Friday, December 10, 2010

2011:Why we can’t back the North, by Ozobu, ex-Ohanaeze President

Ndigbo have not benefited anything from the North

You see, our brothers in Abuja, called me. I will not give their names. They said that they have signed an agreement with the northerners. On the phone, I asked them if the northerners came to them requesting for help to present a candidate for the office of the president?


They said no, and I told them that if the North needed them, they should be the ones to come to them. I told them that they didn’t have the authority of Ndigbo to do what they did. I told them that if the northerners have respect for us, they should come to us. I told them, if they do what they proposed, I will call a meeting of the Igbo and declare that they are not one of us. That was what I told them on the phone when they called me. They said they were coming to see me, and I told them they can’t see me.

The North has ruled this country for so many years. What do Ndigbo as a people have to show for that? What is the presence of Federal Government in Igboland as it is in the North?

I do not trust the North

When I was running Ohanaeze, the northern governors agreed with me that we meet once every month. 19 of them agreed that an Igbo man must be president of this country. I don’t trust them. And I have reasons not to trust them. They promised Alex Ekwueme that he was going to be president. When the time came for them to fulfill that promise, Ekwueme was pushed out, and they brought in Shehu Shagari. They did it second time with the late M.K.O. Abiola.

In politics, the northerners are like mechanics.

They will break your car, put it up for you to manage, after a while, you will be forced to return to them to fix the car again. I told the Abuja people not to bother going to the North because they have failed to keep promises they made in the past, and you can’t continue with such dialogue.

Ibrahim Babangida sent some people to meet me here in my house. I told his messengers that we will not try the North again. Two weeks later, Atiku Abubakar came here himself, and talked to me about how we can help them. I told him that I don’t know how we can help them. I said to him, that I can’t guarantee our help. I gave him a proverb of the Igbo that a neighbour is better than a brother in the farm (agbata obi ka nwa nne di n’ugbo).

Ater that, these Abuja people came and said that after the war that Igbo property in Port Harcourt and Bayelsa were declared abandoned. And I asked them, will you compare the declaration of Igbo properties as abandoned with pogrom? They said no. And I said, if you are alive, you can get your property back from the man who is illegally occupying it, but if you are killed you can’t do it.

Reports about the killing of the Igbo by the North, said that about two million Igbo were killed by the northerners.

I asked them, you talk about people taking our properties, was Jonathan an adult during the war? Was his father one of those who took our properties? If we come together as one, we can negotiate for properties now, but we can’t negotiate the killings of our people in the North. Some of these people were not there when our people were killed in the North, I was a Minister when we went to receive the bodies of Igbos that were massacred in the North at the airport and railway station.

These northerners were so heartless and wicked that after killing a pregnant woman, they used their knives to open her belly, remove the baby in there and kill the baby too. After doing all these, they will send the corpses of the Igbos they killed back to us in Igbo land for burial. And some of the people who ordered this pogrom are still alive today, coming to us to help them become president now. Have we ourselves been president like them? Don’t we want to be president?

One thing the North has always done is when an issue comes up among the Igbos, the North will sponsor one of us who will come to create trouble there. Why must we allow ourselves to be used against our own interest by those who hate us?

Jonathan’s agreement with Ndigbo

When Jonathan was picked as running mate to the late Musa Yar’Adua, he wrote a letter to Ndigbo. The title of that letter was; “Let us build a new era of partnership”. In that letter, Jonathan made good promises to Ndigbo. He didn’t even know whether the PDP was going to win the presidential election, let alone he becoming president of Nigeria, because as at the time he wrote the letter, he was still governor of Bayelsa.

In that letter, he said to the Igbos, I will read it to you. “Upon my selection as a presidential runningmate, I have thought deeply and consulted widely on the concerns Ndigbo have regarding the position of South-Easterners in the Federation of Nigeria, your security from targeted attacks, state of federal infrastructure in the South-East, positions in key federal institutions, extra issues in consultation with some of you and in the best traditions of inclusiveness and good governance.

“I am from the South-South zone of Nigeria and I know that relationship between those of us who were in the former Eastern region needs to be strengthened if we are going to achieve our utmost in Nigeria. It is my desire to find a collaborative way to bring the best in Igboland into productive harmony with the best in the Niger Delta for greater interest and benefit of both regions.

“I am hopeful that a process of truth and reconciliation can take us past the pre-civil war, civil war, and post-civil war challenges into a future of progress, mutual respect, partnership and prosperity. “I pray that you will give me support and cooperation as we embark on this process.” This was what Jonathan told the Igbo in 2007, when he was only a presidential runningmate, and did not know that he would end up as president. He did not feel pleased about the plight of Ndigbo in Nigeria, and he promised to fight. The fact that Jonathan put his desire to fight Igbo cause is enough to earn him the support of Ndigbo.

He was bold and courageous enough to say he will ensure that the Igbo get their rightful place in Nigeria.

Apart from the fact Jonathan is from one of the marginalized regions of Nigeria, how can any right-thinking person jettison someone who came himself and with a promise of what he will do for you, to someone who does not have respect for you, and also could not see any reason to come to you for help, instead you run to him and come here to tell Ndigbo that you have signed an agreement?

After reading Jonathan’s letter to Ndigbo, every right- thinking Igbo man would be forced to support Jonathan. He is one of us and we will support him.

The challenge of Ndigbo

When I was the President-General of Ohanaeze, the late C.C Onoh invited an ambassador and his wife, who lived in Enugu. I was there and the man said to me, I understand you are the President-General of Ohanaeze-Ndigbo? I said yes. He then said to me, you are not going to achieve anything. I asked why? He said you have no instrument of sanction in Ohanaeze.

He said to me, I will conclude my address with the battle song of the Herero; “Listen when the song of the frog resounds from the marshes. Listen to what they have to say. It is good to come together. It is good to reach agreement. It is good to make the voices of many the single voice of all.” That was what he said to me.

One of the ways people who are working against the interest of Ndigbo can be sanctioned is for the traditional rulers of the South-East to say we don’t want them to parade themselves as our representatives on any issue in Nigeria for a period that the Ezes can decide.

Once such a decision is taken, the traditional rulers of the communities where they come from will be asked not to have anything to do with them. We can sanction them. But such people are few, and they don’t present any threat to Ndigbo, so we have decided not to lose sleep about them. Whenever they return to their senses, I know they will join the entire Igbo. They are confused now, some of the people they are banking on among them are already returning home and we have cautioned and accepted them.

I don’t know what any northerner will give to them that will make them go in such a ridiculous way. The North has never given us anything. Even the states that were created in Igboland were done grudgingly. The creation of Enugu State was cancelled four times; it was in the fifth time it was created. I have a securityman from Adamawa State whose name is John Joseph and he is very brilliant.

The day he told me what they go through in the hands of their leaders who have been in government for decades, I felt for him, and imagined what some others are still going through. The day Atiku came here to ask me to support the North, I called Joseph to come and meet his man. When he came, Atiku asked him if I gave him scholarship and he said yes, and Atiku said he heard so much about Ozobu.

When Atiku left, Joseph told me that what we the Igbos do for our children that they don’t do it for them in the North. Joseph told me that they had wanted to come very close to the Igbos, but they are afraid if they will be accepted. He told me that he is from the same community as Atiku.

So, when Simon Okeke and his cohorts in Abuja started talking about supporting the North, we just laughed at them because they don’t know the people they are dealing with. Okeke can’t speak for Ndigbo and he knows. What has he done in Anambra State to earn him the position of deciding for Ndigbo where to go and what to do?

They were boasting of Ekwueme being part of them. Who is Ekwueme? But he has now come back to join us here. He is now with us. As I said before; their number is too small, nowhere to compare with the generality of the Igbos. If Ekwueme can abandon them, it means that they are nowhere.

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