Monday, March 10, 2014

The real task before the Igbo


CHUKS OLUIGBO

Sometimes I wonder whether the Igbo people truly understand the enormous developmental challenges facing Igboland as a whole. As a concerned Igbo son, I have in several articles harped on the need for the Igbo people who are scattered in all parts of Nigeria (and the world) to begin to think of how to develop their homeland so that our children at home will engage themselves meaningfully without necessarily having to migrate to Lagos or Abuja. Igbo contribution to the development of the various cities where they have settled is not in doubt. Ironically, Igboland remains a backwater.

Recently again, precisely on September 26, 2013, Babatunde Fashola, Lagos State governor, re-iterated this point during the 25th anniversary of Aka Ikenga in Lagos. While tendering “an unqualified and unreserved apology” to the Igbo people over his government’s relocation of some destitute said to be of Anambra origin from Lagos to their home state months earlier, Governor Fashola said: “Why should people feel compelled to emigrate from one place to the other? Is there one part of this country that is less endowed, whether in human or natural resource? Is that the problem? Is it the case that perhaps some parts are so endowed but not adequately managed? Those are the honest debates that we must have…. How can development be so difficult in the part of Nigeria that gave us Ike Nwachukwu, Chinua Achebe, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Odumegwu Ojukwu, Alex Ekwueme and so on, how can development be so difficult in that part of this country? I think those are the real issues.”

Unfortunately, not a few Igbo people who viewed the development as a great triumph for the Igbo nation went to town to brag about their victory. They perceived the governor’s action only as a conciliatory move aimed at boosting the chances of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and its candidate, Chris Ngige, in the November 16, 2013 governorship election in Anambra State. The said Ngige was one of the earliest people to come out, following the ‘deportation’, to defend the action of Lagos State government.

And so, rather than address the real issues, rather than seek answers to the governor’s questions on how to develop the South-East to stem the tide of these migratory movements from the region into not only Lagos but other parts of the country as well, even the deadly North-East zone, these over-bloated Igbo egos concentrated on the governor’s apology, fanning themselves and boasting of how they would have dealt with the APC at the polls if Fashola hadn’t apologised. Obviously, they didn’t get the underlying message in the governor’s apology.

It was, however, cheering to read, few days later, that Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, themed the 2013 World Igbo Day celebration ‘Uplift Igboland, Think Home, Ndigbo’. World Igbo Day is marked on September 29 every year. Speaking at last year’s event which held at Michael Okpara Square, Enugu, Gary Enwo-Igariwey, the president general of Ohanaeze, again recapped this rather over-flogged issue of developing the home front.

“Ndigbo are endowed with enormous human and natural resources and can on their own recreate Abuja or Lagos in Igboland. We have as a people achieved tremendous feats in all we have set our minds on. As individuals, we have made great strides in all fields of endeavour. Our recovery from a three-year civil war is legendary. Many nations of the world who went through our experience still bear the marks of defeat and war. What we have lacked is collective action,” Enwo-Igariwey was quoted as saying.

“We can recreate these achievements and direct them towards uplifting Igboland. As a people, we have burst the rims of the space, Nigeria, and poured out to all corners of the world. In all of these places, we have left marks of success in all fields. In this country, we have taken all corners as home and have made our contributions, building homes and businesses. The marvels of Abuja and Lagos amongst other places bear marks of our contributions. And now the question: what have we done about Igboland? Have we given thought to how we can build industries and other businesses to create employment for our teeming youth in Igboland? Have we wondered why our young and not-too-young are streaming out of Igboland in search of greener pastures to other lands? Why have we chosen to invest so intensely in other lands to our detriment?”

The above words gave me hope. And then I read Ochereome Nnanna’s article, “Behind Fashola’s ‘unreserved apology’ to Ndigbo”. Although he tried to explain away the Igbo migrations, Nnanna literarily hit the bull’s eye when he described as sound Fashola’s point about people needing to develop their home states in order not to run away to other lands.

“Part of the Igbo agenda should be to develop Igboland so well that other Nigerians, Africans and foreigners should want to also come there with their investments. They would come if the opportunities are there. Nigerians feel cheated that Igbo come to their door mouths in large numbers and they cannot find enough of their own people in Igboland. Whatever is keeping them away should be addressed. Why would they even come when the owners of the land are leaving in such droves?” Nnanna wrote.

“Uncontrolled migration will destroy the Igbo nation. It will extinct the language, custom and values of the people. It will attenuate its majority status and bastardise its population which is rapidly being absorbed by their various host communities. It will continue to increase the insults the Igbo people suffer from their oft-aggrieved hosts and expose them to hostility and xenophobia. The Yorubas and Hausa-Fulanis also migrate and settle outside their native lands, but they do not suffer the level of hostility aimed at the Igbos because back home, there are enough indigenes and non-indigenes living profitably. Only a person who loves you can tell you the home truth,” he further submitted.

The point in all of this? For me, we may never stop living in or migrating to Lagos or Abuja or other parts of Nigeria, but let’s build Igboland to such a level that migrating to these locations will be one of the options, not the only way out. This point has been made for the umpteenth time, but as the saying goes, until we reach our destination, we have to keep going.

This article was first published in BusinessDay on October 17, 2013. The version published here has been slightly modified.

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