Who else could have demanded that especially on television where it is a well-known tradition to address people by their first names if not Doctor Abati? It is this penchant for egoism that has been at play since last Thursday’s outing on the programme regarding his infamous comment about Ndigbo not selling land to strangers, which has now raised a lot of dust.
Now, much as I agree that targeting Ndigbo with the short-end of the stick has remained a somewhat state policy under the All Progressives Congress (APC), beginning with President Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was and sustained on a higher scale by Bola Tinubu, his successor, I don’t think that he was playing anyone’s script.
I think he simply went into an overdrive as it is wont with him on many occasions. No doubt, the nature of the programme allows the anchors a lot of latitude to impute their opinions lavishly on given subject matters. But on many occasions, this has not only led to excessive licentiousness, but outright abuse. This was actually the case.
What was in issue? Ojy Okpe, the anchor of What’s Trending segment of the programme, had played a video where Godswill Akpabio, praised the entrepreneurial spirit, what he called the mercantile spirit of the Igbo that impels them to develop everywhere in Nigeria, including building their own residential houses and dwelling with host communities, something he says other ethnic groups lack.
“The Igbo are very proud people, the Igbo are very mercantile, the Igbo are the only ethnic group in Nigeria that when they enter Kano State, they build houses in Kano State for themselves. They don’t rent. When they enter Lagos, they own almost two or three local governments, they build houses and live there. There’s no place they go they don’t make impact. But other Nigerians will come to my place, rent houses and live without building a structure. But the Igbo are not like that.”
This was what Abati reacted to. And what did he say? First was to acknowledge the truism in Akpabio’s comment. He even stressed the popular local saying that anyone that ventures into a community where there is no Igbo should scram immediately because it meant danger. But the problem is in the flipside, which he took the liberty to adduce.
In doing so, he sought to take back with the left what he gave with the right hand, stating that in Lagos, for instance, it was rather the “liberalism” of the people than “conquering spirit” of Ndigbo that was at the base of their massive investment. Really? Pray! What is this liberal spirit supposed to look like when the lands were not given out free?
When did a symbiotic affair based on willing seller, willing buyer translate to one party doing the other a favour. For those who don’t know, it is with the proceeds of such lands Igbo people bought that families established businesses for themselves and children, sent their children abroad where they became high-rate professionals, with some of them becoming mega billionaires in foreign currencies.
This is not peculiar to Lagos. It is true of all the major cities in Nigeria. Families in major towns of Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, became very prominent because they sold land to outsiders to develop themselves. Onitsha became the hub of lawyers in the entire Igboland, because families sent their children abroad to study law. The evidence of that enterprises is everywhere.
Many interior Igbo families would like to be like Onitsha where land is hot cake or Aba, where families become entrenched as billionaires because they raised enough capital through land sales to engage in merchandises like textiles, stockfish, same as their counterparts in Lagos. Incidentally, it is the scallywags and urchins in such families that the public seem to focus on.
Besides, could an American in New York claim to be “accommodating” or being “liberal” to a fellow citizen from Texas who bought and built house in the city? Shouldn’t that be an anathema? Should those expression ever come from a public figure like Doctor Abati? Methinks no! That’s a dangerous mindset, the sought that has now become quite prevalent in recent years, especially of the APC-Lagos.
When Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu established the Apapa Wharf, was the thinking like this? Did he acquire land to set up and engage in other businesses that made him the richest man in Africa, because the Yoruba were liberal or because each of the people in the value chain saw opportunities? Did Aliko Dangote establish the Dangote Refinery Limited in Lagos, because the Epe people are the most liberal in Nigeria?
Now coming to the Igbo. Citing what he claimed was the experience of Thomas Owolabi Shobowale (TOS) Benson, late Yoruba politician and lawyer, who rose to the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who he quoted as claiming that his Igbo in-laws refused to sell land to him, Doctor Abati had stated how that summed up the “irony of Nigeria about the politics of the federation.”
Hear him: “The same Igbo who are so industrious that they are all over and do well in other parts of Nigeria, you go as a non-Igbo man to go and buy umunna land, you will be told that you don’t belong even as an in-law. That’s by the way of an aside, but these are the issues, in my view!”