Indeed time
is now at hand. Ndigbo must once again be reminded of doing the needful. The
primary elections of all parties are over with exception to that of Anambra PDP
that shall and always be resolved in the court of law. But before this time,
that is the election proper, Ndigbo needs to be reminded of the hard fact that
2015 is a very crucial year for Igbo survival. It is of necessity to inform
Ndigbo that owing to the precarious nature of things especially as concerns the
politics of Nigeria, we do not for any reason need to dare gamble with the
forthcoming election especially as regards electing candidates, particularly,
candidates of bold conscience.
Across
Igboland, if one is sincere to himself, if one looks into the menu of the past renowned
Igbo politicians, only one man, apart from the older generations, is a
resonance of the attributes of the past dedicated leaders of Igboland. I
wouldn’t say in the common parlance of “the last man standing” because I learnt
and I do know that from “age to age Divinity gathers men for himself so that
from east to west even a perfect offering may be made”. So, greatness and great
men must continue to be as long as the earth stays. But, what is of great
importance is the collective interest of Ndigbo, the crucial moment that is the
period we found ourselves in Nigeria, and sending bold and courageous
representatives to the Upper Chamber knowing fully well that Nigeria as it is
currently constituted, only fearless, courageous Igbo politicians can survive
the present tide.
Recently, in
the just concluded National confab, though not by election, Igbo men and women
were selected and sent to represent their folks. Among the things that generated
heated debate was the five percent oil revenue to North East as a result of the
believed wanton destructions by the terrorists. All the South East
representatives were fully present when the North befuddled the rest of the
country into adopting the five percent oil revenue for the reconstruction of
the devastated infrastructures by the Boko Haram not minding that after more
than forty years of Nigeria/Biafra civil war the Nigerian Government have not
found it a sine qua non to rebuild the East where over two million persons lost
their lives to the bloodiest war in the history of black Africa. Surprisingly,
when some Igbo representatives were confronted over the implication of
abdicating five percent of our oil revenue for a reason in which there is no
justice and fairness, our fickle representatives were rather irked by that
attempt to call them to inner reflection. Ndigbo kept quiet again until a late comer
to the conference who on arrival perhaps because of being at home with what the
predicament of Ndigbo is on one hand, and having gone through the tutelage of Igbo
legends of both dead and alive on the other hand, effortlessly discovered the
blatant injustice in giving five percent of our oil revenue to a part of the
country that has continued to murder Ndigbo with the attendant destructions of
their means of livelihood. We are in
full knowledge that many of our brother representatives refused to botch the
bill from going to plenary session for as for them this matter has been debated
and adopted by the committee and any further intervention is stupid. Chief Umeh
stood his ground at the plenary and shouted to the high heaven over the
injustice that would have almost been passed as a law in the whole Republic
supposing the Confab recommendations were adopted as working document. Being a
man of bigger spirit, he got the enemies of the people to concur on his protest
and at the end the five percent oil revenue was given to all the parts of the
Federal Republic.
Still on
the National confab, our brothers were all seated when one of the Northern representatives
deployed a demeaning language reinstating that Ndigbo is not part of Nigeria. None
discovered that when you refer to a thing as so-called or a people as so-called
that what you are saying is that in the real sense that thing does not exist.
And the Northern representative unabashedly qualified Ndigbo as so-called South
East zone and for all our representatives seated, this is not a wrong doing.
This is because in the real sense of it they are not true Igbo or if Igbo, are
not qualified to be there to represent their people as their quietude in the
face of such demeaning of a people they are representing indicates that they
are not abreast with the laws, customs and struggles of the land they claim to
hail from. Succour came again from Umeh who brought retired General Ike
Nwachukwu to register the protest and the northern representative was brought
to recant his statement and apologize to Ndigbo.
Putting the
confab aside, Ndigbo in trying time as this need predictable characters as
their representatives. The case of our brothers backing out from struggles that
will benefit our common goal is not news. And we see that more often than not
the reasons are flimsy and this points to the fact that the people in question
ab-initio are not abreast with the customs, laws and the struggles of Ndigbo
but are people who due to the confusion of things found themselves in the
corridors of power. The case of Chief Peter Obi the former governor of Anambra
state defecting to PDP five months after he had deployed the same system for
eight years to govern the state is an eloquent instance of a man who doesn’t
know what and who is Ndigbo in the first instance.
Even though
APGA is not an Igbo party, Igbos have much domination in APGA. What it means is
that after all said and done the only political platform Igbos can through it
express their political interest is APGA. APC and PDP in all their sagacity
have excluded Ndigbo from either the presidential ticket or vice presidential
slot. So ensuring the survival of APGA and her spread becomes, I believe, the collective
responsibility of every Igbo man knowing very well that APGA is the only city
of refuge for Ndigbo and that APGA’s support of Jonathan is pure temporal
business with a definite date of expiration as Jonathan’s tenure if elected in
the forthcoming election expires by 2019 such that if APGA is not built and
prepared for 2019 elections Igbos by then may have been absolutely relegated to
political dungeon of irrelevance.
If all that
I have said cannot be established to be untrue, it now becomes necessary to say
that it appears very strong, I suppose, that considering the trend of things
that Chief Sir Victor Umeh’s political ambition in this time coincides with the
political future of Ndigbo, that is, considering the hard fact that Ndigbo is
in dire need of a robust representation on one hand, of which considering the
candidates in Anambra central senatorial zone (where Victor hail from) we know
that among them Victor Umeh has exuded more energy, boldness, courage,
consistency as regards Igbo struggle. On the other hand, considering that Ndigbo
cannot actualize Igbo political destiny without establishing a hegemony on a
political platform considering that they have been sidelined in the other
political platforms, it therefore becomes important and urgent to put to the
mind of Ndigbo that they should be in the know that the failure of a man who
have exuded much strength in sustaining that platform, of whom now could be
seen as the arrowhead of the APGA struggle, whose political destiny coincides
with the Igbo political destiny will be very disastrous. What it means is that
the failure of Chief Umeh to clinch the senate seat may mark the death of that system
we can say from all I have said as the only residual means of salvaging the
battered Igbo political destiny.
What it
means is that Chief Umeh represents the face of the new Igbo political struggle
and that his victory is a victory for all APGA and Ndigbo. Victor’s senate from
his antecedents is not just Anambra central Senatorial thing, rather Victor’s
senate is Igbo’s senate because Victor from his antecedent, as we have duly
established, shall give leadership to all Igbo senator’s if not all other senators.
What it means further is that Victor’s senate is a senate Ndigbo must rally
round to secure for just as in one time or the other in the evolution of people
and nations one man’s destiny may be tied with the destiny of others. Ndigbo
must be desperate about this!
Elo Afoka
holds a PhD in Logic
Email:eloafoka@gmail.com
Mobile:
+2348039229982
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