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| Umahi |
By Emeka Alex Duru
(08054103327, nwaukpala@yahoo.com)
Election seasons in Nigeria are uncertain times. They are moments when presumed wise men and women compete with jesters in clownery.
Elections, elsewhere, are celebrations of democracy, periods of stock-taking, revalidating or revocation of mandates, by the people.
Here in Nigeria, the case is different; election times are moments of everything goes. It is a long stretch of time characterised by advertisement of hypocrisy and sycophancy.
I recall a particular incident during Senator Theodore Ahamefule (TA) Orji’s governorship in Abia. It was a public lecture and a professor of political science, University of Nigeria (UNN), that was the lecturer. Mid way in his delivery, he carefully removed his reading glasses, placed them on the lectern, bent his head and reached for his handkerchief.
He slightly raised his eyes to the audience, shook his head vigorously, pointed at the direction of the governor and lamented that he was at pains to imagine what Abia would be without Orji. To drive home his antics, he claimed that his car developed faults on his way to the event but due to his love for Ochendo, as Orji was fondly called, he abandoned it and took a taxi to keep the appointment.
He expressed doubts of visiting Abia (his home state) again, if Orji left office, since he did not see any capable hand that could run the state. There was pin-drop silence in the Michael Okpara Auditorium venue of the lecture, not in appreciation for the lecturer’s obvious theatrics but in bewilderment. I gathered that for putting up the show, he was handsomely rewarded.
The man acted the typical Nigerian politician in academic gown. He played the perfect courtier in line with Robert Greene’s 48 laws to power. The rule states that the perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity.
The perfect courtier masters the act of indirection, flatters and yields to superiors. But beneath his superfluous expression of loyalty lies a mind seated in deception and betrayal. 16th century Florentine diplomat and historian, Niccolo Machiavelli, dismissed characters with such tendencies as fake and fleeting, in his great work, The Prince.
According to Machiavelli, such men are fickle, greedy, liars and ready to sacrifice anything, including their sons, to look good before their masters and get rewarded for their odious services. They lack scruples.
It is against this backdrop that the recurrent mockery on the Igbo by the Minister of Works, David Umahi, can be fully understood. The trashy outings are becoming more pronounced as the 2027 elections, draw near.
To be sure, Umahi has been on this ignoble tread since the time he left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the platform through which he served as Ebonyi state governor, for the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The drive however began to take more dangerous turns since his appointment as Works Minister. Ever since, it has been the norm for him to headline any of his official engagements with snide remarks at the Igbo.
Less than a week ago, he was on it when he decreed to voters in the South East to support President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election or face the risk of the region losing key federal infrastructure projects.
As if that was not enough, he taunted the Igbo that Tinubu represents “the Biafra we have been looking for,” claiming that the President’s appointments and projects in the South-East were evidences of the region’s inclusion in the government.
This is the point at which Umahi has crossed the line. He is throwing everything into the politics of 2027.
There is no doubt that the Minister has the rights to adopt or support anybody in any of the elections. He can also roll in the mud or crawl for the one he sees as his god or saviour.
The unique Igbo republic democracy even permits any man of age to take his stance or hold opinion on issues without molestation, in the village assembly. Umahi does not therefore owe anyone any explanation to work for Tinubu’s reelection. It is within his rights to do so. But dragging the Igbo and Biafra to his purely personal agenda, is where he gets it wrong and must be called to order.
The circumstances leading to the declaration of Biafra are already in the public domain and do not need repetition. But for context, it was on May 30, 1967, that the late Igbo leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu was mandated by his people to declare the State of Biafra as home for indigenes of the Eastern Region and their kin that were visited with unmitigated pogrom in other parts of the country.
To some, therefore, Biafra is spiritual and even ideological. The subsequent 1967 – 1970 Civil War is equally an issue that touches the heart of every Igbo man or woman, one way or the other. It was an event that resulted to the loss of more than two million Biafrans (Igbo and non-Igbo that believed in the cause) and total destruction of the zone by the federal forces.
Coming from the ashes of the field hostilities in 1970, the Igbo were told that the war was over. They were promised Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (3Rs) by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon.
Even with the duplicity in implementing the policy as demonstrated in the paltry Twenty Pounds handed to each of them with deposits in the banks, regardless the volume of money previously kept, they bore their pains with dignity, believing that Nigeria had learned its lessons.
Some even went as far as giving their children such names as Oguebego (the war is over) and Ozoemena (May it never happen again), not as mark of cowardice but in forging a new beginning.
But 56 years after, the scares of the war exist on every facet of Igbo life in relation to their status in the country. Successive administrations in the country, are yet to accord the Igbo their deserved place in the scheme of things. At every juncture, they are being reminded that they are a conquered group.
But perhaps, at no time had the lot of the Igbo been more piteous as in the immediate past Muhammadu Buhari and the present Bola Tinubu presidency. In policies and programmes of the administrations, the Igbo have been at the backwaters of consideration.
Indigenes of the zone are discriminated against on job recruitments and placements, admissions into federal institutions not on the basis of merit but because of the so-called quota system. Under Tinubu’s watch the people are treated as second class citizens in their places of residence and prevented from exercising their franchise at elections.
These are among the reasons behind the agitations for Biafra by youths in the East; a Biafra, where they can live and actualise their potential without discrimination and intimidation. You may not agree with the strategy and leadership of the movement but the content of their message, remains valid and unassailable. How then does Tinubu, who has not hidden his disdain for the people, represent the Biafra the Igbo have been asking for?
There could, perhaps, be things David Umahi knows about Tinubu that many Igbo do not know and are yet to see. But to argue that Tinubu represents the Biafra the Igbo have been looking for, amounts to a joke taken too far. There must be limits to sycophancy and propaganda.
~Emeka Alex Duru, Ph.D. is the Editor, TheNiche Newspapers, Lagos
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