Igbos, 50 years after Biafra

By Bayo Ogunmupe In reading Igbos, 50 years after Biafra by Joe Igbokwe, you will come face to face with the problems of Nigerian politics.This paperback volume, first published in 2021 is a shining example of a product produced out of a passion, loyalty and love for one's country and people. Fifty years after Biafra published by Clear Vision Limited, Lagos, has 288 pages, six chapters and ending with a nine page admonition: Kill the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Idea in Your Head by Nnoruka Udechukwu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. The book also includes 85 pages of pictures of major participants in the Nigerian civil war and its aftermath. Igbos, 50 years after Biafra is an appropriate sequel to Igbokwe's earlier book on the same subject- Igbos, 25 years after Biafra. In this sequel, the author reprises his role as moral pathfinder with an impassioned call to his Igbo people of South Eastern Nigeria to reconsider storming out of Nigeria and desist from abandoning the agitation for political power to the other ethnic groups: the Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani and the minorities. Igbokwe harps on the view that five decades on the Igbo can ill afford to persist in their apathy and naivette, justifying his position in the observable deficit and the lack of prosperity of the people, poor infrastructure, and education in Igboland relative to the other regions of the federation. In this thought provoking lucid narrative, Igbokwe proffers new pathways out of this jinx; outlining how true economic prosperity of this industrious people is dependent on their consistently making right political choices, their electing effective leaders who reawaken the values and coalitions cherished by the Igbo. This book picks up from 1990 to 2020 trying to look into how the Igbos have fared since the civil war.Thus, Igbos, 50 years after Biafra is a continuation of a series, that shall continue with Igbos 75 and 100 years after the civil war. I have refrained from repeating the Igbos after Biafra slogan because in the 2021 memoranda for the review of the Nigerian Constitution 1999, there is a memo for the creation of six regions from the six geopolitical zones. The implementation of that memo could culminate in giving the name of Biafra to the South Eastern region. Thus, when the series of books are written, they may not necessarily be written by the same author. But the books would give the Igbos the opportunity to look themselves up and see how well or badly they have performed in Nigerian history. The importance of this book is that it gives a ray into the performance of Igbos espousing the idea of where they need to improve and where they need to retreat from and amend their ways. The author has merely set up a template that throws a challenge on the coming generations to chronicle the performance of Igbos since the Nigerian civil war. Books like this recognize the importance of milestones in the life and journey of a people. Books use such milestones to flash an unflattering torch on the performance of a people. This is the critical role Igbos, Fifty years after Biafra has come to play. How well such books play their intended role is left for the people. The author has done his bit, it's left for the Igbos to do their bits. For instance, fact check shows the following quotation to be false: "As a consequence of the Civil War of 1967-1970, the entire Eastern Nigeria is being steadily left behind by Nigerian history and its propelling forces, notwithstanding that over 80 percent of the wealth of the nation- the target of power play, power intrigues and power conspiracies are sourced there,"-Dr Arthur Nwankwo. With regards to oil, the Nwankwo quotation is false. The Biafra war was based on such falsehood which was why it failed. Southerners revel in such falsehood which keeps the Fulani on top and in charge of Nigeria. Out of Nigeria's nine oil producing states, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Rivers and Bayelsa account for 80 percent of oil produced in Nigeria. And all those states mentioned belong to South south Nigeria. Other oil producing states are: Lagos, Ondo, Edo, Imo and Abia in accordance with the volume of oil produced. Thus, the two least oil producing states of Nigeria belong to South Eastern Nigeria. And population wise, Hausa is 30 percent, Yoruba 29 percent, Igbo 14 percent and Tiv 13 percent. Would a just God allow 14 percent conquer or destroy 86 percent of His creatures? I have not mentioned Hausa- Fulani because such one single tribe does not exist in Nigeria. We must not allow misinformation becloud our sense of reasoning and justice. Schools don't teach you how think but you can read normative logic as an epistemological system of analytical reasoning and cognition. It is to be expected that a book like this will generate mixed reactions and inflame passions but we must not ignore Igbos, 50 years after Biafra for its forthrightness in addressing the factors which rule over the Igbo people. The critical message of this book is the desire that Igbos must come out stronger after the civil war, moving into the next milestone as arbiter of Nigerian politics. Chapter one is a summary of the life of the Igbo 25 years after the civil war. "Among the migrant Igbo population were those hugely disadvantaged by the prevailing cultural and religious systems in Igboland then; such as the oru or Osu and other victims of social caste system. The colonial system offered them huge opportunities to move out of Igboland in search of greener pastures where they would escape repressions meted to them in precolonial Igbo society. However, in the few places with rich arable lands like Abakaliki and Anam, there was no pressure to migrate as the rich yield of the soil was attractive enough to dissuade migration." With education as the substance of chapter two, the author showed the enviable feats of the Igbo in education in the period before the civil war. Igbokwe quoted copiously from the book, The Igbo and educational development in Nigeria, 1846-2015 by S.I. Okoro, of the Department of History, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki. "Such was the desire and quest for education which the missions provided among the Igbo that by the 1930s the Igbo not only closed the gap between her and the Yoruba in terms of acquisition and use of Western education, but indeed surpassed them. As this writer has noted elsewhere, "between 1850 and 1930, a period of some 80 years, the Yoruba appeared to have dominated the acquisition and use of Western education in Nigeria." I wish to quote from Igbokwe's concluding chapter six. His conclusions are similar to what Yoruba is experiencing from Fulani herders at the moment. Like the Igbo, Yoruba has surrendered to Fulani domination of Nigeria by their timidity and unconscionable greed for bribes. Any wonder they are crying for a Constitutional Conference where they get extra cash for doing nothing. hear the author: "Igbos made the terrible mistake of surrendering their political fate to minions and hirelings and Fifty years after Biafra they have so demolished Igbos politically that we are stranded on the lonely stretch of wolf-crying and generous appeal to self pity. Today, Igbos are political orphans that are hugely resented by every other ethnic group. This is what we brought to ourselves when we leased our political space to cheap men of straw that traded with it and ended up making us a confused and battered people." Joe Igbokwe obtained the bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Nigeria in 1985. He is the President of his First Grade International motor company and publisher of National Vision Newspapers. Since publishing his best selling Igbos, 25 years after Biafra, he has also written a couple of books on democracy. In his forays into Lagos politics, he has served as publicity secretary of the AC, ACN, and APC (2006-2019); General Manager, LASMRA (2005-2015), Chairman, Wharf Landing Fees Authority(2015-2019), he is currently Special Adviser to the governor of Lagos State on Drainage and Water Resources. He is married with five children.