Re: If You Come from the South-East
By Emmanuel Ndukwe
Your piece in the back page column of August 20, 2004 raised several intelligent points that have hitherto been neglected by several commentators on the plight of the South East and the Igbo in this entity called Nigeria. Yes I come from the South East and what has been going on in Anambra State in recent times has been causing me great emotional pains. The Igbo do not deserve to be treated the way they are being treated presently in this country.
It is only the Igbo that can withstand all the injustices that have been meted to the South-east and still measure up to produce people like those enumerated in your piece, who can hold their heads high in any environment.
It is incontrovertible that there has been a conspiracy between successive rulers of this country to make South Easterners second class citizens. The unfortunate thing however is that the Igbos of the South East are not helping themselves. Several Igbo leaders are just a mere voluntary tools in the hands of our oppressors. The Northerners are still licking their wounds and biting their fingernails in regret for losing out their rigid hold on some key positions that were considered the birthright of the north, in the past, like the Defence Ministry, Customs and Immigration, Ministry of Transport, Power and steel, Diplomatic Postings to choice stations etc. But the northerners have right to regret such a loss and consider anybody who denied them such opportunity as an enemy because when they held such sensitive positions, they used them as much as possible to better the lot of their ordinary people. Early in the life of this present democracy, an Igbo man was appointed the Minister of Transport. The common taunting from other tribes then was that the Igbos had been given a "juicy" ministry and we should complain no more. But what did we hear from this man? One early morning the newspapers and electronic media were all awash with stories on the lamentations of this Honourable minister that his relations and others were no longer allowing him rest in his house and office.
That is those that were in search of contracts and other favours. He warned that he would start ordering arrest of people who came to disturb his peace. He said that he had no powers to award contracts and was not even a member of the then tenders board.
It is only people from the South-east that could so easily bring such ridicule and scorn on their people without any qualms. The Northerners, no matter how highly placed, will always welcome their brethren with courtesy regardless of the class, or looks of these favour seekers and whether they were coming from the remotest villages and had just managed to find their ways to Abuja for the first time. They will also interact with them in their vernaculars to give them sense of belonging.
This same honourable minister was later to describe the quest by his brethren for the highest office in the land as "idiotic" and all the media picked up from there and advertised this "idiotic" thing to high heavens. There is an organic hatred against the South East by successive leaders from other zones, ever since the end of the civil wars in the early 70's.
Nigerian rulers both military and civilians have deliberately held down and neglected infrastructural developments in the east. Good roads, electricity, portable water, good and modern educational facilities, which are taken for granted in other zones are not existent in the East, thereby making the wholeof the South-east zone inhabitable. That is the reason why south easterners have always swelled the population of the other zones by being the most travelled people in search of such good things of life and living. That is why our young men will readily drop out of schools and engage in trading all over the nooks and crannies of Nigeria and the globe.
When in their sheer dexterity and hard work, they finally succeed, they are scornfully looked at as ritualists. That is why the Nigerian press and others like your friend could find easy points of derogatory reference to the Igbos as people who do not deserve to be entrusted with leadership positions in Nigeria; else they turn Aso Rock into shrines over night. The most tragic aspect of these phenomena is that despite all the travails of the South Easterner in the hands of fellow compatriots, there are always people who make themselves ready tools in the hands of our oppressors.
This is why as soon as the news of the invasion of the Ogwugwu shrine broke out, another very highly placed South Easterner in no less a person than the President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, was reported to be relishing in self degradation somewhere in Osun State, wallowing in self pity, lamenting to all who cared to hear that the whole of the forests in Igbo land were being used for ritual murders instead of tourism, even without waiting for a full investigation by the Nigeria police and conviction of the culprits in the law courts if found to be ritual murderers.
Like you rightly pointed out in your piece, there is always a willing South Easterner, who is ready o bring his tribe to scorn and disrepute just in other to curry admiration from his masters in power and these kinds of people have been in copious supply during every regime in Nigeria either military or civilian.
Yet there are others who despite the odds, would always stand to be counted among their folks. Facts that are gradually being released point to the fact that the Okija Shrines have been in existence for centuries, the worshipers have been practicing their faith in public and not in consonance with cult practices and they have been patronized by mighty and low in the society not only from Igbo land, but from other parts of Nigeria. Their practices of depositing corpse of people who were killed by the deities in whatever ways in the open, constitutes environmental health hazards no doubt in modern days and that is not disputable. Some of the arrested priests have insisted that they never killed anybody on their own. Therefore until well organized forensic investigations are carried out on the corpses discovered at the shrines so as, to establish the actual cause of death of the victims, nobody has the right to brand the people of Okija and by extension the whole of Igbo people as ritualists and murderers.
Ndukwe writes from Lagos.
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