| CAN IGBOS GOVERN THEMSELVES? |
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| Written by Ozodi Thomas Osuji | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 09 September 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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CAN IGBOS GOVERN THEIR OWN NATION-STATE? (Can Igbos govern themselves?)
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Lately, one of the questions that I have been pondering is whether Igbo people, as I know them to be, not as they present themselves as, can form a nation state and successfully govern it? This is a necessary question in light of the apparent wish by some of them to separate from Nigeria and form what they call Biafra. (As an aside it should be observed that those secessionists, apparently, are too lazy to even learn that the name Biafra derives from Portugal, is a village in Portugal and naming themselves after a Portuguese town is a sign that they are not true Africanists, are mentally colonized hence are not ready for self governance, yet. The first thing a person who seriously wants to govern himself does is define himself on his own terms, apart from other people, but the Biafrans, apparently, cannot define themselves apart from external others, in this case Europeans. This suggests that they are still suffering from Europe’s cultural imperialism.) To predict an individual’s future behavior you look at his past behavior. We study history to understand how groups of human beings behaved in the past so as to understand how they would behave in the future. In this light what does the study of Igbo history teach us about their ability to govern themselves? Before the white men came to Igbo land there was no unified Igbo nation-state. What existed were many Igbo towns each governing itself. Igbos in their towns had democracy of sorts. The various Igbo towns were not unified into an all Igbo polity. No Igbo warrior rose up and did what other warriors did: use force of arms and or political astuteness to unify his people into one nation. Historically, what happens is that a strong man within a group rises up and organizes a following into a military force and employs it to unify those who are like him, those who speak the same language as him. Having united his people he, or subsequent leaders, may engage in foreign adventure by conquering neighboring groups and building an empire. Originally, Greece was composed of independent towns but these, under foreign pressure, particularly from Persia, united into a Greek nation. Philip and his son, Alexander the Great, of Macedonia took things a little further: they conquered their neighbors and built an empire. A Latin tribe living on the banks of River Tiber were united into a group and began making wars against their neighbors and gradually developed the ability to conquer them and built the strongest empire, Rome, Europe had known. In the East the Mongols did the same; the Chinese, the Indians, and the Arabs did the same. In Africa those Africans living in the Sahel region of West Africa, apparently, under pressure from marauding Islamic Arabs formed strong states and empires beginning with Ghana and morphing to Mali, Songhai, Bornu-Kanen and Hausa States. In the forested part of Africa some African nations emerged, such as the Benin Empire and the Oyo (Yoruba) Empire. Further south there were the Kongo Empire, Angola Empire, Buganda, and Zulu empires. Most countries came into being by gradually evolving from a small unit into a larger unit; generally, this is done through military power. Alternatively, a foreign military power comes around and uses power to unite disparate groups into a country under its control. The British, actually, a handful of them, employed military force to unify the various tribes living in what is now called Nigeria into a country, and govern them for the interest of Britain. Nigeria, like most African countries, was formed for the good of foreign powers, not for the good of Nigerians. Britain ruled Nigeria not because she loved Nigerians but because she wanted to extract certain economic goods from Nigeria and enhance her political prestige in Europe.
Igbos, by themselves, did not form a united Igbo nation; it took a foreign power, in this case the British, to form them into a country. Without the British there would be no Igbo nation. Perhaps, eventually Igbos would have unified into an Igbo nation; given sufficient time everything is possible. But the question is why didn’t the Igbos by themselves form a nation state soon enough? Answering this question would elucidate the question that this essay is trying to answer: can Igbos govern a large polity?
In British Nigeria it took a lot of doing for the British to subdue the Igbos. The Igbo knew town governance and did not like to be subjected to a larger polity. To run large polities it is necessary to have money, money obtained largely through taxation. When the British attempted to tax Igbos the Igbos resented it hence the 1929 Aba Women’s riot. Whereas from the perspective of anti colonial efforts that revolt may be looked at favorably but from the perspective of governance it showed that the Igbos did not understand the nature of governance. You cannot govern a modern polity without generating revenue and governments obtain revenue from taxation. You have to tax a people if you want to run a modern government. Nothing is as inevitable in modern life as taxes. Every citizen, if realistic, bargains on paying, at least, twenty percent of his annual income to taxes. The alternative to not paying taxes is to not have a modern state, to revert to living in the jungle, to being a savage. Civilization has it its price: taxes and living under the rule of law.
THE ABSENCE OF HISTORIC IGBO NATIONALISM
Igbos did not have an Igbo wide nation-state before the advent of the British. With British Nigeria Igbos, suffering from population pressure on their meager land, quickly spread to all parts of Nigeria (and, later, to other parts of West Africa, Africa and now the world). The Igbo began living among non-Igbos in Nigeria…among the Yoruba, the Beni, and the Hausa etc. These other people saw the Igbos as different from them. A people who do not speak your language are different from you. Thus, it came to pass that other Nigerians treated Igbos from Owerri, Mbaise, Ngwa, Umuahia, Okigwe, Orlu, Onitsha, Enugu, Ikwerri, Asaba and Agbo etc as the same people even though among themselves these people could not understand each other’s Igbo dialect. The perception of them by other Nigerians as one people began the process of building a sense of nationhood in Igbos. Igbos, unfortunately, tend to feel inferior and compensate with false sense of superiority. They tend to feel superior to their neighbors. Above all they have the nasty habit of saying derogatory things about their neighbors. Their filthy mouths are filled with put down words for their neighbors; they call Hausa Nnama (cattle), Yorubas Ngbati (lazy folk who exist to party). Since no human being is inferior to others and no human being accepts derogatory statements from others those that Igbos put down resent them. It came to pass that every once in a while the resentment of Igbo arrogance spills over into killing of Igbos. Thus, Igbos have been killed in several parts of Nigeria. The killing of Igbos in other parts of Nigeria, unfortunate as it was increased the incipient sense of Igboness; Igbos began to feel that they are a separate people. In 1967 Emeka Ojukwu, a colonel in the Nigerian army, took Igbos to war with the rest of Nigeria. That war increased Igbos sense of nationhood. Undergoing national emergencies, such as wars and other struggles where the people pull together for their mutual survival, engenders a sense of nationhood in them. All said, several colonial and post-colonial events enabled Igbos to develop what they historically lacked, a sense of nationhood.
Nevertheless, Igbo sense of oneness is very fragile. If you have dealt with Igbos the first thing you notice about them is their wild streak, their taking independence to its extreme; they are not usually amenable to organizational life. Igbos tend not to do well in large organizations. They tend to want to be solo actors. In business they tend to do well as sole proprietors where they start their own businesses and run them as they see fit. They seldom do well in partnerships and certainly not in corporations. Every Igbo wants, as in the cliché that every American Indian wants to be a chief, to be his own boss and since in large-scale organizations there can be few bosses the average Igbo resents his dependency status in large organizations and tends not to do well in them. The Igbo in government bureaucracies generally perceives that work as “orubake”, White-men’s work, that is, as other peoples work, not his own work. Because he does not identify with the government’s work organization, sadly, he tends to find it easy to steal from it. Corruption is something one has to look out for in dealing with Igbos in modern work organizations. Stealing from work organizations where he feels belittled is a form of passive-aggressive resentment of the authority figures telling him what to do? He obeys his work bosses only grudgingly but seldom willingly. If you like, his wild spirit has not been broken yet, and that spirit must be broken before a human being is civilized. Civilization means breaking the savage’s desire for total independence and replacing it with obedience to lawful authorities.
The salient point, though, is that Igbos have not fully developed a sense of being a unified people. Many forces are helping them move to that end but the feeling is still incipient. If Igbos were to separate from Nigeria and form a separated Republic of Alaigbo, let us dispense with the nonsense of Biafra and call Igbos by their real name, Alaigbo, the chances are that they would revert to their traditional clan identities. It is conceivable for the Owerri to fight the Onitsha and the Onitsha fight the Owerri, Orlu, Okigwe, Umuahai, Ngwa, Ikwerri, and Agbor etc. This situation would replicate what is going on in Somalia. The Somalis speak one language and are technically one people. But prior to the coming of the white man to unify them they organized themselves pretty much as Igbos did: along clans. With the departure of the white man and a strong national force (the fall of Said Bare’s military dictatorship) the various Somali clans reverted to their historical status and warred with each other, and the result is that Somalia is today a jungle where there is no centralized government. I am afraid that Igbos may experience the same faith were they to rush into an independent nation-state.
In my judgment, what seems to be in the best interest of Igbos is for them to continue to stay in Nigeria and larger polities, such as a West African federation and, ultimately, an African federation. However, while in Nigeria Igbos ought to work to restructure Nigeria’s constitution along the lines that I, and, eventually, Pronaco suggested. In various writings, I suggested that all Alaigbo, from Agbo to Igwe Ocha, from Arochukwu to Nsuka etc become one state in Nigeria. If all Alaigbo were a state the people would learn to see themselves as one people and learn to govern themselves as one people. Historically, Igbos, unfortunately, like divisions and if you gave them the opportunity each Igbo clan would like to become a separated state. Every Igbo town would like to be a state, and this would replicate their traditional, pre-white man’s socio-political organization. Such small-scale social organization makes Igbos politically weak and certainly makes them vulnerable to external exploitation. Slavery was easily carried out in Alaigbo because of the chaotic social organizations of the Igbos. Since each town was its own state and since each town was too weak to organize an effective army, it really could not fight off slavers. In the early 1600s the Aro, an Igbo clan, on the border with the Efik tribe, formed an unholy alliance with the Calaba and agreed to supply the later with Igbo slaves (who the later sold to the Portuguese and other Europeans). The Aro hired mercenaries, such as the Abam, and these roamed Igbo land kidding men, women and children and selling them into slavery. It was only in 1902 that Frederick Lugard and his British led West African Frontier Army (composed mostly of Hausa soldiers) stormed the long juju of Arochukwu and its counterpart at Umunoha and finally put a stop to slavery in Alaigbo. If Igbos had a unified state that could mount a powerful military it is doubtful that they would have been vulnerable to slave trade. Those Igbos clamoring for more states ought to bear this point in mind: small Igbo states make Igbos weak. Foreigners can exploit the various small Igbos states and that way keep them weak. See the disaster going on in Anambra state. It seems that the people of Anambra don’t seem capable of accepting a government; it seems that each man wants to be the government, the governor, legislature and judiciary, and the result is total chaos in that unfortunate state. The powers that be in Nigeria would be foolish not to exploit these peoples seeming inability to unite and no doubt they are stoking the fire of disunity in Anambra. Machiavelli advises a "divide and conquer" policy towards ones enemies and since these people already enjoy division why not take advantage of it so as to rule them?
In my judgment, as currently constituted Igbos seem unable to govern themselves in large polities. I believe that it would probably take most of this century for Igbos to have learned how to subjugate their wild streak, their primitive egos and obey large organizations. If you doubt my conclusion do these: start a business and invite Igbos to join you. You would find that they would dedicate their activities to figuring out ways to knock you off and take it over, and since they, by and large, lack leadership and managerial skills destroy the organization. Their heads are filled with schemes to take over whatever they find themselves in unaware that organizations run on ideas. Each organization is set on a set of ideas, usually the founder’s goals and if the founder is not there the organization dies (unless professional managers are hired and socialized to carry on those ideas). The Igbo is used to been his own boss, and resents taking marching orders from other people. He resents his work bosses and does whatever he could to knock them off their seeming pedestal, and if he cannot succeed engages in passive-aggressive behaviors to obstruct the achievement of the goals of the organization, such as stealing from it. Igbos, as I see them, tend to do well as individual stars. If you start an organization and hire them as medical doctors, engineers etc and restrict them to performing strict technical functions you are probably safe. But it would be a mistake to place them in leadership and management roles, for the moment you do that they see themselves as in competition with you and their heads would be filled with plans to knock you off and to take over and since they cannot manage it, destroy the organization. And when they succeed in destroying the organization they would blame you for its demise; nothing is ever their fault, it is always other peoples fault. It is like their being resented and killed in Nigeria, it is always, in their view, Nigerians faults; they see themselves as innocent victims and blame others but refuse to see how their narcissistic cum paranoid arrogance sets them up to be hated. In my judgment the Igbos need a century of tutelage to understand organizational and bureaucratic behaviors and, above all, to understand how modern polities are run before they can make a good go of governing themselves as a nation. This conclusion is based on observation of Igbos not on listening to their grandiose and inflated opinion of themselves (they tend to have the lovely childishness of thinking that other people see them as they want to be seen; other people easily see their garaga behavior as acts, as masks they wear to seem important, to gratify their narcissism, beneath which are ordinary weak and terrified human beings). Igbos are novices in the art of leadership and management and need an extended period to learn how to lead in large-scale organizations. I understand that Igbos may not like to hear this view; nonetheless, I stick to it until experience shows me reasons to change it. I would hesitate placing Igbos in leadership positions. I would not, however, hesitate in giving them technical jobs. Their tendency to wanting to do things independently, without consultation with others (they usually do not respect others opinions, they fancy their half-baked opinions sacrosanct), makes them poor candidates for leadership. True leaders build consensus; they listen to other people’s opinions and respect the input of all members of their organization. Leaders understand that they must be followed if they are to lead. If no one wants to follow you then you are not a leader. If you ignore other people’s opinions and do not respect other people why on earth should they follow your leadership? Is it because it is your turn to rule Nigeria, as Igbos tell us, as if as adults we do not understand that leadership is not given to you because it is your turn to lead but because you earn it by demonstrating leadership qualities. People may, of course, follow you if you are a terrorist leader and use force and threat of killing them to intimidate them, such as happens during wars. During wars solders use the threat of killing people to get them to do what the leaders want done. During the Biafran war, the accidental leader of the Igbos, Emeka Ojukwu (accidental because he was not elected by the Igbos, he was appointed by Major General Aguiyi Ironsi, the head of the military junta at Lagos) used force to get Igbos to follow him. In peace his dictatorial character would have made him unelectable. Ojukwu is not a leader who uses persuasion to get people to embrace his point of view and follow them; rather, he expresses pedestrian views, the views of a rich dim wit, and expects folks to accept them and feels angry if they refuse to kowtow to them. That trait of his is actually very common among the Igbos; Igbos tend to think that if they make sufficient noise and say that something is true, when it is not true, that other people would accept it as true. They want to rule by intimidating folk into going along with their mostly uninformed views of reality. If you dare to disagree with them they try to intimidate you. First, they try psychological intimidation and when that fails they try physical intimidation. They would, in fact, attack you physically, all in a misguided effort to get you to tow the lines of their infantile views (I have been physically attacked by these terrorists). The fact of the matter is that whereas people are fearful and you can intimidate them to going along with you, in the long run such leadership styles fail. Sooner or later, fearful persons attempt to overcome their fears and would fight those who rule them by intimidation. White men, for example, used force and intimidation to rule fearful black men in the Americas. As black men overcome the fears that bound them to slavery and second class citizenship white men would have to share power with them and re-negotiate the basis of governance or risk been overthrown by the angry blacks. Four hundred years of intimidation is just about all the white man can get away with; white domination of the black man is over, for black men now have the intellectual wherewithal to jostle for power share. For our present purposes, Igbos attempt to intimidate folk into going along with them; this leadership by intimidation would not work, for one thing as a people Igbos are powerless and do not have the military power to cow any one into going along with their often childish schemes. It is in their best interests to learn negotiation and persuasion skills and try to get others to see their points of views rather than think that they can cow them. If Igbos were more knowledgeable of the art of persuasion, diplomacy and tactfulness they probably would have persuaded many countries to recognize their ill-fated Biafra enterprise. Instead, they assumed that other people would see their points of view and embrace them. Poor chaps; in international relations nations do what serves their national interests, not what helps you. Nobody cared if all Igbos died from kwashiorkor, what mattered to other nations was what was in it for them if they supported Biafra? International relationships are not a sentimental business whereby others supported you because you desire support. This point should be remembered by the would be Biafrans: why should the West support them? What do they have for the West? They must always remember that the oil desired by the West is not in Alaigbo, but mostly Ijaw land. Ojukwu and his fellow rebels had a big F in diplomatic skills.
IGBO CHARACTER
Human beings are individuals and cannot be stereotyped; it is, therefore, foolish to make a categorical statement about a group’s character. Be that as it may, we know that each group of human beings has a dominant character structure to which many of its members tend to conform in varying degrees. In my judgment Igbos tend to have narcissistic personality structure with an over lay of paranoid features. The narcissist believes that he is special and wants those around him to collude with him and tell him that he is special; he wants other people to admire him and pay attention to him; unfortunately, what he seeks from other people he does not give to them, he does not admire other people, he does not give attention to other people, he does not see other people as special. He tends to feel that nature and his concept of God elevated him above other people, made him superior and that, as such, other people ought to accept his false self-assessment as true. He often feels justified in exploiting other people, using them to accomplish his goals and discarding them when they are no longer useful to him and not feeling guilty from doing so. He shares a lot of traits with the antisocial character in that both do not feel remorseful from hurting other people; indeed, both may enjoy hurting other people (many Igbos, for example, enjoyed selling their people; apparently selling their people made them feel like they were superior creatures). In my judgment many Igbos are narcissistic and live to obtain feeling of being very important persons. They do most of what they do to gain social prestige, in the olden days, to buy Ozo title, and these days to become chiefs so that other people would admire them. Those of them who manage to go to school want to be called Dr, Professor Do Little. Igbos are title and prestige crazy. Seeking titles and social importance are attempts to mask their underlying existential sense of worthlessness and meaningless in being. Generally, they are users of other people and not givers to other people. If they are successful they tend to develop narcissistic personalities but if they fail they tend to become paranoid personalities. Generally, the narcissist had some success in his life and that masks his underlying sense of inferiority but when he fails that underlying sense of inadequacy comes out and he tries to mask it with the paranoid solution. In the paranoid solution the individual consciously thinks that other people see him as inferior and resents it, and tries to seem superior; he quarrels with those he believes see him as inferior. He is guarded, suspicious and does not trust other people. I believe that many Igbos, especially less successful ones, have paranoid personality traits (and some even have delusional disorder; in personality disorder, aka neurosis, the person merely wishes to be superior but knows that he is not superior to any one else, but in delusion disorder the individual actually believes that he is the imaginary superior person he wants to be; deluded persons are considered out of touch with reality, hence psychotic; they are grandiose, have a sense of been persecuted by other people, have exaggerated jealousy, and tend to feel that they are admired by important persons, or that they are the love objects of important persons, erotomania, some somatize their delusions and believe that there is something wrong with their bodies).
THE SLAVE TRADE AND THE PERVERSION OF AFRICAN MORALITY
For hundreds of years, Igbos and other Africans sold their people into slavery. There is change and continuity in their present cultures and personalities. During the hundreds of years that they were selling their people into slavery they devalued human life. To the present Igbos do not value human life; they do not treat people with respect and dignity. They routinely put down their neighbors and say nasty things about them. I believe that Igbos still have the mentality of slave sellers, that is, do not respect other people and could easily sell them into slavery if given the opportunity to do so. It must be noted that Igbos did not fight to stop slavery; it was the British and other Europeans who came to their world and stopped slavery. The people’s characters were so perverted by selling slaves that they seemed to think that selling their people into slavery made them very important persons. I believe that the people are now morally degenerate and need an extended period of moral rehabilitation to become decent human beings who respect each other. I believe that they need the civilizing mission of Christianity for them to develop respect for human life. It would probably take, at least, another one hundred years before Christianity has changed their psyche and civilized them. At present they are essentially tribal men. I must confess that I see them as tribal men in business suits. Their tendency to corruption and stealing, I believe, is a carry over from their old habit of selling their people. Indeed, they so love money that given the opportunity they would sacrifice their people to non-existent gods in vain hopes that those gods would make them rich (such events actually took place in the recent Okija shrine sacrifices of human beings).
CORRUPTION IN ALAIGBO
Igbos have a tendency to corruption. This tendency to corruption is exhibited when Lord Lugard established Warrant chiefs in Igbo land; those artificial chiefs (artificial because traditionally Igbos did not have chiefs, “Igbo ama eze”) became petty tyrants and were as corrupt as corrupt could be. They and their court messengers, Kotima, were essentially thieves and tin-can tyrants who terrorized their people, expecting bribes and gifts for cases before their courts. I believe that given the opportunity the Igbo would easily gravitate to corruption for his internalization of morals is very tenuous. Therefore, it is necessary to assume that he is, more or less, like a child rather than an adult, and to see him as incapable of supervising himself and therefore need to be supervised. He should be surrounded with draconian laws and if he steps out of line, steals and or engages in corruption, arrested, tried and sent to stiff prison terms. While in prison he should be made to work for his upkeep rather than fed by society. (If you detect a note of anger here you are correct; I am as angry as hell that Africans sold their people into slavery and did not by themselves work to stop it; I am motivated to punish Africans for that evil behavior; given the opportunity I would treat them in the most heartless, unsympathetic manner until they repent of their sins and learn to be loving human beings who care for their neighbors. DISCUSSION
Depending one how one looks at things, one can say that the opinions presented in this essay perceive Igbos in a negative light. That is true but not quite true. One simply wants to state the truth as one sees it and not pretend that what one wants to be the truth is the truth. As an Igbo person I would like the truth to be that Igbos are a wonderful people who can govern themselves. But if I stick to the mission of science: observation of phenomena, in this case social phenomenon, as it is, not as one wants it to be, then I must state that the Igbos I see with my two naked eyes seem unprepared for running modern polities. This does not mean that they are inherently unable to do so, as racists would say of black folk, but recognizes that they did not have a history of governing large polities and have not learned the habit of subjugating their self-interests to the nation’s interests. Igbos tend to be individualistic to excess; in fact, their individualism borders on the wild. Before human begins were forced to accept the rule of law they lived in what Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) called the state of nature. In the state of nature each person did as he pleased. The emergence of organized society means forcing people to do what serves the community’s interests. The nation state forces its citizens to reduce their egoism and place their egos to the service of the nation. Igbos, as I know them, do not subjugate their egos and place them at the nation’s service, they tend to want to do their own things. I see wild men who need to be systematically socialized into putting their egos to social service. I know that it is not nice to call people wild and loose canons, but that is my perception of Igbos I stand by my perception. I am willing to accept hatred by those who hate my perception. However, I am willing to change my perception if there is contrary evidence. If Igbos want to improve their current lowly social status in Nigeria they must begin by socializing their children to accepting the idea of an all-encompassing Igbo state that they ought to be serving. This process of building a nation may take a century before it is accomplished. At the present the idea of Igbo nation is a mere fiction not a reality. Those Igbos who take it for granted that they have a national feeling are naïve. If you are perceptive you know that the individual Igbo is generally doing whatever he is doing for himself even when he mouths the idea of Igbo unity. Do you want to find it if this is true or not? Give the Igbo chap making noise about Igbo patriotism some money. A little bribe and the man talking shop about Igbo this or Igbo that sings a different tune. The Igbo is opportunistic to the point of being unprincipled. These days he has made money his god and places money above all else. Give the Igbo a little money, and while at it, give him a little political position to gratify his little ego, his narcissistic desires for social importance and he is all yours. He feels so inferior that he lives to seek social importance hoping that being socially perceived as a very important person would make him feel existentially important. Many of these opportunists would literally sell their mothers into slavery to obtain money with which to seem socially important. They are totally lacking in scruples, morality and conscience; in fact, they seem antisocial personalities, sociopath and psychopath; some of them even enjoy seeing other people suffer; they enjoy degrading other Nigerians; healthy human beings, on the other hand, enjoy elevating their fellow human beings, seeing that we are already down, existentially depressed, and our spirits need to be buttressed with positive reinforcements. Simply stated these people have a wild sense of individualism, not the nation serving individualism we see in North America. White America talks about individualism but would lay down their lives for their nation. Would Igbos lay their lives down for other Igbos? I doubt it. Their ego expansion begins and ends in their selves and, perhaps, in their families. The idea of living to serve the whole community is foreign and anathema to the Igbos. In fact, the typical Igbo would use you, exploit you to get his goals met and like the narcissistic and or antisocial personality disordered person discard you and feel little or no remorse for using you. He would see it as your fault that you trusted him, he would call you a mumu or mugu, for if you were smart you would not have taken him at his word and trusted him, you would have been untrusting and paranoid as he seems to prefer to being. These people are a moral mess and need years of re-socialization to begin to do the right thing. At present it is better to see them as children and treat them as such rather than deceive your self into thinking that you are dealing with reliable adults. You do not have to listen to their glib talks, which present them as supermen, as perfect men who make no mistakes. They are the exact opposite of what they present themselves to be. Their garagara are masks hiding unprincipled vain egos. I am aware that I am making global generalizations. Of course there are exceptions to every general rule. I am after all an Igbo and certainly would rather die than behave as I have attributed to Igbos. Nevertheless, it is prudent to assume that the many behave in the manner I have described them. Some of the more glib Igbos would say that my perception of them is based on self hatred and or hatred of them. May be so; I am not going to engage in self defense, so if it suits you to make noise about my supposed self hatred or hate of Igbos go ahead and say so. Just so you know, I do not perceive myself as hating me or hating Igbos. Let somebody refute my perception of Igbos. It is not enough redirecting social discourse to attacks on individual personalities what is germane is to refute the thesis presented by the individual.
THE DESIRE TO ACTUALIZE OF BIAFRA
What shall we make of the so-called movement for the actualization of Biafra? Not much. It is sort of a boys club; it is an organization formed by youth who were not part of the Biafra experience. They seem to have nostalgia for Biafra; to them Biafra seem their peoples one moment of glory in the sun. They look at that war as a historic struggle of good and evil and they are the good. Since, as they look back in their history they do not see anything that they can take pride from (their history was not written down before the white man came along), so they look unto the Biafran war as glorious and look at the leader of that war, Emeka Ojukwu, as a great warrior. A great warrior, indeed; when the war was lost, like a coward, Ojukwu fled the country he had led to war, he fled to go save his hide. This is contrary to what is expected of generals; generals are expected to not abandon their soldiers in the battlefield, to accept their enemy’s punishment, including death, rather than abandon their troops. The Biafran war lasted less than three years, only thirty months. In the annals of people’s struggle for independence three years is nothing. Such struggles often last decades. So why didn’t the defeated Biafrans disappear into the forest and launch a guerrilla warfare? Why were they in a hurry to return to other parts of Nigeria, the places they were supposedly killed at? Why did their desire for independence quickly flame out (and kept alive on the Internet by Biafra internet warriors, not actual warriors)? Power concedes nothing; if you want something from those in power you have to fight for it and they would only give it to you when you defeat them in the struggle for power. Biafrans lost the war and currently talk about their need for independence and talk as if Nigerians would willingly allow them to separate from Nigeria. This is childish expectation. If you truly want independence you return to the jungle and fight for it. Could it be the case that Biafrans are not willing to fight for what they believe and are just noisemakers? Could it be that they believe that if they make Nigerians feel guilty for killing their people that Nigerians would let them go? Nigerians would not feel guilty for they do not see themselves as the evil ones. Contrary to Igbos self-delusion other Nigerians see them as the guilty ones; they blame Igbo arrogance for Igbos problems. Nigeria is not going to let Biafra go out of guilt. Only Biafrans fighting for what they say they want would give them what they say they want, so, why don’t they fight for it? Why haven’t the Biafrans put their money where their mouths are? During the Biafran war itself those that brought the war, the big boys, hid out in rear positions and forced poor children, some as young as fourteen years old, to fight the war for them. Those people were cowards who talked big and got a war going then got others, those who they intimidated to fight it for them. Those bastards hid their children from fighting. (Folk called Biafran soldiers abo ahihia, refuse to be thrown away.) I do not believe that Igbos are yet willing to place their lives in jeopardy for larger courses. I see them mostly struggling for personal goals but seldom for larger communal goals. If you are a fool and listened to them you would think that when the bullets begin to fly that they would stand and fight. No, they would run and talk fools into fighting their wars for them, wars they brought on by their neurotic arrogance, their misguided belief that they are better than non-Igbos. If these people want to separate so badly I say let them exchange their business suits for military clothes and fight, fight for ten, twenty, thirty years or however long it takes to realize their dream. Then they would come across as heroic men, not mere noisemakers. (The Biafra Internet Brigade are hiding out in North America and talking volubly about war but when war comes the cowards would hide and have only the children of poor Igbos to fight it for them; these people are bloody cowards, they are contemptible and despicable; if you want a war go fight it by yourself. I am not a pacifist, I am not against all wars; I am for just wars. In observing the behavior of Internet Igbos I was forced to ask: are these people intelligent? They do not seem to make any kind of sense. Hitherto, I had fancied that Igbos are a very intelligent people but I am not so sure any more. )
Does all these mean that all Igbos should not be given leadership and managerial positions in Nigeria? Not at all. I have seen a few Igbos who possesses all the traits expected in good leaders. They are usually the quiet ones, those that have taken the time to analyze themselves and understood themselves; as Socrates observed, an unexamined life is not worth living; when we examine, analyze, our lives we see a whole lot of things that need improvement. Those with examined lives, understanding that they are imperfect, do not go about verbally abusing other imperfect human beings; instead they seek ways to improve all of our lives. There are Igbos who can rule Nigeria and other modern organizations but they are very few. There are some Igbos who understand that a leader is a servant of those he leads; that he articulates their aspirations and helps them realize them, that he is not there to lord it over them, to get them to worship his inflated ego. Such leaders understand that all people are the same, equal and one and work for what serves our mutual self interests.
PROJECTION OR OBJECTIVITY?
A person who wrote the type of things I have written about Igbos, a group that one nominally belongs to can be said to be talking about what he sees in his self, deny and or dissociate from and project out. Am I projecting out some things I see in me to Igbos? In the nature of things you cannot rule this entirely out. Nevertheless, the question is whether what I see in these people is observable by other persons, or not? I submit that any person who has been close to Igbos have seen the traits I described as inhering in them. In as much as there is inter observer agreement my observation seems accurate. If you disagree with me then disprove me. A cursory reading of this essay may lead one to conclude that since it appears that I doubt the Igbos ability to govern themselves that as an Igbo I doubt my own ability to govern polities. In other words that the writing reflects deep loss of confidence in myself hence in my people. As it were, it would seem to suggest that I want other people to rule us, those who are allegedly better than us. In the Americas colonized Negroes sometime feel so emasculated by their inferior social status that they doubt their ability to do the right thing and believe that only their white masters have the ability to do the right thing for them, rule them. The problem with this assessment of the issue is that I do not recognize external others as better than us. If I were to tell you what I think of white folks you would not believe that a human being would have such a low opinion of his fellow human beings. Regarding other African groups, if the Igbos, an admittedly hardworking group are seen in negative light you can only imagine how one sees them. Let us just say that I do not elevate other groups above Igbos and myself. I do not expect other groups to rule Igbos. I am just seeking ways to make sure that Igbos rule themselves properly. By showing what is wrong with their manner of doing things my goal is to improve their doing those things It is in governing that one learns the art of governing. If you want to develop leadership skills you have to put yourself in leadership positions. You cannot become a leader unless you actually lead people. Igbos, Africans must govern themselves and from so doing learn how to govern themselves well.
CONCLUSION
In 1957 Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence. Since then all black African countries have gained independence from European rule. Fifty years of self-rule has resulted in collapsed economies all over Africa. Nowhere in Africa is the country well managed. So why is this the case? At first we blamed our former colonial masters for scheming to do us in. But in time some of us learned that only children blame others for their woes. When one points two accusatory fingers at other persons three point right back at one reminding one that though others contribute to ones fate that one is more responsible for it than other people. In trying to understand why African countries do not seem to do the right thing I decided to examine my own ethnic group, the Igbos, and understand them as they are, not as they present themselves to others as. I decided to go beneath the mask and know whom these people are. In several writings I have focused on the Igbos. I am trying to understand them, which really means understand me, for one must understand ones group if one is to understand ones self. For example, I am very competitive and do not accept being second to any other person. In trying to understand why I have that trait I learned that it is rooted in Igbo competitiveness. Igbos compete and reward only successful persons and either ignore or shame losers. Thus most Igbos are afraid of becoming losers least they are socially rejected and or shamed. The individual’s behavior is rooted in his group’s culture; the shibboleth of individualism is exaggerated. My goal in this particular essay is to see if there is anything in Igbos background that disposes them to be unable to govern themselves? I believe the answer is affirmative and have posited those probable causes here. I do not know that they are always true but they seem true to me. Let us have a discourse on why Africans seem unable to govern themselves. I believe that members of other African ethnic groups ought to do what I did, do some soul searching and see if there is something in their background that impedes their self-governance. It is time we behaved like adults and stopped blaming the West for our poverty and inability to get anything right. Of course the West does play a role in our situation but let us for a while focus on what roles we play in that situation. When we improve our house and become strong we shall call the West’s bluff. I say, first, let us understand what we did to us before we worry about what other people did to us. There are prerequisites for governing a modern polity, skills like law, political science, public administration, economics, finance, accoutering and management. The average person who aspires to governing his polity can learn these skills at universities. On the other hand, there are intangible skills that though aspects of them can be taught their core cannot be taught. Leadership can be taught but to be a leader one must have an intangible quality: total identification with the people one wants to lead, acute awareness of their needs, articulation of those needs and doing whatever it takes to help satisfy those needs. Leaders work twenty four-seven for their people and do so selflessly. I doubt that selflessness and total commitment to public service can be taught, though we must try. My experience with Igbos is that they have the capacity to learn the superficial aspects of leadership but lack the awareness of the psychological component of it: dedication to social service. Igbos tend to seek public office for narcissistic reasons. They see public office as offering them prestige in the people’s eyes and want to obtain that prestige. They want to be perceived as the most important persons in their world, and public office gives them that neurotic feeling. Igbos seldom ask themselves what am I seeking office for? True leaders do not seek office for prestige but because of what they want to accomplish through such offices. I think that we have to figure out a way to teach Igbos to seek public office for public service, to become selfless and commit to serving the people not because they seek fame and wealth but because they want to be useful to people. (Plato talked about how to train philosopher kings in The Republic). We have to teach these incredibly egotistical, vain people that to be such is to be sick, to live in hell. The egotist is in hell, in a prison of his own making but does not know it. To be ego less, love and serve people is to approximate heaven. (I have covered these issues in my more metaphysical writing.) With a lot of efforts by the end of the twenty first century, perhaps, we shall produce Igbos who are capable of the type of leadership that I am talking about; in the present one has no illusions about them: they seek political office for what is in it for them. This is not a cynical view of them but based on cool-headed observation of them. They are so self centered that they make you want to puke. How did these people become so selfish, you ask. Well, there is no use crying over spilled milk, we just have to make the most of what we have, now. We must continue our effort to educate these people without the illusion that they are going to become altruistic persons motivated by Christian agape love and social service. We cannot give up on them. Hope for good cannot be given up, for when hope dies the man dies. Igbos successfully governed themselves in their traditional society but, so far, have not done a good job of governing themselves in the new political dispensation they find themselves. Ultimately, they will learn to successfully govern themselves in the modern world.
Ozodi Thomas Osuji September 9, 2007
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Posted by Robot| 24.09.2008 07:51