25/02/2024
Now, it seems to me that the Igbo, largely politically ambivalent, can even get their acts together.
Their votes have not been counting for a long time.
Their contributions have always been ignored or sneered at.
Their local political leaders have largely been made by some Centre-based homes and offices and they took it for a ride.
They were clearly told in Lagos that their votes were not needed, whether for or against some preferred candidates.
Their homes and businesses are destroyed in droves just to teach them some bitter political lessons.
They took all these equanimously.
But something strange is happening now.
Political character shift.
The Igbo and most Obidients say they are not participating in any demonstration against the same government/s they were not allowed to vote for or against.
It was disturbing listening to a voice on tiktok this morning. It was lamenting the refusal of the Igbo to join in demonstrations. This voice was borne by a person who professed that she voted for Peter Obi in the Presidential Elections. Other networth political leaders have wondered why the Igbo, West and East Niger, Benue, River-rain, central, south, and global, have bluntly refused to join the bandwagon.
Now, see how wrong people can get these things. Voting for or against Obi is simply not the point at this moment.
Joining in protests against Tinubu, gloriously refused by the Igbo to be a part, is also not the point.
The point has been, what would Igbo participation bring about to it? Vigour? Vocality? Money? Violence?
Nothing! I dare say. The others have these in abundance.
So, why drag the Igbo into a project they would soon be branded by other Nigerians as one other threat to the Nigerian State?
Sure, as they say, the iron must pass through the furnace to be become fine and of use.
The Igbo have passed through the hardest of furnaces in Nigeria?
Pogroms, war, economic deprivations, policy targeting, typecasitng, isolation, abandonment, denied state protection in targeted killings, etc. The list is, indeed, endless.
For me the future looks better. There has risen a generation of Igbo that can actually afford to pay the price and act stateless in Nigeria, just as they are anonymously toiling all over the world.
Being Stateless means that they can even, without nudging or push, abstain, negate, and snob public office elections in Nigeria, without disturbing anybody.
People denied of citizenship, expression, participation, always adopt this, although I doubt it has gotten to that stage.
To the Obidients, Igbo and non-Igbo, the reasons and facts you express are known in your attitude towards bad governance. Those who, in their wisdom, decided and enforced your exclusion in political elections in Nigeria cannot lead you by the nose to participate in unseating who they grabbed, snatched, ran with to install.
They who started it shall finish it.
You never sought the enthronement of your candidates by demonstrations, riots and the like. Those who made it their present political culture to coerce, kill and frighten, should follow through with it.
Non-Igbo Obidients should understand. What you see as sticking out the tongues like you say "ntòòòò" is not targeted at you. They feel as you feel. But they have been fools enough.
Within the laws of Nigeria, a president of the Federal Republic had been installed.
We live with it.
