From the ashes of the spoilers’ tactics of the First Republic, there is no let up yet in the game of playing good boy in the nation’s power dealers’ self-serving schemes that diminish our worth among the comity of the nations that constitute the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
As an Igbo man, I feel ashamed at the reckless and ignoble attitude of our educated people in the South East on how they cheaply make themselves available for dirty jobs for other tribes for six pence in the schemes that place a huge burden on our worth and integrity as a sub-national group in the federation of Nigeria.
The list of our lusts for private comfort and recognition through “slave job” to our own collective shame and disadvantage is long. I won’t bother myself recalling our experiences in the First Republic; I will dwell on recent history that is still very much fresh in our memories so that we can interrogate exactly what our problems are in Nigerian politics.
I have noticed that at almost all delicate moments in Nigerian political history, the Igbos are called in to play disgraceful and spoiler roles in hatchet jobs in favour of Nigeria’s power elite. Talk about national elections, ethnic combustion and other sundry issues that place a burden on national cohesion, our Igbo people readily make themselves available to play a spoiler game that has never earned our people the much needed respect among Nigerians.
For instance, at the time the Southern Zaria people faced the greatest persecution of their lives under General Ibrahim Babangida’s military junta that roped in General Zamani Lekwot, Peter Lekwot and several leaders from Southern Zaria, to face persecution over trumped-up charges of the killings of innocent people during the Zango-Kataf crisis in the late 80s, an Igbo man made himself available to help Babangida’s junta achieve their aim.
When a tribunal was set up to probe the crisis and none of the many Nigerian Judges was ready to participate in the delicate matter, an Igbo man, Justice Benedict Okadigbo, made himself available for the dirty job. He did not only accept to do the dirty job, he was also enthusiastic to carry out the hatchet assignment. During the final judgement on the case, against the weight of evidence, and to the chagrin of the whole world, Justice Okadigbo not only pronounced General Lekwot and his brothers guilty to die by hanging, he also demonstrated, to the amazement of the people sitting at the court gallery, how Lekwot and his people would die by hanging with a rope.
Even though the world was outraged by that judgement, one of us, Justice Okadigbo, did what he was willing and paid to do at the risk of his life and reputation.
It was the turn of another Igbo man, Arthur Nzeribe, during the same General Ibrahim Babangida’s convoluted transition programme. After it emerged that the late MKO Abiola of SDP was massively supported across the country, defeating Bashir Tofa of NRC even in his native Kano State to emerge winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, it took the combined efforts of two Igbo men, Walter Ofonagoro and Arthur Nzeribe, through his infamous Association for Better Nigeria (ABN), to be hired to truncate a national dream for democratic process for prosperity. Ofonagoro and Nzeribe helped their paymasters in the military to achieve their aim.
It was the turn of Professor Maurice Iwu to help in the mindless election fraud that produced President Olusegun Obasanjo in the election described as criminally flawed by the international community after Obasanjo scripted his “do or die” politics preparatory to his second term in 2003 general elections. Iwu later disgraced himself in Ekiti, Osun and Edo states where the courts ruled that Iwu conducted the most fraudulent elections in Nigeria’s political history to please his paymasters.
Ekiti State’s case was even worse, as Iwu literally turned himself to PDP’s megaphone in the 2009 rerun poll skewed in PDP’s favour after mindless election manipulations supervised by Iwu’s INEC to give victory to PDP.
Of course, Iwu was also finally disgraced in courts after the criminal manipulations of the ballot were exposed.
In fact, there are other instances in which we Igbo people make ourselves available for dirty jobs.
One thing that is common to these principal Igbo indigenes among us is after delivering on their dirty assignments, they become irrelevant in the national scheme of things, even as they often suffer public humiliation.
The 2023 election is at hand now and another Igbo man, Godwin Emefiele, has advertised himself as the one that can do the dirty job of truncating the national assignment that has implications for the nation’s democratic growth and economic development.
Emefiele has made himself available to the Aso Rock cabal that corralled him into a self-serving currency swap for power grab scheme that has almost snuffed life out of ordinary Nigerians, which the plotters have now disingenuously blamed on APC as a bad party, to enable PDP win the election.
That man of the Igbo’s moment of dishonour and disgrace is Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, who has flagrantly disobeyed the Supreme Court ruling suspending the naira swap deadline that is snuffing out the lives of Nigerians.
Just like our other Igbo compatriots, Emefiele is risking his reputation and life to enable him deliver on his assignment by his paymasters even if that will earn him jail term for contempt of the Supreme Court ruling. The same Babangida that scripted the June 12 crisis is now being rumoured to be the brain behind the alleged plot to sabotage 2023 general elections and an Igbo man is again the tool for that unpatriotic plot.
Unfortunately for Emefiele, Nigerians have discovered that the conspiracy and fraud by him and his sponsors was like the June 12 conspiracy.
For now, according to the national mood, sympathy votes will go for the victim of Emefiele’s devilish plot, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This is because Nigerians have discovered that the evil men that are sponsoring Emefiele are at work, more so that the candidate they are working for represents the worst specimen in leadership qualities that hold no promise for Nigeria’s development after revelations on his fraudulent Federal Government’s privatisation programme through which he sold national assets to himself and the secretly recorded tape on how he as Vice President stole Nigeria dry through SPV, emerged.
Why are we Igbos so blessed with readily making ourselves available for dirty jobs at critical times in the nation’s history?
We are again in the threshold of another phase of Nigeria’s history and we Igbo people have again had one of us again playing another dirty game against the run of reality and national consciousness in the nation’s polity.
We are conducting ourselves in this manner, yet we are angling for the leadership of this country. Can other Nigerians trust us with the leadership of the country with the way the very best of us conduct themselves at critical times in our national life?
What exactly is our problem in Igboland? Why are we so blessed with making ourselves available for national sabotage at all times?
* Dr Ifeanyi Okechukwu lives in Abakaliki
