Igbo And Yoruba Collaboration Can Change Nigeria, If They Bury The Hatchet For Once By Dr. Wumi Akintide
When two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. The grass
in the metaphor is Nigeria and generations of Nigerians yet unborn. The
Nigerian nation under the Hausa/Fulani and their Igbo coalition has
always been one step forward and two steps backwards. The Igbos and the
Yorubas working together may well have been the key to the nation’s
steady progress, but the two tribes are ever so distrustful of each
other. Nigeria at 54 is a nation kept alive on life support and
compromise, which thrives on mediocrity rather than merit. The best
candidate has never won a electios in Nigeria. We always vote for the
worst candidate and because we are insane, we expect that weak choice to
work miracles. We keep repeating the same mistake but expecting a
different result.
This article comes in two parts because I have been working on it for quite some time and there is so much to talk about.
If you are a frequent visitor to the African Forum website pioneered and moderated by a Nigerian and a Yoruba man named Martin Akindana, you will clearly see why the endless rivalry between the Igbos and the Yorubas has now become a concern for some of us. I give credit to Mr. Akindana for creating that forum and effectively using it as a platform for Nigerians to freely express their views without the need to always put names to what they write. However, hat anonymity has afforded many Nigerians the freedom or the opportunity to criticize and abuse others using fictitious names and appellations.
Mr. Akindana, the President and CEO of Chat Afrik and African World Forum, lives in Maryland. He has been a leader in internet journalism just like Chuck Odili, the President and CEO of the Nigeria World website and Omoyele Sowore, the President and CEO of Sahara Reporters and Sahara Television based in New York.
Two out of these three distinguished Nigerians are Yoruba men and the great majority of their writers and columnists are either Yoruba or Igbo. The Yorubas and Igbos quite often collaborate in America to do great things. Their brothers and sisters back home have so far failed do what they are doing abroad with great success.
Omoyele and Rudolf Okonkwo are two Nigerians who have worked together to make SaharaReporters the envy of social media and internet journalism in the greatest city in the world, to borrow a cliché from Dr. Damages of Sahara Television. I can testify to that as a volunteer in their organization.
You hardly find any Hausa/Fulani Nigerian in the Diaspora blazing that kind of trail for other Nigerians to follow. In my opinion, any Hausa/Fulani man with that kind of drive and motivation would have returned home to be made a federal minister or a state commissioner or an adviser to the president or state governor, because northerners, as a rule, don’t have to work hard to make it in Nigeria. Some of them claim they are born to rule, because they know the Igbos would forever side with them to rule Nigeria knowing the Yorubas and the Igbos don’t get along and probably never will.
If Omoyele Sowore or Rudolf Okonkwo or Chuck Odili or Martin Akindana were to be Hausa/Fulani, they would have been appointed the MD and CEO of Daily Times or NTA or Minister of Information in a heartbeat. SaharaReporters has become a leading source of breaking news on Nigeria while two of its ace reporters, Rudolf Okonkwo, otherwise known as Dr. Damages, and Adeola Fayeun of “Keeping it Real” have become very popular on YouTube because they are very good in what they do. Omoyele is doing something news-worthy in America, producing new generations of television reporters, camera men, production managers, moderators, and top-notch comedians and anchormen, not just for Nigeria but for many countries in Africa.
I am doing this article because I now know for a fact that the never ending feud and distrust between the Igbos and the Yorubas has become a major obstacle to Nigeria’s progress. If the two tribes had maintained the collaboration passed on to them by Herbert Macauley as the first leader of the Nigerian Youth Movement, Nigeria would have made so much progress by now. Herbert Macauley on his death bed had named Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo man, as his successor. He could have picked a Yoruba man to succeed him but he wisely chose Azikiwe. Dr. Azikiwe, a very powerful journalist at the time and one of the leading pan-Africanists of his era was a very good choice.
The Nigerian Youth Movement was out to champion the cause of the people and to fight British Imperialism. Dr. Azikiwe did very well, to begin with, but he made his first mistake when he turned the movement to a political party he subsequently named as NCNC (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons). It did not take long before former members of the Youth Movement, who found themselves in the NCNC began to feel they have been marginalized as most of the important positions in the party were taken over by the Ibos. The party became an Igbo party. Awolowo, a staunch member of the movement, read the hand writing on the wall. He quickly moved on to form the “Egbe Omo Oduduwa” in London which later metamorphosed into the Action Group, with Ooni Risa Adesoji Aderemi as its first grand patron.
The NCNC under Azikiwe began to view Awolowo and the Action Group as competitors and rivals from that point on. Sardauna Bello around the same time had created his own party which he called “Northern People Congress” meaning that only northerners were welcome to the party. Sardauna Bello was not as politically-savvy as Azikiwe and Awolowo, who were more educated and knew right away that a parliamentary system like the one Nigeria has embraced could hardly thrive with a tribal party like the NPC. Those who called the Action Group the first tribal party in Nigeria were being disingenuous. The first tribal party in Nigeria was the NPC. The mere fact that Azikiwe would agree to form a coalition government with the NPC could only mean that Azikiwe and the NCNC’s tolerance level for tribalism was far more strident than they were prepared to admit.
Once partisan politics took hold in Nigeria, the two dominant tribes in the Christian South began to drift apart. You would have thought the Igbos and the Yorubas were natural allies because the Igbos were predominantly Catholic while the Yorubas were also Christian but with many more denominations like Catholic, Anglican, Methodists and Baptist, while some Yorubas in a few Yoruba cities like Ogbomosho, old Oyo Alaafin, Ibadan, Oshogbo and Ede, Abeokuta, Ijebu, and Lagos did embrace Islam. The Igbos and the Yorubas as Christians should have formed a coalition to rule Nigeria after independence, but their rivalry would not permit that.
When two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. The grass in the metaphor is Nigeria and generations of Nigerians yet unborn. The Nigerian nation under the Hausa/Fulani and their Igbo coalition has always been one step forward and two steps backwards. The Igbos and the Yorubas working together may well have been the key to the nation’s steady progress, but the two tribes are ever so distrustful of each other. Nigeria at 54 is a nation kept alive on life support and compromise, which thrives on mediocrity rather than merit. The best candidate has never won a electios in Nigeria. We always vote for the worst candidate and because we are insane, we expect that weak choice to work miracles. We keep repeating the same mistake but expecting a different result.
A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Nigerians for some strange reason always settle for that weakest link in our chain. Balewa or Azikiwe or Awolowo could have become Nigeria’s first Prime Minister after our independence. Nigeria ended up picking Tafawa Balewa the grade II teacher from Bauchi because the man belonged to the senior partner in the NPC/NCNC coalition government. Azikiwe and Awolowo knew Tafawa Balewa was the least qualified for the job, but since the predominantly Catholic Eastern Nigeria would rather go with the Muslim North than go with the predominantly-Christian Western Region, Nigeria lost out by picking Balewa.
Awolowo actually offered to step down for Azikiwe to become Prime Minister, but Azikiwe and his kith and kin preferred the NPC. Azikiwe and his people believed that the Yorubas were too smart and too clever and sneaky. They were convinced the northerners could not out-maneuver them if the push came to shove. Azikiwe became ceremonial governor-general whose main function was to attend funerals of fellow heads of state around the world, while Tafawa Balewa became Prime Minister with all the power in his hands. Balewa as Prime Minister had to compete on the world stage with black leaders like Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Professor Leopold Senghor of Senegal, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, to mention a few.
Nigeria immediately began to lose its focus and his leadership position among African nations because we had a leader who evidently suffered from an inferiority complex when he had to meet with his counterparts in other countries. How for goodness could a grade II teacher from Bauchi have competed with a Dr. Nkrumah or a Leopold Senghor or Sir Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, or Dr. Burnam of Guyana, to mention a few of them who were all products of institutions like Cambridge, Oxford, and Lincoln University in the United States? I know education alone is not all that is needed in a good leader, but during Balewa’s time and even up till now education is something we cannot discount. It is true that Jonathan has a Ph.D. but can hardly compare himself with an Obama. However, the mere fact that he has a Ph.D. on merit from Port Harcourt is something Nigeria should be proud of.
It was true that Tafawa Balewa spoke English with a nice accent. He was clearly an eloquent speaker but there was no way to compare his vision, his charisma, and ability with that of Kwame Nkrumah or Leopold Senghor. Balewa was clearly intimidated by some of those leaders just like Yakubu Gowon was outgunned and clearly intimidated by the Oxford-trained Odumegwu Ojukwu at the Aburi Summit in Ghana. Either Azikiwe or Awolowo would never have suffered from the same kind of inferiority complex that Tafawa Balewa had to confront.
Azikiwe went with the NPC in 1959 because he knew that most of the powerful ministries that require a university education and some technical knowledge to run would naturally go to the Igbos in the NPC/NCNC government. If the Igbos had gone with the Action Group, the big advantage the Igbos thought they were going to get over the northerners would have been lost. The Igbos were thinking more about themselves than the best interest of the nation. “I before others,” which Sardauna Bello once used to describe them, definitely had some validity.
The Action Group led by Awo could easily have joined the NPC to push the NCNC into the opposition because the Yorubas could claim they had more in common with the Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri tribes, as a good number of Yorubas were Muslims like the Northerners. The Yorubas have hereditary monarchies and traditional institutions. The Igbos had none of those commonalities. Anybody could become an “Igwe” or “Eze Igbo” in Igboland. Not so in the North and Yorubaland. Awolowo could not get the Action Group to work with the Hausa/Fulani NPC because of their open disdain for education which is a major platform in the Action Group Manifesto. Awolowo would have had to abandon his free education and free medical coverage for all Nigerians, because the NPC, the senior partner in the coalition would have blocked such a policy. They saw Awolowo as a revolutionary who was going to instigate the “Talkawas” to throw off their yoke of Feudalism. Sardauna never forgave Awolowo for dragging him out of his Palace to go canvass for votes from the commoners.
To Awolowo, free education was non-negotiable. Awolowo could not associate with a party with the NPC kind of mindset. That was why he preferred to go with the Igbos and was not ready to go into any coalition with the Hausa/Fulani. Azikiwe on the other hand was willing to play ball with the North because he figured it out that the Igbos were going to dominate their senior partner. If he had to choose between his peoples’ interest and the greater interest of Nigeria, the choice was clear for Zik. Most Igbos still share the same mindset till now. They would rather go with a party led and dominated by the northerners than the one dominated by the Yorubas. I don’t care what promises the Igbos make to the APC today, the great majority of them are going to vote for the PDP because they are scared of the Yorubas. In my opinion, they want the Yorubas to experience the same genocide they have endured but the Yorubas are too smart for that. It is not going to happen.
Awolowo was misunderstood when he told Nigerians he could not be a good Nigerian if he was not first and foremost a good Yoruba man. What he was saying was that his “Yorubaness” is not necessarily in conflict with his idealism as a patriotic Nigerian. Azikiwe would tell you he was the first nationalist Nigeria has produced. If you believe that crap, you will believe anything. Azikiwe was only a nationalist in name. Many of his actions or behavior did not support that claim as I would show with the remaining segment of this article.
When Awolowo and the Akinloyes of this world conspired to stop Azikiwe from becoming the first Premier of the Western Region in 1954, Azikiwe wasted no time rushing back to the East to force Eyo Ita from Calabar to shelve his ambition to become the first Premier of Eastern Region. If he had allowed Eyo Ita to have his wish, most Nigerians, myself included, would have been singing his praise today as the first nationalist in Nigeria and he would have been right to condemn Awolowo for stopping him from becoming the first Premier of Western Region.
When Azikiwe had a chance to discourage Biafrans from breaking away from Nigeria, he did not do it because the move was very popular among the Igbos at the time. He not only encouraged Biafra to go for secession, he actually wrote the Biafran National Anthem. But when he realized that Biafra was going to lose and lose very badly, he gave an excuse he was going for medical check-up overseas. Instead of going overseas he headed straight to Dodan barracks to denounce Biafra and to pledge his loyalty to General Yakubu Gowon, who welcomed back to Nigeria with open arms. How could such a man tell us that Awolowo was wrong to stop him from becoming the first Premier of the Western Region?
Biafra never recovered from the betrayal and that was one of the events that elevated Odumegwu Ojukwu as the reluctant successor to Azikiwe, even before Azikiwe died. If you ask most Igbos today who was their greatest leader, 7 out of 10 of them would tell you it was Ojukwu. The remaining three may still have some respect for Zik because the Igbos, as a rule, never disown their own which is good. They are far better than the Yorubas on that.
Part II of this piece will address in some detail what the Yorubas have done to show that they do in fact love the Igbos more than the Igbos love them. It will explore in all its ramifications what Nigeria stands to gain from Igbo and Yoruba collaboration. It will make the case for why the Igbos and the Yorubas need to put the past behind them and to move forward for the sake of Nigeria.
Now that Azikiwe, Ojukwu, Awolowo and Benjamin Adekunle have all been retired by death, it is time for the Igbos and the Yorubas to form a coalition to push the northerners to the opposition for once in our history.
Democracy demands such a change because in politics, there is no permanent friend or enemy, there is only a permanent interest. A one-party dictatorship, however benevolent cannot serve the best interest of Nigeria. I urge Nigerians to throw the PDP out of power in 2015.
Stay tuned for part II.
If you are a frequent visitor to the African Forum website pioneered and moderated by a Nigerian and a Yoruba man named Martin Akindana, you will clearly see why the endless rivalry between the Igbos and the Yorubas has now become a concern for some of us. I give credit to Mr. Akindana for creating that forum and effectively using it as a platform for Nigerians to freely express their views without the need to always put names to what they write. However, hat anonymity has afforded many Nigerians the freedom or the opportunity to criticize and abuse others using fictitious names and appellations.
Mr. Akindana, the President and CEO of Chat Afrik and African World Forum, lives in Maryland. He has been a leader in internet journalism just like Chuck Odili, the President and CEO of the Nigeria World website and Omoyele Sowore, the President and CEO of Sahara Reporters and Sahara Television based in New York.
Two out of these three distinguished Nigerians are Yoruba men and the great majority of their writers and columnists are either Yoruba or Igbo. The Yorubas and Igbos quite often collaborate in America to do great things. Their brothers and sisters back home have so far failed do what they are doing abroad with great success.
Omoyele and Rudolf Okonkwo are two Nigerians who have worked together to make SaharaReporters the envy of social media and internet journalism in the greatest city in the world, to borrow a cliché from Dr. Damages of Sahara Television. I can testify to that as a volunteer in their organization.
You hardly find any Hausa/Fulani Nigerian in the Diaspora blazing that kind of trail for other Nigerians to follow. In my opinion, any Hausa/Fulani man with that kind of drive and motivation would have returned home to be made a federal minister or a state commissioner or an adviser to the president or state governor, because northerners, as a rule, don’t have to work hard to make it in Nigeria. Some of them claim they are born to rule, because they know the Igbos would forever side with them to rule Nigeria knowing the Yorubas and the Igbos don’t get along and probably never will.
If Omoyele Sowore or Rudolf Okonkwo or Chuck Odili or Martin Akindana were to be Hausa/Fulani, they would have been appointed the MD and CEO of Daily Times or NTA or Minister of Information in a heartbeat. SaharaReporters has become a leading source of breaking news on Nigeria while two of its ace reporters, Rudolf Okonkwo, otherwise known as Dr. Damages, and Adeola Fayeun of “Keeping it Real” have become very popular on YouTube because they are very good in what they do. Omoyele is doing something news-worthy in America, producing new generations of television reporters, camera men, production managers, moderators, and top-notch comedians and anchormen, not just for Nigeria but for many countries in Africa.
I am doing this article because I now know for a fact that the never ending feud and distrust between the Igbos and the Yorubas has become a major obstacle to Nigeria’s progress. If the two tribes had maintained the collaboration passed on to them by Herbert Macauley as the first leader of the Nigerian Youth Movement, Nigeria would have made so much progress by now. Herbert Macauley on his death bed had named Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo man, as his successor. He could have picked a Yoruba man to succeed him but he wisely chose Azikiwe. Dr. Azikiwe, a very powerful journalist at the time and one of the leading pan-Africanists of his era was a very good choice.
The Nigerian Youth Movement was out to champion the cause of the people and to fight British Imperialism. Dr. Azikiwe did very well, to begin with, but he made his first mistake when he turned the movement to a political party he subsequently named as NCNC (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons). It did not take long before former members of the Youth Movement, who found themselves in the NCNC began to feel they have been marginalized as most of the important positions in the party were taken over by the Ibos. The party became an Igbo party. Awolowo, a staunch member of the movement, read the hand writing on the wall. He quickly moved on to form the “Egbe Omo Oduduwa” in London which later metamorphosed into the Action Group, with Ooni Risa Adesoji Aderemi as its first grand patron.
The NCNC under Azikiwe began to view Awolowo and the Action Group as competitors and rivals from that point on. Sardauna Bello around the same time had created his own party which he called “Northern People Congress” meaning that only northerners were welcome to the party. Sardauna Bello was not as politically-savvy as Azikiwe and Awolowo, who were more educated and knew right away that a parliamentary system like the one Nigeria has embraced could hardly thrive with a tribal party like the NPC. Those who called the Action Group the first tribal party in Nigeria were being disingenuous. The first tribal party in Nigeria was the NPC. The mere fact that Azikiwe would agree to form a coalition government with the NPC could only mean that Azikiwe and the NCNC’s tolerance level for tribalism was far more strident than they were prepared to admit.
Once partisan politics took hold in Nigeria, the two dominant tribes in the Christian South began to drift apart. You would have thought the Igbos and the Yorubas were natural allies because the Igbos were predominantly Catholic while the Yorubas were also Christian but with many more denominations like Catholic, Anglican, Methodists and Baptist, while some Yorubas in a few Yoruba cities like Ogbomosho, old Oyo Alaafin, Ibadan, Oshogbo and Ede, Abeokuta, Ijebu, and Lagos did embrace Islam. The Igbos and the Yorubas as Christians should have formed a coalition to rule Nigeria after independence, but their rivalry would not permit that.
When two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. The grass in the metaphor is Nigeria and generations of Nigerians yet unborn. The Nigerian nation under the Hausa/Fulani and their Igbo coalition has always been one step forward and two steps backwards. The Igbos and the Yorubas working together may well have been the key to the nation’s steady progress, but the two tribes are ever so distrustful of each other. Nigeria at 54 is a nation kept alive on life support and compromise, which thrives on mediocrity rather than merit. The best candidate has never won a electios in Nigeria. We always vote for the worst candidate and because we are insane, we expect that weak choice to work miracles. We keep repeating the same mistake but expecting a different result.
A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Nigerians for some strange reason always settle for that weakest link in our chain. Balewa or Azikiwe or Awolowo could have become Nigeria’s first Prime Minister after our independence. Nigeria ended up picking Tafawa Balewa the grade II teacher from Bauchi because the man belonged to the senior partner in the NPC/NCNC coalition government. Azikiwe and Awolowo knew Tafawa Balewa was the least qualified for the job, but since the predominantly Catholic Eastern Nigeria would rather go with the Muslim North than go with the predominantly-Christian Western Region, Nigeria lost out by picking Balewa.
Awolowo actually offered to step down for Azikiwe to become Prime Minister, but Azikiwe and his kith and kin preferred the NPC. Azikiwe and his people believed that the Yorubas were too smart and too clever and sneaky. They were convinced the northerners could not out-maneuver them if the push came to shove. Azikiwe became ceremonial governor-general whose main function was to attend funerals of fellow heads of state around the world, while Tafawa Balewa became Prime Minister with all the power in his hands. Balewa as Prime Minister had to compete on the world stage with black leaders like Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Professor Leopold Senghor of Senegal, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, to mention a few.
Nigeria immediately began to lose its focus and his leadership position among African nations because we had a leader who evidently suffered from an inferiority complex when he had to meet with his counterparts in other countries. How for goodness could a grade II teacher from Bauchi have competed with a Dr. Nkrumah or a Leopold Senghor or Sir Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, or Dr. Burnam of Guyana, to mention a few of them who were all products of institutions like Cambridge, Oxford, and Lincoln University in the United States? I know education alone is not all that is needed in a good leader, but during Balewa’s time and even up till now education is something we cannot discount. It is true that Jonathan has a Ph.D. but can hardly compare himself with an Obama. However, the mere fact that he has a Ph.D. on merit from Port Harcourt is something Nigeria should be proud of.
It was true that Tafawa Balewa spoke English with a nice accent. He was clearly an eloquent speaker but there was no way to compare his vision, his charisma, and ability with that of Kwame Nkrumah or Leopold Senghor. Balewa was clearly intimidated by some of those leaders just like Yakubu Gowon was outgunned and clearly intimidated by the Oxford-trained Odumegwu Ojukwu at the Aburi Summit in Ghana. Either Azikiwe or Awolowo would never have suffered from the same kind of inferiority complex that Tafawa Balewa had to confront.
Azikiwe went with the NPC in 1959 because he knew that most of the powerful ministries that require a university education and some technical knowledge to run would naturally go to the Igbos in the NPC/NCNC government. If the Igbos had gone with the Action Group, the big advantage the Igbos thought they were going to get over the northerners would have been lost. The Igbos were thinking more about themselves than the best interest of the nation. “I before others,” which Sardauna Bello once used to describe them, definitely had some validity.
The Action Group led by Awo could easily have joined the NPC to push the NCNC into the opposition because the Yorubas could claim they had more in common with the Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri tribes, as a good number of Yorubas were Muslims like the Northerners. The Yorubas have hereditary monarchies and traditional institutions. The Igbos had none of those commonalities. Anybody could become an “Igwe” or “Eze Igbo” in Igboland. Not so in the North and Yorubaland. Awolowo could not get the Action Group to work with the Hausa/Fulani NPC because of their open disdain for education which is a major platform in the Action Group Manifesto. Awolowo would have had to abandon his free education and free medical coverage for all Nigerians, because the NPC, the senior partner in the coalition would have blocked such a policy. They saw Awolowo as a revolutionary who was going to instigate the “Talkawas” to throw off their yoke of Feudalism. Sardauna never forgave Awolowo for dragging him out of his Palace to go canvass for votes from the commoners.
To Awolowo, free education was non-negotiable. Awolowo could not associate with a party with the NPC kind of mindset. That was why he preferred to go with the Igbos and was not ready to go into any coalition with the Hausa/Fulani. Azikiwe on the other hand was willing to play ball with the North because he figured it out that the Igbos were going to dominate their senior partner. If he had to choose between his peoples’ interest and the greater interest of Nigeria, the choice was clear for Zik. Most Igbos still share the same mindset till now. They would rather go with a party led and dominated by the northerners than the one dominated by the Yorubas. I don’t care what promises the Igbos make to the APC today, the great majority of them are going to vote for the PDP because they are scared of the Yorubas. In my opinion, they want the Yorubas to experience the same genocide they have endured but the Yorubas are too smart for that. It is not going to happen.
Awolowo was misunderstood when he told Nigerians he could not be a good Nigerian if he was not first and foremost a good Yoruba man. What he was saying was that his “Yorubaness” is not necessarily in conflict with his idealism as a patriotic Nigerian. Azikiwe would tell you he was the first nationalist Nigeria has produced. If you believe that crap, you will believe anything. Azikiwe was only a nationalist in name. Many of his actions or behavior did not support that claim as I would show with the remaining segment of this article.
When Awolowo and the Akinloyes of this world conspired to stop Azikiwe from becoming the first Premier of the Western Region in 1954, Azikiwe wasted no time rushing back to the East to force Eyo Ita from Calabar to shelve his ambition to become the first Premier of Eastern Region. If he had allowed Eyo Ita to have his wish, most Nigerians, myself included, would have been singing his praise today as the first nationalist in Nigeria and he would have been right to condemn Awolowo for stopping him from becoming the first Premier of Western Region.
When Azikiwe had a chance to discourage Biafrans from breaking away from Nigeria, he did not do it because the move was very popular among the Igbos at the time. He not only encouraged Biafra to go for secession, he actually wrote the Biafran National Anthem. But when he realized that Biafra was going to lose and lose very badly, he gave an excuse he was going for medical check-up overseas. Instead of going overseas he headed straight to Dodan barracks to denounce Biafra and to pledge his loyalty to General Yakubu Gowon, who welcomed back to Nigeria with open arms. How could such a man tell us that Awolowo was wrong to stop him from becoming the first Premier of the Western Region?
Biafra never recovered from the betrayal and that was one of the events that elevated Odumegwu Ojukwu as the reluctant successor to Azikiwe, even before Azikiwe died. If you ask most Igbos today who was their greatest leader, 7 out of 10 of them would tell you it was Ojukwu. The remaining three may still have some respect for Zik because the Igbos, as a rule, never disown their own which is good. They are far better than the Yorubas on that.
Part II of this piece will address in some detail what the Yorubas have done to show that they do in fact love the Igbos more than the Igbos love them. It will explore in all its ramifications what Nigeria stands to gain from Igbo and Yoruba collaboration. It will make the case for why the Igbos and the Yorubas need to put the past behind them and to move forward for the sake of Nigeria.
Now that Azikiwe, Ojukwu, Awolowo and Benjamin Adekunle have all been retired by death, it is time for the Igbos and the Yorubas to form a coalition to push the northerners to the opposition for once in our history.
Democracy demands such a change because in politics, there is no permanent friend or enemy, there is only a permanent interest. A one-party dictatorship, however benevolent cannot serve the best interest of Nigeria. I urge Nigerians to throw the PDP out of power in 2015.
Stay tuned for part II.
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