Marginalisation, defined as the outcome of domination, is the most favoured word used by the Nigerian elite to describe their perceived political reality and above all to seek for more access to the national cake. In all of Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, the story is very similar. Two broad issues are posed when ethno- regional domination emerges as a political issue in Nigeria. The first issue is the control of political power and its instruments such as the armed forces, the public service and the judiciary. The second is the control of economic power and resources. Both are powerful instruments that are used to influence the authoritative allocation of resources to groups and individuals. I am one of those who believe that reference to ethnic and cultural groups as political actors is fraught with analytical risks and any statement made about a group can be easily faulted. For the coming weeks however, a take leave of rational political science and narrate what we say about our ethno-regional groups for the purpose of building a narrative on the marginalisation of Nigerians. Today, we start with the Igbos. Three issues are on the table today on the Igbo question, the question of state creation, the Igbo presidency and the impact of the civil war. Chinua Achebe’s recent book – “There Was a Country”, in which he makes unambiguous comments of the complicity of the Nigerian state and its leaders at the time, Yakubu Gowon and Obafemi Awolowo in starving over two million Igbos to death has generated a huge debate over the past two weeks. General Gowon has responded denying the charges and claiming that it was Ojukwu who refused the offer of a humanitarian corridor and many furious Yoruba intellectuals have lambasted Achebe for what they consider to be unfair attack directed at Awolowo. What we can say is that Gowon’s “no victor, no vanquished” attitude blocked debate on what really happened and I think we should all thank Professor Achebe for placing the question on the table in such a dramatic manner.
There is no doubt that the civil war of 1967 to 1970 was the most serious threat to the existence of Nigeria as a country and it led to the loss of one to two million lives, depending on whose figure you accept. It should be recalled that just before the war, Western leaders had warned that if the East goes, the West will follow. That threat was not put into action and Awolowo, the Western leader was released from jail to serve as Finance Minister and Deputy Leader of the Federal Executive Council His former political secretary, my good friend Odia Ofeinun has written this week explaining that a key document for the debate which has been suppressed all this time is the book by the 1966 coup leader, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, in which he states that the objective of the coup was to make Awolowo Nigeria’s prime minister. He has also started a debate on the complicity of the political and traditional leaders of the then Mid-West.
The fact of the matter is that the Igbo elite have a strong empirical basis to read Nigerian political history as one of failure and frustration for them. It’s a narrative that sees a proud and hard-working people, “the Jews of Africa”, that have been forced to play second fiddle to the other for too long, especially the Hausa-Fulani ruling circles. Following the coup and the subsequent massacre of Igbos in 1966 in the Northern region, and the subsequent declaration of secession by the Eastern region in May 1967, the Igbo elite had assumed that other Nigerians would not fight to keep them in the Federation. They were wrong. Other Nigerians fought to preserve the Federation and the result was the thirty-month civil war and the heavy death toll.
In his book, “Igbo Leadership and the Future of Nigeria” Arthur Nwankwo argues that “Nigerians of all other ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo”, a phenomenon, he tells us, that Chinua Achebe had earlier dubbed “the Igbo problem”. Nwankwo tells us that the Igbos are more cosmopolitan, more adopted to other cultures, more individualistic and competitive, more receptive to change and more prone to settle and work in other parts of the country than other Nigerians. This reality, he says, is overshadowed by the myth other Nigerians persist in spreading that the Igbo are aggressive, arrogant and clannish. This purported attitude of other Nigerians towards the Igbos he points out has led to the development of a ‘’final solution’’ aimed at neutralizing and marginalizing the Igbo after the Civil war. This is seen to have occurred in two ways.
After the civil war, there was a coordinated policy of pauperising the Igbo middle class by the offer of a twenty pound ex gratis award to all bank account holders irrespective of the amounts they had lodged with the banks before the civil war. This was followed by routing the Igbos from the commanding heights of the economy by introducing the indigenisation decree at a time when the Igbos had no money, no patronage and no access to loans to compete for the companies. In addition, landed property owned by the Igbo was declared to be “abandoned property” particularly in Port Harcourt. In the public service, the Igbo elite were marginalised by the refusal to re-absorb most of their cadres who had attained high positions in the armed forces and the federal public service.
It is in this context that many within the Igbo elite have come to understand the policies of “no victor, no vanquished” and “reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation” announced after the war, were not actually applied. There is room to debate these issues today as they feed into current demands for the creation of an additional state in the South East and the clamour for an Igbo Presidency. Of course since the end of the civil war, there has been a remarkable Igbo economic and commercial élan. The marginalisation did not work at the economic and commercial level and the success of the Igbo come back is one of the remarkable stories of our time. It might be precisely because of this success that bitterness persists among the Igbo elite on why other Nigerians appear to believe that they should continue with the politics of second fiddle.
To be major players in politics requires team and coalition building. The Northern political class used to be very good at that but they have lost it in recent years. For the Igbo elite to play it successfully, they do need to convince and reassure the others. Chinua Achebe might have done this cause harm by his recent assertions which really angered the Yoruba elite and now jeopardises the possibility of a common southern political front which appeared possible for the first time in our political history. He has however done Nigeria a lot of good by demanding that we look more closely at the history of the civil war and learn more of what we did to ourselves. As I eagerly wait to get my copy of the book by Achebe and the publication of Ifeajuna’s book, I am enthralled at all the revelations that have been coming out over the past few weeks and I believe understanding our recent history better is the best path to nation building. Next week, I take a look at the Hausa-Fulani and the Marginalisation of Nigerians.
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