Nigeria: Akwete Cloth -- An Igbo Textile Art

BY MCPHILIPS NWACHUKWU AND APPOLOS OZIOGU IBEBABUCHI/VANGUARD

WEAVING is an ancient craft of man dating to the early new stone age when he learnt to make a rough kind of clothing from the fibers of flax plants. Weaving is described as the orderly interlacing of fibres and pressing them together to make the cloth.

In Nigeria, cloth weaving is universally practised in most urban areas and cities like Abeokuta, Ilorin, Iseyin, Akwete, Okene, Benin, Sokoto, Borno, Kano, Bida and Iseyin area among others. Raffia and cotton are most-widely used in cloth-weaving in Nigeria.

Cloth is material of great economic, cultural, political and social importance. Before the introduction of coinage currency in Nigeria, cloth was used as trade good and currency item. It is worn for body beautification and decoration, and for ceremonies. There are different types of cloth-making among various ethnic groups of Nigeria. The Yoruba are famous for Aso-Oke traditional fabric weaving.

Aso-oke is just a local homespun cotton cloth woven by men as narrow-strip cloth, usually woven with vertical stripes in different colours on background colour. The Hausa are known for Kura cloth-making which is deep blue black and shining design.

The Igbo also are known widely for Akwete-cloth weaving which is basically done by women. Akwete cloth is a special woven fabric by Igbo women in Akwete area near Aba in Abia State. It is originally referred to as "Akwa Miri" (Cloth of the water) meaning towel. Akwete cloth weaving is said to be as old as the Igbo nation.

Socio-cultural importance: Because of the dexterity of the weavers who demonstrated evincingly great mastery of technique and beauty of design, the art of Akwete-cloth weaving was erroneously believed to have been introduced from Okene in Kwara state where a similar but highly developed style earlier existed.
Patterns of red and black designs:

However, Akwete cloth comes in different colours and designs. Some are in the patterns of red and black designs, interwoven in geometric patterns on the white ground which is favoured by Igbo men. It is mainly used as a towel for bathing. The Akwete cloths, woven from sisal-hemp fibres are of coarse type, used by masqueraders, and by warriors as headgears, while those made from raffia fibres are used on religious occasions like the Ozo titleship, and for mourning by women.

But the most popular Akwete cloth is the type of cotton fabric woven from cotton fibres in colourful patterns; the weavers have much preference for bright and strong colour like red and yellow. Traditionally, the raw cotton fibres that surround and protect cotton seeds do undergo some processes before use, namely: First, ginning process, by which the cotton seeds are removed from the fibres by rolling a rod over the cotton ball. Second, bowing process, which involves making cotton fibres fluffy by flicking the string of a small bow against them until they look like cotton wool.

Third, spinning process, which is done by pulling the fibres into threads. Processing of the cotton fibres from the cotton seeds is not the same with that of the raffia fibres. Raffia as we know is the fibre from the fresh leaf of the palm tree. The process of extracting fibre from the thorny raffia palm frond demands a special skill by the woman weaver. She first of all starts from the tip, the distal end by splitting it, and then gently pulls down to the inflorescence.

Weaving as gender defined job: She dries the fibres in the sun or by the fire place to make them dry enough for use in weaving. Generally, it is women who process the raffia fibres or cotton fibres or any other kind of fibres for used in weaving.

Wide vertical loom:

Weaving is done on a loom. There are two types of loom namely: horizontal loom which is used by men weavers; vertical loom, used by women weavers. Both types of loom operate on the same principle.

An Akwete woman weaves on a wide vertical loom which produces cloth about 115cm wide x 1609cm long; the length of the finished product is normally twice the height of the loom. Thus, after processing the cotton to desired thread form, the weaver fixes a set of threads on the loom to form the warp and then the weft thread (net-work of thread) is passed over and under the warped thread.

The weft thread can be passed over more than one warped thread at a time to produce variations of thread colours and patterns in the woven cloth. As the weaving progresses, the finished cloth is slipped down over the lower beam and up and back. Then, the weaver uses a weaving stick to separate the odd and eve warp thread before she winds the weft thread onto a long narrow stick which is passed from side to side.

It is expedient to reiterate that Akwete cloth is usually made of cotton thread, and the decorative motifs are produced with cotton threads of a heavier texture or rayon silk.

Politics of cloth: The decorative motifs appear mostly on one side of the cloth, though they can appear on both sides. The decorative motifs are given names which are suggestive of their appearance. A few among them are animals heart; children's fingers; comb; earring; snake-back; stool and tortoise. However, some weavers can give different names to motifs that are not suggestive of their appearance. In the olden days, the "tortoise" motif (ikaki) is only worn by members of royal families and if anybody from non-royal family dares wear it, he or she could be punished or be sold into slavery.

The "ebe" design is specially reserved for use as a protective talisman for pregnant women or warriors. Most of these designs or motifs are by inspiration because the weavers claim that certain motifs are revealed to them by the gods, and as a result, no weaver is allowed to copy the design and it therefore dies with its owner.

Indigene, non-indigene in Igbo land? Tufiakwa!

By Pini Jason, Vanguard

LAST August the Governor of Abia State, Chief Theodore Ahamefula Orji issued an order sacking so-called non-indigenes from the public service of Abia State.

In a directive dated August 25, 2011 entitled: “Backloading on Transfer of non-indigene in Abia State Public service to their state of origin,” the Governor directed that all non-indigenes working in the public service of Abia State (including Local Government) be transferred to their states of origin effective from October 1, 2011. To be excluded from this purge are non-indigenes in the tertiary institutions in the state.

Question mark on Igbo politicians

This policy has expectedly drawn appropriate flaks from Igbo nation for those affected by this purge are mostly fellow Igbo. There have also been some sympathisers who have tried to rationalise Governor Orji’s action. The main plank of Orji’s defence rests on the need to pay the newly enacted minimum wage of N18,000.

My view is that the purge is unnecessary, inexcusable and puts a sharp knife through the thin ligature of Igbo unity. It puts a question mark on the penchant of Igbo politicians to cry about marginalization and injustice in the Nigerian nation. I have always suspected such cries as self-serving. Orji’s action proves me right.

For a gregarious people who have been at the forefront of the advocacy for Nigerians who have lived almost all their lives in any part of this country to be accorded citizenship rights, I think this purge is not a very thoughtful one. It has a tendency to backfire as I have read somewhere that Anambra State is retaliating Orji’s action! I hope to God that it is not true.

We Don't Discriminate In Admission - UNN Don

A VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS INTERVIEW

Dr Emmanuel Igbo, a Professor of criminology at the University of Nigeria and a major stakeholder in Imo State in this interview with Godwin Oritse said that the expectations of the people of the state are very high and called on the new Governor of the state to ensure that the grass people are carried along in the process of governance. Excerpts:

We hear the management of the University of Nigeria discriminate against non- Igbos when application by students are being considered, is this true?

The University of Nigeria as far as I do know, and I stand to challenged by anybody is very transparent in its admission policy and even handed in the sense that the University follows religiously to the letter the instructions from the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

In the admission policy of the University, you have a percentage of those who come by merit, then you have those that come by catchments area of the University, then you have what we call the educationally disadvantage states.

The University of Nigeria, I do not know about others insist very strictly that you adhere to this, if you do not your admission in that department will cancelled.

Merit is merit, if you get admission by merit, nobody is interested in looking at the names in the list.

If the merit is 45 percent for example, you just calculate it, if 45 percent of the quota you have is 20, then you count from one to 20 and rule off, then you come to catchments area , then you go to educationally disadvantaged states then how do you know now discriminate in the admission process?

Anybody who qualified to be in the merit list cannot removed from the merit list or somebody who is qualified to be in the catchments area list you cannot discriminate against the person.

In fact, we are looking for people to fill the spaces in educationally disadvantaged areas.

Anybody who tell you that the University of Nigeria discriminate on its admission process is perhaps is ignorant of the entire process.

What is your impression on the accreditation of courses in Nigeria Universities because this has been a problem that affects nearly all the universities?

Much as we know that there are many candidates at home who want to gain admission into the universities but there are limited spaces available.

What these students do is that once they see an institution, it could be a building or a few building put together and it is called a university and you see students trooping there .

What students should do is to find out whether these universities have the blessing of the National University Commission (NUC), that is very important.

Even the old universities are periodically being accredited in terms of their department, their courses, their lecturers and the infrastructure in place.

Even our law department failed accreditation and was stopped from admitting students.

Even our medical and surgery department failed accreditation and we have stopped admitting medical students.
Relevant Links

Those that complain are those that are actually deficient in almost everything like staff with requisite qualification, in infrastructure.

If you say that you are doing a course like pharmacy, you must have infrastructure like laboratory and these facilities must be inspected and approved by the NUC and Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria just like the medical profession, they have what is known as minimum standards and you must meet these minimum standards.

So those who are talking about not being accredited or asked to go home should find out if the NUC recognize the university and whether they can go there and obtain the certificates.

Do you have cultists in this university?

Yes but their activities are not pronounced because that is how the University's authority want it.

Book Review: The Igbo and Her World…. A Review

Abdulo O. Saba/Vanguard

IGBO PHILOSOPHY BY PROFESSOR T. UZODINMA NWALA

A specter is haunting Africa-the specter of identity-crisis. The sons and daughters of the Mother Continent have over the centuries been brutally severed from their roots through a series of Western-oriented programmes and a history of a systematic agenda of cultural genocide that has plunged the mass of African humanity into a current state of inauthentic existence and the corresponding episode of soul-searching in the hope to once again come to grips with the African self and reality.

This is the spirit behind the on-going vortex for the revitalization of African civilization as demonstrated in the harvest of literature on African humanity and philosophy, and as another acorn to this emergent African cultural oak come the book IGBO PHILOSOPHY: The Philosophy of the Igbo Speaking Peoples of Nigeria, by Professor T. Uzodinma Nwala.

Described by Chinua Achebe as a path-breaking volume in Igbo intellectual history, the work avails as a product of research spanning over 45 years starting from Nwala’s undergraduate research project in 1966-67 academic year at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Taken from a biographical perspective, Igbo Philosophy can be appreciated as the passionate life-work that over the decades flowed from the pen of one of Africa’s most creative and outstanding philosophers who, as a factor of history; also happens to be the man who initiated the teaching of African Philosophy in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1972, from where it spread globally.

The book first appeared to the academic world in manuscript form in 1973.Its influence can be traced to Rev. Edeh’s work on Igbo Metaphysics and other works. The circulation of the book over the last decade has been mainly in photocopies, and whereas the first edition which has so far been in circulation was just about 280 pages, this present edition appears as a book of over 400 pages in volume following a production process that has been on for the last five years.

approach, Igbo Philosophy demonstrates a movement away from works that tend to explain traditional worldview in terms of religious categories and a people’s worldview as if it descended from heaven above. Rather, the exposition builds upon the actual, realistic, and humanistic elements of the Igbo culture in the portrayal of several sociological, phenomenological, and even in certain respects, scientific and technological patterns along which the spirit of that which could be referred to as Igbo Philosophy found its expression. As for the composition of the book itself, a set of preliminary pages opens the work, and following this the reader is ushered into a cultural, historical, and epistemological treasure trove comprising of three sections and fifteen chapters.

Part A contains the introduction and another chapter dealing with the vexatious issue of the origins of the Igbos. Part B, on the other hand, deals with the Igbo traditional philosophy, with extensively deep treatment of Igbo traditional worldview, cosmological order and social control, thought and language in Igbo traditional society, Igbo traditional religious philosophy, Moral philosophy, Political philosophy, Economic philosophy and traditional philosophy of Art (aesthetics). Part C deals with Igbo contemporary thought patterns, examining such questions as the relation between traditional thought and contemporary thought, Christian thought and Igbo philosophy, Western education/ Science and Igbo philosophy. The conclusion comes after these

Moreover, and aside the author’s intellectual authority that is established upon decades of dedicated research in the area, Nwala’s personal affinity with the terrain of Igbo and African philosophy situates the book in a proper historical context, for it is now over 38 years since Uzodinma Nwala embarked on his intellectual odyssey as a pioneer scholar in the study of African philosophy, an adventure recounted by the author in the preface to the second edition, and an experience which beat through the labyrinths of Igbo philosophy into becoming a paradigm for the enterprise of African philosophy.

Having been provided with initial insight through the preface into the mind of the author and his connections to what became known as The Great Debate on African Philosophy, the introduction beckons, and invites the reader down a path that is replete with history, myths, legends, rituals, folklore, proverbs, idioms, skills, crafts, etc, all steeped in the rich world of the Igbos. In the Introductory chapter, Nwala states that he was writing for both the academic world and the world of the general public. He therefore treats such basic questions as the meaning of philosophy, the Egyptian origins of what is today academic philosophy, but insists that every organized human society possesses fundamental philosophical ideas and principles inherent in their culture.

He also goes on to show the differences between traditional philosophy and what is called critical philosophy, while arguing that traditional philosophy was not totally devoid of critical content. Finally, in this introductory chapter, he addresses the nature of Igbo traditional philosophy, summarizing it in the concept of Omenala Ndigbo (or Ako Ndigbo), what Mazi Mbonu Ojike calls Omenalism.

Chapter two deals with the question of who the Igbos are and on Igbo origins. Theories of Igbo origins as well as theories of Igbo connections to the Jews, Yoruba, Igala, etc, as well as the meaning of the word “Igbo”, ideological identity, and common historical experiences come under adequate analysis within this chapter.

From cover to cover, the book is sure to sound a death knell signaling the final laying to rest of the specter of identity-crisis for any haunted Igbo individual and community across the globe, replacing this with a congenial mood of affirmation and identity. Again, the experience that the book promises to every other reader, especially of African origin, is culturally refreshing, familiar and fluid, for as the ideas segue and the pages flow one into another, the reader feels the ghost of alienation being exorcised, to be possessed instead, by the re-assuring embrace of home-coming. Despite its intimidating size, IGBO PHILOSOPHY: The Philosophy of the Igbo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria is certainly a must for every bookshelf, public or private: that is to be identified with the African Renaissance movement.

Esiaba Irobi( 1960-2010) … the journey to Cemetery Road

By Prof. Isidore Diala, Vanguard

Last week at the prestigious Eko Hotel and Suit, Lagos, where the Management of Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas, NLNG in collaboration with the National Gallery of Arts, NGA inducted about 21 Nigerians including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Ladi Kwale, Fela Ransome Kuti into the National Hall of Fame, late brilliant theatre scholar, poet and playwright, Esiaba Irobi beat LNG laurate, Ahmed Yerima and Adinoyi Ojo Onukaba to win the 2010 LNG literary prize for drama to the tune of $50,000.

His winning entry is an unpublished play titled, Cemetry Road, which according to Prof Isidore Diala, “plays dangerously between the sacred and the profane, the macabre and the hilarious and attempts to appropriate the total resources of the theatre, ancient and modern, African and Western.”

Today, Sunday arts publishes a brilliant tribute written by Diala and culled from NLNG: The Magazine, which captures the soul and theaterical depth of Irobi, who sadly lost the battle to cancer not quite long in a German hospital.

The distinguished Nigerian playwright, poet, stage director, actor,literary theorist and scholar, Esiaba Irobi, decorated as his career was, never got the full recognition that he eminently deserved. He shared not only the unusual gifts and temperament but also the fate of some of the master spirits of the race. Educated at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), the University of Sheffield and the University of Leeds, both in England, lrobi’s specialisation was in Drama, Film and Theatre Studies.

A consummate theatre practitioner and astute scholar, Irobi at various times taught at UNN, the University of Leeds, and the Liverpool J. Moores University in England, New York University, Townson University, and the Ohio University, Athens all in the United States of America. He was on a Fellowship at Freie University, Berlin, Germany, at the time of his death on May 3, 20 I O. lrobi’s life was a restless and audacious search for new horizons.

The sheer magnitude of the lrobi oeuvre is a tribute to a life of industry, devotion and tenacity. His published plays include: The Colour of Rusting Gold (1989), Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh (l989),Hangmen Also Die (1989), Nwokedi (1991), The Other Side of the Mask (1999), The Fronded Circle (1999), and Cemetery Road (2009). At the time of his sudden death, he was also working on the final drafts of many other plays, several of which were in fact already in press: Sycorax (initially titled The Shipwreck, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Theater, USA), Foreplay (commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre, London, England), What Songs Do Mosquitoes Sing, I Am the Woodpecker that Terrifies the Trees, Zenzenina, The Harp, John Coltraine in Vienna, among many others. Added to his collections of poetry, Cotyledons (l987).Inflorescence(1989) Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin (2005), the lrobi canon is undoubtedly prodigious. Remarkably though, mere prolificity was not the ideal lrobi aspired to: there were many completed scripts he never attempted to produce as there were equally many staged plays he denied publication. His deep passion for pre-eminence led him to approach every creative endeavour as a soul-searching quest for ultimately unattainable perfection, a daring for the elusive ultimate laurel. His life was a fable of the steadfast search for distinction and the self-mortifications that quest often entails.

Born on the day of Nigeria’s independence, I October, 1960, Irobi interpreted that striking coincidence in terms of a destiny shared with the Nigerian nation, a destiny of agony and pain. In 1989, he told an interviewer: “The historical rigor mortis and political epilepsy of the country itself has left cracks on the mirror of the mind. Whatever has happened to the country has happened to me … “

lrobi’s diagnosis of the cause of that “political epilepsy” locates it in the corruption of the Nigerian leadership – politicians and soldiers alike. Consequently, his continuing theme has been the frustration and marginalisation of even the most -gifted Nigerian youth; he has been equally fascinated by the psychopathology of dispossession and its violent manifestations. lrobi’s signal insight is that even for the humane and the enlIghtened, material dispossession erodes a balanced personality by destroying personal integrity and self-worth. Contending that material dispossession induces mental possession, Irobi sees terror as a vocation that enhances self-esteem and moreover confronts society with for the literature prize is his style and unique approach to writing drama-making the subject matter a lot relevant to the society. its own violation of the norms it seems to support. He apparently endorses Fanon whose canonical work, The Wretched of the Earth, he refers to in Hangmen Also Die, self-consciously framing a comparison with his postulations.

Yet lrobi’s work is also an interrogation and modification of the Fanonian insight on the attainment of inner unity in violent action. lf Irobi reveals terror as a mask worn by the oppressed to confront a society whose hostility emasculates and demeans them, he equally argues that that mask is invariably the mask of madness. His despair is the power of social dispossession to reduce its victims to mere fury and rage. lrobi’s ideal is the reconciliation of purposeful revolutionary zeal with selfless social commitment.

Like his sustained negotiations of Fanon and Karl Marx, Irobi’s discipleship to Wole Soyinka had a profound impact on his art. In The Colour of Rusting Gold, lrobi is fascinated by Igbo concepts of liminality and divination as well as the dangers to the life of ritualised piety. However, in much of his work since the publication of Nwokedi in 1991, Irobi’s much more politically pronounced theme is explored against the backdrop of a ritual symbolism that evokes the typical atmosphere of Soyinka’s tragic drama. Guided by Soyinka’s example, lrobi seeks in his own Igbo cultural background enabling myths to comprehend life’s abiding mysteries; advancing insights deriving from Soyinka’s formulations rooted in Yoruba theatre, lrobi makes the theatrical basis of his typically challenging corpus the dramaturgy of Igbo ritual performances: propitiatory, divinatory, funerary and regenerative rites. But in transforming the enchanted figures of Igbo myths and legends – Amadioha, the thunder-throwing god of the sky,Agwu, the deity of contradictions, Ala, the Earth goddess or their avatars or proteges-into characters in his elemental drama reminiscent of the Greeks’ and Soyinka’s, lrobi also characteristically points to central human dilemmas beyond explicit political frameworks, integral instead with the timeless vision of tragedy. [n his entire oeuvre, his iconoclastic recuperation of Igbo myths and expansion of ritual to facilitate essentially political projects in contemporary societY do not only foreground a specifically [gbo theatre! tragedy but also set in relief his own audacious innovativeness. His inclination is always to formulate an alternative literary tradition and worldview by transforming Igbo cultural experience into paradigms potentially applicable to a wider humanity.

In Nwokedi (indebted to Soyinka’s The Strong Breed and Death and the King’s Horseman) Irobi appraises the relevance of a traditional festival for communal expiation of guilt, the Ekpe, in the context of contemporary political corruption; exploring Igbo funerary music in The Fronded Circle and meditating on a demonstrably Igbo concept of the relationship between the arts, religion and society in The Other Side of the Mask, Irobi drannatises typical post -colonial themes: oppression, migration and cultural alienation, identity crises, revolutionary violence, a revalidation of indigenous traditions, interrogation of colonial stereotypes; Cemetery Road plays dangerously between the sacred and the profane, the macabre and the hilarious and attempts to appropriate the total resources of the theatre, ancient and modern, African and Western. The forthcoming play, Sycorax, is a provocative ideological adaptation of Shakespeare’s much-travelled play, The Tempest, highlighting undertextualised Africanist and feminist perspectives. Exemplifying post-colonial drama’s interrogation of the representational biases of Western drama as well as its syncretic nature, Sycorax in filling in the gaps in Shakespeare’s narrative is typically iconoclastic, audacious, innovative, controversial, or simply lrobisque. Yet, I believe, the play Irobi would want us to remember him especially for is The Other Side of the Mask.

In a deeply moving tribute read at Irobi’s grave side at Amapu Igbengwo Umuakpara Osisioma Ngwa in Abia State, Nigeria, on 16 July 2010, his friend and colleague, Eni- Jones Umuko, called Irobi the most vociferous voice of his generation in the theatre. He also identified lrobi as “a very consummate actor who acted very passionately with a Stanislavskian emotional intensity that he holds under very tight control with a Brechtian discipline that gives him the persona of a Grotowskian mask, giving his acting a trance like quality:’ Umuko recalled also that Irobi craved for awards for his works and had argued fiercely when his work was denied the Association of Nigerian Authors’ (ANA) Drama Prize in 1985. lrobi’s The Colour of Rusting Gold had won the National Gold Gong Prize in 1982. But he justifiably craved for more. Supremely assured of his talent, Irobi saw laurels nonetheless as emblematic acts of public recognition necessary for an artist’s consolidation of his self-image.

His sculptor protagonist in The Other Side of the Mask, Janlike, is the representative visionary artist seeking a transcendence of the wreckage of history and the seductions of the human herd through his art yet paradoxically condemned to the judgment of society. Jamike’s self-acclamation is absolute: “I am the next (master artist)! The next! The very next! I am a genius! Everything I touch turns into gold. Everything I create is an ultimate masterpiece’: But with the denial of the national prize for sculpture for six years, doubts assail him and undermine his self-esteem. Confronting his work in a moment of murderous despondency, Jamike muses: “Caresses the works I thought there was craft here. I thought there was beauty here. I thought there was ecstasy here. Industry! Energy! Sincerity! Honesty! Truth! Power! Love! And Triumph! I thought there was art here. But they say there is none. (He covers the works) Perhaps, I have nothing to offer the world. Nothing. No message. No talent. No gift. No flint of genius. Nothing:’

North and South

By Obi Nwakanma, The Orbit/Vanguard

For most Nigerians from the South, anybody above ridge of the Benue is a “northerner” – Ndi-Hausa – as the Igbo used to say. They were lazy cattle-rearers, and illiterate.

They were generally all religious fanatics. In more recent times, they are the trouble with Nigeria, since “they” have “ruled” Nigeria for much of its postcolonial years. This means, only the northerners have caused Nigeria’s troubles and dragged us all back because of the North’s absolute lack of commitment to Nigeria, and their absolute lack of know-how about how to govern a modern nation.

This is absolutely false. It is as false as the general image in the mind of other Nigerians of the Yoruba – whom I have been told, even by so-called educated and, you might think, sophisticated Nigerians, as “dirty, fun-loving, corrupt and clannish.” This too is absolute nonsense. It is as nonsensical as the image of the Igbo whom many Nigerians see as money-grabbing, greedy, and lawless.

In the past, it was the Igbo who were often described as “clannish.” But that aspect of their national character has been displaced by the Yoruba in the popular Nigerian imagination. It is clear that Nigerians hardly or genuinely know each other.

Every minority from the south is the “Niger delta” – oppressed, and blameless; a victim of Nigeria’s cruel majority ethnic groups. This, of course, is not true. Very key members of the minority groups – north and south – have been complicit in the Nigerian crisis. Minorities have also governed as Heads of the government of Nigeria – Balewa, Gowon and Babangida. Now, Jonathan, is a Southern minority. The image of the southern minorities has been the result of the certain fervour of the Nigerian media which has basically also made the “minorities” question a regional question rather than a situation of human injustice.

There are religious minorities in many places; there are ethnic minorities. For instance, if you have one thousand Yoruba or Efik or Hausa people living in Owerri with an overwhelming Igbo population, they constitute a minority population irrespective of where they come from.

If you have ten Igbo living in Obubra, the Igbo are minority irrespective of their general or putative number in Nigeria. There are other kinds of minorities: paraplegics for instance are minorities. There is a Lebanese-Nigerian minority living in Kano and Ibadan, and such places. These minority populations have questions which ought to be fully addressed with the context of the polity. How we treat the infirm and the weak define the quality of our consciousness.

Those too have rights and ought to be protected by law where the provisions of law are inadequate. But I was talking about this divide – the national divide that makes Nigeria schizophrenic. I have had cause to enter very furious and testy debates on the question of Nigeria with regards to its imbalances. First let me say that the current talk by many southerners that the North, especially through the military ran Nigeria and underdeveloped it is false.

The closer truth is that a very complex alliance of business interests from the North and the South, with their international banking and security links ran Nigeria, and continues to run Nigeria. The ordinary northerner – Hausa or Fulani or Berom or even Tiv – has not benefited in any significant way from the so-called rule of Northerners. Individual northerners and southerners have benefited in immense ways, from their close associations and links with power, and we must pay heed to this fact.

The perplexing level of hatred we promote about each other has made it impossible for Nigerians –North and South – to take ownership of their nation, and to establish a clear reason for taking this country beyond its origin as a contraption of the British. Let me of course say that we have unburied ghosts: the Igbo still feel betrayed by the massive loss of lives from the pogroms and the civil war, and to the various religious riots in which they were targeted.

The image of the North of Nigeria as the hotbed of religious fanaticism and intolerance persists. In the northern mind, the South exists as a greedy, troublesome, cunning, oppressive and inhospitable lot. The South sees the North as a useless drainpipe on Nigeria.

They view the North from the prism that shows us its indolent elite or rulers. There are many truths in the broad canvas of images, but there are also many norths as there are many souths. Nigeria is made of people – complex and varied: kind, cruel, greedy, industrious; the zealot and the one of measured faith.

Nigeria’s diversity is both rich and troubling. There are currently serious separatists movements, North and south, and we all think that each of us keep the other from a certain manifest destiny

There may be truth in all that. But there is also truth in the possibility of what might become Nigeria if it is truly and properly governed. The evolution of modern Nigeria must come with our overcoming these forms of estrangements and a willingness to deal with the question of power – for at the core of the Nigerian crisis is the question of power: who has it and who does what with it. Perhaps we might learn something from Kenyans this week, who went peacefully to the polls to vote for a reduction in the power of the president.

Perhaps Nigerians must place this question of executive power before a ballot. Nigeria must also come to terms with the other issues of political reform: a restructuring of the nation into six regions to reduce both the cost of administering Nigeria, and to create serious institutions, stronger and more competitive than the current postage-stamp sized states that drain the national wealth through unnecessary administrative costs.

Nigeria also needs a new kind of leadership. As analysts follow the current elections, two candidates seem immediately viable: the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, and former military head of state, Mr. Muhamadu Buhari, a retired Major-General of the Nigerian Army. Nigerians must ignore the North-South question in making their choice. Let us examine each of these men by the contents of their character and the quality of their service.

Goodluck Jonathan is highly educated – a research scientist, and also from the Niger Delta – a region which makes a claim for a historical debt owed to it by Nigeria. Buhari comes with a past of stern and disciplined leadership, although there are those who claim that there many chips in his armour. Perhaps many more might emerge for this race. Nigerians owe it to themselves to hold each man who comes to serve to account for their past, and for their vision of the future.

The question of North and South – the inchoate binary that symbolizes our discontent with each other and with this inheritance from the British called Nigeria – must come close a bit. This is the year of our jubilee. Let it be the year of our renewal too. Whoever wins in this election must convene a conference of the nations in search of healing and reconciliation. Otherwise there will be no point wasting our time.

Knife-edge power struggle

By Ocherome Nnanna, Vanguard

THE issue of zoning: to be or not to be, is now being taken away from the discussion or debate level. The two sides to the dispute: the South-South and the conservative section of the Northern political class, are now sabre-rattling. They are mobilising their instruments of intimidation with a view to coercing the nation to succumb to their respective demands.
In the South-South, apart from the unanimous decision of the six states there to support President Goodluck Jonathan’s undeclared bid for the presidency, the ex-commanders of the militant cartels have, after series of meetings, issued a warning that there would be war of Jonathan is frightened out of the presidential race.

On the other hand, following the voting by 10 to seven in favour of zoning by the Northern Governors’ Forum last week, the hawkish Northern conservatives have become more emboldened to raise the stakes and force the nation to make a Northerner the president of Nigeria in 2011.

According to a story published in the Monday issue of Vanguard newspapers, a prominent traditional and religious leader from the North West has been enlisted to, in effect, incite the people of the North by telling them that if Jonathan becomes president next year in spite of their agitation their land, culture and religion would be “jeopardised”.

I hope this is just one of those harmless newspaper speculations. If it is true that this unnamed foremost traditional ruler has allowed himself to be roped into this dangerous regional game that could threaten the future of this nation, then we really have to watch it.

It will be a matter of considerable shock to me if, indeed, the royal father thusly described will allow himself to be enlisted by desperate politicians to meddle directly in the affairs of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whose zoning arrangement is at issue.

It will be surprising because since he ascended to the throne of his ancestors a few years ago, he has been a major bridge builder across the various divides of this beleaguered country. People like us have already started looking up to him to call in the dogs when things begin to get out of hand.

It will be a pity if it is the dogs now calling him to join their regional army where a section of the North will be pitched in a winner-takes-all war of nerves with a section of the South.

When traditional rulers who also represent religious authority become involved in a mundane issue such as the zoning controversy, the danger is that very soon the masses will be called to action, especially in a volatile environment such as Northern Nigeria. More dangerous than that is that the military could become negatively affected by primordial sentiment and intervene in a way that could lead to the Somalia, Sudan, Congo, Liberia, Burundi and Rwanda scenarios.

Our royal fathers and the clergy should keep out of the politics of PDP in their own interest and that of the nation. Let them remember our history and be cautioned by the famous Yoruba adage that says the person who rides the tiger will surely end up in its belly, as tigers are not meant to be ridden like horses. Let them also be warned by another popular Yoruba proverb that says the person who crowns the king is often the first to be destroyed by the king.

The masquerade you dressed up could turn its cane on you first. If it is true that first class traditional rulers are enlisting in the army of the political desperados, let them be reminded that it was these same people who, while in military uniform, deposed and enthroned Sultans of Sokoto at will. They brought down the prestige of that institution and demystified it.

It is only the noble efforts of Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar III that is gradually restoring the Sultanate.
We should dump this zoning noisemaking and encourage all interested aspirants to elected office to tell us how they intend to repair Nigeria to enable us choose who to vote for. That is what we want to hear. This land belongs to all of us.

We all have religions and cultures we are proud of and will defend if need be. We will not be intimidated by anyone. If zoning is all that politicians have to talk about they should shut up and take a walk.

For Jonathan, food for thought

ONE of my readers sent me this text message which I hereby share you. It says: “Nnanna, I woke up this morning to realise that no journalist has written on the failed attempt to kill President Jonathan! I read in The Punch newspaper few days ago that the President’s plane developed fault in the air. Nagging thoughts have since assailed my mind.

Supposed the plane had gone far and reached highest altitude before the discovery of the fault? Who checked the plane and certified it airworthy in Addis Ababa? Who in Nigeria checked and certified the plane fit for the journey?

When and how did the fault develop? Samora Machel of Mozambique was killed when his plane exploded in the air. General Zia Ul Haq of Pakistan was killed in a similar manner. The deaths of both presidents were planned and clinically executed.

They don’t want Jonathan to run for 2011 election and the man wants to contest. So, Jonathan is being targeted for elimination…”.

Let me translate an exhortation over Radio Biafra rendered in Igbo during the war. Jonathan will do well to heed it: Onye ndi iro gbara gburugburu na-eche ndu ya nche mgbe n’ile. Umu Biafra, onye arahul’ura! “He who is surrounded by enemies guards his life at all times. Biafrans, never fall asleep!”

My intention is to contribute to the writing of the romance genre in Nigeria – Myne Whitman

A VANGUARD GROUP OF NEWSPAPERS INTERVIEW


By McPhillips Nwachukwu, Vanguard

Myne Whitman is a Nigerian born and United States based writer, poet and blogger. Recently, she came out with her first novel, A Heart To Mend, a fictional narrative, which seeks to revive the fading romance form in nation’s narrative oeuvre. In this e-mail interview, the novelist, Nkem Okotcha, who prefers to write with the Pen name, Myne Whitman, a transliteration of her real names, brilliantly and critically responds to some engaging issues raised from the deep journey around her narrative universe. She spoke to McPhilips Nwachukwu.

Nkem, tell me about yourself, about your world of childhood and growing up and how the experiences helped to shape your adult visions?

I am a Nigerian blogger, writer and poet. I am also the author of A Heart to Mend, my first novel. I live in Seattle with my husband and write full time. I write mostly romance and love poems though recently I have been trying my pen at literary short stories. I am currently working on my next novel, also a romance. ..

I was born at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu, Nigeria and I grew up in that city till my middle secondary school. I attended Ekulu Primary School, Queens School Enugu, Special Science School Agulu and Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka.

I remember as a child studying a lot, reading everything I could lay my hands on, and then trying to play the rest of the time. My mother was a school teacher and my father worked for the electoral commission, so the love of reading and education came from them and from the environment of Enugu, which is a part an academic and civil service city.

This early background made me very cosmopolitan because I went to school with people from all across the country and outside. Reading a lot makes me sometimes come across as quiet but I do like a good loud debate too, having watched my father and his friends talk politics and football. In three words, I will describe myself as friendly, caring and fun-loving. I realized early on through books that it was possible to be whoever and do whatever you wanted to do. I learnt to stretch my wings even further when I first left the country. I have been a teacher, NGO consultant, banker, skate-hire attendant, and researcher and have worked for the government both in Nigeria and Scotland.

Your real name is Nkem, which in Igbo means Mine. Etymologically , nkem in Igbo pre-supposes both affection, if you like, deep love and possession. And also the title of your work is A Heart to Mend. What have names got to do with your story and whose heart is being mended?

LOL…let me say here that none of my characters is based on me or anyone I know in particular but on a cumulative of my experience. My name has nothing to do with the story, and as you can see I did not even publish under my real name. That said, I love my name and what it means. There is a longer form of course, but I have been called the short form for as long as I can remember by everyone around me including my parents. It was funny when, as I grew older, I realized that it was also a term of romantic endearment between couples.

In A Heart to Mend, the hearts being mended are those of my characters, Edward and Gladys. They’re just people of my imaginings, though since I try to make my stories as real as possible, they also share our fears and hopes, our victories and our pain. Some people say they seem free from some of the usual constraints we real persons face, but if you look closely, you may even recognize one or more of them. For these readers who also identify with the book and the themes/characters in it, I hope their hearts will be mended too.

At another level, locations have a way of affecting one’s state of mind and heart. How has both your home and diaspora experiences helped in shaping the tenor of this narrative?

The narrative of A Heart to mend is very instinctive, you know, from my heart and from my head too. I believe my writing has been shaped more from growing up in Nigeria than the few years I have lived outside the country. You should bear in mind that I am practically a novice at writing. I entered this writing business, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I studied biological science for my first degree, then public health research for my masters. I’ve never had any formal training in writing. So what I write is from my own personal makeup, and less from what I have picked up in writing books and online courses, which go more toward the craft.

Who I am, my identity, has been more influenced by my Nigerian experience. There was so much to draw from especially in terms of storytelling. There were so many books around me, from the children’s stories in Sugar Girl, Eze goes to school, born with a Silver Spoon, etc to Pacesetters and through to the African Writers Series.

There were also the soaps we watched like Checkmate and ripples and of course Nollywood. The western worldview crept in not through my time outside Nigeria but via the works of Enid Blyton, the Lady Bird fairytales, Mills & Boon, James Hadley Chase and the movies I saw, from both Hollywood and Bollywood. I always had that storytelling instinct, and through all these channels, I always looked for the story. So now, when I write, what I do is to find the kernel of a story and then tell it.

Why did you write A Heart To Mend ?

First and foremost I wanted to write a story of love and finding oneself. I also felt that there were not enough romance novels set in contemporary Nigeria, and that I could do something to change that. Therefore, a lot of these themes in A Heart to Mend are motivated by events or stories I’ve heard or read about in real life Nigeria of the last few years. The characters and issues dealt with in the book are therefore meant to be relevant for contemporary life and relationships.

Again, I have always been intrigued by the principle of unconditional love. When I started reading the Mills and Boon Romance novels as a young adult, their stories had a big influence on me and my writing. My imagined and written stories changed from adventures to romance. So now that I decided on full time writing, I was moved to go back to that genre.

In a world that is plagued by unquantified hate tendencies, with wars and rumours of war becoming familiar ring tones. Tell me, from where does one begin to mend afflicted hearts?

I agree with you about the sort of world we live in nowadays. This stress of this tumultuous life has indeed led to many people experiencing heartbreak in one form or the other. In my opinion, one can begin to mend these broken hearts through talking or writing about love.

Romance novels are all about love, in its various manifestations: between parents and their children, between siblings and most importantly, between a man and a woman. As so many songs say, love is truly beautiful and it does make the world go around. When one strips basic human behavior to its barest form, you find that we’re all looking for love in one way or another.

You might be surprised that what you wrote as a simple romantic form is giving rise to some socio political reading. But seriously, can there be a real love story in what seems to be a hopeless and hate inhabited world?

Yes there can. In a romance novel, the two major characters cannot develop satisfying, romantic relationships between each other unless they have some understanding of love. The love story starts from when they lack love but desire it for themselves to when they have full knowledge of it and their lives have been changed. It is the same in real life.

Also, if we say there can be no love stories, do we mean that all the people that get married everyday do not love each other? I don’t think this is so. Therefore, love and romance give hope and makes life worth living. Love is the only way to overcome hate and hopelessness.

By the way, I understood that your story is set in Nigeria. And from the reviews I have read about the novel, it does appear that the entire tapestry and universe of the story is Nigeria and about Nigerians. What are your intentions in doing this?

The primary intention was to contribute to the writing of the romance genre in Nigerian literature. I grew up reading books like Evbu, My Love of the Pacesetters fame, written by Helen Ovbiagele but they disappeared along the line. There has been a sort of renaissance in the writing and book publishing industry in Nigeria and I wanted to add my voice in a unique way.

May be home sickness? you want to use the narrative thread to heal home nostalgia?

Well, I won’t deny that I get homesick for Nigeria and my family and friends back here but my writing is not about that. I have been writing long before I relocated which was just a few years ago and I know that I can always visit when I want. The nostalgia that has a hand in my writing has to be that of reading books set in Nigeria and written by Nigerians. I read a lot of those and I want the younger generation to have that experience too which I believe is a good one, even as we talk about rebranding Nigeria and recreating a positive national identity.

One would have really expected to read your Diaspora experience about love. Don’t you think it is high time African writers began to write trans Atlantic narratives?

Of course there are African writers who write about their diaspora narrative. For example, a lot of the short stories in Chimamanda Adichie’s collection, This thing Around Your Neck, are from her immigrant experience in America or a fictionalized version of it. Several other writers, including Seffi Atta, Teju Cole and Jude Dibia have also explored the theme in their novels.

The truth is that each writer has to seek for a voice that matches their world view and mine, as I have come to see, comes out best writing about Nigeria and Nigerians. That said however, the narrative in A Heart to Mend, has the major characters travelling between Nigeria, London and New York.

That was exactly what classic hate writers of Europe like Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary, Ridder Haggard and their brothers did in such novels like Heart of Darkness, Mister Johnson, King Solomon’s Mine, She among others. Is there anything wrong about writing back to them, through such experiences as yours?

Such Experiences as mine? LOL…I don’t understand what you mean by that o. My experiences in the United Kingdom and the States have been quite good. Apart from that, my novels are not autobiographies, so it’s not about me. Also, I do not write to add to the hate and discrimination in the world but to add love and romance. For now, I will leave political writing and rebuttals of racism to others who choose to do so.

Also I choose to go forward instead of backwards. You see, those writers you mentioned wrote for the days they lived in and I believe the world as a whole has moved on from those days. I read Rider Haggard’s king Solomon’s Mines and She as a teenager and they were basically adventure stories. Of course the rise of the civil rights movement in America in the sixties and seventies meant that those writers received a lot of flak for their portrayal of Africans in their books. Chinua Achebe wrote “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” in 1975 as a response to Joseph Conrad. All this was before I was born.

How’s the novel doing in terms of reception?

A Heart to Mend has been very well received indeed as the mails continue to pour in from different parts of the world. One of the advantages of Authorhouse as a self-publishing company is that they have a very wide reach. So A Heart to mend is available from Canada, to the United States, England, India, and from South Africa and Indonesia to Australia. The publishers called me recently to encourage me to hurry up with my second book because they want us to ride the wave this one is creating. I told them that this is just the beginning, lol…

To what extent has the new communication media of facebook, twitter and blogging helped in promoting the novel?

Having a blog, (which recently won several awards including Blog of the Year at the Nigerian Blog Awards) really helped me in my writing especially with the feedback and critique I got from my readers. The fact is that the world has come to terms with the internet age and other less conventional means of getting a book to an audience are beginning to take root. Talk about eBooks, kindles and Nooks and other such technology.

Also my blog was part of the reason I decided to publish. I had such a loyal following that I wanted to give them a chance to read the complete story. Most of them had been following it on my blog and were very supportive. It was through the support of fellow bloggers that I did my first blog tour and all the publicity that came with that. After that I joined Facebook and Twitter and the following has been growing since.

What is your program for the novel for the home market?

A Heart to Mend had a public presentation in Lagos in April and was very well received. There has been several articles and features in the daily Newspapers in the country since then and the Nigerian Publishers are doing their best with the distribution. So far they are very happy with the reception the book has been getting. They have fans calling them up or metting them half way in order to get the book. A lot of them had found out about the book online from my blog, Youtube, Facebook or Twitter.

The book is currently available in several cities including Lagos, Ibadan, Ife, Abuja, Maiduguri, Onitsha, Port Harcourt and some Nigerian online resellers like Walahi.com, Kalahari.com.ng, Naijareads.com, among others. I get emails from some people who have read it praising it and asking for more.

A governor, clapping with one hand

By Obi Nwakanma, The Orbit/Vanguard

A reader of this column sent me a note last week thanking me for bringing the situation in Imo state to light, and for being in what he calls “informed opposition.” I did thank him, but I made it clear that I’m not in opposition to Ohakim. I am a critic of the government that he leads.

An opposition is an organized platform – a sort of government in waiting – with its alternative programs and ideas in clear distinction from the government of the day in a democracy. Sometimes they draw critical insights from informed sources to canvas their position among the electorate. But there is no opposition in Imo state. There is political opportunism. That is why the Imo state government is looking, and increasingly sounding surreal and weird.

We grew up in the East as the inheritors of fine examples of robust and dynamic leadership that saw Nnamdi Azikiwe straddling the African imagination like a force of nature, or men like Michael Iheonukara Okpara, whose leadership of the East remains without compare. While the Igbo was riding the crest of development and progress from 1957 to 1967, it felt like the rest of Nigeria could not touch its political helms, what with such colorful and eponymous names among its leaders: Akanu Ibiam, educator and missionary doctor, who approached public service with the instincts of a missionary.

Denis Osadebe – poet and brilliant legal mind, whose parliamentary skills were legendary. K.O. Mbadiwe – man of timbre and caterpillar, not only full of rhetoric and bombast, but also full of purpose. A first class political strategist and negotiator who knew his personal interest alright, but never messed with the group interest, for always, the group was the basis of their politics. There was Mbonu Ojike, brilliant economic thinker of his generation, whose early death robbed the Igbo and Nigeria greatly.

There was Nwafor Orizu; there was Jaja Wachukwu, there was Eni Njoku, there was Nwapa, there was Reuben Uzoma; there was Raymond Amanze Njoku, and there were numerous others, any of whom could have, were they born in any other clime, led any nation politically. I have said that perhaps the divine author of things played a terrible joke on the East and the Igbo particularly: he sent them a glut of first class men in one generation, and in a later generation gave them only burnt offering – political lilliputs whose conduct of politics insults the illustrious past of our 20th century political ancestors. Today, there is no memorable Igbo politician.

At the eventual passing of the great Dim Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the last of the relay of great Igbo leaders of the 20th century, the Igbo of Nigeria will not have a single memorable political figure who could rally them to great political purpose. For a people whose leaders were at the fore of the independence movement, this would be a great lesson in irony. The irony was made most poignant in the ring-kissing visit of Ikedi Ohakim, governor of Imo state, last week to Raji Fashola, governor of Lagos state.

The highlights of that visit mark Mr. Ohakim, not only as a second fiddler, but also as a governor without a clear social or economic program, who does not deserve to be re-elected in the forthcoming elections as the governor over a great state like Imo. We must help him return him quickly to his personal business in Lagos, where he says Governor Raji Fashola has made the lives of the Igbo residents worth living and Igbo businesses secure. “I have come to greet a great man, so that I too will be great” said Ikedi Ohakim to Raji Fashola in Lagos.

It sounds cute and gracious. But it also sounds like the servile declaration of a hopeful almajirin to his lordly benefactor. Ohakim was recently paid the left-handed compliment of the Sarduana Award for leadership. It is therefore not surprising from where Ikedi Ohakim draws his inspirations and examples: not from the great Zik or Okpara or Mbakwe. The trouble is that he is on his way to leading Imo state to beggarly ruin.

True, Fashola stays in Lagos and directs its transmutation from a vast slum, while Ohakim gallivants, paying courtesy visits, and spouting strange excuses for his lack of achievement. Once, his excuse was that his opponents had stymied his mandate in court with litigation, and his hands were tied. Now, the Supreme Court has declared him governor, no such excuse is valid any longer.

Now it is revenue: while Lagos has all the revenue, Ohakim says, Imo has all the ideas. This is poppycock of course. Across the fence in Enugu, we see slow but apparent change. Imo is richer in revenue and resources than Enugu. But Enugu has greater purpose. Governor Ohakim needs now to account for the revenue accruing to Imo state in the last three years-plus of his administration. There is no evidence of infrastructural investment. There is, of course, a lot of hot talk about really hot plans to build Oguta and Nworie into tourist utopia.

There is nothing on the ground. There is much talk about rural roads. I went round Imo state last year, I saw only signposts proposing IRROMA. The road from Owerri to Umuahia, much touted as dualized, and commissioned by the late president Yar Adua, is in fact a glorified dirt road, not expanded, but divided with concrete barriers into a narrow two way macadam. Every school and hospital I visited in Imo state was in profound stages of decay. The main city, Owerri, is overcrowded and has lost the serenity of which Owerri was once known because of serious code violations.

There is no evidence of new plans to recreate the city, or build new well developed counties and satellites, or even invest in new urban centers like Orlu, Okigwe, Oguta or the Ahiara-Aboh conurbation. At the office of the Owerri Capital Development Authority, there was nothing left but two old earth-movers, and a huge sign. There was an overwhelming sense of insecurity in Imo State – I had never felt more unsafe in my life.

The greatest development in Owerri is “Keke Napep” and the vast number of posters advertising Governor Ohakim colourfully. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that Ikedi Ohakim was playing hoochie with Imo state. It has possibly to do with the party – the PPA with which he came to power in Imo state – which was some sort of ersatz arrangement foisted between Olusegun Obasanjo and Orji Uzor-Kalu on the East. It had no ideas.

But it also seems to me that much has to do with Mr. Ohakim’s own limitations: his servility to the golden calf of self-imagery for instance. I take again from Ohakim’s statement to Raji Fashola to highlight my concern: “people came from the Lagos” Ohakim said, and asked the Igbo to invest in the stock market. The crash of the stock market, he claims is the cause of the kidnapping in the South-East because Igbo lost their investment.

Ohakim is wrong on several fronts, but let me quickly say that the crime situation in the South-East is connected to the rapid impoverishment and alienation of a critical segment of the population as a result of the inability of government to provide social programs that would cushion the harsh economic environment, stimulate re-investment, create opportunities for young entrepreneurs and expand the growth of the job market both at the public and private sectors.

What does Imo do with its federal allocations? What is its exact tax base? Perhaps it is time the people themselves – long used to indolence and quiet desperation -get some backbone, and demand for accounting for the use of public funds, through either establishing an independent citizens auditing of the state’s finances or through the auditing oversight of its House of Assembly – which seems consistently complicit with the executive arm.

It is time to stop our governor panhandling from Lagos; time to plug all the leaks through which public funds disappear. In short, it is time to get the priorities right in Imo state. It is time for this governor to stop clapping with one hand and get some serious work done.

When it's wise to step down

By Ochereome Nnanna, Vanguard Newspapers

THE present crop of governors in charge of the affairs of states of the South East zone has represented the Igbo heartland extremely well. They have demonstrated an admirable degree of collective purpose, which was not there between 1999 and 2007, when each of the previous governors behaved like crazy political buccaneers.
They were never able to speak with one voice and when they did, one or more of them would go behind, in cahoots with Ohanaeze leaders such as Professor Joe Irukwu, to torpedo collective decisions because of some favours or fears from former President Obasanjo.

At a point, all the governors of the zone were of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and yet they were like water and oil that could never mix.

The setting today is different. Only three states: Imo – Enugu and Ebonyi – are under PDP governors. The other two: Abia and Anambra, are now under the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

It is a pleasant irony that now they are scattered in different political camps they have been able to discover unity of purpose. Perhaps it has to do with the difference between the political atmosphere created by former President Obasanjo and what currently obtains.

It also has something to do with the fact that the gentlemen now in charge are much better adjusted personalities than their predecessors.

When the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua’s ailing body was hidden in Aso Villa and campaigns were on for him to be removed and the then Acting President Goodluck Jonathan sworn-in, the South East governors met and collectively stood against it even though the Ohanaeze supported the push to activate the Constitution.

Many people lampooned them. Even though I also wanted the Constitution to be followed, I knew why the governors took their stand. It had nothing to do with any opposition to the emergence of Jonathan. Far from that. They read the mood of the “cabal” and saw the possible danger our democracy might be faced with if the matter was pushed too far.

But more than that was their personal regard and appreciation of Umaru’s excellent disposition towards addressing some anti-Igbo issues left dangling from the Obasanjo regime.

These included the listing of Imo and Abia states in the Coastal States’ initiative, approval of river ports at Onitsha and Oguta, dredging of the lower Niger River , approval of a Stock Exchange for Onitsha, concrete steps towards commencing the Second Niger Bridge, the restoration of the stolen oil wells to Abia State and many more.

Yar’ Adua had shown himself as a president the governors could work with, as he made promises and kept them without first remembering the fact that the Igbo fought a civil war against the rest of Nigeria .

The decision, last weekend, by the five governors of the South East that the Igbo people will not present a presidential or vice presidential candidate in the 2011 election also got my applause.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo should also meet and formally announce the stepping down of the majority ethnic group of the East from the race. Anybody who goes ahead to contest will be on his own.

It has nothing to do with a “boycott”, as there is no serious matter calling for that. It is a sensible strategy to actively and voluntarily give ground to those who are more favoured by the current equations to contest.

The North is favoured because of the zoning arrangement of the ruling party. The South-South is also favoured in that someone from there is the incumbent President of Nigeria who has a constitutional right to contest.

Any Igbo candidate plunging into the race of 2011 will constitute an obstruction to a South-South candidate, which will serve no useful purpose. Worse, any vice presidential runner will be spoiling the chances of the South-South, and the true Igbo political interest is not cut out to spoil what belongs to others.

In their fight for president with the South-South, the North is very likely to invade the South East for running mates in the hope that they would swing Igbo votes and abort a possible Goodluck Jonathan’s chances of getting elected.

One lesson I have learnt about Nigerian politics is that when the turn of a group to get political favours from Nigeria is ripe, the whole nation usually comes together to grant it. In 1999, we gave it to Yoruba. In 2007 we gave it back to the North.

In both races, all major presidential candidates were from the favoured zones. When Yar’ Adua died we had no problem giving it an Ijaw to whom it was constitutionally due. When the turn of the Igbo truly arises, the major parties will have Igbo aspirants as their presidential candidates. 2011 is not that time.

Rather, as the South East governors have rightly put it, come 2011, the Igbo should give their support only to the candidate of the North or South-South who has a more attractive package of redressing marginalisation and inequity the Igbo people have suffered since the end of the civil war.

Whoever makes it possible for the South East to acquire an equal number of states and equitable number of local councils and electoral constituencies with the other geopolitical zones should be supported. These are more important than an “Igbo president” because they are the necessary stepping stones to a viable Igbo aspiration to the presidency.

Sometimes it pays more to voluntarily abstain. In the past, Yorubas gained more from Nigeria when they were in the opposition.

Since they were taken to the “mainstream” of Nigerian politics by Obasanjo in 2003, the fear and respect that the ruling establishment had for South West politics has, obviously, gone down. Temporary voluntary abstention often gives one a greater bargaining muscle.

Culture and its discontents

By Obi Nwakanma/The Orbit/Vanguard

In the pit of Nigerian politics lies the soul of philistines. A nation cursed with a political leadership without the subtle refinements of culture is doomed to crassness. We see this truth as a matter of fact, reflected in the utter disregard to which the political establishment places culture and matters of cultural policy.
For example, this federal administration, and I’m quite certain, all the administrations of the governments of the affiliating states in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has no policy on culture and no cultural programs. In other words the federal government of Nigeria has no cultural policy upon which a culture program can be administered.

This has been so for a long time. Indeed, it does seem that the last administration in Nigeria to appoint a Federal Adviser on Culture was the short-lived administration of General Aguiyi-Ironsi, who retained Nigeria’s famous, world renowned Painter, the now late Professor Ben Enwonwu as Federal Adviser on the Arts, a preferment he held with Balewa also as the Prime Minister’s Adviser on the Arts.

But it was a different era, when political leadership was well educated and highly conscious: the founding president of Nigeria, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, it must be remembered was a renaissance intellectual and a poet of some significance, and the Prime Minister Balewa was not only an intellectual, a well-read man, but also a novelist who wrote one of the most important Hausa-language novels to date.

The difference today is quite apparent in the emergence of a badly educated and philistinic political leadership who view politics only in terms of the crude structures of power. These men and women today, its often seems, did not receive the kind of sophisticated orientation and exposure that could allow them the judicious insight offered by abstract thought and the subtle power of humane intuition inherent in aesthetic awareness.

Many have never been to a gallery for an exhibition or to an evening of classical musical performance or to a reading of poetry. The Nigerian political leadership is in sum crass and profoundly uncultured. It is an elite without culture; unaware of Nigeria’s artistic heritage and the complexity of her cultural production.

Let me give two startling examples: this past week, I heard about the passing of the poet and publisher, Dr. T.C. Nwosu and the famous broadcaster, Lawrence Emeka. None of the governments in the East, or even the Federation itself, put out a notice in acknowledgement of the contributions of these men to our cultural life. These are just two most recent examples.

When the sculptor Lamidi Fakeye recently passed, there was no gesture to celebrate his contributions. The various governments in Nigeria are unaware of the damage they do in obscuring Nigeria’s cultural capital. Toyin Akinosho, Geologist, Journalist, culture critic and art collector, has done more for the Nigerian artist as an individual than the entire federal government of Nigeria. I am talking of a modest man with modest means.

He has used his personal resources, and at no personal gain, to promote and circulate the works of contemporary Nigerian artists and writers. His home – Mars House – had become a sort of refuge for writers, artists and musicians who find themselves at the edge, or who are passing by, or who need a little consoling space for a bit of solitude to create.

He takes in stray artists like stray dogs. It is easy to run into the cream of Nigeria’s contemporary artists, poets, dramatists, novelists, and critics at Mars House.

I too found occasional refuge in Mars House myself while writing the Okigbo biography for instance, a fact which alas, I failed to acknowledge fully by some inscrutable, inadvertent oversight in the book, but which I make bold here to testify, as part of my gratitude to such easy generosity.

But people like Akinosho cannot, irrespective of their willingness be expected to support Nigeria’s cultural infrastructure as lone rangers. It is unsustainable. It is a burden that requires more substantial foundational support.

There is an urgent need therefore to overhaul the entire culture establishment.

For many years, the ministry of culture has been shunted about and paired with Information, and most recently with Tourism. This is sacrilege. There is need to establish a proper culture ministry, and if it is to be paired with another, the Ministry of Education should be appropriate.

The Ministry of Education and Culture should be overhauled to situate the basic mission of a Nigerian education, and its exposure of its recipients to Nigeria’s classical and contemporary contributions to human cultural production – in literature, in music, in art, in craft, and film.

There is such a thing today called contemporary Nigerian literature and contemporary Nigerian film, but it seems like the basis for affirming and producing as well as circulating these remain fundamentally ambiguous. It is this ambiguity that stultifies Nigeria’s intellectual tradition; the production of citizens civilized by the humane essence of culture rather than by the crass pursuit of deadening lucre.

There is an urgent need to rehabilitate our edifices of culture, and create a very responsive culture administration that should connect heritage to contemporary expressions of aesthetic and social thought. It is time for instance, to place all traditional shrines of our indigenous religions and their scared groves under a heritage trust, make all these federal protected areas under a heritage administration.

There is equally an urgent need to introduce a serious culture curriculum in our public education: I speak of giving our young children opportunities to acquire aesthetic habits through music, art, reading, and other forms of education in our schools.

Art and music education in Nigeria seems dead.

The enrichment, through government aided opportunities for young Nigerians to acquire violins, cello, trombones, saxophones, or even participate in studios and art exhibitions will in many ways reduce dependency on other kinds of distraction.

The opportunity to have music classes or art classes will not only strengthen the visual education, it will also provide serious capacity for abstract thought necessary for creating original and inventive minds.

There is an urgent need to review our funding regime for city, county, regional, and municipal libraries, and the kind of programs that these libraries can embark upon to create a literate society. It is such a terrible shame that some of the ugliest public buildings in Nigeria are its centers of knowledge.

This speaks to the moral condition of Nigeria. This administration must treat as urgent, the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts and the humanities that should provide grants to artists and intellectuals and support public libraries, independent galleries, bookshops and residences in Nigeria, and generally provide stipends for those engaged in artistic creation.

Nigeria wants rebranding, it has the cultural resource, all it needs to do is put its money where its mouth is. It is time to create a full, sufficient, and fully engaged and forward looking culture establishment. This mistreatment of culture – and I do not mean the “Durbar” and “virgin dance” version of national culture – is a mark of our hollowness.

A View From The Igbo Studies Conference In Washington, DC

By Obi Nwakanma/Vanguard/All Africa

Last week, the International Igbo Studies Association held its annual conference at the Howard University Law School in Washington DC. Igbo Studies has indeed come a long way.

The quest for a comprehensive understanding and preservation of the arts, culture, scholarship and other forms of knowledge production by and around the Igbo world has engaged scholars, particularly since the early 20th century with the Igbo encounter or contact with the west.

The remarkable ways by which that contact has shaped the Igbo continues to be the basis of reflections by scholars - and increasingly by Igbo scholars who feel the powerful "urgency of now" to call attention to the intricate as well as intriguing situation of the contemporary Igbo of modern Nigeria, in its current relationship with nation and with the emergent world.

The question of a "transnational Igbo" with a growing Diaspora was at the roots of the first convention of the International Igbo Studies Conference convened by the now late Igbo historian, Dr. Don Ohadike, former Director of African Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca in 2005.

I was at that inaugural conference of Igbo studies but I'm afraid I have been absent from its proceedings until this year. The Igbo Studies Association conference has nevertheless held consistently since that first outing at Cornell now at Howard University, Washington DC since 2006 through the commitments of Dr. Udo Mbanaso and the authorities at Howard University.

The Howard University Law School has offered the grounds for this annual meeting of the Igbo Studies Association and it is imperative to underscore the importance of this historical relationship with Howard University.

It is particularly important to note that, that distinguished Igbo and African statesman, Nigeria's first president, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe had attended Howard University late in the 1920s where he came under the tutelage of some of the most distinguished African-American scholars of the 20th century:

Alain Locke in Philosophy, Ralph Bunche in Political Theory and Leon Hansberry for whom he named the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka when he established it. Indeed this famous scholar of the African world was the first Director of that institute at Nsukka from 1963 with Dr. Chukwuemeka Blyden, Edward Blyden's grandson as deputy Director.

It was the beginning - and as it has now proved - a mostly unrealized dream of making the University of Nigeria the gathering ground - the new Timbuktu - for scholars from Africa and its diaspora, to form what I have described as the "third zone" of African modernist thought. Because Azikiwe was critical in the formation of Igbo modernist ideas, his education and encounters with Howard which now hosts Igbo Studies rings with symbolic significance.

But beyond the symbolism are some very basic questions of what Igbo Studies seeks to accomplish and whether, as some Igbo scholars themselves have seen it, Igbo Studies is different or should be constructed autonomously from Nigerian Studies or framed within the entire dialectic of an African Studies program.

Those who argue for an Igbo studies argue for an autonomy that makes Igbo studies assume the same philosophical and historical purpose of say Jewish Studies or Irish Studies or Slavic Studies, and so on all within the aegis of European Studies.

I think that the central issue for me is to understand the link between Igbo Studies and the preservation of Igbo ideas, but also the creation of these ideas in the context of Igbo visions of itself in a new world in rapid transition. It is also to understand that Igbo Studies cannot be conducted on the mere whim of "self preservation" but on the greater problematic of what we preserve and for whom. In other words, why Igbo

Studies? What is its greater purpose beyond the annual ritual of gathering some Igbo scholars of various fields to examine Igbo life - mostly in a very agonistic way? What shall we do- meaning, how should we instrumentalize some of these ideas that emerge from the fecund and occasionally quixotic minds of those engaged with interpreting the Igbo and their current circumstance?

It does seem to me that these questions should be at the core of the future of Igbo Studies. Many years ago, the Center for Igbo Studies was endowed and inaugurated by Dim Chukuwemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu at the Abia State University, Uturu. That center has apparently gone into abeyance. Governments in Igbo land have sought no productive links or connections with this important center as a way of providing the shaping ideas that might help transform the Igbo world. Igbo Studies therefore exists in some abstract away outside of its own genetic source - in a tabula rasa. It is rather urgent to re-examine this situation.

Indeed, it is crucial to link the Hansberry Institute at Nsukka with the Center for Igbo Studies at Uturu with the proposed International Center for Igbo Studies at Howard University for which the trustees of the Igbo Studies Association are proposing an endowment.

The emergence of the International Center for Igbo Studies at Howard will be a very important development given the reality of a large and growing Igbo Diaspora in the Americas. Many discussions took place at Washington in the two days of the conference - starting with the Poetry Reading session featuring the poets Chimalum Nwankwo, Dubem Okafor and Akachi Ezeigbo who read from their new works. I was also featured to read.

There were also glaring absences like the distinguished scholar-poet MJC Echeruo who retires this year from Syracuse after 50 years of university teaching, the historian Godfrey Uzoigwe of the University of Mississippi, Ernest Emeyonu of Michigan State University, the artist and Art historian Nkiru Nzegwu of Binghampton University, New York, among many.

In sum, the Igbo Studies Association conference this year remarkably consolidates on the work of the last five years and signals something of the slow but steady discussion of the Igbo situation in the current era. That this self-reflexive and critical discussion is taking place is the crucial and most important news.

It means that a climate of opinion may soon emerge on the solutions to issues of identity, the crisis of Igbo education, the question of insecurity, and the dilemma of under-investment and slow economic growth in the East, the result of what the distinguished Sociologist, Dr. Christian Chikwendu Ukaegbu of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois describes as incipient "fatalism" in the Igbo public imagination.

Another important question was raised: when would the International Conference on Igbo Studies hold in a university in the homeland? This is a matter of critical consideration.

Jos Massacres Follows A Pattern Of Unpunished Crimes

By Obi Nwakanma/The Orbit/Vanguard


Reflect on this irony: a young army captain helps to organize a military coup and supervises the liquidation of his commander-in-chief and the host governor, another senior military officer, of a region to which he was paying a state visit. The facts are bare: even in a military situation under a properly trained and disciplined military officer, a General must be accorded his full compliments even in death.

He is given the choice to fall on his own daggers or he is given a dignified exit given the circumstance. But neither General Ironsi nor his host Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi was given that option.

These two distinguished military officers were first beaten to a pulp; indeed severely and roundly humiliated by subalterns under the direction of this young captain before they dragged them off to some far-off location, on Iwo road, we are told, executed and buried in a shallow grave. Of course, the act does not stop there.

This horde of putschists go round all the military installations – the Army barracks – and drag their brother officers and men from their beds in the dead of night and execute them. The execution is methodical and cold. The only criterion for death was to be identified as an Eastern Nigerian officer, and particularly an Igbo officer, and you were marked.

This decimation of military officers of Eastern Nigerian origin did not end there. Perhaps if it did, there might have been some explanation that it was a purely military affair – soldiers killing off their rivals and contenders for power within the military system that had dawned upon Nigeria following another military coup, six months earlier, led by Emmanuel Ifeajuna and other mid-level officers, most of them identifiably Igbo. There might have been some validity in the later claim that the coup makers of July 29, 1966 were avenging the death of their brother officers from the north and their political leaders who had been killed in the January coup. But no, the bloodlust was not contained in the barracks.

It spilled into the streets, particularly in the northern streets, but also in the west of Nigeria, and a systematic elimination of the Easterner, particularly the Igbo was carried out to the letter from July through September, in waves that created the first massive case of internal displacement and movement in Nigeria and in West Africa in the post-colonial era. This cold, calculated killing of the Igbo –the first pogrom – was carefully planned, well-coordinated, and executed with the precision of a military plan.

It left no careful observer of the events, and subsequent historians of that era who have carefully examined the data in any doubt that the pogrom was a carefully planned and well coordinated operation – a selective annihilation or ethnic cleansing of particularly the Igbo in particularly the north of Nigeria. Internally displaced Easterners, particularly the majority Igbo population sought refuge in Eastern Nigeria. Perhaps because of the extended family system still intact in that period, a great refugee crisis was averted, and it possibly blunted the outcry and an international response to the situation.

Perhaps the “international community” simply wanted to let an armed horde settle the problem of the “uppity Igbo.” But long before the Rwandan genocide, a great wave of genocidal killings of the Igbo had taken place. The failure of the world community, led particularly by the great western powers in deference to Great Britain, the erstwhile colonial power and the United States, its ally, and in a policy of appeasement to the wider Muslim lobby led by Saudi Arabia whose connections to the Northern Nigerian Islamic community is through an old Ottoman link, to call the act by its proper name, genocide, foreclosed any consequence against the perpetrators of this act.

But the situation eventually blossomed to one of Africa’s most brutal conflicts following the secession of the Easterners when they felt the nation was no longer able to protect its citizens, thus declaring their own Republic of Biafra, resulting in the brutal civil war in which about three million died in the former Biafran enclave, mostly starved to death as a result of war policy. No one was forced to pay for these deaths. This has created a situation of impunity because no one was made to face the laws in these circumstances.

But to this day, contemporary reporters and analysts of the Nigerian crisis continually fail to connect the cyclic violence that erupts in Nigeria to a history of unpunished crimes most times financed and led by some of the most powerful figures of the community who seize the state and stay above the law. The law indeed is blind in Nigeria. Impunity pays. This cycle of violence and ethnic cleansing starting in 1945 in Jos, 1953 in Kano, in 1966, in 1978, down to the Akaluka beheading in Kano are the ancestral spirits of what has now become the Jos massacre of Christians by so-called Fulani Moslem pastoralists.

It follows the same pattern of unpunished crimes. These killings are also at the contradictory nexus of the nationality question; the indigene/settler conundrum. It is the conundrum which the Igbo have long exemplified in the Nigerian unconscious. They have been killed for daring to settle the nation called Nigeria. The perpetrators and financiers of these crimes understood that in Nigeria the crime of killing pays.

Oh yes, no one of significance has paid for killing. On the other hand people have been handsomely rewarded for acts of “heroic” murder. So, then, fast-forward to the year 2010, and that young captain who supervised the murder of his commander-in-chief, in a successful military operation also called a coup, becomes on that single account alone, a successful soldier.

He became a General before he turned forty and became Chief of the Nigerian Military. He has been lionized, and feted, and he even had a biography commissioned and farmed out to a hagiographer to tell a great heroic fib. He continues to be feted for supervising the liquidation of his commander-in-chief. His reward for that act led the nation to a civil war. And the terrible music plays on because in Nigeria the harsh law is only meted against the powerless. So will it be in this case of the massacres in Jos: there will be no justice.

Imo State: News about Kidnappings

By Obi Nwakanma, The Orbit/Vanguard

The news out of Imo State is not good. There is a sense of failure and a general feeling of siege; a situation that calls us all to rise and confront two important questions: first, how is it that a state so endowed with some of Africa’s best educated people can sit and allow the use of primitive and unregulated power to undermine its civic authority?
Second, how can the residents of Imo State tolerate the current situation in which the state slips suddenly into this primitive cauldron of violence that resembles Colombia under the siege of the drug lord Escobar?

What has happened to this state, once among the most stable and productive of states in Nigeria? Let me first note something that I find profoundly disturbing, which is given scant attention, and which might become the subject for sociologists to grapple with and which ought to disturb any person of conscience.

It is the absolute breakdown of the democratic community in the East in general, but in Imo State specifically.

Two conditions now best describe the relationship of people to community, and their connection to the idea of a collective public in Imo State: lethargy and fatalism. Imo people are lethargic because of a profound skepticism about the value of government in their lives.

There is equally a powerful sense of helpless fatalism about the ends to which society might arrive; that is this belief that governments are no longer established to cater and minister to people.

Government is now considered a cabal, a mafia, in which very closeted powerful interests come together in a devious partnership to subdue the will of the people and conduct public affairs as though it were a private party – with invitations only.

Since 1983, the Imo people have not had a great government with the kind of public spirit that characterized the administration of the late Dr. Sam Mbakwe (please note that Sam Mbakwe earned his doctorate degree academically and was not a dot.com or honorary or “Aba-na-anya” “doctor”). Mbakwe was the last productive governor of the old Imo State – comprising Imo, Abia and parts of Ebonyi State today.

His administration had immense respect for the people, and he established a clear programme of action; set goals that have thus far remained unsurpassed by any succeeding administration after him. Imo was lucky in two respects: one, it had an energetic and dynamic founding military governor in the now retired Admiral, then Commander Godwin Ndubisi Kanu, and in the founding civilian administration of governor Sam Mbakwe. These two set the tone of government and the expectations of the public in Imo.

But alas, since the Buhari years – from the administration of General Ike Nwachukwu to the current administration of Mr. Ikedi Ohakim, a nearly 20-year spectrum, Imo State seems to be trapped in a limbo.

Unemployment, very slow social and economic development; and now increasing crime – especially kidnappings seem to be the legacy of governments in Imo State.

The news in Imo state is increasingly dreary: reports of kidnappings and other crimes that were once unimaginable here proliferate. I was talking earlier on about a breakdown of community and its undergirding social mores. Nothing drove this more forcefully home to me until last year, when I was burying my father.

I returned to a changed society. In the old Igbo world, wherever death occurred, neighbours brought food to the compound to feed the bereaved from the backyard. The community joined in the ritual of mourning and burial.

There was a full accent of what the Igbo call the “umunna” and it took ownership of the dead. Today in Igboland, the “church” the nuclear “family” and the “social club” have replaced the “umunna” – the bedrock of community.

The new fangled “Traditional ruler” has replaced the Town Council, and there is a profound breakdown and dangerous alienation taking place in Igbo land today. This kind of alienation makes it impossible to deal with the social questions that confront us, or indeed, to create grounds that would sustain a civic order based on shared, cohesive visions for social development.

Once upon a time, it would have been impossible, for instance, for anybody to just walk into a community, kidnap or rob anyone, without confronting the will of that community. Escape would be impossible.

But today, the fracture in the architecture of community makes security – the security of the populace – almost impossible to guarantee. Now, comes the news last week that kidnappers brazenly took journalists, among them a sports crew from a South African Television network which came to report some event in Owerri; Professors, and the Chief Judge of the Imo state customary Court on their way from the Airport.

implication of this ought to startle us: Imo State has finally slipped into lawlessness. All it takes now is for any group of young men to acquire some guns and some logistics and they’d go off on a limb and seek targets for kidnapping.

This is the highest symptom of social failure. Highly educated and disenchanted youth, with an increasingly fatalistic outlook on life, acquire more sophisticated means of organizing crimes while public policy and action on social security remains primitive. We are on dangerous grounds here.

Targeting a judge for kidnap is, to date, the boldest act against the authority of state and its institution of law. To put it simply: the law, in its formal sense no longer exists in Imo State. It is now a jungle out there.

The administration of the current Governor Ohakim has clearly lost control of the situation. We must hasten to add, that Ikedi Ohakim did not create the situation that has now snowballed into a kidnap and crime culture. He inherited a broken people from this past 20 years of visionless governance of the state.

But he has contributed immensely to a mood of disenchantment by continuing to perpetuate the absolute lack of accountability and inaction which continues to alienate people and make government meaningless in the lives of people.

A current allegation – and we take it for now as simply allegation until further clarity – by a citizen of Imo state, Mr. Samuelson Iwuoha that he was assaulted and battered by the governor of the state in connivance with some public security official in Government House is serious.

It reflects the increasing sense of the jungle in Imo state. It calls for independent investigation of the governor on both the substantive allegation of corruption and in the secondary allegation of assault following Mr. Iwuoha’s attempt to force the state government to come clean on public account.

Finally, the failure to open up alternative channels for public action drives people towards serious crimes.

A state like Imo, without credible social and economic programs for its teeming population of the jobless and underemployed; or whose programs are more on paper and declared intentions than on reality risks the kind of anomie that now threatens to make Imo state a kidnappers den. The situation in Imo state is serious, and calls us all to action -both the administration and the citizens of the state.