Since 2003, Ndi-Igbo have been making a song of taking the Presidency of the country, hanging their hope on fractured proposition. Like a mirage, it has been eluding them, much to their chagrin. Ditto 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019 and now 2023.
Many factors are known to be contributing to their failure inspiite of the availability of enormous wealth and human resources in the South-East.
The human resources obviously pales into insignificance and worthlessness if conflict of interest from aspirants of same divide cannot be peaceful and harmoniously subsumed into one voice especially now that the 2023 general election draws near with aspirants of all hues begin to strut the electoral turf, making wild promises and actively struggling to run down their co-ethnic aspirants.
Though providence played a smart and significant role in the emergence of Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw man from the minority tribe in the then Eastern Nigeria, as an executive president ahead of of the Igbo, a larger and major tribal group in 2008 yet it was clear that a strong and powerful political arrangement and game plan super-headed by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo, gave rise to development.
Another factor is the phobia with which Ndigbo by their neighbours in the tripodal structure of the Nigerian Federation. That phobia is unwittingly premised on the wrong and negative notion that igbos are bad, domineering and have potency and capacity of holding grip to power permanently, not minding, they have been on it for over five (5) decades now.
These phobiests attributes to Ndigbo, a compound of falsehood, dubiety and stunningly banality using all the arsenal’s within their power including the media to malign Ndigbo.
Commendable achievements made by Ndigbo are not eulogiesed as they do to heroes and heroine, instead, they are treated with contempt and rudeness.
But very unfortunately, most Igbos do not know this but the recent abuse on Ndigbo by Rev Father James Anelu, from Edo State on Ndigbo during a divine church service comfirms the magnitude of hatred other tribal groups within this unholy Federation harbour for Ndigbo.
As an acclaimed priest of God who should have been a clear sample of Our Lord, Jesus Christ whom he claims to profess but Anelu, lost his spiritual cloak, threw caution to the wind in a divine service at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Enu-Owa, Ikorodu in the Catholic Archidiocese of Lagos, descended on Ndigbo with an outright ban on Igbo songs followed by unsavoury remarks and vituperations that are in total contrast with the typical life of Ndigbo.
Very unfortunately, Reverend Father James Anelu, is just one, out of the lot who are harbouring unprovoked hatred for Ndigbo.
This group of Igbo phobiests do not see any thing good and progressive in Ndigbo even when they are the author and the brewers of the national economy which the Labour phobiests control and share today.
Banditry, headers war and terrorism is progressing at an alarming rate in their divide yet they are qualified and good enough rule Nigeria for as long as they desire. Haba!
The other factor that is mitigating against the political progress leading to the clinching of Presidency is the somewhat taciturnity of Ohaneze Ndigbo, the umbrella of Ndiigbo whose leadership has done incalculable damage to the political hope and aspiration of Ndigbo. Most times, the are politically pauperised with trivialities like money and petty appointments that cause them speak from both side of their during political periods requiring them to speak with one voice and insist on a point, like their counterparts of Hausa’s Arewa Consultative Assembly and Yoruba’s Afenifere or O’dua Peoples Congress.
Frankly, Ohaneze Ndigbo flounders between a socio-cultural organisation and a quasi-political organisation except the present leadership will change the narrative though proofs are yet to be seen because the search for a Nigerian president of South-East extraction is far beyond verbal rhetorical.
