THE IGBO QUESTION IN NIGERIA: CRITICAL APPRAISAL

 

By Ben AHANONU

The Oxford Dictionary, defines question as a matter forming the basis of a problem requiring solution and in the wider world, questions often arise as man relates with fellow man at interpersonal, community, state or country levels.

Before the coming into existence of Nigeria, the different ethnic groups that constitute the country today, have had unresolved intra and inter-ethnic questions, which often resulted in tribal wars, internecine upheavals and kingdom conquests.

The loose web of kingdoms and groups of people persisted until the coming of the European Colonialists, which gave rise to what we have presently as a country.

It was not long after independence from British colonial rule that questions about the durability and viability of the new state of Nigeria as a united entity began to emerge. The Igbo speaking people were incidentally at the epicenter of the unfolding drama.

The tenuous state of affairs later degenerated into a genocidal civil war that took the lives of millions of Igbo people and destroyed whatever economic and political edge they had over the rest.

The aftermath of the civil war including the deliberate official marginalization and other deprivations meted out to the Igbo people even prior to the war and in the post-civil war Nigeria became what is often referred to as The Igbo Question.

Over the years, much have been written and said about this issue in private conversations, public discourses, colloquiums, books and more. This has come in the form of lamentation and bemoaning of the plight of the Igbo.

On more than one occasion, efforts have been made to chart a way forward through communiqués; charters but nothing much have come out of all these efforts which seem like seasonal catchy routine.

In the light of the foregoing, there comes the need to change tactics in the approach to tackling the Igbo Question.

Now is the time to start looking inwards. The time has come when Ndi Igbo should stop blaming others for their plight while doing little themselves to turn things around for the general good of Igbo land.

Some of those sticking points that constitute the Igbo Question vis-à-vis the Nigerian nation can be addressed systematically by the Igbo themselves and in the course of doing that quite a huge chunk of what is the Igbo Question would have been answered.

Ndi Igbo should start holding their elected representatives and public officeholders accountable right from the councillors to the Governors and members of the National Assembly. Such a move will not only engender good governance in Alaigbo but will also guarantee democracy dividends for the people.

According to the former minister of power and Professor of robotic engineering, Professor Barth Nnaji: “By empowering our people in their rural setting, we can quickly help Nigeria achieve the much vaunted double-digit growth of our GDP. Our people must be empowered to see themselves as productive entities in the country’s growth engine. The people of the Southeast must work to become the engines, the levers, and the mechanisms that make the system operate and produce. With a population of more than 200 million, Nigeria is the largest country in Africa. Interestingly, the people of Southeast constitute a significant proportion of the population and are the ones that have the propensity to go into uncharted territories to work with the locals for development and economic advancement. The people of this region can look at this state of affairs as a great opportunity to improve themselves and by extension, the country.

However, to achieve the aforementioned, Professor Nnaji said: “A number of critical things should be in place. We need enabling infrastructure, we need adequate educational system and we need to be thinking for the whole rather than for self.

In the case of enabling infrastructure, which is the major bane of industrialization, it goes beyond what we physically view as infrastructure. It can include physical security, transport, ICT, telecommunications, water, health, education, finance, power and technology.”

I naturally concur with Prof. Barth Nnaji and assert that it is high time the Igbo discontinued with the now anachronistic siege mentality syndrome that has in the main, obstructed their real sense of direction and hampered the charting of a real course to transform Igbo land.

Igbo land is filled with people, who have what it takes to turn wasteland into paradise and oasis of splendour.

The essential thing is a determination to tap into the begging pool of expertise, talent, resources, semi-skilled manpower and harness such appropriately to transform Igbo land into the real land of the rising sun where hope is fulfilled.

This article was first published in 2014.