Time for handshake across the Niger

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/04/time-handshake-across-niger/

Time for handshake across the Niger

On April 29, 20173:44 am In News
By Emeka Obasi

The days of acrimony should be over, there is so much to give when the Igbo and Yoruba ethnic nationalities put aside the extraneous wedge between them. Our country cannot move forward in the face of rancour.


Those of us who know history must not stand aloof and watch the younger generation degenerate to the vile language that has taken over the social media. It is like there is an undeclared war going on. Every comment is twisted to paint either the Igbo or the Yoruba in bad light.

We cannot continue like this. Besides politics, there is so much between the Igbo and Yoruba. They forged positive links during the days of British Imperialism and worked together in the push for independence. All these cannot be washed away by this bunch of uninformed, foul-speaking boys and girls of the computer age.

Let us not take away the fact that Lagos, as the then capital of Nigeria, was bound to attract people from all over the nation. The Igbo in their usual nature, found favour in the Fed al Territory. The First university, located in Ibadan , also enjoyed a large concentration of Igbo brains.

It is therefore no accident that the Chinua Achebes, Emeka Anyaokus, the Chris Okigbos, the Emma Ifeajunas , attended the premier university. While there, they bonded with men like Wole Soyinka, Bola Ige and Olu Akaraogun. That friendship will never wane, those close to them know it. What some critics see is far from reality.

The Yoruba also found the East alluring. Alhaji Alade Odunewu, veteran journalist, attended Bethel College, Onitsha. Joseph Oyeleye Adeigbo, Clerk of the Federal Parliament in 1964, began his secondary education at Government College, Umuahia and finished at Christ the King College, Onitsha.

Professor Oladeinde Ogunbi was at Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha while Bankole Oluwatuyi spent time at Zik’s Institute in the same town. Lam Adesina, Sam Ajayi, Olajide Idowu, Abisogun Leigh and Kehinde Obanla, all members of the Constituent Assembly, 1988/89, graduated from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Igbo professionals worked in the Western Region just as there were Yoruba workers in the East. My uncle, Dr. Nathaniel Obasi, was a Dentist in Ibadan. Festus Oladapo Shadare, began his career with the Eastern Region Information Service in 1952.

Two Igbo heroes, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Chief Emeka Ojukwu, grew up in Lagos and spoke fluent Yoruba. Zik’s children bear Yoruba names. In fact, some of his best friends were from the West. One of them, Chief Adeniran Ogunsanya, died in November 1996, shortly after the Owelle was laid to rest.

Benjamin Adekunle, son of an Ogbomosho father and a Bachama mother, was good in Igbo. He picked it from his Igbo childhood friends in the North and perfected it when he was in Enugu as Aide de Camp to Eastern Region Governor, Sir Akanu Ibiam. He also met his Ijaw wife, Comfort Akie Wilcox there. Michael Adelanwa and Sunday Adewusi, were at different times, Zik’s ADC.

Ibiam married a Yoruba lady. And that is part of the partnership between the Igbo and Yoruba. The third military governor of the West, Oluwole Rotimi, had an Igbo wife. The wedding reception was chaired by Ojukwu. The first civilian governor of Oshun State, Isiaka Adeleke, had maternal roots in Abia State. That implies that entertainer, Davido’s grandmother was an Igbo woman. The First Lady of Ondo State has Anyanwu as maiden name.

Not many know that Achebe had Yoruba in-laws. Anyaoku, and Prof. Vincent Ike have Yoruba wives. Ike as a traditional ruler does not have an Igbo woman by his side. The First Igbo Four-Star General, Paul Dike’s wife is from the West. Philip Asiodu’s better half is Olajumoke Pereira.

Asiodu lived comfortably in the West, no Yoruba harmed him as the civil war raged. His brother, Sidney, great athlete, was executed in Asaba by Nigerian soldiers. Many Igbo footballers stayed put in the West. ‘World Two,’ Tony Igwe, Austin Ofuokwu and Sam Opone played for the Green Eagles. Obisia Nwakpa lived in Lagos too.

In Biafra all through the crisis, lived Kofoworola, First daughter of Oba of Lagos, Adeyinka Akinola Oyekan. She was married to a Biafran naval officer, Nicholas Ohiaeriaku of Ogwuagga-Abba, in Imo State. What an irony that her husband was captured in Bonny by the Nigerian Navy led by Akin Aduwo, who like Adekunle, had an Ijaw wife. The Biafran remained a Prisoner of War until 1970. The Commander of Biafra School of Infantry was Captain Ganiyu Adeleke.

Those who want the Yoruba and Igbo to remain in perpetual separation know they are destroying Nigeria. These two groups must come together. There is a lot to share and much more to gain. Back to History.

The First Northerner to qualify as a lawyer was indeed a Yoruba from Ilorin; Ganiyu Folorunsho AbdulRazaq. Can you beat this? He was born in Onitsha in 1927, and attended CMS Primary School there before proceeding to Kalabari National College, Buguma.

Chief Ogunsanya was so much in love with the Igbo that as Commissioner for Education in Lagos, he offered scholarships to Igbo students. And his house address was No. 5 Godwin Okigbo Street , Surulere.

In the past we had F. Ebubedike in the Western House. Today, there are more in Lagos.

I have a lot to say personally. In 1983, I worked for Chief Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria. My dad belonged to the Nigeria Peoples Party and was a local government chairman. I used his vehicle to carry UPN Party agents. He did not scold me for once.

Dr. Obasi bought property in Ibadan in the 1950s and due to the war, forgot about that investment. He died in 1999. Much later, his children went to Ibadan, discovered the land which was still untouched and sold it.

These things have to be exposed. Igbo/ Yoruba ties are deep. It is time to come together. Onward Nigeria.

Social media and Nigeria's new civil war

Nigeria has been on the throes of a virtual civil for the past few years. This war which has pitched brother against brother is fought thankfully not in a battlefield but on social media. The battlegrounds are Facebook, Nairaland, Twitter, to a lesser extent Instagram and other sundry online forums. This war is basically between the Igbos and Yorubas with the other tribes acting as not so innocent bystanders. These two tribes due to their large, enlightened and educated populations dominate the social media sphere in Nigeria. The Niger Deltans and other southern minorities tend to passively support the Igbos, while the Hausas, who are really the target of the Igbo attack, support the Yorubas explicitly. This war have with words as its weapons, have added to the vocabulary such interesting words and phrases as “Zoo”, “Wailing Wailers”, “Ofe Nmanu”, “Biafraud”, “Dullards”, “Elections have been won and lost” amongst other colourful words and phrases.

It's hard to know the origins of this war. Historically, Ndigbo dislike the Hausa/Fulani and distrust the Yorubas. The Yorubas, distrust the Igbos and dislike the Hausas. The Hausas dislike the Igbos and distrust the Yorubas. This circle of dislike and distrust culminated in the Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970 which pitched the Igbos as Biafra against the rest of Nigeria. To a good proportion of Igbos, the Biafra war was between the Igbos and Hausas and they believe they had an agreement from some Yoruba “leaders” to join them in the fight against the Hausas and felt betrayed when these Yoruba “leaders” reneged and instead of being at best neutral, became staunch antagonists.

The advent of social media and its attendant freedom of speech has given a new generation an avenue to vent their spleen and spew the hate that almost destroyed their parent’s generation. This new bitter phase of the war began with the emergence of the All Peoples Congress  (APC). The worst nightmare for an Igbo propagandist is an alliance between the old enemies of Yorubas and Hausas, which is what APC depicts when viewed along Nigeria's ethnic fault lines. The Igbos had adopted the then Nigerian President Goodluck ‘Ebele’ ‘Azikiwe’ Jonathan as one of their own. The fact the Jonathan is from Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta of Ijaw extraction is of little consequence. He is not Yoruba, he is not Hausa/Fulani, he is a Southerner, he is a Christian, his name is Azikiwe, so he is as close to Igbo as you can get without actually being Igbo. The Igbos supported Jonathan and PDP in 2011 and were ready to back him to the hilt in 2015. They viewed any attack on Jonathan as a personal attack on Igbos, the belief was that the Yorubas and Hausa/Fulani are uniting for the sole purpose of kicking out a southern Christian minority. It also didn’t help that a lot of the APC leaders were Muslims. On the Igbo side of social media at the run-up to the election, the APC was often depicted as a Muslim party and even called sponsors of Boko Haram.

The Yoruba protagonists on social media on the hand viewed APC as the best thing since sliced bread. They often made reference to the “cluelessness” of President Goodluck Jonathan, while depicting Buhari as the Messiah in waiting and Bola Tinubu as John the Baptist. A lot of Yorubas felt shortchanged by the Jonathan government and saw the APC as an avenue to get back into the mainstream of Nigerian politics. To do that, they had to demystify and then crush the ruling government and their social media mouthpieces, the Igbos. The Yorubas were the harshest critics of the Jonathan administration on social media and were the propaganda machine behind the APC.

The defeat of the ruling PDP at the 2015 general elections means that there is now a role reversal. The hunter has now become the hunted. Where in the past we had “Jonathan the Clueless” now we have “Buhari the Dullard”. The Igbos on social media have now become the main critics of the Buhari administration for which they have earned the unenviable name of the “Wailing Wailers”, and they in turn call Buhari supporters inmates of the “Zoo”. Only on social media!

Any news on social media can be used as a tool for ethnic points scoring. From the ethnic make-up of the appointments of President Buhari, the long awaited ministerial list, the death of the Ooni of Ife and the “Abobaku” debacle; utterances of Femi Fani-Kayode, the fallout between Super Eagles head coach Sunday Oliseh and his erstwhile captain Vincent Enyeama, even as mundane a topic as the nominees for the Headies awards has the internet ethnic bigots slugging it out.

The emergence of the likes of Nnamdi Kanu, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Radio Biafra has taken this war to whole new level. This internet army complete with facebook pages, Twitter handles, a flag, virtual embassies and even a National Football team have become the greatest social media phenomenon in Nigeria. It is arguable that this group is a match to the very effective APC propaganda that won Buhari the presidency on social media. In Nnamdi Kanu, they have an arrowhead who seems to have captured more young Igbo hearts than his earlier incarnation, Ralph Uwazurike of MASSOB. Kanu with his take no prisoners, no holds barred way of speaking, he has captured the hearts and minds of many an Igbo youth who now believe the Igbos are better off as an independent state than in Nigeria. It is very common to see many Ndigbo signing off their comments with Kanu’s catchphrase “Chukwu Okike Abiama”.

This war will only be fought and lost on social media. It gives a lot of people an avenue to exhibit their innate bigotry. It shows us that Nigerians are not really the most tolerant of people and that from generation to generation, the tribal fault lines on which Nigeria is built has not been repaired. It is alarming that a good number of the hate protagonists on Social Media are products of Unity Schools and the National Youth Service Corps. These were schemes that were initiated foster unity by bringing people of different ethnicities and background together at a younger age. This is to ensure that we have unity in our diversity. These are people who work with and socialise with people of different ethnicities in real life but come on social media to score cheap points. Are these people really ethnic bigots? Some definitely are, but the majority are noisemakers who are enjoying a game of “my tribe is better than yours”. For those beating the drums of war, if you want to test your power, there is Boko Haram to be defeated, your country needs willing soldiers.

Ike Onwubuya writes from the United Kingdom