BIAFRA, IGBO PRESIDENCY AND RESTRUCTURING: What Do Ndigbo Really Want? -By Onwuasoanya FCC Jones.

In view of the heat and expectations of the forthcoming 2023 Presidential election as well as agitations from Nigerians especially the South East on issues surrounding the Nigeria political space and leadership, an political analyst and social crusader, Onwuasoanya FCC Jones writes extensively to clarify main issues and the matters arising at hand.

READ HIS ARTICLE: 

If you are the type of person that regularly engages in political discussions with people from varied political and ethnic backgrounds like me, you would have come across this group of people who would be quick to dismiss the argument that an Igbo man or woman should become President of Nigeria by 2023 with the argument that; “Ndigbo do not know what they want”. They will go on and on about how a different group of Igbos is agitating for Biafran, while another group is talking about restructuring, while the other is talking about Nigerian presidency of Igbo extraction. Sometimes, it could be hard cracking up a logical response to this snide, but, long before my election as the Second-in-Command of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Wing, I had been engaging this set of people. While most of them are impossible to have a conversation with, because of their partisan biases, I think, any reasonable one would give my logic a thought, even if they don’t end up accepting it.

I have always told my friends that everything the Igbo is asking for is easily attainable if the Nigerian government is ready to think and amenable to dialogue. But it appears that some people or majority of the people in government are so strong-headed that they believe the only way they can respond to the genuine and very valid agitations of Ndigbo is to try to forcefully crush them. This has never worked and this will never work. Ndigbo are not asking for too much, and if anyone or any group of people are really ready to pay attention they will easily recognize that we are not actually asking for three things or different things, but one thing; Justice. It is the absence of justice and equity that has given rise to the seeming variegation of demands, but even if these demands are varied, it can be resolved with just one thing; justice.

Let us take a quick stroll around the three dominant agitations by Ndigbo;

ON BIAFRA

Biafra has gone beyond a mere agitation to an ideology, and every Igbo, no matter their political orientations or personal reservations about the approaches to this agitation, is a ‘Biafran’. This does not necessarily mean that every Igbo person wants a secession from the Nigerian Union. In fact, there is no tribe in Nigeria that has demonstrated more love or made more sacrifices for the continued unity of Nigeria than the Igbo. No tribe has individually or collectively contributed to the growth of Nigeria than the Igbo. Such a group of people are not the type that would want to secede from a country they have invested so much in building, except, they are continuously made to feel unwanted. The average Igbo person who supports secession does that out of frustration with the injustice and glaring imbalance in the Nigerian State rather than out of any tribalistic or divisive motivation.

It is important to understand that Nigeria may actually be in a more precarious situation than in 1967. While the Ohanaeze leadership is obviously inclined to more diplomatic and political engagements in attempting to redress the perennial, but worsening political imbalance in the Nigerian union, the youths and majority of Southeast and Igbo youths are understandably impatient towards the Nigerian State and are ready to take their dates into their hands. The events that led to one of the bloodiest civil wars of the 20th century has always been there, but was either ignored or glossed over, because the political class, including those from the old Eastern region and the current Southeast, were comfortable with the snacks of State they were nibbling away at, and they never imagined that a day would come when a group of oppressed and deprived people would rise up to fight for their survival. The ability of what some analysts regard as a “ragtag” Biafran Army to hold off the well equipped, sufficiently supported and globally backed Nigerian Army, for 30 months, should tell anyone who truly cares about history, that Ndigbo, with all the imagined and real geographical and political disadvantages will never be a pushover.

The Federal Government, if they were sincere in addressing the issue of BIAFRA would have understood that these agitators are simply asking for justice, they are asking for equity, they are asking for fairness. Most Igbo youths who have signed up to this agitation are brilliant, exceptionally talented people who watch helplessly as those they intellectually, academically and even physically better endowed than, are better positioned, not by Providence or any such extraordinary circumstances, but because of the tribe they belong to, the language they speak and the religion they adhere to.

ON RESTRUCTURING

Contrary to the popular notion that the restructuring agenda was initiated and is being spearheaded by the Afenifere and Southwest political class, the late Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu should actually be credited as the first and most popular advocate of restructuring. Restructuring was what Ikemba brought to the table in Aburi, Ghana, when he attended a conference aimed at forestalling the civil war. He, on behalf of the people of the old Eastern Region proposed a confederal system of Government against the unitary military government headed by General Yakubu Gowon. Ojukwu, like present day advocates of restructuring was convinced that allowing all parts of the country to develop and secure themselves according to their capabilities would reduce mistrust, tension and the unnecessary tussles that have made Nigeria a laughing stock before the world. He also knew that rather conferring special privileges on one ethnic group over the other, a confederal system of government would force different sections of the country to look onwards and discover special talents and assets within itself, with which they would be able to develop and govern themselves efficiently.

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, which is the apex sociocultural organization representing all Igbos, no matter what may be their political, social or religious biases, has made it clear at different fora, that for Nigeria to survive, the current economic and political structure must be reviewed and even renegotiated. The kind of restructuring the Ohanaeze leadership is asking for, may not be a total confederalism, but a true federalism that makes different States of the Federation, semi-autonomous units of the Federation, rather than the incongruous contraption, passed off as a federalism. By asking for restructuring, Ndigbo are asking for a fair playing ground, not just for themselves, but for all Nigerians.

Therefore, restructuring to Ndigbo means that; The current Nigerian Constitution which makes Southeast the most politically disadvantaged region in the country should be overhauled, to among other things achieve an equilibrium or something close to it. Governors should have control over the security of their States. Southeast States should be able to control whatever resources they generate and pay some agreed percentage as tax to the Federal Government. Southeast region should be semi-independently governed by a government that can only be elected or removed by the people of the Southeast, ditto, other regions of the country. Southeast and every other region of the country should have equal representation in the FG. Simply put; restructuring means justice and equity and anyone asking for restructuring is asking for Nigeria’s survival. It is therefore wrong to hold the notion that restructuring is a Southeast agenda. Restructuring is a national agenda.

ON SOUTHEAST PRESIDENCY

It is an indictment on the Nigerian political class that Igbos are being made to campaign or even fight for the presidency of Nigeria after all these years of injustice and intentionally denying them of what is fully their right. Forget the political delineations done for political convenience, Nigeria stands on a tripod of Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and political positions have been distributed or rotated over the years based on this arrangement.

Among these three major tribes in the country, Hausas would have produced Presidents for ten years in 22 years and a Vice-president for twelve years while the Yorubas have produced a President for eight years and a Vice-president for another eight years within the period. The Igbos haven’t produced any within this period. In the last six decades plus since Independence, an Igbo man has only been an executive President for a tumultuous six months and the Vice-presidency for less than five years, while the Yorubas, Hausas and Ijaws have shared the presidency in all these years among themselves.

Given this background, every Nigerian of good conscience would not consider the campaign for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction as an Igbo or Ohanaeze agenda. This is a campaign that every Nigerian should embrace and advance, no matter what our different political backgrounds might be.

A Nigerian President of Igbo extraction in 2023 will be the clearest demonstration by Nigerians that they accept Ndigbo as equal stakeholders in the Nigerian project, and a denial of this right to Ndigbo would leave us with no option but to confirm the suspicion that other parts of Nigeria do not consider Ndigbo welcomed I’m this union. Conceding the presidency to the Igbo in 2023 remains the only option available to the Nigerian political class to convince the average Igbo man and indeed every Nigerian of good conscience that Ndigbo can indeed get justice in this country. It is therefore the best, shortest and most effective way to resolve other demands of Ndigbo.