Igbos in my view have the best advantage to win elections to the Centre, which is what they really desire because by their nature they live everywhere, but that has eluded them.
I have heard the phrase "there is no federal presence in the East” very many times that I have gotten almost numb to it but it hit me specially when my Igbo friend in Ibadan who I consider hard working and successful made the statement on this particular day.
We were discussing the cost of transportation to different parts of Nigeria in the front of his well-stocked supermarket at Molete in Ibadan when from the blues he made the statement. Another Igbo man had said the cost of transportation to Enugu from Ibadan was 52,000 Naira. Why should that be? I asked in utter amazement; my son who is a student in Jos had just traveled to that Tin city a few weeks back and it costs only 37,000 Naira. That was pretty costly but we must thank magical Bola Tinubu, the man Nigerians allegedly voted for in 2023, many will argue that he manoeuvred himself into office, in 2023. If you want to get the full details ask Dele Farotimi, an activist legal icon who is cooling his heels at the Ado Ekiti Correctional Center because he challenged one of the principalities in Nigeria. So be careful in your asking if you don't want the Dele Farotimi treatment. Let me share a little of it to brief you on what you may get into if you ask. Dele Farotimi was hounded, some say he was abducted from his house in Lagos by fierce looking policemen with guns as if they were going to arrest a group of terrorists. They seized the phones of all Dele's staff inspite of the warnings of the Inspector General Mr. Kayode Egbetokun that they should not pry into people's phone again. Dele is most likely going to spend his Christmas and new year in the Ado Ekiti gulag and if their plans succeed he may just be there for the rest of his life. That is how constrained free speech has become in the country ruled by a man who lied to the nation that he is a democrat. I'm talking of Bola Ahmed Tinubu whose hypocritical performance during the protest to restore the stolen presidency of late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola earned him the governorship of Lagos. Those NADECO, National Democratic Coalition fathers who handed Lagos State gubernatorial ticket to him are biting their fingers today.
Despite Tinubunomics which is praised to high heavens by all Tinubu's Breton Woods friends, transportation to Enugu which is not as far as Jos should not be 52,000 Naira. I asked and in the process my two Igbo fellow discussants told me of the traffic's snarl in that corridor because of the heavy presence of security checkpoints has added to the Tinubu pains in Enugu. "At every kilometer you get a checkpoint and they frustrate you so much; the transporters have built that delay into their fares." That didn't amaze me as I have argued several times that the security personnel cannot do better than that because it is caused by the crisis of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB which the Federal government has branded a terrorists organization. Most Ndigbo think the heavy security is punishment specially packaged to oppress them. I don't think so. Nobody wants to openly identify with IPOB but it seems everybody is IPOB. I remember between 2020 and 2023 when I plied Lagos and Jos road very frequently you could count about 120 checkpoints and each one with a designated extortion amount. A commercial car I rode in kept 1200 Naira in denominations of 20 Naira at a compartment on the front door for easy reach each time we got to a checkpoint. Policemen wielded sticks with which they were ready to smash the windshield of any vehicle that tries to dodge them. They were more on the road for what they can extort than the massive armed robbery that was ravaging the road then. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressroad also experienced the same treatment. But our Gen Z did not see that and so when they talk they think it was the usual oppression the Igbos are complaining of in the hands of other ethnic compatriots. The Igbo elders have to do more with honesty to bring peace to the region. Peace is better than war, no ethnicity in Nigeria should look for imaginary enemies.
My Igbo friend spoke more ferocious words out of anger. He was prepared to get out of Nigeria into a separate country for the Igbos and to take a passport to come to Ibadan to continue his trade. “If I travel to Enugu,” he said, “I will have the same feeling,” and O my! he threw in the painful word again: “There is no federal presence in the Southeast, there is no federal presence in Enugu." Like a thunderbolt, those words hit me. Can they be true? Or a lie as I had often taken the words. We were in the capital of Oyo State and I did a mental calculation of the federal presence in the state, the University of Ibadan, the University College Hospital, Federal Agriculture Institute at Moor Plantation etc. Why have I not researched this often told story? Why would that happen to Ndigbo? Especially in these era of democracy where nothing can be hidden from public view. When the Northeast, Northwest, the Middle-Belt, the South South and lately, the Southeast, all got a development commission each to take care of real or contrived disasters that happened in the regions, I knew the Southwest where there has not been any intolerable disaster apart from the operation "wetie" ( burning of houses of politicians) the people of the region staged to resist the government that stole their mandate, would soon contrive theirs. And they did and today there is a Southwest Development Commission. This is how we concentrate on things that does not bring developmemt but put money in the pockets of theiving politicians and civil servants.
So how is it that "there is no federal presence in the Southeast." Luckily, Facebook now has Artificial Intelligence which makes it easy for little researches to be conducted to check facts or fallacies. If it is true that the Southeast has been really neglected, I will cry fowl by writing about my findings. If not, I will call it what it is; a fallacy. I asked the Meta AI to give a list of federal universities and colleges in Enugu State because that state was our focus and I think I can use that Southeastern state as a case study. What applies to Enugu would apply to other four Southeastern states.
For federal universities and colleges in Enugu State, Meta AI gave me only the once prestigious but has now become a caricature of its past, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. It said other institutions are state or privately owned and run. I was amazed; my friend was right and I will complain to high heavens. But I decided to calm down peradventure I had not put my questions right. I decided to be specific. I asked whether there was a Federal Polytechnic and lo and behold there was Federal Polytechnic, Ohodo. What about Federal College of Education? Yes, there is Federal College of Education, Eha Amufu. There is no Federal College of Agriculture but the Meta AI gave a list of other eight federal agencies in the Coal City state. I asked again because Meta AI warned that the list is not exhaustive and it gave a further 33 federal agencies including the 82 division of the Nigerian Army. Meta AI was not done yet as it warned that the list was still not exhaustive but I felt satisfied with what I had so far.
What could my friend mean by an absence of federal presence in Enugu State which could fairly represent all the Igbo states and compare favourably with my own state of Oyo? What could the generality of Ndigbo mean when they complain of absence of federal presence. I agree with the complaints of many Nigerians from the south that distribution of military facilities have been skewed in favour of the regions in the North of the country but using this Enugu State example I see no clear difference between Enugu and other states of the nation. I can understand from the perspective of my friend who is not well educated in the formal terms but very wealthy and more intelligent than the average Nigerian but I can't understand the educated Ndigbo when they make the same complaint. I did not tell my friend when he said he would prefer to belong to a separate country of Biafra and only come to Ibadan to ply his business that that may not be possible because a split of the nation may mean a perpetual war and animosity among the components parts. If the three major tribes can go apart what would be the fate of the minorities. Igbos in my view have the best advantage to win elections to the Centre, which is what they really desire because by their nature they live everywhere, but that has eluded them. The have the opportunity to build bridges across the ethnicities but I don't know why they are not making good use of that advantage. A friend said sarcastically that the Ndigbo want everything for themselves and that their business practices need to be conducted with more honesty and in a friendly manner to make them acceptable to their neighbours. That friend also allege that Ndigbo need to adjust to their neighbours and not keep complaining that others should accept them. Playing victim always will not help their right cause this friend says. Ndigbo will also need to forget about propaganda they were fed with during the civil war as this little study on federal presence has shown that the complaint about lack of federal presence is more of propaganda than real facts. The civil war ended in 1970 and a new nation need to be given birth to which can be big enough to accommodate every Nigerian as late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the first republic political icon kept saying till he died without seeing the Nigeria of his dream.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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