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.
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
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