TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
;DThe Igbo are an egotistical breed indeed. They have this air about them that borders on selfish self-deceit. I remember growing up with stories of how intelligent the Igbo are in comparison to the backward, illiterate and stupid Hausas. Everywhere, the Igbo’s oversized ego pushes them into projecting themselves as a far cleverer tribe than they really are. This perception pervades the whole of Igbo land that I was surprised to find out only a few years back that “Aboki” means “Friend” and not the utterly derogatory collocation that borders on “Dumbo” is it given down the East. I’m not trying to unnecessarily pick on my own brothers; every tribe has their own misconceptions of reality. I’m just giving a perspective.
Earlier this month (March, 2012), I happened to travel from Jalingo to Gboko, and my driver was not a commercial driver at all. He said he was a government ‘general contractor’ (whatever that means), doing a part-time computer course in Gombe State University (I think) and shuttles from his home in Makurdi to the school each weekend. He picks passengers travelling along the same route on his Toyota car to and fro, as a way of cutting costs. As I was sitting on the front with him, it made striking up a conversation with him a lot easier, coupled with the fact that he was a real chatty fellow.
Soon his conversation (he did most of the talking) moved from castigating his native Taraba state for being (virtually) the most backward state in Nigeria, to the causes of the Nigerian civil war. He gave me a totally different insight to what he felt were the remote causes of the pogrom and the distrust in the North (which of course led to the civil war). In his view, the North started ‘hating’ the East primarily not because of religious differences, but owing to the overbearing attitude of the Igbo which they exhibited both in daily interaction with their northern counterparts, and in the army. He insinuated that the Igbo started a form of social Apartheid against the less literate and less sophisticated northerners. As an example, he narrated a personal account of an incidence he witnessed as a child in which an Igbo clearly objected to sharing a seat on the same bus with a Hausa on the grounds that the Hausa man was dirty and disheveled, as all Hausa are wont to be. This he (the Igbo man) did right in front of other Hausa onlookers, in their town! My driver was not finished yet: he said that there was no doubt that, for instance, the Hausa soldiers were less exposed than their counterparts from other tribes; but it was the Igbo who went out of their way to prove this to the Hausa brethren. There and then, a dangerous seed of anger and resentment was being sown. He finished with a question: why does it have to be the Igbo who single-handedly carried out the first coup, and why did they have to leave out popular Igbo figures in the killings?
While I cannot vouch for the veracity of the above insinuations, I mentioned them to drive my point home that the Igbo believe too much in their abilities and worth, and it did not start today. It particularly irks me then when I hear people say that had Biafra been allowed to secede, she would have been a far advanced country by now. The claim is so empty that I really should not have bothered, but I had to since it is a regular card being played by Biafra apologists who make every effort to mourn yesterday, while brazen murderers of today are having a field day.
Before the 1966 Nzeogwu-led coup defined a new route for what was to become of Nigeria, the existing civilian government then was made up of a substantially large number of people of Igbo (Biafran) extraction, who were all involved actively in sowing the seeds of corruption, which the military in turn capitalized on to unleash their own brand of looting. There was no evidence that the embezzlement and maladministration which became the hallmark of government then was restricted to other parts of the country, save then East. If Biafra had succeeded, it is highly likely that the same looting ideology/class would have found its way to governance quite naturally. I say this because the Biafra dream was a ‘secession’, not a ‘revolution’.
There is a popular cliché that ‘Igbo enweghi eze’ (Igbo has no king). It does not mean the Igbo do not have titular heads with kingship designations in their various communities. It means that whoever happens to be the king is a primus inter pares and therefore has his powers stripped to the barest minimum of authority since the Igbo have maintained an essentially democratic system of government. The downside of the cliché though, is that decision making becomes a difficult process with the attendant problem of not carrying everyone along. It also implies then that for every Igbo Agenda, there is a mole somewhere assiduously working to rock the boat, or better still, sink it. And the mole is Igbo, too. That the Biafra project did not succeed was attributed – to some extent – to the fact that not all (prominent) Igbo threw their weight behind it (I’m looking at you, Zik). But that is talk for another day. What then do you think will be the fate of a country made up of a bunch of I-too-knows?
Fast-forward to 21st century Nigeria and look at the state of Ndigbo as a nation. Whatever is there to cheer about the Igbo is a result of individual effort, and not astute governance. Whether it is the great Igbo markets, or the famed Igbo Transporters, or the infrastructural layouts, name it. They are all a collection of feats of desperate citizens which will still happen in a different badly run country, and then ends there. Who in the Igbo nation has the political ideology to move Nigeria (or Biafra) forward among the sleazy lot in power at the moment? Who can the Igbo wholeheartedly say they could trust? Look at the current crop of south-east senators and tell me the plight of the common man happen to cross their minds in a whole year, unless they happen to need between 10-20% of your votes (don’t worry, they can make up the rest through rigging). A friend once told me that had Biafra been a reality, the Igbo would have reversed to the modern day form of feudal government in which rich riggers like Andy Uba and his miscreant brother would be Vassals to a bigger miscreant, leaving the common Igbo man to work and toil for them. He thought he told a good joke. His grin disappeared when I retorted that he proclaimed a prophecy which thankfully enough might have been averted. Whither Biafra?
If any part of Nigeria would have done better as a separate country, it’s most probably the Yoruba. They have time and again shown flashes of the promise both in political ideology and in administration – ACN and Fashola are the present embodiments of both - while across the Niger, my Igbo brethren are content with being stooges. So my dear Ndigbo, can we please stop posturing around with our streak of non-violent Nazism, and actually do something about it?
Chidozie Nnachor...
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/guest-articles/taraba-memoirs-6-biafra-a-country-worse-than-nigeria.html Rot in hell all hater of Edo the heart of the nation , if not Edo you ppl.will have
TRENDING GISTS 
biancaflexy
kebella
........yu already no that 
...heheh...if yu wanna smell what kebella is cooking........bring it up!!
BendelArmedRobb
steve222
......... Igbo guys re busy making money when yu morons re here making an empty noise fooling urselves as usual............purey boys the earlier yu guys do something better with ur gawd 4saken life the better 4 una........... real men don't make something out of nothing ............why trying to defend urselves when y'all no the truth...............am not afraid of fake guys buh if yu think yu ve what it takes to fight KEBELLA pls be a man n' stand me with ''original profile'' not all this multiple profiles created by fools to defend themselves yet the truth can't be hide................rubbish!! y' all disgust me big time n' i hate to say that t*t* d*1*ck is not lying when she said that Benin guys re stupid...........mtchew
otagermo
arsenal123
Solidstonez
georgecool
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