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Reacting To Wumi Akintide’s Igbo-Yoruba Collaboration

October 20, 2014

Indeed, Dr. Wumi Akintide is one of the many writers that deserve resounding accolades, those who write for a better united Nigeria rather than a divided one, those who perhaps write through the wide eyes of the enslaved Nigerians rather than through the blind eyes of the government. I have truly savoured some of his writings and on getting to the last full stop I will say ‘yes, this is the way we should go’. His recent topic reads; “Igbo and Hausa collaboration can change Nigeria if they bury the hatchet for once” which was published on www.saharareporters.com and www.chatafrik.com. The topic is so haunting that you could do away with your lunch in order to grasp its contents. Wumi succeeded in taking us down the memory lane, excavating the activities of those who seem to be the fore fathers of this country and pinpointed the various ways they have hated and loved themselves. How they formed the NCNC, the NPC, the AC and how they failed in their attempts to build a great Nigeria. Wonderful! However central this history may be, the more probable truth is that they are just the crap no one should be bothered with at this point. There are indeed more pressing things to talk about than how and why our purported fathers failed. Abeg tell that to their graves.

Be that as it may, I still have other problems with Wumi’s collaboration pattern basically because it is as cold as the dead country he was trying to resurrect. To begin with, a collaboration that ignores any tribe in favour of others cannot bring about the unity we need and will apparently succeed in growing the abhorrence we may have suffered over the years. My convictions about this are spurred by the fact that Wumi’s collaboration insinuates that the northerners (as well as other smaller tribes) deserve to be sidelined in leadership (on grounds known to Wumi alone). This obviously betrays every effort that may be geared towards bringing Nigeria together by such collaboration. One may as well ask, what’s more tribalistic than this domineering approach? I am aware that one of the very many things that exacerbated the civil war was that the Igbos were seen to be more assertive than every other tribe in Nigeria. Where this is the case, would you expect the northerners and of course the other minority to be silent and watch the coalition of the Igbo and Yoruba being imposed on them? You cannot preach unity well, however high your tone is, by tagging a particular set of persons in the same group as the pathetic half. Regrettably, this is what Wumi has done.

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Secondly, Wumi’s historical overview that smartly invented hatred specifically between two tribes alone is rather too selective. I would have been more comfortable if Wumi had said that due to lack of discipline and lies from our fathers, Nigerians have bred incorrigible hatred amongst themselves that it now runs in their bloodstreams. Mind you that hatred in Nigeria today is drifting from tribal point of view to religious cum socio-political points of view. So that if you are not a member of my church, then you are worthless, if you are not a member of my political party you are as good as dead, if we do not share the same social background, to hell with you. It really behoves me that most Nigerians still do not see all these behavioural hazards. Besides, when you say that the progress of this country has been stuck up in the enmity between the Igbos and the Yorubas, it may well mean that the Igbos are in good terms with the northerners to whom they lost the dreaded war, and that the Yorubas as well, are deeply in love with the northerners that they purportedly (through Wumi’s vision) see to be ignorant. In dissecting the problems of this country, we should bear in mind that the allotment of blames has surpassed the tribes. It is now on individual basis because every Nigerian (home or abroad, dead or alive) has either played a part in bringing Nigeria into disrepute or has refused to do something to make it a better place.

Thirdly, a write-up that insinuates that the Igbos have perpetual hatred for the Yorubas, while the Yorubas have been saintly towards their Igbo counterparts is rather worrisome as the story is somewhat intentionally half-baked. I was deeply stunned by the following lines from Wumi’s thoughts: “Azikiwe…was willing to play ball with the north because he figured it out that the Igbos were going to dominate their senior partner. If he had to choose between his peoples’ interest and the greater interest of Nigeria, the choice was clear for Zik. Most Igbos still share the same mindset till now. They would rather go with a party led and dominated by the northerners than the one dominated by the Yorubas. I don’t care what promises the Igbos make to the APC today, the great majority of them are going to vote for the PDP because they are scared of the Yorubas. In my opinion, they want the Yorubas to experience the same genocide they have endured but the Yorubas are too smart for that. It is not going to happen.” Two things struck me when I read these lines. One, how did Wumi come about the discourteous lines on genocide highlighted above which he blatantly called his opinion? Two, is Wumi’s write-up merely a conduit pipe for winning more Igbo members for the APC? On the first question, I will rather remain speechless until Wumi explains how he came about that thought. On the second, it is needless to emphasize that the APC is as questionable as the PDP. The only thing that makes them political parties is that both of them are registered with the INEC, nothing more. Whoever votes for one has invariably voted the other. So what’s the point in making so much noise about which party the great majority of Nigerians are going to vote for? Well, if Wumi’s thoughts were not APC-driven, his last line wouldn’t be: “I urge Nigerians to throw the PDP out of power in 2015”

Consequently, when I thought I could live with Wumi’s bad judgement, he swiftly lost my accolades in his conclusion that: “part II of this piece will address in some detail what the Yorubas have done to show that they do in fact love the Igbos more than the Igbos love them. It will explore in all its ramifications what Nigeria stands to gain from Igbo and Yoruba collaboration…” I would have waited for this enviable part two of Wumi’s thoughts to be published, but it is needless bearing in mind that it could emerge to worsen my understanding of what ideal love and collaboration in a country like Nigeria should be. Those who write in favour of a particular tribe (in the bid to discourage tribalism) in total disregard of the other (however minute), either end up leaving the situation as it was before they picked up their pen or create another worse situation. Instead of sanitizing the ruined minds of the people, you end up resuscitating what seemed to have been forgotten.  It’s not my intension to toe the same path of pointing fingers selectively like Wumi, but then, one may want to ask; what’s more disloyal of a lover than being silent when the Igbos died in the hands of the north that Wumi has calculatedly linked with the Igbos? Apparently, there is no answer this. Besides, history has written its books, we can only re-direct it.

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The brilliant author Dan Brown was very much convinced as I’m now when he opined that ‘the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought’. This is the food the ruling class and its cohorts have always cooked when they want to engage the grassroots citizens. And anytime it happens, the ignorant ones will be excited that their tribesman is in power even when they have nothing to benefit from that selfish tribesman; absolutely nothing. So that it should not bother you further (if it ever bothered you) why the ‘ethnic saga’ is at the vanguard of the barrel of troubles that has swallowed us up for decades; so that if you have a mind that works, you will not be caught up by the tricks of those who divert our attention from their rude governance bound by ineptitude and selfishness to the cross-roads of which people is more advanced than the other, or which people hate or love the other most. Young people should wake up and take responsibility for what happens to them. If you are bad you are bad, that you are from Jerusalem will not change you. Only discipline. I have seen Igbo brothers and sisters who are not any better than the devil and I am sure someone from other tribes has come across a brother who is the devil himself; and the same thing applies to good people. Enough of all these twists; enough of indiscipline. Enough of Wumi’s collaboration for the enthronement of the APC, an annex of the PDP. The truth is that if APC wins the presidential election, the PDP members will simply defect to the APC and vice versa. They will all continue from there until the baton is switched again. Upon Fayose’s swearing in, about 5 lawmakers in Ekiti state defected from APC to PDP. Does that ring any bell Wumi?  Abeg, hide your part two make young people see road pass.

KELECHI ATTAMAH

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Follow me on @kelechiattamah.

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