OPINION: Igbophobia Is A Pleasurable Pastime

By Amanze Obi

My friend and colleague, Segun Ayobolu, has joined the infamous clan of journalists and writers who are demonizing the Igbo on account of Bola Tinubu’s presidential aspiration. I find this regrettable, especially in the light of my belief that these gentlemen, as cosmopolitan as I thought they were, were incapable of this level of incivility.

But I know that Segun was conscripted and fed a lie. He must have been taken in by the antics of those for whom Igbophobia is a pleasurable pastime. I dare say that the views he expressed in his recent article on the Igbo and the Peter Obi presidency are hardly original to him. They are bits and pieces of prejudicial narratives on the Igbo hammered into shape by promoters of hate and purveyors of falsehood. Like many others who have mischievously tied Obi’s presidential aspiration to his Igboness rather than his personality, Segun outlined many reasons why he is scared stiff of a possible Obi presidency. None of them, strictly speaking, is about Peter Obi . All of them border on Igbo stigmatization and jaundiced perception by many a non-Igbo Nigerian.

Segun alleges that the Igbo have appropriated Peter Obi’s candidacy and have, by so doing, poisoned his aspiration. He accuses Obi’s supporters, who he imagined are predominantly of Igbo ethnic stock, of being abusive and indecent in their conduct. He goes further to say that Obi’s presidential quest will be hurt by Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB’s separatist agitation. Then he went back in time to rehash stories about the January 1966 coup and how the Igbo wanted to use the Aguiyi Ironsi regime to enthrone Igbo hegemony in Nigeria.

Segun also said he is worried about a possible Obi presidency because it will bring about another round of Igbo ascendancy as was the case under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. According to him, the Igbo were unduly favoured under the Jonathan presidency. That is not all. Segun said he is also apprehensive about the disposition of the Igbo who describe Lagos as “no man’s land”. He is worried that an Obi presidency will afford the Igbo the opportunity to seek to realize their expansionist ambitions in Lagos.

I must say that I am stupefied by this catalogue of negative ethnic profiling directed at the Igbo. It is much more disturbing when it is spewing forth from non-Igbo journalists and writers who are friends with some of us from the Igbo nation. Why do those we call our friends recklessly deride the Igbo without qualms? It is strange that they do not care a hoot about how their jaundiced opinions about the Igbo will affect the sensibilities of their friends and associates from the Igbo race. I can hardly come to terms with this disposition because I cannot possibly write, for instance, in condemnation of the entire Yoruba, without being mindful of how my friends and associates from that part of the country will feel. I will not do so because no people or group can be classified as good or bad through and through. It is always a mixed bag. For this reason, what is sensible to do is to take on individuals or groups and deal with them on the basis of their individual merits or lack of it rather than lump an entire race together and sentence them to the gallows. Should the Igbo go through this stigmatization because one of them wants to be the President of Nigeria? I do not think so. Those who are subjecting them to psychological warfare on account of this are being insensitive and inconsiderate.

Regrettably, this kind of mindset is driven by familiar prejudices. In Nigeria, a different standard of judgment is usually reserved for the Igbo by their traducers. That is why when an Igbo sets up a newspaper, Igbo critics will quickly dismiss it as Igbo newspaper. If an Igbo man is at the helm of affairs in a bank, the bank is written off as Igbo bank. This derisive tag holds true in most professions. It is usually easy and convenient to give the Igbo a bad name. For some, it is a sport; a pleasurable game of sorts.

This long-standing prejudice is what is being visited on the Peter Obi presidential project. Those who have an axe to grind with his quest are not facing him directly. They are not trying to tell us about his personal deficiencies that make him unsuitable for the office he is seeking. Rather, he must be written off for the simple fact that he is Igbo. They are simply saying that the Igbo have sinned and come short of the presidency and Peter, their son, has also sinned in like manner. In other words, Obi must suffer collateral damage for the sins of the Igbo, whatever they may be. This is silliness of the worst order. I do not expect this level of prejudice from those who ought to be above board.

Why must the Igbo be judged in this manner? Why are those criticizing Tinubu not dragging the Yoruba into the fray? Tinubu is being judged according to his own merit. In other words, Tinubu and his Yoruba ethnic nationality are different entities. Each can carry its own cross without infecting the other. But in the case of Obi, he is one and the same thing with his Igbo ethnic group. This selective characterization is very unconscionable.

In fact, it has become axiomatic to say that Nigeria has Igbo problem. That is why resentment for the Igbo has become a way of life in Nigeria. Anything or situation that appears favourable to the Igbo is maligned and given a bad name. We saw all of that in the run-up to the presidential primaries of the major political parties in the country. The Igbo had demanded then that the presidency be ceded to them in 2023 for reasons of equity, justice and fairness. But all manner of counter-narratives, most of them jejune and prejudicial, were advanced to shoot that down. Not even our brothers from the South West who were beneficiaries of that concession saw any sense in the Igbo demand. At the end of the day, the two major political parties, the APC and PDP, ignored the Igbo roundly and fielded candidates from outside Igboland. But antagonists of the Igbo are not done. They are taking another step further by transferring the aggression to the Peter Obi candidacy. It is all in the bid to undermine the Igbo. Rather than allow Obi to run the race freely as a free Nigerian, detractors are trying hard to reduce the national appeal he enjoys to an Igbo affair. If painting the Igbo black and tying Peter Obi to that stake is the campaign tool that his detractors have fashioned against him, someone needs to remind them that negative ethnic profiling is not a campaign strategy. Rather, it goes to show that those who have adopted this cheap blackmail have neither a superior argument nor a viable alternative.

The Tinubu supporters are really making a mistake by making the Igbo and Peter Obi the focus of their campaign. They should borrow a leaf from supporters of Atiku Abubakar who are concerned about issues of good governance, rather than dissipate energy on negative ethnic profiling and bigotry.

Obi, PhD, a former Imo State Commissioner for Information, former Chairman The Sun Editorial Board, is a Columnist with The Daily Sun