NEW GOVERNANCE MODEL
FOR NIGERIA
After series of consultations over the dire situation in today’s Nigeria, detailed analyses of divers proposals, and impressed that the recommendations below fairly addressed many of the fundamental issues, the United Igbo Elders Council (UNIEC) Worldwide, unanimously decided to adopt this IGBO POSITION or others like it as a just, fair, civilized, balanced, and significant step in solving the national crisis equitably:
IGBO POSITION on:
CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW,
RESTRUCTURING, REGIONALISM, and REFERENDUM
~ A win-win template for peace and stability in Nigeria.
IGBO RESTRUCTURING GOALS
1.END TO THE PORTS AND ECONOMIC BLOCKADE AGAINST THE IGBO/EAST – BY EXTENSION also AGAINST THE ENTIRE EASTERN HALF OF NIGERIA UP TO LAKE CHAD – AND RESTORATION OF THE IGBO AND OTHER COASTAL PORTS.
All coastal ports along the Gulf of Guinea were working before colonialism, and there is no reason why they cannot continue to do so when needed most after independence. They include the operational ones around Lagos; the Gelegele and Ughoton of the Bini; Koko, Ode Itsekiri, part Warri of the Itsekiri; Ogidigben, Sapele, part Warri of the Urhobo; Akassa, Brass-Nembe, Burutu, New Calabar or Kalabari ports of the Ijaw; Igweocha (Port Harcourt), Opobo, Ubani (Bonny) of the Igbo; Onne, Ngo, of the Ogoni and Andony/Obolo; and Bakassi, Calabar, Ibaka, Ikang Akpabuyo, Oron, Upenekang, of the AkwaCross. There are many other developable coastal ports. The Chinese, it is said, have them in thousands or hundreds. These ports should be dredged, modernized and reopened to prosper their peoples and other Nigerians, each according to need and capacity.
Apart from occasional outbreaks of tokenism, almost all the coastal ports in Nigeria outside Lagos are for no clear economic benefits or sound strategic rationale seemingly under practical lock and key, except that the world-famous Igbo Port Harcourt, Bonny, Opobo and other Eastern ports were specifically blockaded against the Igbo/East in 1967. The ports/economic blockade, practically subsisting till today, aside leading to millions of deaths and still counting, continues to be reason for the unhealthy massive Eastern and other diversions to Lagos for maritime and related livelihood and, therefore, main cause of the de-industrializations, impoverishments, frustrations, unemployment, youth restiveness, western-directed long-travel costs and risks, accidents and kidnappings, not to speak of periodic inter-ethnic issues around Lagos/West. The Igbo remain most grateful to their Western/Yoruba compatriots for their tolerance, but believe that Nigeria is more efficiently developed multi-regionally from different mutually emulating competitive angles than perpendicularly from a single 90° Lagos corner.
While appreciative of the gesture, the South East Development Commission, SEDC, is of marginal if any practical utility without the reopening of the Igbo ports, for industrialists cannot manufacture in the East only to haul their products back to Lagos to export. Nor are many people really excited by the endless deceits called “Onitsha River port” or its “Orashi/Oguta” 250-kilometre or so “dredging to the Atlantic” analogue, via the same Rivers state, two kites regularly flown to either taunt the Igbo or divert them away from their age-long maritime traditions. Many Easterners appreciate the resumed utilization of Ogoni’s Onne port, hoping it becomes part of albeit belated process to bring succour to the Ogoni peoples, and catalyst for the modernization of the scores of other ports along the Nigerian coastline.
The Igbo therefore are now renewing the oft-repeated appeals for the reactivation of the globally famous Igbo and other Eastern coastal ports; they pre-existed Nigeria, and their renewed use would herald prosperity first for the Rivers peoples, then the hinterland Igbo in general, and for Eastern, Southern and other Nigerians, to prepare everybody for the AfCFTA. Igbo and other Easterners are tired of poverty amidst their humongous natural and other endowments, and plead that these coastal ports be retriggered to return them to maritime prosperity and centuries-long maritime traditions and traditional blue economy.
2.RESTORATION OF THE EASTERN POLE OF DEVELOPMENT.
Spilling over from the East, other poles of development should emerge in the Middle Belt, across to Northcentral, and down to the Northeast. This dire demand is directly linked to the number one request.
Poles of development refer to semi-autonomous import-export industrializing zones in the coastal South organically linked to those in the riparian North. For all intents and purposes, Lagos and part-West, because of the Lagos ports, are the only really functioning poles of development in today’s Nigeria; the rest of the states are more or less mere glamorous poles of poverty, of well-dressed white collar jobs and political administration over de-industrializing and backsliding populations, with everything centred around maritime Lagos and allocative Abuja.
Whereas the Lagos/Western ports would more efficiently serve the western half of Nigeria up to Sokoto and thereabouts, the Igbo/Eastern ports hold much of the keys to the development of the entire eastern half of Nigeria across the Benue and down to Lake Chad. So, opening up Igbo/Eastern ports system equally spills over and triggers development across the eastern Middle Belt and beyond, while the continual lockdowns of the Igbo/Eastern ports are also having cumulative negative tolls on the entire eastern half of the country down to Maiduguri.
Hence, the simplest solution to the underdevelopment and poverty of the eastern half of the country starts with retriggering the Igbo/Eastern coastal ports, consistent with federal exclusive responsibility. The traditional Igbo Azumini-Opobo Imo River basin is very short for dredging and modernization, and the centuries-long priorly very busy Port Harcourt-Ubani broad sea-lane equally so. Both, in use since pre-Nigerian times, their operations could be handed over to competent Rivers entrepreneurs, so to eliminate poverty first in the Rivers state, then to the hinterland and entire eastern half of Nigeria. Lifting the embargo on the ports would also greatly reduce the gridlocks, overhead costs and ethnic tensions around Lagos/West, and enable our Western compatriots develop more efficiently. With the additional prospect of modernized roads, railways, air and cyber corridors, and the eventual dredging of the Niger and Benue rivers to the coasts, reopening the ports would dramatically escalate the scale of industrialization in Nigeria and massive reduction of unemployment and poverty levels among her citizenry.
3.A PERMANENT END TO THE EIGHT-YEAR CONDONATIONS OF TERRORISM and ORCHESTRATED WARS.
The Tinubu administration was not the perpetrator of the “wars” and atrocities between 2015 and 2023. These included “wars” against “insurgency” in the East; against “farmers-herders clashes” in the Middle Belt; and against “banditry” within the Hausa lands. There were “minor” replicas in the West against our Yoruba compatriots, and in the Niger Delta for their bad luck of having oil in their soils.
By mid-2015 there was not a single “insurgency” or “war’ to overthrow the federal government or procure a Biafra anywhere in Igbo society and none today, except the one manufactured by a tyrant that made sure that such a “war” existed, with shoot-to-kill or shoot-at-sight orders openly issued against promising innocent youngsters in full view of all the world, in part to punish the Igbo for their sundry sins. Biafra existed in airwaves to the annoyance of some, but mostly amusement of majority of Nigerians in markets and motor parks, who had time to listen and became excited about a mythical “Jibril,” a mere njakiri that meant nothing for democratic minded and civilized peoples, but life went on peacefully in the East with absolutely nothing on the ground that any honest ruler would call “insurgency.
There were also hardly serious if at all any “farmers-herders clashes” in the Middle Belt until it became a decoy to legitimize ethnoreligious terrorism and suspected attempts to use the military to assist terrorist invaders wiping out indigenous peoples, seizing and renaming their vast lands and resources, and forcing survivors into IDPs camps to die off. There was also almost little else in the so-called “war against banditry” except a suspected taquiyya mixup in Boko Haram and other pro-terrorist alliances to totally subjugate a remnant Hausa people reawakened into emancipatory self-realizations against their caliphate oppressors. And, then, the Yoruba appeared to also be deserving of occasional “wars” in the form of “random” terrorist attacks, maybe as warnings or condoned lessons in good behaviour.
Until the APC National Convention to choose a candidate there was no thought that a Yoruba should or ought be successor regardless of “agreements” signed with a humble pen at Bourdillon street, and flowing tears and solemn avowals of “just let me be there, I swear I will hand over to you, oh my mighty saviour Jagaban!” Similar “oaths” were probably also sworn to rich Governor Chibuike Amaechi who would instead be rewarded with a large cloth on his head, Ogbonnaya Onu the alliance facilitator, and a host of others. Almost everyone knew that fulfilling honest agreements wasn’t part of their strong points, but still wanted to “try your luck.”
Your Excellency, it is no more news that the last administration may have murdered millions of innocent Nigerians (the Emancipator’s Hausa Tsantsa Development Association alone are claiming 7 million Hausa casualties), stole so much money, carted away so much of Nigerian wealth, and possibly committed so much other unimaginable crimes against humanity and against peace, hiding behind sundry phoney “wars” against various sections of Nigeria, each section punished for its own separate misdeeds.
The only real wars that existed and continue to exist are by the Boko Haram and other locally nurtured terrorists, the ruler’s “killing the Boko Haram is killing my people” and their imported allies, some of whom he claimed were “Libyans,” but treasonously admitted into Nigeria without Legislative approval, and occupying forests, farms and highways, recruiting vulnerable Nigerians, Igbo, Middle Belt, Yoruba and other locals, and kidnapping and killing peoples everywhere, with a government displaying open reluctance to fight the terrorists while instigating and diverting such fights elsewhere to give room for unlawful living space for “your brothers.” For eight terrible years of savage man’s inhumanity to man it was war everywhere and citizens’ innocent bloods spilt on all azimuths.
Mid-2015, inaugurated a designer war against everyone, each victim group corresponding to their cruelly calculated misbehaviours. If no other Nigerians cared, an average Easterner knows what they went through in the hands of a clique that consciously transformed priorly peaceful business parts of the country into violent war zones of “unknown gunmen”-military operations, kidnappers and all. At a point Igbo abroad would not dare return home lest they are killed by “unknown gunmen,” who are hardly arrested to prove who they are. State-sponsored terrorism is avoided by civilized nations; in Nigeria of mid-2015 to mid-2023 it was a new normal treated casually as other unconstitutional impunities of the time.
Hence, Igbo gratitude!
The above background of orchestrated violence on the peoples of Nigeria is why if nothing else the Igbo and possibly others are most grateful to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for bringing that “life” of generalized atrocity, those terrible “wars” and nationwide reign of terror to an end from day one, and the Igbo plead that the orchestrations never return, as reports of renewed “strange” kidnappings are again rearing their ugly heads.
4.UNCONDITIONAL RELEASE OF ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS.
Above all Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and his colleagues, together with immediate end to all manner of unlawful, hooded, night and secret arrests, detentions and extrajudicial killings.
To an average man, His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu owes nothing to an ungrateful predecessor that didn’t want him come to power, and should break totally from the caveman’s cruel methodologies. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been tortured, victimized and dehumanized beyond measure, and it confers to a nation no value to continue to keep an innocent citizen in jail. No one except the Boko Haram and associated terrorists, is waging war to dismember Nigeria, and it serves no civilized logic to pamper terrorists and be unforgiving of some other citizens for not belonging to the favoured race. Therefore, all those detained over anything political since mid-2015, whether End-SARS, IMN, IPOB, Yoruba Nation, “Yahoo Yahoo,” EndBadGovernance, or other issues should be set free unconditionally, the jail-houses decongested, more industries built and more prisons closed, with government starting to genuinely dialogue with the youths.
Yes, in utter frustration Chief Frederick Nwajagu made a statement to scare his oppressors, but, government can relent to free the man and return him to his family. Whatever he under extreme provocation uttered about IPOB to frighten off his oppressors was nothing compared to the hate speeches of those who actually set off killing people, looting their property, committing other crimes, and walking free today. Let bygones be bygones, so that our distinguished leader and President not wait for another President to release Nnamdi Kanu and others in 2031 or instead kill them. Government should persevere not to permit the eight-year reign of terror, visibly discontinued in May 2023, be resumed or extended under whatever guises.
Despite discovery of the Lokpanta mass grave besides a pretended “cattle market,” and probably others in and around Igbo society, many Igbo/Eastern families and friends are still anxiously searching in vain for their loved ones, as thousands of “IPOB”/”ESN” suspects that survived initial shoot-at-sight orders are rumoured to be in various dungeons held incommunicado all over Nigeria, allegedly subjected to frequent secret “trials” and the carcasses regularly disposed of as fowl. If these allegations are true, any day that passes adds to more lives lost that could have been saved by a release. Only a President Bola Ahmed Tinubu can direct an impartial investigation into these issues and order an immediate release of those children of lamenting parents. Among them could be scientists and artists that could add value to Nigeria’s development. Let every Nigerian imagine the agony going on in many innocent homes in endless wait for their loved ones among a people not at war with anybody!
Many other Nigerian citizens were mostly before this administration forced into exile because of cruel policies at home, a lot frustrated into reluctant criminality in their desperate efforts to limit wastage of their disappearing youth, and in the mediocre “crime”-learning process falling into merciless jails outside Nigeria for execution; while others got holed up somewhere incommunicado as illegal migrants, sex slaves, child labourers, unwilling soldiers, and so on. If a Nigeria can pamper, forgive, rehabilitate, employ, pay and reward murderous terrorists, the Igbo are appealing to the federal government to immediately engage with foreign governments for the return, or repatriation and peaceful rehabilitation of all Nigerians in foreign countries who are there against their will or mature consent. Nigerians should no more be allowed to be persecuted, criminalized, gaoled or casually executed abroad or within the country, or escape into exile in fear of domestic persecution over political opinions.
5.RESTRUCTURING.
Nigerians demand a Restructuring on the basis of single- nationality Regions, side by side with multi-ethnic nationality Regions. The number in each category to be determined by competitive regional considerations.
No economic policy or “blueprint,” however brilliantly formulated, can work beyond a marginal neocolonial glass ceiling without a correct political economy or foundation, otherwise a basis on which the superstructure stands. It is in vain that people build castles in the air or good governance on false foundations.
Igbo proposals aim at simultaneously addressing the national question of relations between ethnic nationalities and the class question of distribution of power between elites and other formations. The Igbo want a Nigeria peacefully stabilized to secure trade, travel, investment and modernization.
The Igbo believe that every Nigerian, group or individual, has something positive to offer to the collectivity, and that the above five demands would give each group the opportunity to do so and, in so doing, considerably heal the nation’s wounds.
A MISCELLANY OF OTHER PROPOSALS.
Igbo are keenly aware of several Restructuring and/or Constitutional proposals by other Nigerians. Examples:
I.Yoruba have mostly been consistent with restructuring based on ethnic nationalities or groups of same, and to that extent substantially consistent with Igbo proposals. The Igbo and Yoruba share a lot in common, and both should be helped by the present federal government to correct any Zik and Awo “mistakes of the past” or whatever sort of misunderstandings, so that with mutual empathy help Nigeria into a higher order of peace and development. Yoruba and Igbo need harmony, not disharmony; so, President Tinubu should not miss the golden opportunity to achieve the long-desired Yoruba-Igbo rapprochement, or permit those whose progress depends on contrary motives to continue to guide or determine federal policy towards the Igbo.
II.Some Fulani elites have been definite that restructuring “means different things to different peoples,” with a number of observers suspecting this to be a euphemism for opposition to territorially related restructuring, probably because they “own” Hausaland and also “own” or aspire to own the rest of Nigeria. But, it appears it would benefit the Fulani and other Nigerians to maybe finally have a specifically agreed Fulani state or region, different from the Hausa, so that both uphold their unique traditions, and start living side-by-side in harmony, no more as slave and master. There are other alternative solutions to the Hausa and Fulani situation – see below.
III.Many educated Hausa see restructuring as meaningless without freeing them and their lands from a more than 200-year Fulani occupation and subjugation; they demand a resumption of Hausa paramountcy in Hausaland, and, this is a legitimate demand. Albeit, it’s not yet clear how the Hausa intend to achieve this: by negotiations or by elections; expulsion of the Fulani back to wherever; restoration of previous Hausa dynasties with abolition of the Fulani caliphate/emirate/village head system subjugating the Hausa; creation of a special Fulani homeland on volunteered patch of Hausaland; subsuming the Fulani under a Hausa democratic majority rule inside Hausaland; or a Hausa and Fulani equal or unequal condominium or parallel dynasties under the flagship, Hausa-Fulani in Hausaland, etc? Or a continuation of the Fulani caliphate until the final and total eradication of all traces of Hausa and their civilization? For any civilized solution there is no way a violent primitive anachronism called caliphate can survive on and on and perpetrating their atrocities ad infinitum. And, by its own logic, there is no other “better manners” possible for a “reformed caliphate” than fighting its way through war and bloodshed.
IV.AkwaCross peoples appear desiring unity among their Annang-Efik-general Ibibio-Oro peoples, practically of similar language and culture, in coordination with the Ekoi/Ogoja areas. They are making a legitimate demand as well.
V.The Ijaw have long been associated with the unity of Ijaw peoples in the Ijaw central Delta, probably without prejudice to Ijaw enclaves, exclaves, living peacefully elsewhere, and the traditional coastal access or contiguity of vicinal nationalities.
VI.While the Kanuri seem silent or aligning with the Fulani, the Chamba, Ekoi/Ogojas, Gbagyi, Idoma, Igala, Jukun, Mumuye, Nupe, Ogoni, Tiv, Urhobo, sundry Middle Beltans, etc have variously spoken of individual homogeneities, past historical ties like in the Kwararafa and Benin empires, and need for their internal unity and self-determination within a united Nigeria. Above all, restructuring would have no meaning for most Middle Belters if the millions violently expelled from their unlawfully renamed ancestral communities are not first assisted to peacefully return to them, and their tormentors expelled back to sending domains. These too are a legitimate aspiration. Nigeria ought to be a modern country governed by law, and not continue as a contested territory since 1800s between violent alien invaders and their local allies, and actual owners of the land.
VII.There are also sundry elitist groups or individuals, some of them known for what could be viewed as utterly amazing proposals, except that they have a free pass to the Presidency and can drag the intelligence of Nigerians.
VIII.1963: A dead-end subterfuge and delay tactics.
Some Nigerians seem to be splitting hairs arguing for a return to or “retrieval” of the (“federating principles”) of the 1963 “we the people” Parliamentary Constitution; a neocolonial arrangement not based on ethnic nationalities or their consent; that didn’t implement the Willink’s recommendations; that exacerbated inter-ethnic antagonisms; and with institutional mechanisms that could not cope with or withstand those negative contradictions that triggered January 15 and subsequent events. The “federating principles” and institutional mechanisms of 1963 were not adequate to protect the peoples’ rights in the face of a determined factional federal state capture and regional governments bent on breaching them; if it were able to do so it could not have collapsed.
1963 was a poor ceremonial President (would Tinubu even for a minute contemplate to temporarily translate into one, regardless of an “assured” 2nd term?); executive Prime Minister (Akpabio?); and 4 Regional Premiers (which Governors would stand down in any former Regions for one to “temporarily” become Premier in Benin City, Enugu, Ibadan, Kaduna, even for a minute?). Followed by the next process of going backwards to a priorly condemned 1999 “military”/”unitary” Constitution; then mount the “existing reality” of the formerly rejected military’s 36 states as the “we the people” units of a “new” Nigeria. Can a 36-state structure designed against the people translate into a 36-state structure of “we the people”?
The presumed “solution” is that afterwards another process would restart for desiring sections of states to change positions by plebiscite to join or rejoin their ethnic kith and kin in any other states of their choice. Then, after this back-and-forth chaos lasting any indeterminate number of minutes, hours, years, decades, centuries or millennia, with its unanticipated balance in the number of post-merger or post-rearranged states, they finally arrive at a “new Nigeria” of new states or regions! That is what 1963 suggests for the average mind, labelled unsophisticated, too commonsensical, etc!
And, imagine: it is the current President and National Assembly that would abandon rich 2nd term prospects to indulge the 1963 “constitution-makers” in their retrieving roundaboutations.
What about the Hausa yearning for freedom from the caliphate system, for whom 1963 means a deeper re-entrenchment into caliphate bondage? What happens to the invaded, occupied and renamed Middle Belt lands; settlement for wandering Fulani and end to their wars for land; Igbo concerns; Yoruba concerns; others’ concerns; military-security issues, national ethos . . . none of them is addressed in the return or retrieval of 1963. And, is it an ineluctable law to first recover a sunken ship before building a better one, or “retrieve” 1963 before directly adopting a new constitution that would address vital issues of restructuring?
Except those benefitting from the neocolonial system unjustly imposed on others, now being taunted as a “we the people” constitution, even when it collapsed at a moment of the peoples’ greatest need, every Nigerian individual or group wants to be free to optimize their potentials in the modern world, an opportunity being denied them in Nigeria as presently constituted, including a 1963 half measure that could not withstand the determined subversion of the peoples’ wills mostly between 1962 and January 1966. Nigeria therefore needs a new foundation to carry a 10-storey building, not return to a weak foundation made for a one-storey house. The Igbo believe that these demands by the people can be justly and peacefully addressed in a genuine restructuring to achieve a new Nigeria, if there is a balanced and honest political will to do so.
Igbo are after true nation-building, the consensual unity of component ethnic nationalities of Nigeria; and not mere constitutions, which can be achieved by simply arranging for some clever draughtsmen to as usual produce an “indivisibility” document “uniting all Nigerians,” with an almost zero regard to the peoples’ will or the actual unity of all Nigerians.
A constitution, written or unwritten is axiomatic, but comes last; it is a set of principles defining relations between elements of an organism in structural-functional relationships. In politics the elements first agree to relate or are determined, followed by the rules governing their conduct.
OTHER DETAILS
Terrorist sponsors returning to business in Igboland after the interlude?
The Igbo and many other Easterners once again appreciate the distinguished President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for the gradual improvements in security in the East due to his prompt action on assumption of office, and humbly call the attentions of His Excellency that there still appears to be groups or individuals in official and non-official circles not comfortable with any peace Eastwards, circles nostalgic of the eight years of free mayhem, and bent on continuing from where Your Excellency stopped them mid-2023, to export disaster to the Region on any pretexts.
Many Nigerians hosting them know that most Igbo and other Easterners are a very peace-loving community, essentially defensive in nature, and had at no time since 1970 declared war on the federal government, although it is well-known that not every Igbo child had been comfortable with armed terrorists invading and destroying farms, seizing the highways and footpaths, kidnapping and killing their parents and other innocent citizens sometimes even after collecting ransoms, managing to enlist some unemployed and hungry Igbo youths into their ranks, and with none of them since mid-2015, ever brought to justice even when by “mistake” they get arrested or exposed.
In one of countless other occasions the terrorists, with N100, 000, 000.00 ransom already pocketed, had to boast to a captured Archbishop Kanu Uche and his humiliated colleagues that they had come to forcefully settle in Igboland and that any community that dares oppose them would receive the full wrath of “the armed forces.”
The Igbo don’t lift a sword against any guests or whomsoevers, and would not in the future change that noble tradition, but, particularly since mid-2015 have witnessed war, bloodshed and mayhem systematically brought to their doorsteps, farms and highways, with hardly anyone having an effective answer to the calamity. And, for eight years the known or suspected perpetrators of these crimes were both judge and jury blaming the victims and controlling the false narrative to the world. Hence the cheering regard by almost every Easterner, especially those of us in the APC of His Excellency President Ahmed Tinubu’s emergence as a saving grace, because we felt that coming from a group that values life and progress, he is the one with whom the Igbo can partner to reverse whatever short-sighted actions taken by Zik, Awo and others. So, let not the Yoruba, Igbo and other Nigerians continue to bemoan anything, and miss the golden opportunity to correct any mistakes of the past, and help Nigerians unite to reset the country upon new civilizational foundations.
But, those molesting and killing the Igbo are back into business despite the respite that President Tinubu brought and hope he symbolized. In just these few days or weeks, a medical doctor was seized in Enugu; a man was reportedly snatched in a heavily “armied” and policed Enugu to Nsukka highway and his poor family made to cough out a whopping N30, 000, 000.00 or so to secure his release; a bus carrying medical students along the Enugu-Makurdi road was intercepted and no one knows whether the poor souls have been ransomed, killed for not being ransomed early, or organ-harvested; the School of Health Technology, Oji River was invaded and the poor boys and girls carted away with no help or sympathy from anybody. The new mayhems have been let loose inside the 5 eastern states or routes most travelled by their peoples as if to recoup the days missed in the interlude created by our Mr. President’s non-continuation policy. The bazaar is returning; it’s alleged that every “officer” bribes to be posted to the East, and the Igbo/East are once again returning to helplessness; “if you talk you would be killed, if you don’t talk you would die nevertheless,” is gradually returning as the “wisest” approach to die. We are yet to touch the inhumane killing of 5 or 6 innocent soldiers at Aba, with no explanation how armed soldiers could be concentrated at a spot and wiped out in a jiffy without proven resistance. Whereas security has improved remarkably since the last one year, the hordes manufacturing insecurity in Nigeria now seem to be descending on the “Southeast” as their “approved” bastion of “operations.” The Igbo have no option than continually appealing to His Excellency our President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not to allow a resumption of these orchestrations in the East; as they are ending in Nigeria let them also end in the East.
“‘Problems’ with neighbours” and restructuring
Since his seminal Path to Nigerian freedom (1947), the sage, Baba Obafemi Awolowo and other great Yoruba compatriots, have been in the forefront of the advocacy for the restructuring of Nigeria on ethno-linguistic and related cultural principles. It is therefore no surprise that it is from our Yoruba brothers that the discourse has this 2024 acquired a new momentum under a Yoruba-led Presidency of Nigeria. If the restructuring is undertaken with a genuine honesty of purpose for a nation-building that benefits everybody, there could be no worthier legacy for our President and party. Hence, almost every group has joined the moving train, each one making their positions known, in the hope that a truly new and just Nigeria is in the offing for the benefit of everybody.
Partly due to the “balancing” position of the Igbo, unlike elsewhere in Nigeria, since antiquity not a single Eastern ethnic nationality has ever levied war against the other. Over the almost 600 years of modernity, each used her coastal ports without let or hindrance in maritime relations with Western powers, often in mutual cooperation. But, once Nigeria happened to everybody and the boundless riches of the East were discovered, Europeans and others needed Igbo and their neighbours to have “problems” to enable a malign access to these resources. Nothing became as sweet to some ears than that the Igbo and their neighbours are “bitter enemies,” when in fact European tribes hardly were speaking to each other at the time.
Nigerians should not inherit this false mentality. There is not a single Nigerian ethnic group outside the East that cannot be made to be a “bitter enemy” to their neighbours, not that this divide-and-rule generated situation is acceptable or normal! Neighbours are the best of everything, except when any is misled against the other.
The Igbo-neighbour “enmity” is therefore an imported cancer and self-chosen false weltanschauung on which its merchants built their castles in the divide-and-rule colonial misgovernance of Nigeria, and inherited, encouraged or adopted by some Nigerian elites for their purposes, now including on restructuring. The Igbo-neighbours divide-and-rule enables its propagators to mischievously separate the Annang-Efik-main Ibibio, Bini, Ekoi, Idoma, Igala, Ijaw, Ishan, Isoko, Itsekiri, Ogojas, Ogoni, Urhobo, and others from their almost harmless Igbo kith and kin; to seize the oil and other resources of these great peoples; to destroy their environments and continually impoverish their communities; to militarily occupy and victimize their unhappy peoples; to render their cities, forests, vast lands in the Middle Belt redundant instead of modernizing and preparing them for the AfCFTA; to encourage them to lay falsified claims on Igbo anythings as reward for playing the game of Igbophobism, to suggest that their survival lies in Igbo destruction, their prosperity in their impoverishment, and their security in their insecurity. All this, to ensure an everlasting disharmony, enmity and volatility, East, South and Middle Belt of Nigeria.
Particularly since 1967, this “Igbo problem with their neighbours” became an industry determining the prosperity, rise and rise of sundry individuals, while their masses suffer in unhygienic life, hunger and penury.
Let it be declared umpteenth time to the world that the Igbo have no problem with any neighbours more than others have with theirs, except a choice refrain ever since destroying these good nationalities. Unlike elsewhere the Igbo never at any time targeted neighbours for eradication, at no time exploited their resources that never existed in the first place until a 1961 to 1965 thinly spread trickling oil revenues after thousands of years of relationships in which the Igbo bore the brunt of subsidizing the Eastern economy, using Igbo resources to accommodate all, because everyone knew themselves as one. Till today the Igbo are deprived of reciprocity from a great oil wealth that was in vain pleaded to help develop any part of Igbo society. This lack of reciprocity the Igbo blame not on neighbours, since they too are in no control of what was freely given them by God, and rightly theirs.
The Igbo are happy with the great wealth embedded beneath and above their neighbours, but, unfortunately realize that only through the swords of disharmony sown between the Igbo and others do some people imagine they can endlessly be snatching these resources instead of the peace and justice that the Igbo offer.
Therefore, the first choice for the Igbo in any restructuring remains an enlarged Eastern unity up to any consensual point even including Yorubaland on civilizational basis, together with the great Benin Empire/Edo state, and embracing the Bassa, Idoma, and Igala, all on mutually agreed terms. The Igbo believe that restructuring offers an opportunity for laying the foundations for a return in modern times to the mutualities of yore. Hence, regardless of anything, the offer for extended regional unity is on the table, for each group to decide what to do.
On Internal Restructuring and Inter-Ethnic or Regional Mergers.
There is no ethnic nationality without own internal issues, necessitating agreement on how to live peacefully together – hence, internal restructuring. The Igbo republican tradition appreciates that internal freedom and diversity from child to family to society are a source of strength, same way that though “tribe and tongue” may differ, they nevertheless constitute a potential source of power, unity and prosperity in Nigeria. To translate these diversities into advantage, all that is required is for each Region, whether homogenous or multi-ethnic, to have its own internal restructuring expressed in a Regional constitution to address its domestic issues, either before or after the national restructuring.
DIVERSE OPINIONS EVERYWHERE.
Like many other Nigerians most Igbo progressives are keenly aware that nothing may at this point rescue the country and put it on the right track than a total and comprehensive ideologically driven peaceful socioeconomic and political revolution. But, with guns recklessly pointed at all azimuths by the exploiting classes, and divide-and-rule ethnoreligious manipulations to complement, the progressive elites and masses deny themselves the organizational capacity for this historical necessity. Therefore the only other means of peacefully liberating the country and people is a form of restructuring able to grant to each group a reasonable capacity for the full expression of their individual and collective potentials. Peoples have been oppressed beyond measure and now divided into four broad categories:
~ Nationalities or groups of nationalities seeking independent statehood outside Nigeria, preferably through a UN-conducted referendum. At the forefront of this absolute or external self-determination are those Igbo and allies for Biafra; maybe those for a Yoruba nation or Oduduwa Republic; and other nationalities mostly in the South but gradually embracing the Middle Belt contemplating the main direction of the wind before making up their minds.
~ The elites of some nationalities who, while acknowledging the legitimate rights to self-determination both in natural, domestic and international laws, are equally aware of the severe domestic and external limitations for their exercise, are ready to unite for an honest restructuring of the polity to grant a level of internal or relative self-determination to the various nationalities or groupings thereof to peacefully stabilize the polity.
~ The corrupt and compromised system beneficiaries of sundry characterizations who are opposed to any genuine restructuring or fundamental change, and propagating that it is they that are destroying the country that are the patriots while dishonestly accusing those recommending restructuring as either seeking a confederation or disintegration of Nigeria. This group has malign linkages both within themselves and with external entities bent on the continuing destruction of Nigeria.
~ The politically nonchalant or ignorant, mostly within the poorest classes and generally unable to help themselves except mobilized to do so.
The Igbo in the second group desire nothing different from what most other Nigerians are asking for: a restructured new arrangement based on ethnic nationalities or groups thereof, with a degree of relative self-determination to unleash the potentials of every citizen and nationality. A fair restructuring would create conditions favourable to consensual unity without the necessity of using brute force to bludgeon everyone to “love” One Nigeria, and prove that the peoples in the space called Nigeria are not domiciled in perpetuity to evil, but capable of building a modern democratic society favourable to all her citizens.
REGIONALISM.
Like colonised peoples everywhere, every divide-and-rule tactic has been applied to selectively separate Nigerian, especially Eastern tribes into mutually antagonistic entities, but, despite the cruel policy promoting animosity to ensure unimpeded exploitation of their boundless prosperities, Nigerians have largely managed to sustain their common identities as Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and so on. We appeal that the divide-and-rule policy is no longer necessary in the East or elsewhere, since a peaceful formula now exists for the exploitation of the resources of various peoples, nevertheless. This is why given centuries-long mutually beneficial sanguinary and historical ties and advantages of the economies of scale, restoring and enlarging the original Regions is always the first choice for the Igbo in matters of restructuring the Nigerian polity.
Nature is a formula
Nature had already structured peoples into territories, and only requires an honest political-administrative imprint for harmonious nation-building – hence, organic restructuring.
With good leadership and honesty of purpose political restructuring is neither rocket science nor reinvention of the wheel, for it has been successfully accomplished in several other countries. The general formula is for the relatively big or “special” ethnic nationalities or cultural entities like the English, Fulani, Hausa, Hindu, Igbo, Scotts, Sikhs, Yoruba, Welsh, etc to each stand alone as a uni-ethnic homogenous unit, while the rest are variously joined together into competitive multi-ethnic regions, provided that the following (Willink’s Commission report, page 47) are observed:
a. “the principle of self-determination:” the group must desire to be separate and united;
b. “the principle of ethnic relationship:” the people should be “as nearly as possible homogenous;”
c. “the principle of geographical contiguity:” the people should be indigenous within a piece of “continuous and compact piece of territory;” and
d. “the principle of viability:” the unit should constitute “a self-contained economic unit” – this enjoins relatively smaller ethnic nationalities to federate into single regions.
In the special circumstances of Nigeria, the four general principles would be supplemented by three special provisions, as follows:
e. A formal commitment, embodied in a binding resolution to seek a consensual solution to Nigeria’s problems.
f. An initial equality of regions between the original North and original South, without prejudice to the possibility of voluntary mergers on civilizational or other grounds.
g. In the South a retention of each region’s traditional contiguity to their coastal ports; and, in the North, to either the Niger or Benue Rivers or Lake Chad, in anticipation of their ultimate dredging to the coast.
CHOICE BETWEEN 2 and 12 BALANCED and EFFICIENT REGIONS.
Taking into account the general principles applicable to restructuring and the supplementary provisions special to Nigeria, in addition to saving the costs of governance and triggering a development revolution, Nigeria might need to choose between 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 Regions, as follows:
. . . Two regions comprising the original North and original South.
. . . Four regions comprising an adjusted Eastern and Western regions in the South; a Middle Belt and far North regions in the North.
. . . Six regions with the Igbo, Yoruba in the South each down to the coast, plus a truncated “SouthSouth” region whose contiguity has been breached by the Igbo Port Harcourt to Bonny and Azumini to Opobo contiguities to the coast; and, in the North, a Middle Belt region split longitudinally into two, plus a mostly islamic Hausa-Fulani-Kanuri region. Because of contradictions between ethnic homogeneity, contiguity, and independent coastal access in the South, and necessity of restoring a Hausa region independent of the Fulani caliphate, a just six regional structure would be nearly impossible without voluntary mergers by other Southern ethnic nationalities with the Igbo and Yoruba on one hand, and continued Hausa and Kanuri acquiescence to servitude under the Fulani, on the other.
. . . Eight regions would be expressed by an AkwaCross or original South Eastern state, an Igbo-Obollo/Andony-Ogoni federation, a Bini/Edo-Ijaw-Ishan-Isoko-Itsekiri-Urhobo federation, and a Yoruba region, all in the South; plus two Middle Belt and two far North regions on agreed terms.
. . . Ten Regions would mean five in the South: Igbo or Eastern Region; Yoruba or Western Region; AkwaCross, the original South Eastern State as Southeast Region; Obollo/Andony with Ogoni as Southern Region; and a federated Bini/Edo-Ijaw-Ishan-Isoko-Itsekiri-Urhobo as Southwest Region. In the North two Middle Belt Regions would be complemented with three separate Regions for the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri and their various cultural affiliates. The ten Regions seem most ideal for Nigerian unity, essentially meeting all the general principles and supplementary provisions for a properly restructured polity.
. . . Twelve Regions would mean extracting the Ijaw from the Southwest federated region to constitute a Niger Delta Region contiguous between Burutu/Escravos and New Calabar River with multiple developable ports. In the North a third Middle Belt would complement the separate Hausa, Fulani, and Kanuri, regions.
NIGERIANS ARE INVITED TO MORE CLOSELY EXAMINE THE FOUR-, TEN-, AND TWELVE-REGIONAL ARRANGEMENTS.
Except if what they want is for each of the country’s 250 to 300 or so ethno-linguistic groups to constitute her own Region. A FOUR, TEN, or TWELVE regional Nigeria should pursue a militarily non-aligned Afrocentric policy, promoting peaceful coexistence abroad as she does within.
Listening to Forebears for Civilizational Preservation
Those who speak the same language, or ethnic nationalities in Nigeria seeking to control their destiny is a part response to an existential emergency, occasioned by attempts by others to eliminate or subordinate them, and their survival promotes rather than detracts from national unity. On the other hand, identity politics is discrimination or policy based mostly on natural attributes like tribe or race beyond the victim’s control, and it stands condemned by civilized mankind. Restructuring to ensure the survival of ethnic nationalities, preserve their civilizations, and solve the national question is, therefore, not identity politics, or merely about the institutions of government, but more about the structures of governance and polity, the basis upon which the superstructures are erected.
Once a foundation is faulty the building, however lofty in other parametres and decorations would be sinking every moment until it finally collapses by its own weight. And, repositioning the kitchens, parlours and dining rooms, transferring the library upstairs to the corners below, or imposing new “rules of engagement” on life in the crumbling edifice, otherwise called devolution of powers, far from improving the solidity of a house erected on false foundations might merely hasten its collapse. Hence, regardless of the ideals of class or classless society, peoples nevertheless continue to derive meaning from the civilizations they inherited, and appreciate their recognition as units of political administration.
That was probably why Chief Awolowo, in recognition of the individuality of Nigeria’s ethnic civilizations had earlier declared that “In a . . . federation, each ethnic group, no matter how small, is entitled to the same treatment as any other ethnic group, no matter how large.” Nnamdi Azikiwe in a 1949 Aba gathering would address the uncertainties of the time thus: “The Ibo people have reached a crossroad . . . with routes leading to diverse goals, but . . . I can safely recommend . . . (the) road to self-determination . . . within the framework of a federated Nigeria and the Cameroons . . . an Ibo state, based on linguistic and ethnic factors . . . side by side with other linguistic and ethnic groups . . . each as separate as the fingers, but united with others as a part of the same hand.”
Before them, two illustrious Africans who happened to be Igbo had declared their people to the world as a nation fit for independent statehood. “From the time I left my own nation,” narrated Olaudah Equiano in the 18th century, “I always found somebody that understood me till I came to the sea coast.” Little doubt then that in the 19th another nation-builder followed, whose political struggles, writings and “philosophies became the basis for future African independence,” starting with his “Empire of the Eboes . . . between the Rivers Niger and Old Calabar, and bounded on the north by the left or Binue branch of the first river, on the south by the Atlantic, on the East by Old Calabar . . . and on the west by the River Niger” – Dr. James Africanus Beale Horton.
Yes, careless references to tribe and tongue could be a starting point for discrimination, but that was not so for those illustrious forebears for whom they signified nations and civilizations, and might also be an acknowledgement of the positive influence of diversity in advancing progress.
It’s not possible for the United Kingdom to have achieved that global renown if the special talents of the Scots had been suppressed in condemnation of “identity politics.” Therefore, restructuring based on ethnic nationalities, where patriotically applied, far from identity politics, can be a stable civilizational approach to nation-building.
Ethnic nationalities or cultural groups are civilizational integers which in every civilized society promote unity by exciting the interdependence and mutual emulation that inheres in their diversity. Above all, once existential fears envelop society the way happening in Nigeria, there is no honest solution or restructuring than taking those fears into account and encourage the preordained spiritual and other unity between peoples and their lands. Hence, the Land Use Act, a part expression of Organic Restructuring, according to both of which the peoples and their lands are organically linked together and, in effect, far from obstructing, actually promotes national unity.
ON REFERENDUMS.
Nigerians are fully aware that any important political change in a country would certainly be re-constitutive in nature, with some attributes of a state treaty inherent thereof and, therefore, subject to a single question referendum or a multi-choice plebiscite. What the Igbo are opposed to is either a factional expulsion of any nationality from the federation as happened in April 1990, or threats to impose a purported “referendum” or “plebiscite” on any group or extracted portions thereof.
If and when necessary, let there be a referendum or plebiscite on any existential or other vital issues, but, on agreed consensual terms for all Nigerians at the same time, preferably under the supervision of the United Nations, for some credibility.
ELEMENTS of TRUE RESTRUCTURING.
In summary, the Igbo greatly commend all those who have dared make inputs into the debates on new governance model, constitutional review, restructuring, regionalism, and referendum, for the considerable intellectual exertions involved in doing so. Injustices and sufferings in Nigeria have reached monumental proportions and other than a total mass revolution, Nigeria should be restructured based on four elements:
~ New constitutive units based on ethnic nationalities or groupings thereof.
~ Resource ownership and control, otherwise “true federalism,” a component of which is fiscal federalism.
~ Military-security reorganization. In particular, Nigeria should change from what appears to be a neocolonial to a national army friendly to and part of the people, instead of seeming to be a class apart at war with them. This can be achieved in many ways, including regionalization, a massive doctrinal re-orientation, a post-secondary compulsory military service, and so on.
~ National ethos or ideology. A restructured new Nigeria must be a modern democratic secular state of equal laws and equal applications based on universal, civilized common law principles covering everybody, so as to promote law and order, ease of doing business, marriage, harmonious social life, intra-youth convivialities, etc. All great powers fought to eliminate caliphates from the societies of civilized man, and Nigeria cannot be its dumping ground. The caliphate, its sharia and their cuttings, amputations, stonings, beheadings, and so on applied to whomsoevers should therefore be abolished with instant effect. Islam, like other religions of peace, should in Nigeria not be a religion of war and violence against any citizens. Same applies to other faiths.
The Igbo earnestly appeal to all Nigerians to examine this presentation thoroughly, so as to enable us prove to the world that the black man is capable of building an equitable and stable modern society that can stand the test of time. Restructuring is a golden opportunity to build an egalitarian new Nigeria devoid of the injustices, fears and anxieties of today.
SIGNED:
Prof. Obasi Igwe
Director Media and Publicity
United Igbo Elders Council (UNIEC) Worldwide
August 22, 2024.
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