In a contribution to a debate over whether or not the South-East should accept the position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) after Dr Alex Ekwueme lost in his presidential bid in 1998/1999, the late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu reminded his people that a secretary is someone who carries coffee. That might have been a hyperbole but it drove the point home: The offer was not befitting for his people, as far as he was concerned. Not everybody might have shared in that view but methinks that there is something awry in the fact that 16 years later, the posturing among some political leaders in the zone is such that suggests that the best that could happen to the South-East is that office.
I find the interest shown in that office by some Igbo elements as both a contradiction and a seeming sense of desperation. Those showing disappointment that President Muhammadu Buhari failed to appoint an Igbo as the SGF failed it for at least three major reasons. One, an Igbo has just left that office, and so what’s the big deal. If the South-East couldn’t get a promotion, its people should not canvass for the office again as if everything has been denied them by Buhari.
Good a thing, the last holder, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, brought glamour to it but it should not be seen as an ambition for the South-East collective. But even with what Anyim did, I am of the view that Ojukwu’s coffee theory may readily apply under the present circumstances. An SGF of South-East extraction under the current dispensation may not have as much clout as Anyim had, given the current matrix of offices in the Buhari regime. Or, do we want a secretary who will be excused from a meeting after serving coffee?
Agreed, some Igbo elements in the All Progressives Congress (APC) might have nursed the ambition of becoming the SGF but that interest does coincide with the collective interest of the people of the zone. Which brings us to the second reason why the South-East expectations over the SGF were faulty: Whether South-East APC leaders like it or not, the truth is that the people of the zone were generally for President Buhari’s opponent in the last presidential election, President Goodluck Jonathan. Yes, Buhari got votes from the zone but the people of the zone, as a collective, wanted Jonathan, for reasons that have been so well stated previously by several commentators that they do not warrant any repetition here. President Buhari himself has put that on record when he made a clear distinction between those who gave him five percent of their votes and those who gave him 95 percent. That was a clear innuendo on “I know those who voted for me.”Is it fair, therefore, to expect him to bring the zone that gave him only five per cent into the innermost temple of his government?
As a child, my mother used to allude to the proverbial child who eats in the house of a woman to whom his mother is a debtor. According to the proverb, the creditor mother would only grudgingly give the child a portion of the meal: “Eat and add to the debt your mother owes me”. By aspiring for the office of the SGF, even if subtly, the people of the South-East, if you like, the Igbo, were playing that proverbial boy.
Finally, the people of the South-East ought to be reminded that even their worst critics have acknowledged what they have accomplished for themselves through the last general election. They have broken the “Jinx” of “not speaking with one voice”. Perhaps for the first time in a long period of time, they took a common stand and stuck to it to the end. Some critics wish it away as out of default. But it was not. The Igbo of the South-East should not arm their critics. They know what and whom they wanted and were ready to face the consequences of their actions, including forgoing choice offices.
But even so, the general feeling of despondency among the Igbo of the South-East to the Buhari regime is not necessary and may even be counter-productive. The people (of the South-East) wanted to prove a point and it is to their eternal credit that they succeed in doing so. As I have stated in previous articles, the APC-Buhari project was not superior to the Jonathan re-election agenda, the victory of the former and the current bashing of the latter’s regime notwithstanding. Both sides knew what it was out to accomplish and in every contest, a winner must emerge.
In my article, “Igbo did not make a mistake on the 2015 general election,” I noted that the major reason the Igbo took the stance on Buhari was that he was wrongly presented to them. And it is worth respecting: Buhari was presented as a religious fanatic, a Boko Haram sympathizer and even an Igbo hater. Those who had the responsibility of packaging him did not seem to care about Buhari’s image among the Igbo apparently because they thought it did not matter. Yes, he went ahead to win the election but that does not in any way obliterate the significance of the fact that the Igbo chose to distance themselves from fellow who, going by what they were told knew about him, did not fit the bill. Some Igbo APC leaders have tried to give the impression that the Igbo are receiving the punishment for not being part of the Buhari project. My advice to such leaders is that they should desist from such posturing because they are bound to regret it.
In any case, it is not a hidden matter that Buhari is not enamored by them, due both to their antecedents and abysmal performance in office. Consequently, Buhari should look beyond this class of politicians and see ways he can endear himself to the people; not the political elite whether in the APC, PDP, APGA and what have you. As I have stated earlier in this article, the president should not listen to the talk about SGF. There are many things at his disposal to use to make the Igbo of the South-East feel quite at home with him; and there are people he can use to achieve that outside those currently parading themselves as Igbo representatives in the APC-Buhari dispensation. Still, the president should not also listen to those who say that the appointments from the Igbo speaking parts of the South-South, notably Delta and Rivers states, makes up for the Igbo of the South-East. It is not the same thing because the matter has to do with geo-politics, not tribe. It is only a matter of coincidence that there are Igbo in those states. It is also a matter of coincidence that the South-East is made up entirely of only Igbo.
Nobody should mix up issues: Igbo of the South-East sincerely see those of the South-South as their brothers but it is politically incorrect to take what belongs to one group for the other. Therefore, those who argue that the appointment of said Dr Ibe Kachikwu, an Igbo from Delta State, should be taken for an appointment for the Igbo of the South-East are blackmailing the Igbo of both zones, and misleading the president.
Overall, my people, the Igbo of the South-East, should not allow themselves to be cajoled into rubbishing what they achieved at the 2015 general election; which is that they gave character to the politics of the zone. While they must not cheapen themselves by expressing hasty regrets over what they did, they, nonetheless, owe themselves a duty to work for a better Nigeria and which they can only demonstrate presently by cooperating with the Buhari regime.
