Why Ndigbo Will Not Join In The Protest Against Nigeria Current Economic Hardship -By Gozie Irogboli

Since Tinubu mounted the saddle as the Nigerian President in May, 2023, things have deteriorated so badly in the country. Security situation has worsened; the economy is in shambles, national psyche is at the nadir. All we get in the media is the report of boondoggle projects and phantom reforms while billions of dollars are borrowed and frittered away on frivolities to satisfy personal whims and settle political cronies and acolytes. The government agents and propaganda team are busy playing the blame game. Nigerians are peeved that the president and his team are living large at the expense of the people while asking the people to tighten their belts. The inflation rate, exchange rate, unemployment rate are alarmingly very high while national debt is mounting. Nigerians are groaning in throes of the harsh economic situation.

Interestingly, while the Fulani North who supported Tinubu who ran for the presidency on the Muslim-Muslim ticket and the Tinubu’s Yoruba kinsmen are crying about the harsh economic situation in the country, the Igbo who never supported Tinubu seem to remain calm, making some people ponder why the Igbo man is not complaining in spite of the biting economic problems facing the nation..

Characteristically, the Yoruba have supported Tinubu being one of their own while the Muslim North seemed to be beguiled by the Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket. They had expectation that the Tinubu’s presidency would work to improve the fortunes of Nigerians but alas they are disappointed. Those who were deceived by the Tinubu’s hyped performance in Lagos when he was the governor were expecting him to do much but they never knew Tinubu’s contribution in Lagos was in fact nugatory compared to what is reported in the Lagos Press. I have noted this before that Tinubu hadn’t the qualification, the mindset or the patriotic fervor to govern a multi-ethnic nation like Nigeria. Secondly, he came with a revanchist mindset to punish those who didn’t vote for him and to profit those that supported him to grab, snatch and run away with peoples’ mandate.

Coming to power through a dubious electoral process, Tinubu had assumed that once he “settles” the National Assembly, the Judiciary, the Press, the so-called CSO, the labor unions and the other pressure groups and oil his propaganda machinery that he would be on auto cruise as he did in Lagos. But that is not to be. His unpreparedness, incompetence, nepotism, profligacy and ill-thought-out policies have created untold hardship in the country.

So, it is only those who don’t know about Tinubu’s background and idiosyncrasies or those who chose to ignore them on account of ethnicity or religious consideration that would be surprised at his woeful performance. Thus, Ndigbo are not in any way taken unawares by the Tinubu’s failure. The signs have been there. Ndigbo have done their scenario analysis and are prepared for the worst.

Ndigbo will not protest not just because they are prepared for the worst. There are many other reasons for it. Protest against Nigeria government especially in the APC era is a needless exercise. The protest will be hijacked by the government hired agents, trivialized and given ethnic or religious coloration and then used as a weapon to punish innocent people.

Again, Ndigbo will not protest this time because they have been protesting against the Nigerian unjust system for more than five decades now but no one listened. But instead they have been maligned, denigrated, stigmatized, marginalized and killed. They protested with their votes but those who are crying now about hardship and who claimed they “know” politics said that they have committed political suicide for exercising their civic franchise.

Ndigbo will not join in the protest because when Tinubu’s APC marginalized Ndigbo in the sharing of political offices and in the siting of government projects nobody spoke on their behalf. When Tinubu and his cronies unleashed mayhem on Ndigbo, in the period before the February, 2023 general elections, nobody protested. When the APC government imported Unknown Gun Men (UGM) and turned Igbo land into a killing field nobody protested on their behalf. When the APC regime laid siege on Igbo land like an occupied territory nobody spoke. When Tinubu and his honcho men destroyed and confiscated the asset of the Igbo man in Lagos, nobody protested. Yes, Ndigbo will not protest because those calling them out want to use the opportunity to blame Ndigbo for the failure of the current clueless regime. They want the opportunity to create chaos in order to loot the shops of Ndigbo.
Moreover, Ndigbo have always voted for good governance, equity, justice and economic progress but the Yoruba have always vote for ethnicity while the Fulani always stands for religious extremism. Ndigbo will not protest with those who have made their choice and have gotten what they wish. Ndigbo might not want to protest with those who pride themselves as people knowledgeable about politics whose knowledge of politics is centered on putting their tribe’s man or the person of the same faith in power. The reasons may sound cynical but the truth is that the Igbo man is tired of a nation that celebrate failure, injustice and oppression; that prefers primordial feelings to economic progress, that sacrifice merit on the altar of mediocrity…

Many people may not know this but I have said it on many occasions that there is no significant difference between the Fulani and their Yoruba partners when it comes to politics. Tinubu’s antics have clearly shown that. They both think Nigeria belongs to them only. They both have false sense of entitlement. Their loyalty is primarily to their lost empires—Fulani to the Uthman Dan Fodio heritage and Yoruba to the Yoruba nation—and not Nigeria. They promote impunity, nepotism and mediocrity. They both see politics as do-or-die affair. The only difference between them is in their modus operandi.

The Fulani act like a predator while the Yoruba are parasitic in their style. They both survive on the crude manipulation and the exploitation of the naivety of the minority elements within the country. Both are united by the war fought against Ndigbo and their common hatred for the Igbo man. They both play politics of exclusion. They don’t share power. When the Fulani say North, they mean the Uthman Dan Fodio Empire. When the Yoruba say South, what they have in mind is the land between Lagos and Illorin and from Abeokuta to Akure.

Those who antagonized Jonathan, a president from the South are the Yoruba. The ports in the South are not functional except the one in Lagos because the Yoruba are opposed to it. The Fulani is not interested in where the port is sited but the Yoruba are. They believe that the continuous relevance of Lagos is dependent on keeping the other coastal ports moribund.

The Yoruba might make all the noise to confuse others but the truth is that they don’t believe in one Nigeria. Tinubu said so in a widely publicized media interview in 1998. Awolowo said that Nigeria is a mere geographical expression. They don’t invest outside Yoruba land. A friend once joked that the only Yoruba investment in Nigeria outside Yoruba land is their church business and mushrooming prayer houses. But we also know that they don’t want to change the status quo either. The skewed quasi-federal structure in Nigeria is in their favor. The Odua Movement is just noise. The Yoruba are more fretful about the prospect of the emergence of Biafra than even the Fulani.

They both live in perpetual fear of the Igbo man and use every forum to blame the Igbo for the woes of the country. The bigoted Fulani clerics use the mosques as the platform to launch attack on the Igbo while the Yoruba crank intellectuals and ethnic jingoist use the Lagos Press.

Ironically, the political elite from the Fulani North and the Yoruba Southwest who have controlled the affairs of the country since the civil war era have always pretended to love their people but they have the most impoverished folks in the country. They use poverty and ignorance as the tool to control their people. But this no doubt will be their ruination. Every thesis has its anti-thesis, so says Karl Marx.

Since Independent, the country Nigeria has struggled to remain together as a nation but no regime has destroyed national consciousness like the current regime. The feeling of nationalism is at its nadir at present with the APC’s Mephistophelean policies that only seem to highlight the nation’s fault lines. But nothing in the sublunary world lasts forever. The recent events have shown that everything in the country has gone full circle. The folly of the nation seems to have gone full circle. Wickedness and injustice in the land have gone full circle. It is time for the people to reclaim their sovereignty or forever remain enthralled in the hands of the scoundrels, knaves and the recidivists that have hijacked the state administrative machinery. I do not know how it will happen but it must certainly happen. Continued suffering, oppression and injustice in the current regime will unite the people and act as the catalysts that will spark off the freedom march. There is a limit to human endurance. Tinubu’s poverty and hunger expansion program (TIPHEP) will unite the masses that they have disoriented with poverty, tribal politics and religious bigotry.

Gozie Irogboli,
An economist, a novelist and a public policy analyst
(goziei@yahoo.com)