You probably know the scientific fact that the sun rises from the east but I tell you today that that assertion may no longer hold true. Not for the Southeast region of Nigeria at least, indeed the sun seems to have left that part of the world entirely. The celestial element probably finds no pleasure in blazing upon a land and a people remorselessly in retreat. Today, the entire Igbo miasma would make any keen observer drop an unconscious tear. You know there are no flowers where the sun does not shine, where there is no vegetation there is denudation of monumental proportions, a phenomenon we glibly call gully erosion. And laugh if you will, but it has been said that any land that cannot harbor the white man in this age is doomed. You will hardly find a white man in Igboland today. Yes, perhaps mixed mulatto or earth-brown white, and even fugitive white man on mercenary duty, but hardly any real white man on legitimate assignment. Such is the state of the vast oriental land east of the great Niger River.
You will shed a tear for Ndigbo if you understand the historical odyssey of this people; how they got trapped in the proverbial Nigerian rain and how they are still under the torrential downpour drenched, cold and shivering. I got another tear-evoking glimpse of it when I read an interview granted by Chief Segun Odegbami to Sunday Punch (May 5, 2013 page 76). The great national team footballer of yore who could have been something of a Cristiano Ronaldo were he playing today had this to say when asked how the Nigerian civil war affected him: “Like I said, we were reduced to just 17 pupils in my school (as a result of the pogrom and ensuing war, only 17 students were left of the entire St. Mulumba College, Jos populated largely by Igbo students). And as a young boy, I experienced the pogrom; the killing of civilians. I was walking to school one day and the people I knew, young boys and girls, were running away from the people who were trying to lynch them. For the first time in my life, I saw a dead body. I saw people throwing stones and actually killing people. I saw it, I experienced it. It was horrible and the pictures are still etched in my mind up till now, even though I didn’t quite know what was going on as a young boy…
“But I trekked three kilometers to my school and I saw all the way from my house to the school, killings along the way… I saw it all and it was horrible. For me, we don’t want such things to happen again. In that regard, the pogrom affected me, the war affected me and many of my friends were killed, so many of them fought in the war but I did not experience the war myself. But it left a permanent scar. It’s something I dread; it brings back those ugly pictures and I pray that our country does not degenerate to that level again.”
If the searing of Odegbami’s innocent, little mind does not break your heart, how does it make you feel that those people who were hunted down like wild hogs and mauled to death on the streets of Nigeria never learnt any lesson from their sad history? You are bound to worry if you conjecture that these fellows are still being literally chased down and targeted at every opportunity. And if perchance, an implosion results, they are likely to face the same fate as in the 60s because they have remained out there in the same vengeful rain. Since after the Biafran war, Ndigbo have not managed to come together as a people; not under one voice and not under one platform. The so-called Ohaneze Ndigbo has long become Ohaneze ndi oshi na ama. In the last 14 years, the body has been turned to an ugly bird of prey that feeds on the entrails of Ndigbo. The recent election by some mealy-mouthed young turks simply rededicated the already prostrate body to Aso Rock for the purpose of 2015. The prize is a putrid pot of porridge.
Would you not feel sorry when Igbo statesmen hold landmark birthdays in Abuja, Lagos, London and anywhere else but their homesteads in Igboland? Many now conduct traditional marriages in the cities because they dare not return home. Home has been abused and desecrated; home has become a place of anguish for the Igbo. Your heart is bound to sink when you see some popinjays posing as monarchs of Igboland visiting Aso Rock on your behalf; people who are largely impostors with made-in-China totems and imaginary kingdoms, they are the veritable face of the unchallenged ruse and refuse that has become Igboland. You are bound to cry when you see Igbo’s biggest politicians celebrating worthless board appointments and ambassadorial postings. One becomes weary when Igbo stakes in the polity are tied to unfulfilled and unfulfillable promises like a Second Niger Bridge, dredging of the River Niger, inland port and the dualisation Onitsha-Owerri-Aba roads, among others.
Finally, you will sob, knowing that the caterpillar defoliating our tree lives in the tree. When you see mushroom groups such as Njiko Igbo, C- 21, Aka Ikenga, Igbo Kwenu, etc, spring up purportedly on behalf of Ndigbo but otu awughi n’eshi. They are all masquerades dancing for the coins, for survival. Consider Njiko Igbo for instance, founded (though being disputed) by Chief Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State. It is only in Igboland that leaders hold series of very high positions yet do not grow to prominence or to be statesmen. The last we heard was that Chief Kalu, the new-day champion of Igbo cause took our matter to the British House of Commons (BHC). What a calamity! What a scandalous calamity.
If only Kalu consulted, he would have been tutored that it was the same British colonialists who wilfully impaled Ndigbo by crafting their current status in Nigeria’s political equation. How they would laugh him to scorn for his astounding ignorance of Nigeria’s recent history and how they would enjoy the comic relieve! What could the BHC possibly do anyway? Can’t Kalu see that the solution to Igbo problem is hidden somewhere here at home among Igbo leaders, elite and people? Should we overlook his past political philandering and missed opportunities, is he capable of leading change? Only if he would allow some light to filter in. But first, where is the new moon, the very symbol of a rebirth? Has he swum the stream of no return that imbues one with the spirit of self-immolation or has he carried the sacred sacrifice of the people to the cross roads to offer up his self?
As it stands we all can see through Kalu’s veil of hidden motives in Njiko. On the other hand, this assignment requires self cleansing, Spartan discipline and dogged enlistment of other Igbo leaders; it must be a concert of all stakeholders tediously meshed by a visionary, tenacious (and for the umpteenth time,) selfless leader. And where is the philosophical underpinning, the institutional backbone and the administrative platform? The very pillars that will stand when human energy wanes and our frailties bob up to subvert the grand idea.
Make no mistake about it; to lead a people out of their peripatetic history into a glorious new dawn is not a champagne party. It is often a life-time endeavor needing extreme sacrifice. The reward of course is to own a chunk of history. Does Kalu have such wisdom, grit, rigor, stamina and temperament to change the course of Igbo history? I think not but will be glad to be proved wrong.
