THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF NDIGBO IN NIGERIA - Statements from His Excellency Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu
Dear all,
Please find below excerpts of His Excellency Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu's presentation at Jubilee Room, House of Commons on April 18th, 2013 -
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“THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF NDIGBO IN NIGERIA’’:
Honourable Members of the British House of Commons:
There is a belief amongst us Ndigbo. It is believed that a person, who does not know from where the rain started to beat him or her, will also not know where the rain stopped to beat him or her.
Ask me for one of the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria, in fact, one of the largest three, and I’ll show you the Igbo ethnic nationality.
Ask me again for that group, which produced key Nigerian nationalists like Alvan Ikoku, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Michael Okpara, Akanu Ibiam, Mbonu Ojike, Denis Osadebay, Nwafor Orizu, and many others, and once again, I’ll show you the Igbo ethnic nationality.
Ask me for perhaps the most illustrious, the most widely spread and traveled ethnic group in Africa (not just in Nigeria this time), and I’ll have an answer for you: the Igbo. You find them everywhere, adding value to commerce, the academia, industry, the professions, sports, agriculture, indeed, they are in all walks of life.
And also, if you ask me for a people who are so development oriented that wherever they are,they make a definite mark by building up the place, I’ll show you once again the Igbo of eastern Nigeria. In fact, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, one time Federal Capital Territory Minister in Nigeria once remarked that 70 per cent of properties in Abuja, are owned by the Igbos.
But then, this sad one! Ask me for a people so repressed, so marginalized, so ill-treated and mistreated, a people who are killed not just in their hundreds, but in their thousands, both during war and peace time, and with tears in my eyes, with a broken heart, with trembling lips, head bowed in sorrow and regret, I’ll show you the Igbo, an ethnic group that has gone through terrible travails in Nigeria.
Ndigbo are shockingly and carelessly murdered in Nigeria, not even like animals in countries where animal rights are established, but like animals in the jungle by hunters. One was described by those in the Northern Nigeria as a retaliation of some Northern elites, who were believed to have been victims of a January15, 1966 coup. Then, a hatchet job was done against Ndigbo: Our people were killed in the North in droves and their mutilated bodies were ferried down our villages and towns amidst tears.
This coup was regarded by propagandists as being an indicator that Ndigbo wanted to "dominate" all spheres of life in Nigeria. But the fact was that the coupists never consulted any of the known prominent Igbo leaders. The North characterized it as “Igbo-inspired Coup.” Hence, they killed Ndigbo in the North, and have been killing till such a date.
When the Ndigbo mutilated bodies were ferried down our villages and towns from the north amidst tears, Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, then Governor General of the Eastern Nigeria, was among notable Igbo sons and daughters, who stood up and cried and called the entire world to come and see the pogrom that was committed against Ndigbo.
The Northerners wanted to break out of Nigeria.
For cheap political gains, those who killed our people moved falsehood as necessary inspiration for carrying their war against Ndigbo. They falsified that General JTU Aguiyi Ironsi’s military regime was nursing towards one-system form of government and if not stopped, would be harmful to the assorted composition of Nigeria. Ironsi was Igbo, and the first Military president of Nigeria, and was later killed by the same northerners, on a reconciliatory courtesy visit.
On that note,some of our unbiased scholars have been asking that if the claim of sending many Igbo sons and daughters to their early graves by the northerners, and that Ironsi’s regime was tending towards a unitary government, and was also against Nigeria’s corporate importance between January 15, 1966 and July 28, 1966, how come that after the July 29, 1966 revenge coup, unitary system of government has been made strong and has continued within Nigeria till the present-day.
What has changed after July 29, 1966? Nothing! Except that the same northerners held political power in Nigeria among themselves for a period of 35yrs, therefore making Ndigbo their “Prisoners of War” in the much touted “One Nigeria”. As regards to this,I can say that such behaviour makes the international community to classify people in our country as “Different Nigerians”, but “One Nigeria”.
Our intellectuals, poets, writers, journalists, etcetera, have continued to ask questions that, could it be that some sections of Nigeria were entitled to impose and operate a unitary form of government on other sections of Nigeria,while some other sections are not entitled to do the same. Our men and women of book and pen have continued to say that the Hausa-Fulani, while hiding the real intentions for the war, drafted in the Yoruba, in the dishonourable project; and the groups set about poisoning the minds of some Eastern Nigeria minority groups with propaganda of Igbo “oppression” and “domination” among them, which enticement, they ingested into the minority groups and also across the world,and do not want Ndigbo to survive in the political environment in Nigeria.
Due to the unfriendly acts that our people have suffered in the hands of our believed countrymen and countrywomen in the northern part of the country, the now out-of-use Eastern House of Parliament, known as Eastern Nigeria before 1967, saw the reason our people must be a sovereign state from Nigeria. The Parliament commanded Colonel Ojukwu (now of blessed memory) to declare Biafra in May 1967, when it was clearly perceived that Ndigbo were no longer safe in Nigeria, due to the killings and destruction of property that were targeted against them in the northern Nigeria. After the declaration, was when the Nigerian Government-led by a northerner, started a war of slow-destruction against Ndigbo-led Biafrathe same year, which came to a biased end in 1970. Those who initially wanted to pull out of Nigeria turned to label Ndigbo rebels before the world, which our people neither were nor are.
Forty two years after the (un)civil war against Biafrans was said to have come to an end, our people’s plights in Nigeria are yet to come to an absolute end. As part of its unholy political tool against Ndigbo, we have come to endure promises upon promises in the hands of the government at the centre in Nigeria. About two years ago, the Nigerian government gave assurance to repay veterans of the civil war, but this promise died after the newspapers and magazines that it was published were read.
Our Biafranex-war veterans have been pleading with the Federal Government to honour the assurance of the N1.5 billion it said was going to be given to them. These men and women of honour, who brought pride and honour to our people, and protected the lives of millions of our people, who would have become preys like millions of their kiths and kins crying in the undignified graves in the thick forests and paths that dot our towns and villages, battered by the munitions of the aggressive Nigerian troops, are still crying that their plea to the government has not been hearkened to since 14th May 2012 that the said money was noticeably promised them.
It was on July9, 2012 that some of our good spirited sons and daughters commissioned what is known today as Biafran War Veterans’ Home, in Okwe, Okigwe, Imo State, whereas Nigeria has a government but regrettably, the one that merely pays lip service to the situation of her people, but most especially, when such situation has to do with Ndigbo.
On-the-face-of-it all, the government from the time Crude Oil was discovered in striking quantity-ing one of our ancient towns of the Niger Delta in 1956, the Nigerian state has not hidden its character that shows it loves the Crude Oil derived from our villages and towns, which is the hub of the country’s economy, more than our people. How to do we prove this! I can only ask you to come to our villages and towns, and cry.
Who can believe that before our brave war-veterans were relocated to their new building that consists of just 20 flats for over 120 of them, Oji River was the home of the Biafran veterans along the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway. They lived at the location since July 11, 1975. They took there as an abode after they were forcefully chased out from GTC (now IMT Enugu), where they lived in a dormitory alongside with leprosy victims, by the government.
These our heroes are elders not less than 65 years of age and many of them were not married before the outbreak of the war, yet the northern apologists continue to say that the northern part of the country is impoverished. And I always ask myself:By whom? Take for instance: The oil wealth from our villages and towns has been used in developing Lagos, once known as the Capital of Nigeria. And today, the same oil wealth is being used in developing Abuja that was once a beehive of mountainous rocks, while our people continue to walk the streets in abject misery and poverty, borne out microscopic Federal Government presence in Igbo land.
While Ndigbo have forgiven those involved in the war (but have not forgotten about the war),who wanted to rinse-out our people from the surface of the earth, it is very hard to reconcile our people’s buildings and landed property that were seized by fellow countrymen and countrywomen in different parts of the country and were christened “Abandoned Property” instead of “Stolen Property”, of which the Nigerian Government has always behaved in the unconcerned manner, when its attention is drawn to the issue, to revoke these hard earned articles of our people to the rightful owners, from the hands of slanderers of our economy.
In such place that our people’s property were seized is the old Rivers State, which was created in 1967, at the peak of the Nigerian war of annihilation against Ndigbo, to further the Nigerian government’s efforts in making sure that the strength and spirit of our people were weakened. In the intensive continuation to reduce our people to nothing in the political sphere of Nigeria, the Nigerian Government, after the war in 1970, paid every Igbo man and woman 20 (Pounds sterling), no matter how many millions of money that the Igbo had in the bank, before the outbreak of the war. Before this, Ndigbo were fighting to live, while the Federal Government had announced a total naturalization of all the companies Ndigbo had so much interests in, especially on the Nigerian side.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) negotiation of fund was to fund the war in favour of Nigeria – his pay master and a percentage of this fund went to the National Bank. This bank was solely owned by the westerners. As a result of this, Yoruba people had direct access to loans for the purchase of the share interests taken away from Ndigbo till date. Amongst others, these were the rigorous adventures that were coordinated against Ndigbo by the Nigerian Government.
Then came Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, as military president of Nigeria in 1976. He took Ndigbo less than a beast, after the death of Murtala Mohammed. The representations of Ndigbo in the federal level were next to nothing. A lot of people said that it was the hatred culminating from the Yoruba-race since during the war, that made Obasanjo hand power over to Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979, even when Shagari, it was clear in many quarters, did not win the election with the two-third(2/3)majority, as stipulated in the Nigerian electoral rules. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe –Igbo – was supposedly robbed in that election.
Despite all these atrocious acts against Ndigbo and the speculations from different quarters that we must have learnt our lessons in Nigeria, we have not resolved our belief of a prosperous country. We have learnt not to relent in developing Nigeria and, beyond. We did not mind the #20 (Pound Sterling) that was given to each Igbo that had money in the bank after the war. The Nigerian apparatus against Ndigbo thought that they could kill the nature-given enterprising spirit in us. But they did not succeed, and will not. Ndigbo’s trading network today in West, Central Africa and indeed, the world over, has diversified. We have been strengthened rather than weakened. “Abandoned property” has also not deterred our people about the distribution of infrastructure in Nigeria.
Selective killing and marginalisation of Ndigbo in Nigeria:
Ndigbo have always had the courage to stand for other tribes in Nigeria; without mentioning names, we have voted into power persons from different tribes across the country.But these tribes we have helped by voting their men and women into power,habitually, keep on sabotaging us, so that we remain in an everlasting bondage in Nigeria. Because political powers are rested in their hands, instead they would use such powers to elevate the status of our people that have seen only the bad and the ugly in Nigeria, (no good) they rather re-defined democracy in Nigeria by the size of the Naira each tribe has, knowing that the money that our people had were money they earned through their individual labours, and not money accruing from the sales of Crude Oil that are not significantly accounted for.
Would it surprise us that in a fresh report released by the honourable men and women of the Federal House, the Northerners are controlling eighty-three percent of oil blocs in Nigeria, yet their propagandists’ mercenaries are clamouring that the poverty in the north is very wide than that in the south. By this example, we can see who is really holding each other on the ground and, at the same time,is crying for help.
Ndigbo are highly marginalised and killed in Nigeria, to further our haters continued efforts that we go on extinction from the surface of the earth. Our people are betrayed in Nigeria recklessly. The powers that feel they are do not want Ndigbo to inherit any political lineages as are being shared and enjoyed by other tribes, not minding the fact that we are one of the majority ethnic groups in Nigeria.
I have beenfighting against this evil gift to us decisively. I’ve always fought that themarginalization of Ndigbo is structural by the Nigerian Government, fortysomething years after the war. If not, how could a big tribe like ours be the only one in the country that has five states grade in the six geopoliticalzones across the country? Our experts in numerology have always said that sincethe last state creation exercise in Nigeria our people have suffered immeasurable loss predictably above N1.8 trillion, due to the imbalance in the Federal monthly allocations to states.
I am not talking about the erosion that is sacking most of our villages and towns that the government is merely treating with the kid’s glove. The insurgents in the northern part of the country who are at it again – killing our people in thousands and destroying our hard earned property and businesses and at the same telling our people to leave the region – is no longer news.
It baffles me that if there was an Islamic crisis in any foreign countries, the northerners target our people in the north, and inspect their cooperation with their foreign counterparts on our people, by killing us and destroying our property,of which we have not shown any reprisal attack. I am paused to ask: Is this not the same Nigeria that the north had always boasted that she fought for, to unite as One Nigeria? How come that the slogan in the north today by the insurgents is that our people should leave the north and relocate to our structural impoverished towns and villages, when it is obvious that we have erected monumental edifices in the north? Can this messenger’s warning be as are a result that the presidency has shifted from the north to another tribe? Your guess is as good as mine.
Today, the President is from South South, the Vice President from North West, Senate President North Central, Speaker House of Representatives from North West, and the highest-ranking person in the Order of Protocol from South East is the Deputy Senate President. Yet, we are among the three largest ethnic-nationalities in the country.
As if exclusion of the Igbo was a deliberate policy, let’s look at Nigeria’s 36 states structure. Most of the geo-political zones have at least 6 states, while the North East even has more. Only the South East has only 5 states, a classic case of inequity and marginalization, since you can have access to federal resource based only on the number of states you have. Strident calls for a redress of this injustice have gone unheeded for years.
What of the state of our roads? South East has the worst road network in the country. Lives are lost daily on the crater-filled roads, which our people are compelled to use daily, since they are very commercially oriented people.
The bridge that connects the South East to other parts of the country, called the Niger Bridge,has been in existence before the Civil War. Today, it is decrepit, and indeed an accident waiting to happen in terms of collapse. Government after government has paid mere lip service to it, and today, it has become an object of political manipulation. Yet, no second Niger Bridge, which is very crucial to the welfare of Igbos.
As an oil-producing country, refineries and petrochemical projects are sited in different parts of the country by government. Except in the East. Steel mills are also in other parts. Except the East. But we have large scale erosion and other forms of environmental degradation in plentiful proportions. Oh, why are we so blessed?
Self-reliance of Ndigbo in Nigeria:
Historically and politically supportive, I have always told the Nigerian Government that the injustice against Ndigbo in Nigeria cannot be said has come to an end, if there is no Igbo presidency in 2015. Not beyond! In our people’s resolve to make Nigeria a peaceful and habitable place, we have always been peaceful. Even when the northerners plucked the eyes of our beloved ones in our presence, we have remained unprovoked, but apostles of peace.
I have volunteered that the Federal Government should send me to broker peace between it and the insurrectionary in the north, but this selfless gesture is like water that dropped on the shell of melon. This voluntary move was coming when I saw that many names from the north that were assigned with this task by the dreadful sect, refused to pay heed. Maybe, they refused the peace-move out of fear or, because they wanted the slow-destruction of Ndigbo to keep-on in the north.
These words that I am presenting before us today is a summary of Ndigbo’s political and psychological sufferings in Nigeria, because there is no book in the world that can contain the blow that we have suffered in the amalgam of nations of 1914 that is today regarded as Nigeria and called same. In my perception, all the decrying by the Federal Government of the killings of Ndigbo in the north and other vices targeted against us, would only amount to mere lip service if by 2015, there is no Igbo presidency. The Nigerian state cannot carry-on calling on our people’s support in managing the security situation in the country, and at the same, does not want our people to be president of the country. Is this not an extension of the insecurity that Ndigbo are facing in Nigeria?
Enter Njiko Igbo
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, what then is the way forward for the Igbos of Nigeria?Must they remain hewers of wood and drawers of water in perpetuity? No. And it would take all men and women of goodwill to do something about it.
Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, in a paper entitled ‘Ndigbo: An integral part of the Nigerian project,’ says the aim of the Nigerian project “is to develop and sustain a nation in which all the constituent parts and citizens are able to pursue their self-fulfilment, and to enjoy as high a quality of life as possible; a nation that would be a source of pride to its citizens, to Africa and to peoples of African descent all over the world.” It is in this spirit that we have, therefore, decided to set up NjikoIgbo (Igbo Unity), which is a movement dedicated to changing the power formula in Nigeria in favour of the Igbo ethnic nationality. As Chief Anyaoku further said, “There are so many Igbo names in the pantheon of our country’spioneer educationists, professionals in medicine, law, engineering, journalism,and in private business.” So, why then can’t an Igbo be president?
So, what does Njiko Igbo seek to do? It is a platform for the galvanization of Igbo, at homeand in Diaspora, for the attainment of a Nigerian president of Igbo descent. It is non-partisan in that it embraces all Igbo, no matter their political affiliations. We want to mobilize Igbo all over the world to speak with one voice, and pursue the Igbo presidency project with all our might. If we fail to lead the way in the struggle to reposition our race, nobody else will do it for us. Our destiny lies in our hands.
Njiko Igbo has attracted membership in large numbers from Nigeria, and indeed, different parts of the world. The Igbo nationality is fully mobilized, and we will be fully represented in the 2015race for the presidency. We demand justice in Nigeria, we demand equality, we demand equity. And we shall get it, with the support of distinguished people like those in this hallowed chambers. Igbo presidency in Nigeria in 2015 is a possibility, and we will go for it.
Conclusion
Former President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural group, Chief Raph Uwechue says of the Igbo, in a paper entitled ‘Igbo are nation builders:’
“To the Nigerian project, the Igbo have given a great deal yesterday, are still doing so today, and have a lot more in store for a much greater tomorrow.”
Yes, the Igbos have a lot more in store for Nigeria. They have sown, they have tended the plant, it has matured. Now is harvest time.
Please join us in the great harvest. We will reap till our barns are full, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Please join us in the great harvest.
Permit me to use this opportunity to appeal to the British government through this honourable house to increase funding to Africa especially Nigeria as against the proposed legislation to reduce aid for health, education, infrastructure amongst others while committing more funds to war areas such as Mali with the provision of arms and ammunition. Nigeria needs increased funding to meet our development challenges, the biggest of which is achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This intervention will bridge the gap between the rich and poor countries, thereby making the world a place we will all like to live. It will also avail developing countries access to improved health services, increased infrastructure projects, food security, economic growth and development and in essence improved standard of living.
I thank you for listening.
