The Igbos, The Yoruba and History
By
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
sanusis@ubaplc.com
WWW.GAMJI.COM
Every moment in life is a moment of history. Every
present action immediately becomes past and roles
played today will be remembered tomorrow with
pride or shame, satisfaction or regret. Yet some
moments are clearly more momentous than others,
and represent far greater opportunities and
dangers. These are often moments of crisis, a word
which in its Japanese form is written with two
characters, the one representing danger, the other
opportunity.
The deaths of ‘Yar Adua, Abacha and Abiola plunged
Nigeria into a crisis. That is, a period portending
great danger for the corporate body called Nigeria
as well as near limitless opportunities for progress,
for a departure from the tension, the stagnation, the
corruption and the injustices associated with the
dark period known as the Abacha days. For the
leaders of Southern Nigeria and, in particular, the
two dominant tribes, the Igbo and Yoruba, it
represented an opportunity once more to make a
move for the presidency, and shift power (whatever
that means) away from the North which has come
to be portrayed as the source of all the problems of
the nation. The desire to win over power is the
natural goal of political activists. The use of
propaganda, blackmail, lies, bribery, deception, even
threats of secession has been the hallmark of many
an astute political strategy aimed at attaining set
goals. Yet the choice of which method is
appropriate to a specific polity in a specific
historical context is a difficult one, requiring a high
sense of perception, a knowledge of history, a
natural intelligence and political sophistication. In
choosing the path of black-mail and ethnocentric
diatribe, the leaders of the South have once more
displayed to the world their political naivete, and set
the stage for another defeat that may see them
remaining in opposition for the next four years.
One marvels at the never-ending cycle which sees
Southern Politicians play into the hands of their
northern counterparts. For a people who take pride
in the depth of their Western Education and who
have often expressed contempt for the
“backwardness” and “illiteracy” of their northern
brothers, southern politicians have presented to the
world the ever-present proof that “book –
knowledge” and intelligence are not necessarily
correlated. One recalls Chief Awolowo’s description
of Shagari as a “glorified Grade Two Teacher”. It
was missing on Awolowo’ that the more
contemptible the adjectives he used to describe
Shagari, the lower he sank in the eyes of perceptive
watchers, as the man he was describing had clearly
shown that he was better by defeating him in a race
both participated in from start to finish.
Western Liberal Democracy is a product of the
nation-state. It takes as given, the corporate
existence of the state and establishes institutions
and the rule of law such as to ensure that the
system, rather than an individual, is relied upon for
safeguarding individual rights and societal values.
To the extent that Nigerians have decided to pursue
the path of the Western Nations (or at least those in
power have decided that this is the way to go)
participants would do well to bear this fact in mind.
A democratic system is primarily about Institutions
and the rule of law. It is not about individuals. We
need a system, based on laws and a constitution
agreed upon by all, that guarantees each and every
Nigerian wherever he is from the right to full political
participation and unfettered expression. A system
that protects each and every one of us from the
tyranny of an individual. A system in which our
dignity and liberty are not protected only when the
president comes from our own part of the country.
Abacha was a corrupt, ruthless dictator – period.
Where he was from is immaterial. All Nigerians,
Northerners and Southerners, Muslim and
Christians, suffered from the corruption and
injustices of his regime with the exception of a small
band of family members, sycophants and traitors
who joined him in looting the coffers of our nation.
Those who stood against his tyranny and spoke out
for freedom and equity suffered: among them
Obasanjo, Yar Adua, Abiola, Rimi, Ige, Lamido,
Nwakwo and Ken Sarowiwa. A cursory look at the
list of those detained, framed, murdered, lied
against, pauperized and otherwise abused in the
last five years will prove to honest persons that
Abacha was no respecter of region or religion and
that he represented the least form of humanity
degenerating dangerously close to bestiality, which
is why, like Pharaoh, he is remembered today for
his evil rather than his good, for no good of his can
obviate the memory, etched in the individual and
collective consciousness of Nigerians, of what it is
like to live in an environment of terror, not knowing
who next will be struck with impunity.
In pretending that these are not the issues, in
teaching their followers to oppose Abacha not for
his corruption, greed and cruelty but for his ethnic
origins, in portraying the annulment of the June,
1993 election as an act against the Yoruba, in
pretending that Abiola’s death in prison was in
some way different from ‘Yar Adua’s death in
prison, in claiming that the solution to this country’s
predicament lies in changing the ethnicity of the
president and producing a “Southern” President: in
all this, the political leaders of the South have
displayed the highest degree of naivete, the lowest
sense of responsibility and the crudest application
of their intellectual faculties. Worse than all this,
they have played straight into the hands of their
political rivals, the Northern Politicians.
The history of Nigeria since independence is too
recent, too many real-life participants are still alive,
for it to be rewritten with impunity as a political
strategy. It was only in the 1960’s that the Nigerian
Army’s officer corps was predominated by officers
of Igbo extraction. It was only in 1966 that a group
of such officers decided to destroy the peace of this
nation and wage a war against other tribal groups.
That was when the five majors decided to eliminate
the Premiers of the North and West while letting the
Igbo Premier go scot-free, to assassinate the Prime
Minister who was a northerner after having advised
the Igbo president to flee and letting the Igbo
Senate leader go scot-free. To execute the Minister
of Finance who was from the Mid-West; to execute
the most senior military officers from the North and
the West while letting the most senior military
officer and army commander who was Igbo go
scot-free. Not one prominent Igbo leader, military or
civilian was touched . All the prominent civilian and
military leaders from other regions were executed.
The Igbo senate leader, acting for the Igbo president
in his absence was, by the constitution, mandated to
swear - in the most senior NPC minister as Prime
minister. He did not. Instead, having consulted his
Igbo President, and the president alone, he handed
over power to the Igbo GOC in flagrant disregard for
the provisions of the constitution. The speech of
Nzeogwu, the magazines and newspapers
published in the six months of the Ironsi
government, his declaration of a unitary state, the
provocation of northerners by Igbo traders who
laughed at them in Sabon Gari markets, all of these
are too recent, too well-documented to be rewritten.
The Igbo people were responsible for the first
military coup in this country; They were responsible
for the first attempt at ethnic cleansing; They were
responsible for the first violation of constitutionally
laid down succession procedures; they were
responsible for the destruction of the federation and
the creation of the unitary system of which they are
now victims (since the initial objective was for the
Igbos to dominate the other groups); they were
responsible for Nigeria’s first civil war.
It makes no sense, in the face of these facts, repeat
facts, for the Igbos to shed tears today and claim to
have always been an aggrieved party. It will
convince no one. Granted, the Igbo people as a
whole must not be punished for the action of some.
Granted, there can never be full reconciliation
without justice and equity. Granted, the Igbo people,
like all Nigerians, have the right to fight against
perceived injustices. The way to do this is by
integration into the country, by joining broad-based
parties and establishing a system that guarantees
all individuals and groups their rights and liberty. It
is not by crying Biafra again. It not by following the
man who led them to defeat and ran away to come
back later and enjoy his wealth. The Igbos have
always had alliances with other parts of the
country. The astute political strategy is to go into
one now. Tribalism will lead to defeat, once more,
and even more humiliation.
As for the Yoruba, they have not been known to call
for secession or the break-up of the country until
recently in the aftermath of the June 12 crisis and
Abiola’s death. One may not agree entirely with their
description of themselves as peaceful people, but
they clearly are a peace –preferring people,
consistent with their well-known nature of seeking
maximum enjoyment from life at minimal personal
cost. The Yoruba instinctively know that more can
be gained in peacetime than in war. Being business
people, they have an acute sense of the risks of war
and its implication in terms of destruction of
accumulated wealth and property.
Yet in spite of this, the Yoruba have in their politics
displayed two consistent streaks that have
consistently kept them in opposition and cost them
opportunities for coming to power. The first is vanity
– a dangerous state of self-delusion borne of
imagined intellectual and academic superiority over
opponents and rivals alike. Thus, Yoruba politicians
have consistently underestimated their northern
opponents who thrive on wily intrigues and far-
sighted manipulation of the political process. They
have also assumed to their peril that other southern
tribes would naturally acquiesce to their leadership
and be lured into a southern alliance whose
objective is to help secure supremacy and power
for the south – west. Even the so-called Oduduwa
republic assumes that the people of the former mid-
west who had fought for an independent region in
the sixties will willingly resubmit themselves to
Yoruba domination. This is all in addition to the
recent utterances of Afenifere calling for excision of
the Yoruba of the north from Fulani domination, a
call dismissed by a prominent northern Yoruba
leader, Sunday Awoniyi, for its banality and
presumptuousness.
The second streak is self-centredness. Of all the
tribes in Nigeria who sometimes fight for parochial
reasons, the Yoruba are the only group who clearly
believe they are Nigeria. When they have what they
want, Nigeria is good. Otherwise it is bad. When a
Yoruba candidate loses an election (like Awolowo
did in 1979 and 1983) it is rigging. When he wins
(like Abiola in 1993) it is a landslide victory in a
free-and-fair election. When Buhari overthrew a
democratically elected and sworn-in government
headed by Shagari, he was hailed as a reformer
who came to fight corruption. When his tribunals
jailed ‘progressive’ Yoruba governors for theft he
became unpopular. When Babangida dissolved the
election of Adamu Chiroma and Shehu ‘Yar Adua as
flag-bearers of NRC and SDP the decision was
hailed as patriotic and courageous even though it
led to an extension of military dictatorship. When the
same man annulled Abiola’s election it was a
travesty of democracy. The list is too long to go
through.
As a result of these two characteristics, the Yoruba
have tended to be received by all other groups in
Nigeria with one sentiment: mistrust. The Igbo
people believe to this day that the Yoruba led them
into the war pretending to be with them and dumped
them at the last moment. During the Second
Republic, a grand alliance of four opposition parties
capable of winning power from the NPN achieved
nothing when it became clear that for the Yoruba
the issue was not one of supplanting a conservative
government and installing a progressive one, but of
securing the presidency for a Yoruba candidate –
Chief Awolowo.
NADECO, whose members had been strident
opponents of Abiola branding him Babangida’s boy,
suddenly look up June 12 and tribalised the cause.
Subsequent to Abiola’s death, the memorandum
NADECO submitted to the Government of
Abdulsalam Abubakar was such a comical exercise
in vain hallucination and naïve optimism that one
wonders if those that drafted it were in complete
possession of their mental faculties.
The Yoruba have become Nigeria’s wailing tribe,
detaching themselves from the rest of the country
and alienating the people they hope to rule; abusing
other Nigerians through their vociferous media and
hoping for votes from the same Nigerians on ballot
day.
The lesson in all this is that the Igbo, Yoruba and all
Nigerians must learn by now that no one can win a
national election on a tribal platform. Those
clamoring to join Ojukwu’s Igbo party, and those
attempting to transform Afenifere/NADECO into a
tribal party are heading for a resounding defeat at
the polls.
The presidency can, and perhaps should, move to
the south. But it will be to a southerner who
contests on the platform of Nigeria, not of his tribe.
A southerner committed to the system, to the rule of
law and to the principles of peace, justice, equity
and freedom, not of avenging real or imagined
wrongs; a Southerner like Chief Abiola who stands
the chance of winning.
This is an opportunity to make (or unmake) history.
But, sadly, it is being thrown away once more in
what may be the commencement of a new cycle of
defeat, frustration and wailing.
By
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
sanusis@ubaplc.com
WWW.GAMJI.COM
Every moment in life is a moment of history. Every
present action immediately becomes past and roles
played today will be remembered tomorrow with
pride or shame, satisfaction or regret. Yet some
moments are clearly more momentous than others,
and represent far greater opportunities and
dangers. These are often moments of crisis, a word
which in its Japanese form is written with two
characters, the one representing danger, the other
opportunity.
The deaths of ‘Yar Adua, Abacha and Abiola plunged
Nigeria into a crisis. That is, a period portending
great danger for the corporate body called Nigeria
as well as near limitless opportunities for progress,
for a departure from the tension, the stagnation, the
corruption and the injustices associated with the
dark period known as the Abacha days. For the
leaders of Southern Nigeria and, in particular, the
two dominant tribes, the Igbo and Yoruba, it
represented an opportunity once more to make a
move for the presidency, and shift power (whatever
that means) away from the North which has come
to be portrayed as the source of all the problems of
the nation. The desire to win over power is the
natural goal of political activists. The use of
propaganda, blackmail, lies, bribery, deception, even
threats of secession has been the hallmark of many
an astute political strategy aimed at attaining set
goals. Yet the choice of which method is
appropriate to a specific polity in a specific
historical context is a difficult one, requiring a high
sense of perception, a knowledge of history, a
natural intelligence and political sophistication. In
choosing the path of black-mail and ethnocentric
diatribe, the leaders of the South have once more
displayed to the world their political naivete, and set
the stage for another defeat that may see them
remaining in opposition for the next four years.
One marvels at the never-ending cycle which sees
Southern Politicians play into the hands of their
northern counterparts. For a people who take pride
in the depth of their Western Education and who
have often expressed contempt for the
“backwardness” and “illiteracy” of their northern
brothers, southern politicians have presented to the
world the ever-present proof that “book –
knowledge” and intelligence are not necessarily
correlated. One recalls Chief Awolowo’s description
of Shagari as a “glorified Grade Two Teacher”. It
was missing on Awolowo’ that the more
contemptible the adjectives he used to describe
Shagari, the lower he sank in the eyes of perceptive
watchers, as the man he was describing had clearly
shown that he was better by defeating him in a race
both participated in from start to finish.
Western Liberal Democracy is a product of the
nation-state. It takes as given, the corporate
existence of the state and establishes institutions
and the rule of law such as to ensure that the
system, rather than an individual, is relied upon for
safeguarding individual rights and societal values.
To the extent that Nigerians have decided to pursue
the path of the Western Nations (or at least those in
power have decided that this is the way to go)
participants would do well to bear this fact in mind.
A democratic system is primarily about Institutions
and the rule of law. It is not about individuals. We
need a system, based on laws and a constitution
agreed upon by all, that guarantees each and every
Nigerian wherever he is from the right to full political
participation and unfettered expression. A system
that protects each and every one of us from the
tyranny of an individual. A system in which our
dignity and liberty are not protected only when the
president comes from our own part of the country.
Abacha was a corrupt, ruthless dictator – period.
Where he was from is immaterial. All Nigerians,
Northerners and Southerners, Muslim and
Christians, suffered from the corruption and
injustices of his regime with the exception of a small
band of family members, sycophants and traitors
who joined him in looting the coffers of our nation.
Those who stood against his tyranny and spoke out
for freedom and equity suffered: among them
Obasanjo, Yar Adua, Abiola, Rimi, Ige, Lamido,
Nwakwo and Ken Sarowiwa. A cursory look at the
list of those detained, framed, murdered, lied
against, pauperized and otherwise abused in the
last five years will prove to honest persons that
Abacha was no respecter of region or religion and
that he represented the least form of humanity
degenerating dangerously close to bestiality, which
is why, like Pharaoh, he is remembered today for
his evil rather than his good, for no good of his can
obviate the memory, etched in the individual and
collective consciousness of Nigerians, of what it is
like to live in an environment of terror, not knowing
who next will be struck with impunity.
In pretending that these are not the issues, in
teaching their followers to oppose Abacha not for
his corruption, greed and cruelty but for his ethnic
origins, in portraying the annulment of the June,
1993 election as an act against the Yoruba, in
pretending that Abiola’s death in prison was in
some way different from ‘Yar Adua’s death in
prison, in claiming that the solution to this country’s
predicament lies in changing the ethnicity of the
president and producing a “Southern” President: in
all this, the political leaders of the South have
displayed the highest degree of naivete, the lowest
sense of responsibility and the crudest application
of their intellectual faculties. Worse than all this,
they have played straight into the hands of their
political rivals, the Northern Politicians.
The history of Nigeria since independence is too
recent, too many real-life participants are still alive,
for it to be rewritten with impunity as a political
strategy. It was only in the 1960’s that the Nigerian
Army’s officer corps was predominated by officers
of Igbo extraction. It was only in 1966 that a group
of such officers decided to destroy the peace of this
nation and wage a war against other tribal groups.
That was when the five majors decided to eliminate
the Premiers of the North and West while letting the
Igbo Premier go scot-free, to assassinate the Prime
Minister who was a northerner after having advised
the Igbo president to flee and letting the Igbo
Senate leader go scot-free. To execute the Minister
of Finance who was from the Mid-West; to execute
the most senior military officers from the North and
the West while letting the most senior military
officer and army commander who was Igbo go
scot-free. Not one prominent Igbo leader, military or
civilian was touched . All the prominent civilian and
military leaders from other regions were executed.
The Igbo senate leader, acting for the Igbo president
in his absence was, by the constitution, mandated to
swear - in the most senior NPC minister as Prime
minister. He did not. Instead, having consulted his
Igbo President, and the president alone, he handed
over power to the Igbo GOC in flagrant disregard for
the provisions of the constitution. The speech of
Nzeogwu, the magazines and newspapers
published in the six months of the Ironsi
government, his declaration of a unitary state, the
provocation of northerners by Igbo traders who
laughed at them in Sabon Gari markets, all of these
are too recent, too well-documented to be rewritten.
The Igbo people were responsible for the first
military coup in this country; They were responsible
for the first attempt at ethnic cleansing; They were
responsible for the first violation of constitutionally
laid down succession procedures; they were
responsible for the destruction of the federation and
the creation of the unitary system of which they are
now victims (since the initial objective was for the
Igbos to dominate the other groups); they were
responsible for Nigeria’s first civil war.
It makes no sense, in the face of these facts, repeat
facts, for the Igbos to shed tears today and claim to
have always been an aggrieved party. It will
convince no one. Granted, the Igbo people as a
whole must not be punished for the action of some.
Granted, there can never be full reconciliation
without justice and equity. Granted, the Igbo people,
like all Nigerians, have the right to fight against
perceived injustices. The way to do this is by
integration into the country, by joining broad-based
parties and establishing a system that guarantees
all individuals and groups their rights and liberty. It
is not by crying Biafra again. It not by following the
man who led them to defeat and ran away to come
back later and enjoy his wealth. The Igbos have
always had alliances with other parts of the
country. The astute political strategy is to go into
one now. Tribalism will lead to defeat, once more,
and even more humiliation.
As for the Yoruba, they have not been known to call
for secession or the break-up of the country until
recently in the aftermath of the June 12 crisis and
Abiola’s death. One may not agree entirely with their
description of themselves as peaceful people, but
they clearly are a peace –preferring people,
consistent with their well-known nature of seeking
maximum enjoyment from life at minimal personal
cost. The Yoruba instinctively know that more can
be gained in peacetime than in war. Being business
people, they have an acute sense of the risks of war
and its implication in terms of destruction of
accumulated wealth and property.
Yet in spite of this, the Yoruba have in their politics
displayed two consistent streaks that have
consistently kept them in opposition and cost them
opportunities for coming to power. The first is vanity
– a dangerous state of self-delusion borne of
imagined intellectual and academic superiority over
opponents and rivals alike. Thus, Yoruba politicians
have consistently underestimated their northern
opponents who thrive on wily intrigues and far-
sighted manipulation of the political process. They
have also assumed to their peril that other southern
tribes would naturally acquiesce to their leadership
and be lured into a southern alliance whose
objective is to help secure supremacy and power
for the south – west. Even the so-called Oduduwa
republic assumes that the people of the former mid-
west who had fought for an independent region in
the sixties will willingly resubmit themselves to
Yoruba domination. This is all in addition to the
recent utterances of Afenifere calling for excision of
the Yoruba of the north from Fulani domination, a
call dismissed by a prominent northern Yoruba
leader, Sunday Awoniyi, for its banality and
presumptuousness.
The second streak is self-centredness. Of all the
tribes in Nigeria who sometimes fight for parochial
reasons, the Yoruba are the only group who clearly
believe they are Nigeria. When they have what they
want, Nigeria is good. Otherwise it is bad. When a
Yoruba candidate loses an election (like Awolowo
did in 1979 and 1983) it is rigging. When he wins
(like Abiola in 1993) it is a landslide victory in a
free-and-fair election. When Buhari overthrew a
democratically elected and sworn-in government
headed by Shagari, he was hailed as a reformer
who came to fight corruption. When his tribunals
jailed ‘progressive’ Yoruba governors for theft he
became unpopular. When Babangida dissolved the
election of Adamu Chiroma and Shehu ‘Yar Adua as
flag-bearers of NRC and SDP the decision was
hailed as patriotic and courageous even though it
led to an extension of military dictatorship. When the
same man annulled Abiola’s election it was a
travesty of democracy. The list is too long to go
through.
As a result of these two characteristics, the Yoruba
have tended to be received by all other groups in
Nigeria with one sentiment: mistrust. The Igbo
people believe to this day that the Yoruba led them
into the war pretending to be with them and dumped
them at the last moment. During the Second
Republic, a grand alliance of four opposition parties
capable of winning power from the NPN achieved
nothing when it became clear that for the Yoruba
the issue was not one of supplanting a conservative
government and installing a progressive one, but of
securing the presidency for a Yoruba candidate –
Chief Awolowo.
NADECO, whose members had been strident
opponents of Abiola branding him Babangida’s boy,
suddenly look up June 12 and tribalised the cause.
Subsequent to Abiola’s death, the memorandum
NADECO submitted to the Government of
Abdulsalam Abubakar was such a comical exercise
in vain hallucination and naïve optimism that one
wonders if those that drafted it were in complete
possession of their mental faculties.
The Yoruba have become Nigeria’s wailing tribe,
detaching themselves from the rest of the country
and alienating the people they hope to rule; abusing
other Nigerians through their vociferous media and
hoping for votes from the same Nigerians on ballot
day.
The lesson in all this is that the Igbo, Yoruba and all
Nigerians must learn by now that no one can win a
national election on a tribal platform. Those
clamoring to join Ojukwu’s Igbo party, and those
attempting to transform Afenifere/NADECO into a
tribal party are heading for a resounding defeat at
the polls.
The presidency can, and perhaps should, move to
the south. But it will be to a southerner who
contests on the platform of Nigeria, not of his tribe.
A southerner committed to the system, to the rule of
law and to the principles of peace, justice, equity
and freedom, not of avenging real or imagined
wrongs; a Southerner like Chief Abiola who stands
the chance of winning.
This is an opportunity to make (or unmake) history.
But, sadly, it is being thrown away once more in
what may be the commencement of a new cycle of
defeat, frustration and wailing.
Comments