21. August 2009 by admin.

Apologise now!
• For scheming Ndigbo out of power, Ohanaeze tells Nigerians
From Geoffrey Anyanwu, Awka
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

“For this clearly discriminatory and, indeed, contemptuous attitude towards Ndigbo, it is only right to assert that our beloved co-citizens of Nigeria owe the Igbo nation unreserved fraternal apology for visiting an unjust and sustained capital political punishment on the entire Igbo nation vis-à-vis their constitutional right to exercise executive power as president of our country.

This is a fundamental right already too long denied for which Ndigbo gburu-gburu no matter their individual political differences must now unite to fight.”

This was how Ambassador Raph Uwechue, president general of the Igbo socio-cultural apex group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, summarized what the Igbo needed henceforth from the Nigerian project in his lecture entitled: “Ndigbo - Unrewarded Nation Builder” delivered at the Nigerian Union of Journalists’, Anambra State Council political awareness workshop held in Awka.

He chronicled the developmental activities of Ndigbo in Nigeria, but regretted that the Igbo nation has nothing to show for its sacrifices.
Sidelining of the Igbo
The Ohaneze President-General recalled on how in 1979 and 1983 both Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Dr. Alex Ekwueme were schemed out of power.

He said, “there is the feeling that the Igbo as a people are being deliberately sidelined, especially in the sphere of political leadership of the country. No Igbo person is deemed good enough or trusted enough to be put at the helm of affairs, at the apex management position of Nigeria. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s pioneer titular Head of State, took a shot at the real thing – the executive presidency in 1979 and 1983. In spite of his nationally acknowledged role as the foremost crusader for our nation’s independence, he scored abysmally in both electoral tests. Dr. Alex Ekwueme fared no better, even as he teamed up with a scion of the northern oligarchy – Alhaji Shehu Shagari. Their joint ticket under the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) won the presidential slot in the successive elections of 1979 and 1983.

“Like today’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the NPN was the dominant political party at the time. Securing its presidential candidate’s nomination was as good as clinching the presidential position. Dr. Ekwueme was poised to replace Shagari at the impending end of his second tenure as the party’s flag bearer come the next election.

“He was eminently qualified and was favoured by Shagari himself for the presidential job ahead. He had to be stopped, hence, the coup of 31st December, 1983, which traded in the remaining three years and nine months of Shagari’s second and final term, with all its democratic restrictions, for an eventual collective northern rule of some 14 years of absolute power under the successive military governments of Buhari, Babangida and Abacha 

“This event denied Ndigbo, perhaps the largest ethnic group in Nigeria, their ‘federal character’ chance of producing an executive president and their constitutional right to exercise presidential powers for a possible eight-year period of two terms. This callous and contemptuous treatment meted out to Ndigbo is in clear and cruel contrast with the compassionate concession, massively supported by Ndigbo, given to the Yorubas in 1999 to field the two Olus – Falae and Obasanjo, for the presumed presidential slot missed by their kinsman, Chief M. K. O. Abiola in 1993.”

Military rule
Uwechue also noted that, “in the 30 odd years of military rule of our country, apart from the six months stint of General Aguiyi Ironsi, who was officially and formally invited by the civilian remnant of the toppled Balewa administration to assume office as head of state in January 1966, the closest an Igbo officer in governance was the appointment of Navy Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe as his second in command by the then military President Ibrahim Babangida in 1985. He was summarily removed in humiliating circumstances early in the life of that administration.”

Political appointments
Sometimes, too much is being simplistically made of random appointment of Igbo technocrats to high profile positions, where demonstrable competence is usually required to tackle certain specific and difficult national tasks. What has been critically absent for decades, and is missing today, is fair and effective Igbo participation in the national decision-making process, which is entirely political. 

Appointees, no matter how highly positioned, only implement decisions already packaged and handed down to them. They are hired and fired at will. Considering their manifest multifaceted contribution to Nigeria’s political and economic development, Ndigbo deserve better than political crumbs from the master’s table. Igbo political role in Nigeria

He stated that Igbo political role in Nigeria has been consistent in the pursuit of national unity and inter-ethnic cooperation, noting that under Zik’s leadership, the Igbos played the role of bridge builders in the fledging Nigerian nation.
This, he contended, made Zik to accept the leadership of the legendary Yoruba political activist, Herbert Macaulay to form and direct the first truly significant national political party –National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC).

 “At independence, the Igbo-led NCNC shunned the attraction of being the senior partner in an East-West Alliance with Chief Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) and chose to team up instead as the junior partner with Sir. Ahmadu Bello’s Northern People’s Congress (NPC) in order to consolidate the frail and insipid attachment of a wary and skeptical North to Southern Nigeria. At that time, Chief Awolowo’s Yoruba dominated Action Group (AG) was viewed with considered suspicion by the Hausa-Fulani led NPC for its ambition and role in the then Middle Belt, under the ebullient, intrepid and anti-feudalistic leadership of J. S. Tarka’s United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC). However, when the Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was accused of treason and incarcerated in 1963, on charges which many Nigerians believed were trumped up to silence him politically, the Igbo leadership of the NCNC switched sides and came to his rescue.
1966 military intervention
The military intervention of January 1966, which was to a considerable degree a consequence of the persisting political turmoil in western Nigeria, put an abrupt end to the political activities of the various parties. That coup, most regrettably, took the lives of many prominent national leaders both military and civilian.

Behind the façade of general jubilation which greeted the January coup among the progressives in the country, particularly in the South, there was the ominous reality of an embittered North, the most powerful region in the Federation, whose overall representation in the army itself kept good pace with its political dominance in the country. Northern interest had suffered heavily both in the political and military spheres. Once it recovered from the shock, the North was bound to reassert itself in both domains.

This it did brutally in July 1966, sweeping General Ironsi, who was murdered at Ibadan, out of power. Some 214 Igbo officers and men were reported killed across the nation in a wholesale massacre, which also took the life of Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, the popular Yoruba military governor of Western Region, an articulate Ironsi confidant, known to be a sympathizer of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Thus, the circumstances of the January event and the largely one-sided killings that marked the bloody aspect of that coup practically made such a vengeful situation inevitable. For the Northern political leadership, the January 1966 coup was a plot conceived and hatched by the entire Igbo nation to seize political power in Nigeria.

Yet, the stark reality of that historic episode is that, as the British writer, Walter Schwartz put it succinctly in his book, Nigeria, which appeared at the time, “…the coup was Ibo-led, but national in objective”. Many prominent Igbo officers, starting with the head of the army General Aguiyi Ironsi to Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was the commanding officer in Kano, were not involved. Indeed, Col. Arthur Unegbu, the Quarter Master General, was killed in Lagos for refusing to cooperate with the coup makers, who came to him and demanded the keys to the armoury.  

Nzeogwu 1966 and Orkah 1990
In relevant retrospect, the similarity between the Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu led coup of January 1966 and that led by Major Gideon Orkah in April 1990 against the government of General Ibrahim Babangida stands out in astonishing relief. Both coups were carried out by young and idealistic middle-ranking officers; intent on transforming what they sincerely believed was a rotten Nigerian society. Neither coup was prompted or supported by senior officers of their respective ethnic groups.

But there is a painful difference in their aftermath. Nzeogwu’s coup was branded an “Igbo” coup, for which the entire Ndigbo must pay a heavy and recurrent political price. Orkah’s coup was not seen as a “Tiv” coup and justly so, and has no perceivable penalizing political price tag for the Tiv ethnic group.

            
For this reason, the Ohaneze boss is demanding an unreserved apology from co-citizens of Nigeria for Ndigbo and righting the wrongs meted out to Ndigbo by them assuming leadership at the apex management position of Nigeria.

The Sun Newspaper; Thursday, August 20, 2009.  http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2009/aug/19/national-19-08-2009-10.htm

Posted in Leadership, BLOG, Education, Nigerian Politics, Blogroll, Igbo Politics, Uncategorized | No Comments »

18. August 2009 by admin.

Leadership Dilemma of Ndigbo

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Leadership, Commerce, BLOG, Education, Igbo Religion, Blogroll, Igbo Politics, Nigerian Politics, Uncategorized | No Comments »

18. August 2009 by admin.

  Read the rest of this entry »