ALTHOUGH my effort here is the place of Igbos in the political scheme of things in the face of the raging debate on “the principle of power rotation or zoning” in Nigeria; I have commenced this treatise deliberately with the above title fully convinced that by origin of the Igbo, we are not just found in Nigeria only; there are Igbos in the Diaspora and we have accepted ourselves as descendants of children of Abraham, the Jewish patriarch.
So we are part of the African Jews whose ancestry is traced to Israel and relatives are found in Ethiopia. The Jews and their descendants have suffered several persecutions in different parts of the world. The story of concentration camps in Hitler’s Germany is a common feature in history books for those who are not familiar with the story of the persecution and killing of six million Jews.
The story and persecution of the Igbo in Nigeria is also well-known in the country. Wherever they are found, the Igbo and Jews have been major creators of and contributors to human progress. The Jews are a major force in the United States on the basis of their creativity and resourcefulness; so are the Igbo in Nigeria, nation-builders despite institutionalised marginalisation by state authorities.
The civil war between the Nigerian State and the Igbos in Nigeria that lasted from 1967 to 1970 is a story of self-defense in the face of genocidal attacks. Since after the civil war, this race mainly found in the South Eastern part of Nigeria have been in the struggle for self- rediscovery and reassertion in the mainstream of the Nigeria’s national life. This has been very challenging!
The Igbo have faced their greatest obstacle in the process of taking their rightful place in the post-civil war Nigeria in the political front. There have been planned and sustained effort to keep them out of the control of state power. The Nigerian state has operated for over 40 years on the basis of Igbo-phobia, particularly in the era of military juntas who coincidentally fought the war.
Despite this situation of affairs; the Igbos have carried on with their lives with a kind of determination that is uncommon among mere mortals. They have also worked for civil rule and democracy which from every indication offers them more in terms of a voice and a stake in the national scheme of things.
They have always brought their best to participate in all the civil debates in terms of constitutional conferences, political reform conferences that are geared towards creating a more equitable and just society, where no man will be discriminated against on the bases of tribe, ethnicity or religion.
This was the background and condition under which the Constitutional Reform Conference was held in 1995 where the issue of power rotation among the various sections of the country was conceived. It was at the conference that the former Vice-President, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, an Igbo, in a sheer display of political wizardry and ingenuity developed a political master-plan for the sustenance of the unity and stability of the country.
He divided the country into six geo-political zones for the purposes of distributing or sharing national positions, including the rotation of presidential powers.
This idea was vehemently opposed by the North but however, reluctantly accepted and included in the constitution that was to be promulgated by then Head of State, General Abacha.The sudden death of Abacha changed a lot of this plan as that constitution was extensively altered by Abdulsalmi Abubakar who inherited the throne after Abacha’s death. One of the casualties of the alteration was the zoning principle. It became purely a political party affair which have successfully run for 10 years now by the ruling PDP. By that simple calculation of power sharing between North and South, the Igbos would be producing the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by 2015.
However, the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has also thrown up another challenge that is trying to rubbish the little success Nigeria has achieved in political re-engineering. The Goodluck Jonathan presidency constitutes a major hindrance in the efforts of the Igbo people to assume leadership of the country by 2015.
Comments