If the vice presidential slot is headed for Igboland, Ndi Igbo, and thus Nigeria, will be best served by giving Ebonyi people the right of first refusal.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes
The problem with Nigeria is not as it is popularly imagined. The problem with Nigeria has little to do with leadership deficits. The problem with Nigeria has to do with lack of intellection. Don’t be deceived by the profusion of PhDs or even professors. According to Bishop David Oyedepo, himself an educationist, Nigeria has more PhDs than [all] European nations added together, but they aren’t worth stuff.
Thus the problem with Nigeria may be surmised as follows: Nigerians want to build a great country by reading and writing journalism. Journalism is about reportage, not thinking. To be a great journalist is literally to be on the heat, sorry on the beat, that is, in eternal haste. And even we journalists confess to that much. One of journalism’s best and brightest stars gave a universal definition of the craft: “journalism is the first rough draft of history.” The key words are ‘first’ and ‘rough’ and ‘draft.’ If one cared for Confucius, he said as follows, Nothing done on the basis of haste or “draftness” may endure or prosper.
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Now, the opposite of journalism is the twin of the classics and the scriptures. Classics and scriptures are works that transcend their times and authors. Insistently, history shows, 1. That all countries built upon or around the classics or scriptures endured and have prospered; 2. That all countries built upon and around journalism, that is, inability to think through due to haste or whatever, are in dire and undeveloped and perhaps undevelopable straits.
Now, we can whisper as follows. If you gifted Buhari whole and entire as a freebie leader to America, France, etc, the performance differences, if any, will be marginal. The question is, why? The answer is, because these societies are constructed along the lines of the scriptures and the classics. Their societies are well-thought-out. So, no leader is granted the franchise to be a “singularity.”
But from 1966 to date, Nigeria has been as turbulent as canoes sailing the storms. The reasons are simple: We have not thought anything through. We are about building with journalism what may only be built with the scriptures.
And nothing illustrates this more than the discussions one runs into in the matter of Atiku choosing an Igbo Vice President. Expectedly, a world of journalistic comments fill and foul up the air. But first the backgrounds. According to the many, merit should drive the political process and there is little that zoning can deliver.
However, following our researches, we can assert that this is the most ignorant postulation in history. Now this. Dr. K.O. Mbadiwe, who, by the way, is American-trained, is a great and seminal wordsmith. He as much as we know is the first to speak in these terms: “Zoning to Un-zone.” What he meant is not unclear, he never elaborated. But as with the words of poets, it says more than its author may be aware of.
Now, a sophisticated reading or perhaps more correctly rereading of American history reveals the following. America is the most [consciously] power-political zoned country in history. In fact, it is the rite of zoning that allowed America to bid for world greatness and have it befall her as ripe fruits, the earth. Thus the genius of America is that they zoned to un-zone. This embedded state constructional maneuver, of “zoning to un-zone” is thus in being embedded not sighted by the many too many, that is by those who read and write journalisms.
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The point is that history is merciful to us. Generally, we all die off before the consequences of our acts or omissions manifest. And when we are gone and our sons are on edge they wonder what it is that hit them. No, it is the consequences of the foolish or short-term wisdoms and greed of their fathers. It is the consequences of acting journalistically when one should have acted historically or, better, scripturally.
To tie up, we counsel that if the vice presidential slot is headed for Igboland, Ndi Igbo, and thus Nigeria, will be best served by giving Ebonyi people the right of first refusal. The reasons for this and the development of states in history have been investigated in some detail in our new book, The University-Media Complex: As Nigeria’s Foremost Amusement Center.
In that book, we developed the concept and tools of 1. Solvent Population and 2. The Constructional Ballasting of the Ships of States. With these tools, so many “embedded realities” that have been in the dark are now brought under the sun and made self-evident.
The point is that, if you don’t, like America, ballast your Ship of State, your country will turn up like the Titanic. That’s inevitably too doomed, too soon, just like Nigeria. This is an iron lore. And it may be meet to report that nobody who has read the book has disagreed with us, an inch.
Following is an excerpt from the book. It is related tangentially but offers enough hints, we believe. And lest we forget, we are ready to debate this matter with any parties anywhere, any day. For full disclosures, let it be noised abroad that this correspondent has no connections with Ebonyi save for being Oru, not even Igbo. Happy reading.
“I cannot get tired of telling this. Dr. Akanu Ibiam/Ebonyi, Dennis Osadebe/ Delta, Dr. Okpara /Abia, Fred Anyiam/ Imo, Ellah/Rivers, Chief Abangwu/Enugu were all Zik’s men. What you immediately notice is that these names represent the major sub-ethnics of Igbo, and they were one and all political intimates and club followers of Zik. After Zik, the truth is that no Igbo politician that I know of has the time to so “cross the streets.” Politics since Ekwueme has taken the colouration of being almost a family business or a branch office of “Myself, my Sons, and Connections Incorporated”. Igbo have simply failed to reach out to themselves, yet they tabulate that their – excluded – brothers owe them a thing or two, including loyalty? It may be allowed for a man dream as such that the world owes him all, but that is not the way the world is run. Inclusion is the first rule of the game of all politics.”
“Since Zik, what attempts have any prominent Igbo politician made to reach out to the geographical outliers or frontiers of Oru na Igbo nation, etc? Yes, immediately it was post-war, the accursed Federal Government of Gowon began playing divide, rule, and ruin. Yes, the geographic frontiers Igbo were sometimes tempted and perhaps seduced, but it was our duty and greater benefit to show forbearance regarding the small failings of our men, our own brothers and sisters; to never berate them in public, and to never add fuel to the raging Gowonistic fire game of dividing and ruining Igboland.”
“Perhaps, if our leaders were seized of historical examples, what happened to Germans and Austrians would be lesson enough.”
“After World War II, some Austrians declared they were not Germans.
Antony Beevor further states:
“Then came another shock … Our Austrian comrades suddenly ceased to be Germans. They called themselves ‘Austritsy’.”
“The point in it all is that it is human all too human to want out when comrades are beaten to it. That is, our historical education should have prepared us for this, so much that we do not need to shock or be shocked. And we could only copy or better improve from the German response template. What did the Germans do? They forbore, knowing that Germanness is a thing no German can flee from. They knew that they, the German Germany, in having the greater numbers, thus had the greater duties not to call out on their kind, the Austrians. The Igbo insightfully teach owu okeny na eri ariri/it is the greater one who sacrifices to save the whole. It is not just charity and fellow feeling. It is all these and more. It is even most importantly strategic that the most powerful make the most sacrifices for the good of all. And it is all imbedded in Ofo na Ogu, only if we cared to unbundle it. The point is, our fathers have written the scriptures. Why do we behave like pagans or convert to lower religions?”
“Thus, for German Germans, the greater duty was to be so worthy a German people that the German Austrians would want to ‘return home.’ After all, the Austrians have no other place to go. Will they start being Russians, Israelis, or Igbo?”
“Today, the German cultural template, despite Austrian reticence, is pan-German. For example, German periodicals publish German bestsellers and Austrian lists are all integral parts of it.”
“Germans never shout or talk down on the Austrians for inventing a non-pan-German autography. Just like America and England, they too are becoming one people separated by a common language; and just like the Igbo intellectual history predicted and all history seems to affirm, it is the Oru, whose equivalents for Europe are the Americans that saved the heartland or the European civilisation at its hour of greatest dangers, aka World War II. Therefore, being ‘separated by one language’ is not a reality; it is a flourish. They are two apart, but together in that apartness. That should be our aim and our game. And this we can win with all our Oru na Igbo peoples.’’
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“What are we saying? Our redemption will not come from Igbo heartland as has been predicted by the mirrors of history and Eshi imbedded conjectures. Our Aristotle or our Alexander the Great would likely emerge from these outlier or frontier geographies. This is the iron lore of history. It is the most likely thing to happen, and we cannot serve ourselves best in a matter if we act in ignorance of historical, perhaps of even existential, tendencies.”