Editorial
Allen Onyema: Upping the ante of patriotism
The name of Allen Onyema, has been on the lips of many Nigerians for the past one week or so now. Not that he is a stranger to Nigerians or vice versa. In fact, he has been a household name since he broke into national consciousness with his Air Peace Airlines – an outfit that is as strange in its ways as its numerous deeds are pleasant to the souls of many a compatriot.
Outside the enemies of Nigeria, of which there are a surfeit that the nation is cursed to live with and endure, prancing about everywhere including the corridors of powers at every level, only very few would likely discountenance the positive impact of what he has done for Nigeria using this carrier.
When Nigerians were being killed in South Africa as a result of the xenophobia that broke out in the country, it was Onyema that elected on his own to deploy his aircrafts to lift them out of the country and bring them home. That was in 2019. A few months after, in 2020, during the outbreak of COVID-19, when foreign airlines shut their doors on Nigerians or charged cut-throat fares, he was the one the nation ran to once again to rescue citizens.
Between April and May, 2023, he was again on song, this time to airlift Nigerians from Sudan, after the country broke out into a fratricidal conflagration that caused non-citizens to flee the enclave. At great risk and cost, he again responded swiftly and diligently. In all these interventions, the common denominator, was that missions were carried out in the main, free of charge.
In other words, he bore the cost himself. And what cost? The money involved were not minor amounts that could be waved away lightly. They were industry-size costs capable of making serious dents on any firm, and could indeed bore holes into the pocket of both Air Peace himself as a businessman. Yet he endured.
Look at his latest foray on the Nigeria-London-Nigeria route, which commenced operations on Saturday, March 30, 2024. A typical Nigerian businessman could have keyed into it to make a kill. If Onyema were not some kind of uncommon, scarce and far-in-between patriot, he would have seized the moment like his contemporaries in exploiting the current systematic bastardisation of a country under the heavy pall of all manner of greedy Shylocks, practically squeezing the very life out of the citizens.
What if he had just halved the prices of his tickets on that route? He would still have been been smiling to the banks with humongous profits, while seen at home as a hero with the same people he would be exploiting eulogising him. But did he travel that route?
Indeed, before he moved in, there had been a flood of tales of terrible and horrible experiences Nigerians went through outside the asphyxiating cost imposed on them as fares. One of the stories, narrated how in one of the neightbouring countries, where two Nigerians, had gone in the search of cheap tickets, after being fleeced by criminal immigration officials, were clamped into a jail on trumped-up charges and later jailed – a double jeopardy, having lost their London opportunities.
During his appearance on Monday, on The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise Television, the airlines boss elaborated on the impetus of his intervention – how Nigerians travelled to as far as Morocco, Egypt, Qatar and other near and distant countries just to reduce the heavy financial weight as well as the hassles of running around for the reprieve.
Hear him: “Nigerians are happy. It is as if a kind of burden has been lifted off their shoulders. A situation where Nigerians were paying (through their nose) – my own staff, paid N15million on Business Class to the UK. Some people paid N17million. Then, because some people couldn’t pay, Nigerians were going to South Africa, fly six hours to South Africa, overfly Nigeria airspace to fly to London, for another nine or 10 hours, just to get a cheaper fare.
Onyema addressing his colleagues at the event
“Nigerians were going to Morocco, Egypt, Qatar, eight hours, lay over of about three hours, you do another eight hours to the UK, just to get something cheaper. Then, if you want to fly direct, it’s a different ball-game. The humongous fare was unbearable for them.
“But when we came, what we did was, assuming we slashed the N15million to N10million, people will still clap for us. But, no, we brought it to where it belonged. We brought it down to N4million. We’re not losing by doing N4million. That I can tell you. We brought it – Business Class to N4million, brought the Economy Class to N1.2million and at the same time giving students rebates.
“Immediately, the same airlines that were giving dollar as an excuse, for the fleecing of my country, came down withing 24 hours. Air Peace distorted the market. All of them started coming down within 24 hours. They started begging people, doing social media rounds all over the place and brought their fares from N15-17million to N5million and even begging people.”
Now, he has taken his hitherto one man show patriotism a notch higher. He is now trying to co-opt others playing in his league to follow suit. On Thursday, he made the first pitch publicly by when he addressed members of the Corporate Nigeria under the aegis of Organised Private Sector (OPS). One of the guests, he was quoted by Ajuri Ngelale, President Bola Tinubu’s spokesman, as seizing the opportunity of a parley with the Nigerian leader to plead with his colleagues, to deliberately slash down the price of their commodities, goods and services.
Citing his own example when the President hosted members of the OPS to Iftar – the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims in Ramadan at the time of adhan (call to prayer) of the Maghrib prayer – at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Onyema, pleaded with his colleagues to copy the example of Air Peace, in order to help the President, achieve his goals.
Hear him: “President Tinubu is thinking of the Nigeria of the future. The ease of doing business is coming back gradually. I can attest to that in the aviation sector because of the people you appointed to head that sector. I can also attest to what our High Commission in the United Kingdom did in making Air Peace flights into Gatwick Airport a possibility.’’
Whirlwindnews.com.ng is on all fours with this patriotic call. We cannot thank Onyema enough for the manner he has deployed his resources in the service of Nigerians. This call is just one of the demonstrable evidences of his loyalty to the nation and the people of Nigeria. What Onyema succeeded in saying at that forum, even without doing so directly is that these people could still live large without killing Nigerians through their exploitative ways.
No doubt, the call is likely to fall on deaf ears in the main, because the audience he was addressing is made up of those who put the country in its current parlous state in the first place – the economic brigands who have adopted all manner of ways to pillage the nation’s commonwealth and fleece Nigeria to the bones.
Yes! Amongst them are the foreign exchange speculators, who have warehoused the forex they got from official sources in the evil gambit of selling them off to make huge profits rather than employing them to purchase machinery and raw materials to produce and grow the economy.
Seated in that audience were likely to be the bankers that never do any real sector business outside cheating the system and declaring outlandish profits or those responsible for the wanton and indiscriminate hike in prices of their products out of sheer pleasure of watching Nigerians suffer as would medieval sadist that see human suffering as sport.
Yes! There were thieves in that audience, for whom the words of Onyema, would be like pouring water on the back of a duck and who rather than be roused to pity and repentance like the people of Biblical Nineveh, were likely to be thumbing their nose at him, if not cursing under their breaths and angling for his head on platter as would Herod with John the Baptist.
Yet, he has spoken as a patriot. Perhaps, few might buy into his message, have a change of heart and do something in this direction. Nobody knows how much a little downward dip in the price noodles or biscuit could save the mother preparing his child for school from her nagging headache or how happy that man trying to erect a two-room structure in his village could be on hearing that he could now buy cement cheaper.
Even if unheeded, let Onyema’s pleas continue to be the tiny voice knocking at the conscience of those who hear them in that audience. One day, something must certainly give!
Nigerians are currently witnessing the most horrifying experiences in their country at the moment. Perhaps, only those who witnessed the civil war on the side of Biafra, between 1967-1970, would probably connect with the present situation. It is a mimic of the Biafran harrowing, horrendous experiences, that have been variously recorded by historians and those who suffered them.
Already, many people are dropping dead by the day, as it was then. What probably remains are the refugee camps and the ugly pictures of children with tiny feet, distended stomachs and glazy eyes, that announced the presence of kwashiorkor – that awful disease that sent millions to their untimely death – that terrible condition, more merciless with slow, punishing end than the swiftness of bullets or bombs dropped in market places, which ended their ordeals quicker.
But, from the look of things, we are getting there. Already, criminals have continued to seize a substantial part of the Nigerian space, carving fiefdoms for themselves and progressively competing with the remnant of what we see as government of the nation’s entity, something not even as bad as the Biafran side contended with during that hideous era.
The culprit the sorry pass, this time, is not the disagreement between any part of the country or talks about secession. No it is not about such slogans like On Aburi We Stand, or Go On With One Nigeria, that were prevalent during that time. It is also not about soldiers taking aim at one another, the menacing echoes of the clatter of bullets, the ominous hovering of airplanes with the concomitant anxiety from the scare-gripped people, of their weapons of mass destruction dropping on them.
No! These have been replaced with a fresh weapon – petrol – a commodity which instead of becoming the major item to propel the vortex of national development, has turned the direct opposite – stagnating growth and even pulling it back into the dungeon of hopelessness and bottomless pit bleakness – leaving in its wake – hunger, disease and death. That is the new felon.
Unfortunately, the hand propelling this misfeasor is the All Progressives Congress (APC). In the last nine years the party has been in power, Nigerians have been subjected to the level of pain and deprivation never known or contemplated in history. Muhammadu Buhari, the first President on the platform of the ruling party, practically made the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), smell roses, despite the misgivings in the country during much of its 16-year rule, for which the people grabbed the change APC promised with both hands.
Incidentally, the wailing, trailing the deterioration occasioned by the ex-General has been upgraded to something worse since his exit last year. Like the biblical account, Buhari flogged Nigerians with whips, but Bola Tinubu, his successor is flogging them with snakes and scorpions. The only common denominator is that both have employed the same tool – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), as it is now known.
However, Tinubu’s template is nothing near comparison. Under him, the monster has not only been let loose, but aided with bits and spurs to rampage across the nation with the ferocity of an angry tsunami. Do not forget that Buhari, in 2016, announced the “total removal” of subsidy on petrol products, when he raised the price from N86 to N145, but gradually ended at N195 by the time he left in 2023.
But look at what Tinubu has done with the same product. As if he was bidding his time to punish Nigerians and concern Buhari’s whips to history, one of the first words that came out of his lips, minutes after his inauguration on May 29, 2023 was – subsidy is gone! It was one magic expression that instantly plunged the nation down the hill to the jagged rocks at the bottom of the precipice. It is obvious that he could not wait.
Within hours after that odious and outlandish pronouncement, the same PMS jumped from N195 to N550. That did it. Since then, it has been tales of woes. The price has continued to climb progressively with little checks to the level that at the last count, it hovered around N617 and N700. That was before the arrival of the Dangote Refinery Limited (DRL). Now the story has become wackier.
Millions of Nigerians had expected Dangote to be the game-changer to obviate their suffering. But in the common Nigerian street parlance, whosai? That angle seems covered too in the apparent determination of the government, seemingly vengeful for yet to be determined reason(s) to cut its pound of flesh. The long, filthy hands of its patrons, appears to have clutched DRL in a vice grip. It started with the controversy over the refusal to supply crude to the facility, forcing it to source products from abroad at more than the prevailing rate in the international market.
This was followed with the sudden, outlandish and totally obtuse tale that the Dangote products are below standard compared to the imported ones. In which other country in the world has such a narrative been heard of a government that is supposed to protect local manufacturers at all cost? But this is Nigeria where no lie seems too heavy to tell even to an imbecile. Perhaps, they changed course from stifling the Dangote operations, out of the deafening din from the rest of the world, probably their collaborators abroad – the vested interest whose imprimatur seem quite evident in their activities – for it is obvious that they take the outcries of Nigerians as the trumpeting of crickets at night.
Now, the reason for that odious episode surrounding the Dangote saga a few weeks ago appears to be crawling out. It was obviously meant to bring DRL to its knees in other to cut a deal, more like – You either sell to us so that we sell to the people or you don’t produce. Or what else could be responsible for Aliko Dangote telling a bemused nation that he could not reveal the price of his product and that, that aspect would be left to the Federal Government. This is supposed to be a private concern.
Even a total moron would notice the asininity behind account we hear daily. They are nothing more than a sequence of an entirely childish, if not idiotic effort to hoodwink the public. Over the years, they and their goons had tried to do a yeoman’s job of trying to drum it into the ears and minds of the people that it would make no difference, whether Dangote came on stream or not because “oil is an international commodity.” That nonsensical piece of reasoning, is the same strange argument they also labour at various times to make in the expectation of fixing the local refineries.
They are quick to suggest, in other words that even if the cost of loading, shipping, transportation, insurance, labour, and everything put together to conduce that dreaded expression – landing cost – nothing changes. Where else do you hear that in the entire globe, except in a clime which has made Voodoo Economics, a la Samuel Aluko, the late globally-acclaimed Nigerian economist, a template? Check it, they will never cite any other place in the world where such happens, just like they never tell of any other oil producing country in the world currently suffering the snares of crude thievery, which has become part of the nation’s sad story.
Stretch it further, what the prevailing argument they make means is an attempt vitiate the expectation that by buying the 450,000 barrels of crude daily earmarked for domestic use at Naira rate, and with the prevailing conditions in Nigeria, including cheap labour, Dangote could produce, and indeed should produce PMS and profitably sell at less than N100 per litre.
They now want their illicit and untenable position to prevail. It is clear now that because of the condition under which he operates, Nigerians would be forced to buy the product at the current rate of N890 – NNPCL rate or N1,000, N1,2000 at the other dispensing stations. That is the tragedy Nigerians have found themselves in.That is the wickedness of the APC government!
Else, how could anyone explain what is going on? Is it not clear that neither the cabals in the NNPCL, which have ensured that the nation’s three refineries have remained comatose despite the billions of dollars they have gulped in terms of Turnaround Maintenance (TAM) nor their replication in government filthy hands are prepared to let go?
If it bears repeating, we do so with our full chest! Dangote petrol can sell for less than N100 at profit. But the cabals, which have ensured that the nation remains the country with the highest production cost of crude – $45 per barrel, as opposed to $10-$15 in other climes, the only country where crude is stolen, the only oil producing country with comatose refineries, are at work. Yes! We know who is telling the truth between Dangote and NNPC. The only sin the former could commit is being an enabler and or complicit.
We, at Whirlwindnews.com.ng are happy Nigerians are getting out of their cocoons to speak out. Thursday’s statement by the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), a pressure group of Muslim faithful in Nigeria, is quite apt. It means that nobody is deceived. Our final words – just like this body has maintained is – let Dangote sell his petrol and let Nigeria breathe!
Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, was on Friday, August 23, 2024, inaugurated as the 19th Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) – Nigeria Judicial Council (NJC) record. She is the 18th Nigerian to occupy the position, down from Justice Adetokunbo Ademola, who took the first shot, as the first Nigerian from 1958 to 1972, having taken over from Justice Stafford Foster Sutton, a Briton, the first Nigerian CJN, who occupied it between 1955 to 1958. She is also the second woman to occupy the position after Justice Mariam Aloma-Muktar – 2012-2014.
Apparently to underscore how important the assignment was, President Bola Tinubu, who jetted out to France in his new Presidential aircraft on Monday, August 19, had to return to the country to perform the swearing-in ceremony, at the State House, Abuja, before hundreds of eyes from the Nigerian judiciary and millions of Nigerians watching the event.
Armed with Masters degree in law, from the London School of Economic and Political Science in November 1983, Kekere-Ekun, was pulled out in December 1989. From private practice where she was a lawyer from 1985 to 1989, she moved to the bench, beginning as a Senior Magistrate Grade II, in the Lagos State Judiciary in December 1989, and later appointed a judge of the High Court of Lagos State on July 19, 1996.
There, she served as Chairman, Robbery and Firearms Tribunal, Zone II, Ikeja, Lagos, from November 1996 to May 1999, from where she was elevated to the Court of Appeal on 22nd September 2004, serving in various divisions of the court and as presiding justice of two divisions of the court (Makurdi & Akure) in 2021 and 2023, respectively. She finally made it to the Supreme Court of Nigeria as the fifth female justice of the court, on Monday, July 8, 2013.
What this means is that the new CJN is not bereft. She has history behind her and plenty of experience to boot – experience picked up both in the classrooms, where she was equipped with adequate knowledge, and in practice, where she honed it for the past 39 years. It then means what comes out of her office as the head of the judiciary, henceforth, is deliberate. Her actions and deliverables cannot be a function of inexperience or lack of knowledge.
Why do we emphasise on this? Simple! The Nigerian judiciary she is taking over is in complete tatters – a mess – desolate, dishevelled and disgraced. Incidentally, she is part of that awful history, and in some cases, directly responsible for why many Nigerians turn away their faces and cover their nostrils at the very mention of that arm of government, especially in the years of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Not that other arms of government – the executive and the legislature are better in any way. But the emphasis on the judiciary is because of its superintending powers over the other two. The judiciary, apart from possessing the power of life and death, so to speak, also has the power of redemption, not only to tame other powers, but to heal the society.
Till the end of humanity, long after the bodies of the present generation must have completely decayed and manured the earth, the name of Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, would always be mentioned as the lead-judge that delivered that notorious judgement, which made Hope Uzodimma the Governor of Imo State on January 14, 2020, catapulting him from the number four to the first position in the original rating by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Now, it does not matter, neither does it redeem the situation, whether the erudite jurist delivered the judgement according to law as it is, which many in the legal profession, could argue is The Justice. What matters more is how much justice has been done and is seen to have been done to the society. In other words, how much did that particular outing, satisfy the three-way traffic concept of justice – justice to the accused, justice to the accuser and justice to the society, so poignantly made by the late Chukwudifu Oputat, Justice of the Supreme Court (JSC), as he then was?
Put differently, how did that judgement satisfy the dictum in law that justice must not only be done, but seen to have been done? That was the contentious issue in the Imo case and many other cases in the Nigerian judicial system in recent years, particularly in the APC years and more particularly in last year’s general elections and even in the latest cases – Imo, Kogi, Bayelsa, governorship election cases that were decided by the apex court on Friday, the same day the new CJN was inaugurated.
Even non-lawyers, these days, have come to terms with the fact that law in itself has two components – the letters of the law and the spirit of the law. But over the recent years, the Nigerian courts seem to have concentrated on the former and completely ignored the latter. Court verdicts taper more on technicalities to cushion nagging questions, rather than answer them.
That is why the pronouncements of the courts, particularly the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) and the Supreme Court in the last presidential election cases, have at the best, remained suspicious, while at the worst, totally dismissed as horrifying. It is because neither the original court nor the apex court, answered the basic questions, based on the actual winner of the election, based on examination of figures, but merely relied on technicalities in deciding the cases.
That is why we find it gratifying that the new CJN is thinking about restoring judicial integrity as one of her priorities. What is more? The adverse public feeling about the judiciary, would have been mitigated if it is coming from ordinary members of the society not counted as “learned.” But when such is coming from as high as Musa Dattijo Muhammad (JSC), who, in fact retired as second in command to Kayode Ariwoola, the immediate past CJN, it is no longer a function of ignorance.
Now that Kekere-Ekun, has vowed to take up the matter, we recommend that she visits that classic treatise of October 27, 2023, where the retired erudite jurist, in his valedictory address, all but agreed with the public perception that the judiciary is oozing the stench of corruption, sleaze, and mismanagement.
“Well, my expectation is that we will take the judiciary to higher heights. The reputation that it has, we will improve it. We will make sure that people have more confidence in the judiciary. I believe that it’s not a one man job, we all have to be on board. And because we all see where the areas are that need improvement, I believe that there will be cooperation, because we all want to see a better judiciary.
“A better judiciary is for the benefit of the entire nation. Whatever the shortcomings that we see today, we’re all members of the society. So if you want to see improvement, let the improvement start with each and every one of us and our approach to justice. Let us also have faith in the system.” These were her words after taking her oath of office on Friday.
What could more comforting. Some people have actually claimed that her appointment is to continue where her predecessors left and complete what they left behind. Nigerians will be waiting to see where the wind blows. Luckily for her, the Nigerian Senate is a rubber-stamp institution. So, nobody expects any sort of hiccups regarding her confirmation.
But, as William Shakespeare, once wrote – the purest treasures mortal times afford, is a spotless reputation. The misgivings about her previous outings could actually be excused by the argument that she was under some hierarchical leash in the apex court and could therefore be beholding to some powers therein. Now, she has no such constraints. She is now in charge. It is left to her to swim or sink. Her decision! We wish her luck.
“To those who have taken undue advantage of this situation to threaten any section of this country, be warned: The law will catch up with you. There is no place for ethnic bigotry or such threats in the Nigeria we seek to build. Our democracy progresses when the constitutional rights of every Nigerian are respected and protected.
“Our law enforcement agencies should continue to ensure the full protection of lives and properties of innocent citizens in a responsible manner. My vision for our country is one of a just and prosperous nation where each person may enjoy the peace, freedom, and meaningful livelihood that only democratic good governance can provide – one that is open, transparent and accountable to the Nigerian people.”
These were the exact words with which President Bola Tinubu, reacted to the heightened ethnic threats directed against Ndigbo in Lagos, led by the Lagospedia, a group using the hashtag – #Igbo-Must-Go, in his nationwide broadcast on Sunday, August 4, 2024. It was part of the President’s official clapback to the 10-day nationwide protests against his government to call attention to the biting hunger in the land occasioned by what the promoters link to the bad policies the administration has been churning out since its advent on May 29, 2023.
From the outset, we, at WhirlwindNews.com.ng, finds the President’s declaration as outrightly pretentious and utterly hypocritical. At best, it is an uncanny attempt to hoodwink the people or a gambit to whitewash a sordid situation. In other words, the President is clearly playing to the gallery, an art, which he seems to have perfected in his well-strung political history that has eventually landed him at Nigeria’s number one job.
This ignoble campaign against Ndigbo did not just happen. It is the outcome of a progressive political strategy, which has gained a lot of verve in recent years, particularly since Tinubu found new political alliance outside his hitherto Igbo friends. As Governor of Lagos State, Tinubu had pitched his tent with Ndigbo as chummy political bedfellows.
He not only brought them in as part of his government, but as true allies in many of his other engagements, including his war with the Federal Government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. That he survived as the only governor that returned for a second term in 2023 on the platform of Alliance for Democracy (AD), was partly against the backdrop of this alliance.
So, what changed? His alliance with Buhari! That relationship changed everything. The formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was hinged on one central philosophy – anti-Igbo. It was clear to every discerning observer that there was nothing for the Igbo in the party.
Two factors could have led to it – Buhari’s anti-Igbo sentiments, founded on the issues that led to the civil war and even after. Remember that Femi Fani-Kayode, had revealed how the former President allegedly told him that he would never forgive Ndigbo for killing Northern leaders. Should that be true, then it would have followed and accounted for why his APC government adopted the marginalisation of the South East as a state policy.
The second factor, could also be the prevailing feeling in certain quarters that the subsisting administration of then President Goodluck Jonathan, was more or less a high-decked Igbo government to the advantage of others, based on the strategic offices their people occupied and the fact of the massive support the former President enjoyed from the South East zone.
But whatever it was, the fact of this sentiment, and somewhat retaliation, was evident in the distribution of the APC offices where the key positions were farmed out to the other zones to the exclusion of the South East. Even when the late Ogbonnaya Onu, then National Chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Rochas Okorocha, Governor of Imo State elected on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), donated their structures to the party, it did not change anything.
So, it emerged that out of all the key positions in the party – National Chairman, National Secretary and even National Publicity Secretary, all went to different zones, leaving the South East with only such mundane and insipid offices as National Organising Secretary and National Treasurer.
It was even more apparent in official government structure – President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN), Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). The South East, the third leg of the Nigerian tripod never came close to any of these positions in Buhari’s eight years in office.
It is obvious that the plate has not changed as Tinubu, Buhari’s successor, appears bent on sustaining it. In fact, the highest position of the Igbo today is lowly Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. Imagine! Even under Buhari, the South East even managed to get a better deal at a point in Deputy Senate President.
So, the current campaign in Lagos, is girded with shield and armour from higher, very powerful quarters – as powerful as the Presidency – right before Tinubu’s nose. Therefore, if any, the measures to tackle it must start from the President himself. No more no less! No one should therefore be deceived.
Nobody should really be surprised about the life and death bent the tendency has now assumed. For the APC and the government it controls since 2015, what this means is that the very day Ndigbo cease to be the fall-guy during elections, the APC government will come to an abrupt end. It is that simple.
Even a political imbecile knows that APC is finished in Lagos as it were. The party has withdrawn all its deposits with the people. What is left is a huge deficit. It is so, more out of the peoples’ weariness with the party rather than performance. In other words, even if the government in power lines the entire street with gold in terms of performance, the party will still lose in any free and fair election. People are simply tired of seeing the same face daily.
This much was demonstrated in the 2023 presidential election. In the February 25 poll, this message was delivered to the party in clear terms when it scored less than 15 per cent of the votes. Forget what was officially recorded to them by the electoral umpire. That dismal outing was actually not a verdict against President Bola Tinubu, its candidate as it was for the weariness of the people towards the party.
Now, the phenomenon of hitherto popular political parties losing elections is not peculiar. It is indeed normal. That is why in the US, the Democrats would be in power for a period only for the Republicans to take over. The UK has just had their own change of guards a few weeks ago, when Rishi Sunak, of the Conservative Party, had to give way to Kier Starmer of the Labour Party.
The African National Congress (ANC), had to reach out to the Democratic Alliance (DA), its sworn enemy recently, after losing its hitherto comfortable parliamentary majority to form a coalition government, as a result of the gradual, but steady loss of the vice grip on voters in South Africa over the years. Reason? Same weariness of the people. In Ghana, Nigeria’s West African neighbours, it is usually a relay race between the New Peoples Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
However, the difference is that in Nigeria, the government in power never allows this natural change in the feeling of the people to occur. They see it as an affront that their authority to rule forever is either questioned or threatened. That is the sin of Ndigbo in Lagos. They are seen as the tool through which this obvious change will occur at Alausa and the strategy is to put them down to ensure that it does not happen. Who is the culprit? Simple – APC!
That the intensity of the campaign against Ndigbo reached its fever-pitch in the 2023 governorship election after the massive trouncing of Tinubu in the presidential race is therefore not surprising. Even if the APC is aware that the number of Igbo people in Lagos could not have conduced that shameful outcome, its members know enough not to place the blame where it really belongs, but have to create an imaginary enemy – Ndigbo as the fall-guy.
The late Lateef Jakande, never had to pass that route because he was sure that he could afford to go to sleep and even snore on the day of election and still wake up to claim victory despite the huge presence of the same Ndigbo in Lagos. Why? The momentum was with him! His time was even during the most intense political rivalry between Nnamdi Azikiwe an Igbo and Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba. Besides, the Baba Kekere, as he was known, had a different mindset altogether.
Apart from weaning himself of itchy fingers in government, which is one of the greatest flaws of the new helmsmen today and using the resources of the state to work for the people, he also knew how to apply himself to his enemy territory and seduce them. Jakande, it was, who actually described Lagos as a no-man’s land – a positive indicator to attract more people and the concomitant investment to develop the state.
To prove the veracity of his mindset, Igbo people won the Jakande low-cost houses he built, just like their Yoruba counterparts, Igbo children enjoyed full free education with the Yoruba, Alaba Market, a vast area of land were allocated to Ndigbo to do their trading, just as Alaba Rago was given to the Hausa people as market for their animals. Nobody ever heard that Ndigbo ever wanted to take over Yoruba land or were disrespecting the Yoruba culture, whatever that means.
What have we been saying? Tinubu was merely being clever by half by that declaration. He not only knows the truth about the anti-Igbo campaign, he knows the culprits. One of them is Bayo Onanuga, who he sees every day. Even if he does not know the faces behind the Lagospedia group, he has the tool to fish them out quickly.
Fredrick Nwajagu, the embattled Ezeigbo of Ajao Estate, was picked up in a matter of hours and charged with treason by the authorities in the same Lagos. Yet, all he did was threatening to invite the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) – not to attack anybody – but to protect Igbo properties in Lagos. Certainly, that offence could not be compared to the damage of a probable genocide on a group of people as the recent threat indicates.
This is also true of the government of Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Last week, Obafemi Hamzat, his deputy, was on television denying knowledge of the patrons of the evil campaign and even swore that he was not aware of the variant provided by Onanuga, which was everywhere in the social media immediately after the onslaught against Ndigbo in Lagos during the March 18 governorship election.
Might well be that he is not even aware of how to get to Ketu from Alausa. But whatever happens, the agelong message present in the no-condition-is-permanent inscription on the back of the gwongworo truck remains quite germane. Some 20 years ago, Tinubu and many of those dishing out hemlock to Ndigbo were fugitives running away from Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s erstwhile military despot. Today, they are on the same seat. Tomorrow, nobody knows who would be there.
Igbo people have lost assets worth billions of naira since this onslaught. On the heels of the governorship election, Akere motor parts market went up in flames. Some other markets have also suffered similar fate. Choice edifices belonging to Ndigbo have been pulled down under one guise or the other under official cover. To say that Ndigbo have really suffered under the APC government in Lagos is a huge understatement.
Our position! Ndigbo must never be under any illusion that their battle is against the Yoruba. It is completely an APC onslaught. It is their strategy. They should remember that their progenitors were here before the present actors. Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, had built the Apapa Wharf long before Sanwo-Olu was born. Ndigbo had interacted with the Yoruba and done business with them even before amalgamation of the Nigerian North and South more than 100 years ago.
What they are facing now is just a phase, which must come to an end at a point no matter how long it lasts. For the APC and their goons, stopping a change is akin to standing on the way of a moving train. It is an impossible act. Their attempt to hold on to power forever and by other means is futile. It will come to an end one day and the true owners will regain it. Those true owners are not going to be Ndigbo, but the people of Lagos.
In this regard, if Ndigbo must leave Lagos, it will be by their own accord and not by cajolement. Bode George, elder stateman perhaps captured the true message when he described Lagos as a melting pot of the Nigerian polity, just like New York is to the US. A guest on The Morning Show, a breakfast programm on Arise News Television, he had wondered how a man from Ogun State would be threatening Ndigbo to leave Lagos.
What this means is to further strengthen the point that the Igbo-must-go threat is not a Yoruba affair. It is a project the real patrons must take ownership of. If it bears repeating, we say so unequivocally. A government that is worse than Buhari’s in terms of nepotism, particularly against Ndigbo cannot turn around and disassociate itself from their current ordeals. Tinubu has given Ndigbo more than a raw deal. Let the redemption begin from the Presidential Villa.
When the mother goat is chewing the cod the kids are watching the movement of its jaws. The Igbo haters know where they derive their powers. To effect the desired change, Tinubu not only knows where to look to fish out the culprits, he knows what to do thereafter! Nobody is deceived. Anything else is not only buck-passing, but hypocrisy!
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