Nigerian Igbo complain about political “marginalization”. While true because of the civil war, and while Nigeria needs “a new grand bargain” between its ethnic nationalities, the Igbo themselves have harmed themselves. We must first shed our (political) victim mentality.
Then we must address the disadvantage of being “led” by selfish, greedy and self-centered political elite masquerading as political and social-cultural leaders who are the first to shoot down their own.
Many Igbo leaders are fine men and women. But there are too many that are envious and self-hating, choosing to be politically second-class so long as it serves their little interests. Ndigbo need a strategy, with high impact strategic engagement with other ethnic nationalities with a win-win proposition, not just ethnic political noise-making.
Do you think it’s a surprise that Barack Obama became US president despite the attempts of many other black Americans like Jesse Jackson? Obama succeeded because he did not have a chip on his shoulder, though he acknowledged the systemic injustice of racism.
But he had a proposition, not just a sense of entitlement. He was able to largely because he was the son of Kenyan man and a white American mother who did not descend from a line of former slaves and therefore was spared of their psychological insecurities. The joke in Kenya is that a Luo (his father was from the Luo tribe) could be a US president but not a Kenyan one!
I ran for President in 2019 as a Nigerian candidate, not as an Igbo candidate, and no apologies. I am a proud Igbo and love Ndigbo. But I also love other Nigerians of other ethnicities, unburdened by the hang-ups of history.
All of this not say we should not deal with the civil war in our national history. It is the elephant in the room. That subject, and the matter of constitutional restructuring back to real federalism, must be resolved if Nigeria is to be stable and become a real nation which it currently is not. I have argued that Nigeria’s leaders must apologize for the millions of lives lost in the Nigeria-Biafra war if we are to heal. That’s the right thing to do.
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Prof. Kingsley Moghalu was educated at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Ph.D., M.Phil.), The Fletcher School at Tufts University (M.A.), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (LL.B.), and the Institute of Risk Management in London, UK. He was a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2009-2014 and was a presidential candidate in the 2019 elections in Nigeria.
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