How Igbo Had Their Cake And Ate It

By Kunle Awosiyan

This question has always come to mind; why was it easy for Yorubas to vote for Afenifere’s Alliance for Democracy in 1999 but so difficult for the Igbos to vote Odumegwu Ojukwu’s APGA in the southeast?

The southeast voted massively for the Peoples Democratic Party in their states despite that APGA also fielded candidates.

Was it because the Igbo did not believe in Ojukwu anymore or because they were not aggrieved like the Yorubas who had been battered by the military and losing its prominent son, Chief MKO Abiola in the process? This is another question that has different answers.

Why did the Igbo vote for a Yoruba man, Olusegun Obasanjo instead of the Yoruba chosen candidate, Olu Falae and not their own son, Ojukwu? Was it because they love Obasanjo or because OBJ was the anointed candidate of the northern oligarchy for the PDP?

The summary is that the Igbo have special love for PDP from 1999 till now and I think they should be given the opportunity to produce the next president in a party they had invested both time and money in.

Not that there will be no primaries, it is time for the PDP to work for Igbo as it worked for Obasanjo to pacify the Yorubas in 1999 even though OBJ was never the choice of the Yoruba majority.

Igbos have more stake in PDP than in the present All Progressives Congress, which was the merger of the ACN and CPC. Of course there are APC governors in Ebonyi and Imo states, the Igbos in those state see them as the hand of Esau and voice of Jacob.

Hope Uzodinma of Imo is today being described as “Supreme Court Governor” in Owerri and for Dave Umahi of Ebonyi, he is a head that is disjointed from his body.

“Umahi is on his own, we are PDP here”, a close friend from Ebonyi once told me.

The clamour for rotational presidency by the southern part of this country and most especially the Igbos is not out of order but one must realise that it was never a constitutional matter but an arrangement by political parties to pacify any aggrieved ethnic group.

The idea, which began in 1999 was used by the northern oligarchy to impose Olusegun Obasanjo on us a way of pacifying the aggrieved Yorubas whose son MKO Abiola was incarcerated and killed by the military.

True, Obasanjo was a Yoruba candidate, he was not the Yoruba chosen or anointed candidate but Chief Olu Falae.

In 2003, the AD refused to field a candidate, having seen the “do or die” politics of OBJ who was bent on “capturing” all the southwest, using PDP. That was when he became a Yoruba candidate but with the instruction not to take the Yoruba states from the AD governors.

Having cajoled the Afenifere to convince the Yorubas to vote for PDP in the presidential election, the rigging was extended to the state level where all AD governors lost to PDP except Lagos.

Lagos Governor, Bola Tinubu was the only surviving AD governor after 2003 and he used his position and litigations to reclaim the stolen mandates by the PDP in Osun, Ekiti, Ondo and Edo. Remember, he bankrolled Mimiko’s of Labour Party to unseat Segun Agagu in Ondo.These,he achieved using his new platform, Action Congress that was coined out of AD.

In those days, I expected the southeast to vote massively for late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s APGA but the whole of the east preferred PDP until Peter Obi broke the jinx through litigation to unseat Dr. Chris Ngige in Anambra State.

Till date APGA has not moved beyond Anambra. The southeast region had its cake and ate it by always toe the northern direction until after Goodluck Jonathan’s 2011 to 2015.

However in 2014, the southwest fell into the same trap that southeast had been when it toed the same line by collapsing the ACN with CPC to form APC to wrest power from PDP.

For me, the north is smarter to have prevailed against the southeast since 1999 and the southwest in 2015 but southwest and southeast have never worked for one another. The two zones always claim to share the same values when it comes to injustice but had never agreed in politics. They are suspicious and pretentious.

Both had worked for the interest of the north.

In 2015, the southeast voted massively for the PDP, the southwest voted for the APC. For me, the southeast should boldly demand a presidential slot from PDP while the southwest should do same from APC having invested their time and money in the parties.

How can this work out?

(1) All the southern states dominated by PDP should present a concensus presidential candidate to battle whosoever the north is bringing from the party just as the PDP in the southeast settled for OBJ instead of Alex Ekweme then. The reason is this, zoning is just an arrangement and not constitutional.

(2) Let all the southern APC states come up with a consensus presidential candidate too, to battle whosoever the north is backing. The reason being that they must first agree in their house before selling themselves to the public.

(3) Let both the southern PDP and APC states meet if truly they want a southern presidency and come up with a consensus candidate irrespective of the party affiliation as they did in their resolution over the invasion of the herdsmen.

With this, it will remain for them to convince the north why they are more organised and better positioned than anyone from the north and thus get some votes from the northern part.

These are critical factors that can form the basis of what I call “Evaluation of our Critical Mass”. Are we sincere to do justice? Do we really want an Igbo presidency?

Is it Igbo or Yoruba or Urobo or Ijaw presidency that will put food on our table? Is it a tribal presidency that will stop ASUU strike and provide employment for teeming unemployed youth?

Why did the north pacify the aggrieved southwest in 1999 and find it difficult to pacify the aggrieved southeast in 2022?

Why can’t both the APC and PDP present two Igbo candidates to slog it out like OBJ and Falae did? Is is because the Igbo had its gift but sold it by throwing up Goodluck Jonathan as its candidate instead of Orji Uzor Kalu or Rochas Okorocha?

The reasons are not far fetched but we must explore it, even now that the Igbo’s former anointed candidate is now an “aspirant’ in APC, Goodluck.