“The current protest against JAMB and the accompanying narration of Igbo marginalization is not unfounded” —Ebuka Onyekwelu
The recently rescheduled Unified Tertiary Matriculation Exam – UTME, by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board – JAMB, for the Southeast and parts of Lagos State, has again, raised a serious argument on Igbo victimization and marginalization in Nigeria. Days after the rescheduled examination has been taken, the debate has continued to rage. Some have blamed the JAMB registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, for negligence while others have declared him incompetent and therefore called for his resignation or sack.
Interestingly, no amount of explanation from the examination body has been satisfying. So far, absolutely nothing seems to justify why a network glitch for a national examination affected principally the Southeast. This error or network glitch has, thus, naturally diverged into a discussion on Igbo marginalization, with an intensity that demands an open conversation surrounding the age-long charge against Nigeria by the Igbo.
Beyond the JAMB imbroglio, Nigeria has built a reputation of distrust and suspicion in its interaction with the Igbo. There is a very long history of perceived marginalization against Igbos in Nigeria and there has not been any effort to assuage and confine these accusations to the dustbin of history. Recent events both in the governance and politics of Nigeria, only tend to reinforce the trend of careful sidelining of the Igbo. For instance, the former president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari’s popular 95% and 5% support comment in America, was interpreted as a clear notice to the Igbos, who did not support the former president both in 2015 and in 2019. Igbos were also not as prominent or featured in that government as their counterparts. Although the president tried to explain that he was misinterpreted, by then, it was already too late. The political reality in today’s Nigeria under the ruling All Progressives Congress – APC, is that the party has a different route to the country’s presidency based on its originating alliance between South-West and North-West geo-political zones. Given those realities, the APC can win the presidential election without a single vote from the Southeast and serious support from the South-South, so long as the party remains strong in the North and South-West. To win 25% in 24 states including winning the popular vote are two things the APC can do without the support of Southeast and the South-South geo-political zones. As of today, there is no Northern State that the APC cannot win 25% in a presidential election, and none of the six South-West States that can fail to deliver 25% to the APC in a presidential election that the party is seriously contesting. These are critical political realities that at the time of Buhari’s presidency were even more striking. Yet, such comments from the president would naturally force a feeling of alienation and it did. The feeling of not being wanted in a union one is supposed to be a part of is never a debate in reason or logic. It evokes emotions and a feeling of rejection which directly attacks patriotism. President Buhari’s comments were therefore needless, and worst still; no government builds a nation of patriotic citizens by creating a feeling of rejection for a section of its citizens.
Yet, there is more. In The Trouble with Nigeria, published in 1983, Chinua Achebe outlined to a telling point what the core issues were regarding Igbo marginalization. First, he talked about a state policy of marginalization which he said was pursued relentlessly by Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo who were Nigeria’s Heads of State between 1975 and 1979. Achebe raised the question of structural marginalization “by which four states with a considerable interest in a fifth were given to the Yoruba while their Igbo competitors of equal population got two.” In comparison with the present experience, what has changed? Today, Southeast Nigeria, nearly exclusively inhabited by the Igbo, is the only geo-political zone in Nigeria with five states. All other five geo-political zones in Nigeria have six states, except North-West which has seven states. Therefore, only the Southeast has five states. This is fundamental in resource allocation and sharing as it affects not just resource allocation and distribution but forms the bedrock of representation in Nigeria’s representative democracy. The import of this is that the Southeast is designed to play from a position of structural disadvantage.
The next issue raised by Chinua Achebe in his 1983 publication was how the then Federal Government conveniently removed the Southeast from crucial national infrastructure, such as irrigation schemes and steel mills. “Many have tried but nobody has quite succeeded in explaining away the sitting of five steel mills worth N4.5 billion on completion, with estimated employment capacity of 100, 000 by 1990, only in the North and West of the country,” Achebe argued. Unfortunately, in 2020, Nigerian officials were still trying to explain how the railway awarded by the Buhari administration succeeded in boycotting the Southeast, albeit impossible to explain away. Most recently, Senator Osita Ngwu of Enugu West senatorial zone, speaking at the plenary of the Nigerian Senate while addressing the Senate President, Senator God’swill Akpabio, claimed that the Southeast irrigation schemes got absolutely nothing in the allocation before the senate, while another was allocated over N60 billion in the same country where the irrigation scheme in the Southeast had not gotten a kobo for over a decade.
Therefore, from every conceivable standpoint, the current protest against JAMB and the accompanying narration of Igbo marginalization is not unfounded. It is not a baseless, emotionally driven opinion. The fact is that it takes being an Igbo to know exactly how it feels to be Igbo in Nigeria. As Nigeria keeps throwing up surprises that raise suspicion, it will be difficult to regulate how the Igbo interpret these realities of theirs.
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