In his seminal work, The Trouble with Nigeria, the great writer and polemicist, Chinua Achebe, did a critique of his country. It may as well pass as a critique of Ndigbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, Bini or any other ethnic group that make up the giant of Africa. In fact, Achebe devoted a chapter of the booklet to the Igbo problem. We shall return to this theme later in this article. The slim volume of 68 pages written in 1983 by the great novelist can be said to be one of his most quoted works till date.
In this book, Achebe traced the Nigerian problem to failure of leadership. From the time the book was published till date, Nigeria’s problem still has to do with poor and uninspiring leadership. According to him, ‘the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.’ Nigeria’s other problem the author noted is tribalism. All our efforts to expunge tribalism from our national life have proved futile. Achebe had observed: ‘Nothing in Nigeria’s political history captures her problem of national integration more graphically than the chequered fortune of the word tribe in her vocabulary. Tribe has been accepted at one time as a friend, rejected as an enemy at another, and finally smuggled in through the back-door as an accomplice.’
Even the old and the new national anthem did or whichever way you want to place them not escape Achebe’s criticism. His view on the national anthems is deep and worth quoting in full. According to Achebe, ‘then a strange thing happened at our independence in 1960. Our national anthem, our very hymn of deliverance from British colonial bondage, was written for us by a British woman who unfortunately had not been properly briefed on the current awkwardness of the word tribe. So we found ourselves on independence morning rolling our tongues around the very same trickster godling: Though tribe and tongue may differ/In brotherhood we stand!’
Achebe further underscored that ‘it was a most ominous beginning. And not surprisingly we did not stand too long in brotherhood. Within six years we were standing and sprawling on a soil soaked in fratricidal blood. When it finally ceased to flow, we were ready for a new anthem written this time by ourselves. And we took care to expunge the jinxed word tribe. And to be absolutely certain we buried the alien anthem in its own somnolent evangelical hymn juice (concocted incidentally by another British woman, the third in a remarkable line, the first being Lugard’s girl-friend who christened us Nigeria) and invoked the natural dance rhythm of our highlife to mark our national rebirth.’
Forty-one years after Achebe’s keen observation, we are back to the old national anthem of tongues and tribes and brotherhood. On the Igbo problem, Achebe wrote: ‘Nigerians of other ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo. They would also describe them as aggressive, arrogant and clannish.’ He also noted: The real problem with the Igbo since Independence is precisely the absence of the kind of central leadership which their competitors presume for them. This lack has left them open to self-seeking, opportunistic leaders who offered them no help at all in coping with a new Nigeria in which individual progress would no longer depend on the rules set by a fairly impartial colonial umpire.’
In his fine article in the Daily Sun of May 27, 2024, entitled: ‘Igbo: People in search of leader revisited, Ejike Anyaduba rightly observed: ‘A cursory look at Nigerian power equation reveals that the Igbo are facing decided threats in the power game in the country. Nine years after the Nigeria-Biafra war, an Igbo man was elected Nigeria’s civilian Vice-President. Fifty-four years later, the same people are struggling to be appointed to positions that otherwise should be theirs. They have been turned out of the doors of power and unduly exposed to suspicious charges. Efforts to reclaim and possibly surpass previous attainments got fritted away by political inexperience of parvenus.’ Every Igbo person should note Anyaduba’s forthrightness and be thinking and working on how to salvage the situation.
Due to the republican nature of Ndigbo, they hardly speak with one voice on any issue that concerns them. Even in the matter of which of the two major Igbo dialects, Onitsha Igbo and Owerri Igbo, the Igbo orthography will be written dragged for so long and delayed further development of Igbo language and by extension Igbo Studies. This can explain why we have two versions of Igbo Bible, the Owerri dialect version and the Onitsha dialect version. This problem was however resolved when scholars like F.C. Ogbalu, E.N. Emenanjo and other Igbo scholars yielded to the use of the central Igbo dialect in the writing of Igbo. The central Igbo is an amalgam of Owerri and Onitsha Igbo. Despite the standardization of Igbo language, people still use and write in their dialects or try to approximate to central Igbo. In music and Nollywood films, the various Igbo dialects still come alive.
The individualistic nature of Ndigbo has worsened the political advancement of the South-East in Nigeria’s extant democracy. During the birth of the present political dispensation in 1999, which brought President Olusegun Obasanjo into office as a civilian president, the South-East was offered the position of Senate President. Probably because of our lack of unity, the seat was allowed to rotate among the five states of the region in Obasanjo’s eight years in power. That political instability in the Senate robbed the region of any benefits that would have come from it.
In the history of state creation in Nigeria, the South-East zone has been the most marginalized. From one state, East Central State, during Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s state creation of 1967 to two states, Anambra and Imo, in Gen. Murtala Muhammed’s state creation exercise of 1976. During Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s state creation exercise, the South-East was given two additional states of Abia and Enugu. Gen. Sani Abacha topped it with Ebonyi State, and Abacha’s state creation exercise brought the number of states in the country to 36. While the North-West has seven states, the rest has six states each. South East remains the only region with five states. All efforts to give the South-East the sixth state has been thwarted by forces both within and outside the region. Since then every attempt by the Igbo to present a united front in demanding for just one state has not been successful. Past movements for creation of states in the region include, Njaba, Aba, Etiti, Adada and Orashi. Among all of them, Njaba was the most popular and featured prominently in the 2014 national conference.
Recently, Mr. Ikenga Ugochineyere and some members in the House of Representatives came up with a bill for the creation of Orlu State, which in conceptualization is not remarkably different from what the canvassers of Etiti State had in mind, a state made up every part of the existing five Igbo states, a sort of a rainbow Igbo State. Following the criticisms that trailed Ugochinyere’s Orlu State, there are strong indications that the movers of that state may change to ANIM State which will comprise Orlu and Ihiala zones. ANIM is also not significantly different from the former Njaba State movement. I do not know if the present administration will even embark on the creation of states now or in future. Whether the Tinubu administration will create states or not, the South-East remains the only geopolitical zone that deserves additional state. But the way and manner some of our people are shooting down any movement for th e creation of additional state for the zone is utterly selfish, unpatriotic and unnecessary. The vehement criticisms and the discordant tunes over the proposed creation of Orlu State border on clannishness and individualism which other ethnic groups associate with the Igbo. For Ndigbo to get the additional state during the anticipated state creation, they must begin to speak with one voice. The current multiplicity of views over the creation of Orlu State, or Njaba, Adada or Anioma as some Ndigbo are even advocating, cannot really help our cause. As a people we must begin to think and speak as a group on some national and even regional issues. Ndigbo have achieved so much as individuals. Unfortunately, we cannot honestly beat our chest that we have achieved so much as a group in Nigeria’s democracy.
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