Nigeria vs the South East

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), from which Obi decamped, felt confident that he would neither survive nor thrive outside their established political ‘structures’. Members of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), scoffed at the idea that he could pose a threat to their candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a behemoth of Nigerian politics credited with masterminding the election of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Obi’s initial support base—a diverse group of progressive Nigerians of different ethnic and religious affiliations—knew that the odds were stacked against him from the onset. Nonetheless, they were happy to back a politician who seemed to have genuine zeal to serve the people and stuck with him based on this principle. Only Obi’s kinsmen knew that the conversation would soon become about where he was from instead of what he stood for or what he could offer. True to their fears, Obi’s candidacy soon became ethnically polarizing.

Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria’s People’s Party came on national TV with carefully selected words. According to Kwankwaso, ‘it would be very difficult for the northern voter to vote for a candidate from the South East.’  These loose comments started the barrage of attacks from mainstream personalities which has since then intensified. Politically exposed people like Kaduna State governor, Nasir Ahmad El Rufai, referred to Obi supporters in a tweet as ‘imports’ ahead of a planned one-million-man march and social media influencer Reno Omokri, repeatedly referred to Obi supporters as members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the proscribed secessionist group whose goal is to excise the South East from the rest of Nigeria. In a tweet, Omokri wrote that ‘at night, in their covens, there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between IPOB and the core Obidients!’

In all this, Obi stayed above the fray, maintaining that his candidacy was based solely on his belief that he could reposition Nigeria towards socioeconomic recovery. In his campaign, Obi told Nigerians everywhere that it was their turn to ‘take their country back’.

Igbophobia /ɪgbəʊˈfəʊ.bi.ə/ is the baseless suspicion of, prejudice, discrimination, or hostility against people from the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria, by Nigerians (from other ethnic groups).  Igbophobia is an ever-present thread that runs through the tapestry of the story of Nigeria. Long before the first military coup in 1966 and the civil war the coup precipitated, Sardauna of Sokoto and the premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello, expressed deep-seated distrust towards the Igbo people in Northern Nigeria. According to him, ‘an Igbo man comes to a place and wants to become the top boss.’ To assuage his unfounded fears of Igbo domination in the North, the premier stated that they only hired Igbo people for jobs they cannot find a northerner or an expatriate to do, and in this case, only on contract basis. This enshrined a culture that made it nearly impossible for Igbos to secure civil service jobs in the North.

Bello made unfounded claims of the East not employing northerners, without pointing out that in 1964 formal education had penetrated the South East more than any other region of the country, and thus poised the Igbo for formal professions. He also tactfully fails to mention that his kinsman became the first elected mayor of Enugu, the capital of the Eastern region. Igbo sociocultural norms conditioned Ndigbo to be ambitious, engage in commerce,  take risks and value community progress. As a result, Igbo people have travelled to different parts of the country to start and run businesses. With the help of the Igbo apprenticeship system, these businesses quickly expanded, contributing commerce and revenue to the environments they were run in. Bello’s views, now replayed in the 2023 election cycle, are not arbitrary or without effects.  Igbo people were singled out in public places like airports and massacred by the Nigerian military for looking Igbo or having Igbo names. Eventually, these incidents of ethnic cleansing matured into what became the bloodiest genocide in recent history.

Igbophobia shares a lot in motivation, intent and practice, with other forms of ethnic and nationalist hate displayed around the world and throughout history. From xenophobia and anti-Semitism to racism, igbophobia in Nigeria has stayed true to every rule in the playbook of targeted national discrimination of a group. Just as Bello thought of the Igbos, many South Africans believe that Nigerians in South Africa are the reason they cannot get good jobs. In periods of social tension, these reservations lead to sporadic attacks and killings of Nigerians in South Africa, comparable to the Igbo pogroms that preceded the Nigerian civil war.

While the exact number of Igbo people lost to the civil war is still speculated, Achebe notes in There Was A Country that ‘the head count at the end of the war was perhaps three million dead, which was approximately twenty percent of the entire population.’ This, according to Achebe, made the Nigerian-Biafran war ‘one of the bloodiest civil wars in history’. After the war and following systemic, government sanctioned socio-economic disenfranchisement, Ndigbo were stripped not only of their property but also of their pride. They were given a meagre 20 pounds to rebuild their lives from the ground up; regardless of how much they had saved in banks across Nigeria before the war.

In the past few days, similar narratives and sentiments have been expressed in public by Twitter users. In a now-deleted tweet, a user said of the popular Igbo-owned retail franchise, ‘when we take Lagos back, it’s Ebeano supermarkets me i want o.’ This tweet follows earlier threats of forceful appropriation of Igbo-owned properties in Lagos issued by the wife of the president-elect Senator Oluremi Tinubu in 2019.

In There Was A Country, Chinua Achebe points out that former minister of finance and the premier of western Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, also had reservations towards the Igbos and that the feelings of distrust and prejudice played an impactful role in the formation of the Action Group (AG), western Nigeria’s foremost political party. ‘Over the years,’ Achebe wrote, ‘Awolowo had become increasingly concerned about what he saw as the domination of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) by the Igbo elite, led by Azikiwe.’ These reservations may explain his intent on creating financial policies aimed to cripple a people already left desolate by a genocidal war.

In a society that values meritocracy, the Igbo presence and professional progression should raise questions about the capabilities and capacity of said Igbo person. Both Awolowo and Bello could have asked questions about why Igbo people should occupy such positions. Instead, Bello—rather than promoting national unity by employing the best possible hand and encouraging interethnic collaborations—adopted an approach that damaged the ideals of one united Nigeria.

Despite decades of exclusionary economic policies and inter-citizen hostility, Igbo people have continued to participate in and contribute to the Nigerian project across all sectors. Yet, their national loyalty is frequently questioned—despite producing sterling individuals like Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Oby Ezekwesili, Dora Akunyili; an endless list of dedicated individuals who have not only represented the country well internationally but have served their country dedicatedly in different degrees.

As Chinua Achebe pointed out in The Trouble With Nigeria 30 years ago, ‘Nigerians will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo.’  This sentiment has been greatly observed in this election cycle, as both ruling and opposition parties set aside their differences to take turns antagonizing Obi, LP and Ndigbo.