“We cannot, as Igbos, truly break away from this monster with her fangs wedged deeply into the functioning muscles in our body,”
―Don Okolo
I understand the clamor, and I do understand the reasoning behind the push to carve out our own niche in a corner of the south and call it ours. Every single aspect of the maltreatment, and the vicious cruelty iced on the bedlam heaped on us, it seems that we have no other option left; we must secede.
But wait! I have had time to think about this breakaway idea and what it portends. I have come to believe that, if we did that…if we were successful, we would have no place to live. What we, the Igbos, have not put into consideration is this: Our number is greater than the Hausas. If we returned to our ancestral land, we would be screwed in tight, like the horrific drama that plays out in Pre- Covid New York, where people are jammed traversing Manhattan’s business district during most normal hours. We would be bound shoulder to shoulder, gagged improperly and rendered mute as a condition to this enviable freedom that we seek.
In land mass, the Hausas win hands down. Even as they are way less in number, and live in scattered communes, they have their naturally bequeathed forty-acres and a mule…literally…to each man, woman and child. They have crafted the narrative to follow a particular trajectory; that they are the most populous group in the nation. Nnukwu Asi, Big Lie. We, the Igbos, do not have so much land endowed to us. Even as most people in this very faulty assemblage of opposing cultures believe, the Hausas are not the dominant population…again, in number.
This piece is not about the culture with the highest number of practitioners. I am only attempting to shed light on these dual toned, creepy truisms of the number of people of Igbo extraction and the availability of land we are craving to return to. What we are failing to understand is in regards to that single attribute about the Igbo man’s idiosyncratic (distinctive) nature; that he is extremely gregarious (literally outgoing) …to the point no one could contain him, and then convince him strongly enough to remain in his own yard, build on his own God-given parcel. As a result of that, the Igbo man is extraordinarily successful. He is the quintessential “Build on someone else’s Land Builder’.
He is hated… The Hausas despise him, and the Yoruba people hate him just as much.
But there is a collateral damage attached to that phenomenon; he is hated. The Hausas despise him, and the Yoruba people hate him just as much. The conundrum (puzzle) is, that those that hate him would rather not let him go. And I do not believe it is because of the damn crude. I would hypothesize that the reason they are clinging onto the last tacit fabric to hold on to the Igbo man is his gallivanting (globetrotting) attributes that he applies in his efforts when he sought for ways to make money: The Igbo man carries the nation with him wherever he goes…and he has sustained Nigeria in commerce, education, contemporary music, arts and culture.
I am not saying that the Yoruba people have sat indolently. No! They are doing their level best in so many other areas to prop up this beleaguered nation. If one pooled the contributions Nigerians have made to the world, the Igbos would come out on top. I am not making this up. A lot of people have said so before me. In truth, this article is designed to dissuade and dampen the clamor of a breakaway. I deeply suspect that the attempt roaring for a Biafran Nation, would go no further than a child hurling a piece of stone to hit a mark one thousand meters away. And I will tell you why: PROPERTIES AND INVESTMENTS.
Chew on that. Roll it about your mouth. Taste what you are munching on. Do you feel your taste buds coming alive because your mouth is floating in juices? Or, is it dryness that you feel…the kind where you feel each bite is more like chomping down on cardboard? This is one time you cannot lie to yourself. Let me be clear: I would love for the Igbos to mosey on and leave the dead to bury the dead. But I do not think the outcry would amount to anything…because the one hellbent on being a free man was the same one who wrote the precepts of his own demise. He will be unable to cut away, cleanly, without the frivolities…the nonsenses of adjuncts like his PROPERTIES AND INVESTMENTS SCATTERED ABOUT THE NORTH AND WESTERN STATES not to weigh heavily on his mind for that clean breakaway. Cut me some slack because I know where I am going with this.
Our properties would be underwritten as abandoned. It happened before. Why would it not happen again?
One must be tone deaf not to see the colossal attachment the Igbos have with the nation that does not love her. One must be supremely adjudicated to the badlands of insanity not to see how emotionally attached the Igbos are to the country that despises her. One must be utterly deranged not to know that the Igbos own at least fifty percent of the properties in the north, and maybe another sixty-five percent of the properties in Abuja. You must be an absolute fool to believe that the government of Nigeria would pass a decree that would allow Igbos to cross national boundaries, unrestricted, to gather money from their properties.
This is not about golf and her honor system. The Nigerian government is renowned, alright. Her politicians play by a different set of rules from the rest of mankind. They will take over our properties, and any other liquid investments, like our portfolios…anything they can yank from the stable of any business enterprise withing their purview. Our properties would be underwritten as abandoned. It happened before. Why would it not happen again? Did the State government of the Rivers people not declare we had abandoned our properties, even as we were forced to run for our lives? My point? Well, my point is that we will be screwed deeper without the benefit of a reach-around to lessen the pain. We cannot, as Igbos, truly break away from this monster with her fangs wedged deeply into the functioning muscles in our body.
How could we walk away cleanly and not bother about our investments standing firmly in these territories? Would you come back to Kaura Namoda, to the flatlands of Sokoto, go deep inside the steaming enclaves of Idris, Dantata and Olufemi to ask for rent payments? Hell no, you cannot! There is no way they will allow us to make money off their lands. What is on the land belongs to the land, applies here. This attachment we have with the rest of the country is wholly unbreakable. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEADS. The British carved us out…and now, it appears nature has applied her wicked sense of humor to declare that we must live with this housewife from hell…well, until hell itself freezes over. Do you see how emotional this has become? Have you noticed that the strings holding us attached to the fads and vagaries of the Alhaji and Alhaja is infused with stringent tendons, where we cannot cut it off? Even if we were successful in breaking away, we would be faced with unreachable goals from there on. We would face insurmountable kinds of ignominies…like the humiliation that would follow in their bid to cut us off from the rest of the world.
We would face insurmountable kinds of ignominies
The struggles we must engage thereafter, to right the ship, would be overwhelming. But it will be the seizure of the Igbo properties that would remain the ace in the hole…the ace up in the Hausa man’s long-sleeved Senegalese to hold us down in perpetuity. And the Igbo man, who is as savvy and as fearless as a badger, is also not a fool. He knows how to hold condescension at bay when he is faced with it. I am stating unequivocally, that Idemili, Mmilli Agu, Gaga N’ogwu, Eze Afojulu, would not give up the properties and investments in these far-out lands to perpetuate an incendiary monarch in the gulf. These are facts…bitter truths, and they are unpleasant to the ear in every passage.
Let me use the analogy of the simple buying and selling principle to ram this through: If the buyer is more eager to buy than the seller is to sell, the price of that one commodity will be closer to favor the seller’s price…and vice versa. That is the situation the Igbos are not getting. And they are supposed to own this one dictum wholly, and then wear it like a freaking badge of honor. If the country were to allow us to break away, it would come at their own terms…in that single jingle of a diatribe: Buru Ubanka. Screw you Igbos…you are going nowhere. You are staying here with us in this pit of depravity and wallow in our collective shame. The Igbos are the eager ones in this bargain…and we are running out of chips to wedge a bet. We should stay the course, rethink our investment strategies to beat these inebriated, unschooled, gavel-brained… (YOU FINISH IT)
♦ Don Okolo, Professor and filmmaker, is on the Editorial Board of the West African Pilot News. He is the author of many books.
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