U. S. consular staff in Abuja and Lagos received deafening applause as Nigeria-based attendees recounted the professionalism and cooperation accorded them during their visa applications and interviews. The biggest kudos, however, went to the conference chair, Apollos Nwauwa, a professor of history at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, USA whose remarkably efficient organizational skills (including liaison with the U.S. consular officials) earned him another term as conference chair.