Yorubas Vs Igbos Vs Hausas (Unending Distractions That Have No Benefit To Nation Building)

DON EBUBEOGU

 

I read the posts by Harrison Okoro and Agunze Azuka Onwuka on the post election diatribes between Igbos and Yorubas and I realized that one of our biggest problems in nation building is ethnicity. It may be bigger than corruption if we scale the problems mitigating our socio-economic progress in Nigeria.

Politics is a subject I always try to avoid because of its tendency to be misunderstood, and its divisive inclination. Even in advanced economies where politics have been practiced thousands of years, you still observe suppressed misconceptions and naivety once in a while. Obama presidency exposed the division among Americans than the world imagined. Trump won the election and White Supremacists came out of the closets to embarrass America and the world.

Coming home, how do we defend the disruption of the election in Igbo dominated areas in Lagos without sounding biased? When has election became an affairs strictly for indigenes of a particular area? Do we have any iota of respect for the Nigerian constitution?

In some of the posts/articles I read in the last 24 hours, people actually wrote and believed that non indigenes are not allowed to live, trade and die freely and peacefully in South East. One went as far as saying a non indigene can never be allowed to own a property in South East.

I am not a historian but one aspect of NCNC party of Azikiwe that I cherish so much was the congregation of Nigerians under one party with equal rights and privileges until we drank the cup of madness that destroyed our ethnic blindness.

For instance, under NCNC Mallam Umaru Altine was the Vice Chairman of NCNC Youth Association at Enugu. The party nominated him and he contested and won the Mayor of Enugu Municipal Council.

For emphasis, Mallam Umaru Altine was a Fulani cattle dealer from Sokoto who was also elected in the first democratic election into the newly constituted Enugu Urban District Council held in 1953, where he later succeeded Walwin Ebreneyin, an Urhobo man as the chairman of the council (in Enugu State).

In 2019 general elections, we have the likes of Attah Ahmed and Dauda Adams Garba vying for the offices of State House of Assembly at Anambra and Ebonyi states respectively. Win or lose they will not make headlines because they have the rights like their Igbo counterparts to stand for election anywhere in Nigeria.

How do we keep mute and allow others to change the narratives about Igbos just because they are ignorant of what is happening in the South East, without being guilty of the “danger of a single story’, apologies to Chimamanda Adichie.

Even some Igbos may not know that the prestigious Onitsha Business School is owned by Dr. Olusegun Oludapo Sogbesan who came to Anambra State as a youth corper and fell in love with our beautiful sister from Umuoji. What of Raji Adewale who is not only living is his personal mansion at Trans Nkisi GRA Onitsha but was one of the Estate Agents that facilitated the allocation of plots to Igbos in the same estate many months back. These will not make national headlines because they are everyday norms across the entire South East.

At Abakaliki, Okigwe, Ugwu Oba, and many other places, you won’t fail to notice large settlements owned by Hausas who dominate the trade on goat, cow, onion, pepper and other agricultural products. Nobody challenges their ownership or water down their rights to own those lands.

Agreed, Lagos is owned by Yorubas 100%, but by the virtue of Nigerian constitution, that ownership cannot dilute the rights of Igbos to live freely like Yorubas.

Elections are won by courting electorates and not by threats. Babatunde Raji Fashola was massively voted by Igbos. He appointment Ben Akabueze and Joe Igbokwe into his cabinet and he also enjoyed a good relationship with the Igbo community. What has changed since he left?

There are so many things that unite than divide us, yet we have spent more energy escalating the divisions among us, to the detriment of nation-building.

At the end, we shall all live with the consequences of our actions, and Canada will no longer be an option.

End of story.

 

Don Ebubeogu is the President – Onitsha Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture and CEO, Tiger Foods and Beverages.