2023: Igbo, Give Up Presidency, Give It To Yoruba

By Chimaroke Nnamani

“How did the Igbo get to this? Who sold this massive con job? Who are the snake oil salesmen? Why the perceived mistrust of the Yoruba?

“We never fought? Our properties never seized? Our businesses thriving in their Homelands? Blossoming inter-marriages with multiple offsprings? Common language etymology.

“They stayed out of Nigeria/Biafra war until the Benin expedition. Fajuyi died for Ironsi’s sake. Bola Tinubu gave his financial life line to Igbo’s Ben Akabueze.

“President Obasanjo had highly dependent Igbo mentees including myself. Called me son and seriously shared confidentialities with me. That I will carry with me to the Lord’s vineyard.

“Our properties were returned immediately in the second quarter of 1970 with collected rent and interests.

“The ‘ontogeny’ of our revered kolanut Yoruba.

My brothers where is the disconnect?

Okpara and our forebears saw it.

“The NCNC/NPC alliance was a colossal failure for South East. Ditto NPN/NPP. History repeats.

“AG/NCNC alliance 1956/57? Was aborted. Could have provided Chief executive to either party.

“The AG/NCNC alliance in United Progressive Grand Alliance, Awolowo & Okpara mired in pre-66 coup imbroglio.

“The UPN/NPP alliance could have done the same. The threat of Ekwueme Presidency writers claim added filip to collapse of the 3rd Republic.

“When you shift power to Yoruba, you don’t go to Kwara or Kogi, you go to Southwest. But the weakness of the South East zone is patently obvious such that they throw any bones to us and we bite.

“We must always be expected to show gratitude for any pittance. After all we were spared with ‘no victor, no vanquished.’

“We should be happy and don’t worry. We can always resort to spare parts and hugging containers. For this ongoing political expedition, my Igbo people have suffered the consequences of socio-political insularity.

“Confused by mediocres and cry babies. Emergency politicos. Whose ticket out of the burden of inferiority and underachievement is ethnocentric preachments.

“One a pure exercise in self-driven political catharsis, the other a know abuser and denigrator of my people.

“The Igbo are out of the power echelon of an African State they helped found. Product of self-injury and own goal. We need a restart. Based on a paradigm shift. Careful but calculated risk.

“The Igbo has to retrace the steps of Okpara and Awolowo, the United Progressive Grand Alliance. An Igbo-Yoruba Alliance.

“It is not late for the Igbo to reflect on and carefully X-ray the looming reality of a President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“A marathon politico Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, City Boy they call him, paid his dues over decades, performed creditably in governance and politics.

“With an A-Game, decades of hardwork, patience, resilience and tenacity. And a lot of swagger and chutzpah, Tinubu is it. A consummate and well navigated City boy. A winner always.

“Only saw him complain once, and probably his last. The rest is history. That Alliance, Handshake across the Niger that is, and a resultant Southern Coalition will build a Great no Nigerian Partnership with our Northern brothers and sisters cutting across tribes, religions and all differences.

“A land where truly all Tongues may differ but the voices will coalesce and resonate in a crescendo of synergy, amity and good conscience. The answer to the Igbo power conundrum maybe.”

Dr Nnamani, a serving PDP Senator, former two-term Governor of Enugu State, made these points in a Post he entitled “The Igbo Insularity and its Yoruba Wahala”