By Clement Udegbe
“Facing it , always facing it, that’s the way
to get through. Face it” —Joseph ConradMore.
Igbos have come to
that point in the national life of Nigeria, where they just have to
face it. They have to face the realities of these times. No one will develop
the South East for them except they face it. No one will stop crime and
kidnapping for them, except they face it. No one will spare their land from
Fulani herdsmen, whether they play the politics or not, they just have to face
it.
 |
| *Buhari |
No one will
terminate the buds of islamisation from growing in Igbo land for them, except
they face it. No one will stop the killings at the least provocation in the
north except they face it. No one will stop shooting at unarmed Igbo Youths
under whatever guise, except they face it. Some Igbos think they have money,
but none of them is on the Forbes list of the richest 100 in the
world, and none is on the list of the richest 100
in Africa, they have to face it.
And to face these and many more, they must, if they will get the Igbo land they
deserve from this Nigeria
we live in today. Igbos have to face the fact that as a people, they got it
wrong after the 1996 to 1967 civil war. They have to face the fact that
dispersing like the oil bean seed all over Nigeria
while neglecting their own region, and blaming all others is not the way to
push forward your agenda in the new Nigeria.
None of them will
become President without a solid political base at home, and joining other
peoples’ base will never help them. The South East has many rich sons who
started political parties perhaps just to access the money INEC was dolling out
to political parties in those days. They had no intentions to develop their
region politically, and they were not interested in forming any political base
in that region. Thus, their political parties died as soon as the free money
from Federal government for parties dried up. These Igbo men wanted quick money
without power, and today they keep scheming to join and jostle for positions in
main stream political parties that were formed by their colleagues who targeted
power and money, and remained faithful to that cause.
The ACN from the South West, teamed up with
CPC from the north to produce the APC using renegades from the PDP, to displace
the PDP in the 2015 Presidential elections, while selfishness left APGA with
only Anambra State in the South East,with some of the
founding members and huge beneficiaries of APGA working hard to kill it. The
South East needs to review its foundations and definitions of success, and
President Muhammadu Buhari may have been sent to help open their eyes to some critical
directions. First, the Fulani herdsmen, and the subsequent Grazing Bill were
supposed to open the eyes of Ndigbo, to their internal security arrangement,
which they naively never gave any serious thoughts before now. When in 2011,
the idea of developing a data base of persons with criminal tendencies and
records in the South East was suggested, they called it profiling of
northerners, and killed it.
Today, the South
East states are grappling and groping in blind efforts to fight and control
kidnapping, which has continued to mushroom, without any data base to work or
start with. Painfully, while other South East states are developing legislative
and cerebral means to stem marauding Fulani herdsmen and stop the Grazing Bill,
Imo State appears more interested in a piece of legislation that will empower
the Governor to acquire land for ranching and other agricultural purposes etc,
with the scary attendant risk of possibly handing such acquired land over for
grazing! Second, Buhari’s isolation of Igbos in his government is supposed to
also open the Ndigbo’s eyes to regional agriculture. Igbos have forgotten those
things that they depended on for three years to survive the civil war. We
had a specie of cassava that we ate raw and boiled and ate like yam which
is no longer in existence. Every home had a small poultry farm in Biafra, which we have abandoned for frozen chicken with
all the health hazards having to do with their storage as well as the use of
accompanying chemicals!
We abandoned the
long snake tomatoes, which should have been cross-bred for better taste,
because it had bulk and volume. Only a few Igbos remember our local, hardy,
sweeter and stronger specie of the cow called Ehi Igbo, which we failed to
ranch, and preferred this tasteless Nnama,
called cattle, for which they want to own our lands by force! Third, Igbo eyes
should now be open to industrialisation of the South East, requiring a special
electric power generation plan or strategy. No government, Federal or State, no
matter how manipulative should stop Igbos from working out an arrangement for a
deep Sea Port with road and rail transportation system and network to
serve that zone.
Fourth, the recent
WAEC results where the South East came within the top ten in the nation,
although Imo state performed poorly due to APC’s faulty education programmes,
should tell us that Igbo children are ready to soar, if they can be empowered
and encouraged, irrespective of who the President is. Hoping and trusting that
Governor Okorocha will reverse that ugly trend, Igbos should look more inwards,
than outwards. And since no known Igbo man owns an oil well, let the conquerors
and owners of Nigeria
keep their oil money, and let us seek for God’s Agenda for our Land, and work
very hard to achieve it by creating a region of bountiful success. No Igbo
person should expose himself to the risk of being shot at by these blood
thirsty soldiers, and police officers no matter what. If indeed Buhari has
achieved the National Confab Report, so be it. Let Igbos begin to think and act
regional, and let it be a pleasant surprise when Nigeria decides to re-integrate
them properly.
*Mr.Clement
Udegbe, a lawyer, can be reached at ceeaai@yahoo.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment