The Presidency — By Prince Emeka Obasi
Business Hallmark May 17 – 23, 2010

Road to Golgotha

On a normal day, life goes on in many parts of Nigeria in its natural rhythm. Many are oblivious of the incubus spreading over the Southeast. Ha, everything is not normal. The Southeast is in danger. Every year, it churns out millions of young people with only a fraction ever hopeful of gainful employment. As the kidnapping industry booms, it threatens to expand and mutate into organized crime. No one is safe, not in Lagos or Abuja. With the exit of the elites, the Southeast has been abandoned to charlatans, which means that the situation is bound to get worse. There is no superior culture to act as a role model. Street culture therefore reigns supreme.

Increasingly, the Southeast is becoming a basket case. Already it has become a baggage to the South. A new development gap is growing between the Southeast and the South-South. States like Rivers, Edo, Delta, Cross River and now Akwa Ibom have overtaken the states of the Southeast. There is no five-star hotel in the whole Southeast, while its major commercial towns, Aba and Onitsha, are gradually dying. Aba, which used to hustle and bustle, has regressed. Most of the erstwhile rich merchants have relocated offshore. The Southeast contribution to the GDP is a mere 8%.

In the entire Southeast, there is no high-profile private secondary school in the mould of Olashore International or El Amin. The cumulative effect of all these is that the Igbo has virtually ceased to matter nationally as a political force. In the last eleven years, no Igbo who has occupied a high national office has ended well. Name them: Senators Evan(s) Enwerem, Chuba Okadigbo, Adolfus Wabara, Prof. Fabian Osuji, Prof. Iwu and now Prince Ogbulafor. During Obasanjo’s tenure, there were five Igbo Presidents of the Senate. There is virtually no Igbo perspective on national issues. Nigeria has effectively become a country of two major ethnic nationalities and one emergent power zone. The Igbo, easily Nigeria’s most populous and monolithic ethnic nationality, has regressed and become impotent, irrelevant and in the view of many, irritants.

A Lost Cause?

There are some Igbos who believe that all hope is not lost. Prof. Anya O. Anya is one of such optimists. He believes in the infinite capability of the Igbo to regenerate. But I disagree. For the Igbo, it is already past midnight. They will never, in all probability, regain whatever pre-eminence they once enjoyed. Igboland has become Nigeria’s Lebanon.

Their children will be foreigners in the country of their birth. Future generations of Igbos will be alienated and rootless. Children of Igbos born in Lagos, most of whom already speak Yoruba as a first language, will soon start adopting Yoruba names as those in the North now bear Hausa names. At any rate, being Igbo does not confer any advantage on anyone. So, why bother?

Indeed, what is happening is a historic disintegration of an ethnic nationality without much precedence in history. And it has all been made possible, partly because the Nigerian State promoted a policy of Igbo marginalization and partly because the Igbo, a group of people created by God to be the same, have chosen to despise each other so passionately that they are unable to act as one and speak as one. Who can help the Igbo?

Concluded.