…Says there’s no leadership for Igbo
By Chukwuemeka Chimerue
NNEWI— FIRST Republic Minister of Aviation and elder statesman, Chief Mbazulike Amaechi, has decried the current position of Ndigbo in the affairs of Nigeria, saying Igbo are not only being marginalised but treated as a conquered colony.
Fielding questions from a cross-section of journalists at his hometown in Ukpor, Nnewi South Local Government Area of Anambra State, the foremost and only surviving nationalist added that the Igbo currently lacks credible leadership, especially since the principle of rotation of leadership was introduced in the apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo.
He said, “Not that they(Igbo) are just marginalized, they are being treated as not equal partners in the country. The Igbo are not treated as a part of the federation. They are being treated as a conquered race, as a colony. That is the truth.
“I know Ohanaeze as an organization until they introduced rotation into the constitution; that is, this state will now produce the leader and at the end of this, this state will produce. The leadership shifted from what would be given to where you come from and the thing started deteriorating. It started going down. When it will go up, I don’t know but it will not be easy for the man who will raise it up to do so because it’s easier to destroy than to build.
“The destruction has been so much. So, the Igbo now don’t have leadership. Nobody leads them. Like in the olden days, Dr. Azikiwe was in charge of the political leadership; Chief Z. C. Obi was the leader of the Igbo culturally and non-politically. So, wherever there was a problem of common interest to Ndigbo, whether you belong to the Action Group of those days or the NCNC of those days or the Mbadiwe’s Democratic Party of those days; what will happen is that Z.C. Obi will summon a meeting, special meeting and all these leaders will come together and solve the Igbo problem and everybody goes back to his political party. There is no leadership in Igbo land. There’s no leadership for Igbo now.”
The elder statesman also advised the Federal Government to accede to the demands by pro-Biafra groups to conduct a referendum as a means of addressing the issue of the renewed agitation for Biafra.
According to Amaechi, “I would have advised the government of the day to give the agitators for Biafra what they want. They said they want plebiscite, if you go to plebiscite, they will lose. In Abuja for example, apart from government buildings, 70 percent of the private buildings in Abuja is owned by Ndigbo. Go to Lagos, Ndigbo own 40 percent of the buildings. In every town in Nigeria, if you take away the population of the indigenous people of such place, the next people in population are the Igbo and so, if Buhari and his people were good politicians, they will just say, okay; we give you plebiscite. Go and conduct your plebiscite. INEC will conduct the plebiscite because the Igbo in Abuja will not say that they are going back to Biafra. The Igbo in Kano will not vote for plebiscite, neither will Igbo in Lagos, neither will Igbo anywhere. There are more Igbo abroad than at home and if by any crises, they are forced to come back home, you will see real crises at home. There will be no peace. The place geographically cannot even accommodate them. Administratively, it will be difficult to govern them. Who will govern them if we get plebiscite; that Kanu, or Okorocha or all these people? They are the people that will govern you when you get Biafra? I don’t like what is being done to Ndigbo now in Nigeria but I believe granting them referendum will go a long way in addressing some of the issues.”
When asked about his views on the demand by some section of Igbos for restructuring and others for 2023 Igbo presidency, the nonagenarian has this to say: “I’ve always spoken for and in support of those agitating for restructuring; restructuring in writing a constitution for Nigeria because there is no constitution. Nigeria is being ruled without the people’s constitution, without a constitution written and owned by the people of Nigeria. The only constitution that was people’s constitution was the one of 1963; the Republican Constitution of 1963 which the military overthrew in 1966 and said we abrogated it, we cancel it. Then in 1977, 1978, 1979, Obasanjo organised a Constituent Assembly headed by Rotimi Williams. Rotimi Williams and his men wrote a constitution for Nigeria, passed it onto the military; the military instead of sending the draft then to plebiscite for Nigerian people to see, the military removed some of the things they didn’t like and put what they wanted into the constitution and then one man signed it; one man who’s occupying the seat of the government illegally by treasonable act of overthrowing a democratically elected government. The same man signed this constitution as an order-in- council. So, it’s not a constitution of the people of Nigeria. Then the military continued to rule with this; one military after the other until 1998; when Abacha died; so they set up another Constituent Assembly. They drafted a constitution again instead of putting the constitution as it is or even as amended by the military for the public to vote and say this is our constitution, they did not do that. The military removed what they did not like, what the North did not like and signed approval; ‘I hereby approve that this is the constitution’. Constitution signed by one man. So, all along till today, Nigeria is being run as an illegality. Nigeria is an illegality. There is no legal constitution, there is no constitution. Nigeria is not being run under a constitution now. It’s being run by the illegal imposition of the military from one side of the country and so, my advocacy is that the people of Nigeria should meet, write down their own constitution, not like some people saying, we will go to the House of Representatives, we will go to Senate, secure amendment, if you amend a building that is built on a wrong foundation, you are still building on a wrong foundation and the building is bound to collapse at the time it should collapse.
“There can only be one final solution. Let the people of Nigeria meet, work out a basis for being together. The wealth of the country is being produced from one side of the country; the South South, the South East and part of the South West. The wealth of the country now is on oil and gas and that is the only source of revenue of the country and yet the imperial Fulani Government that is ruling the rest of the country as a colony will not permit the people who produce the wealth to gain from the wealth; to have a say in the control and the management of the wealth that accrues from their place. Even in the management of the production that creates the wealth, they have eliminated people from the area completely.
“I’ve always heard Ndigbo talk of Igbo presidency, I don’t talk about Igbo presidency but I’ll understand when you talk of a Nigerian president of the Igbo extraction or of Igbo origin. There is nothing like Igbo presidency but if you are talking of a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction, one; nobody will ever come and offer it to you on a platter of gold. It has never been done anywhere in the world. If you want to be president of the country, you have to work for it, you have to plan for it, you have to strategise for it and you have to mobilise for it and capture it, not being given, no. You have to capture it. So, if anybody is talking about Ndigbo must be president in 2023, yes, okay. If you want to be, work for it, organise for it and if I may say this, I was NCNC’s final authority in party organisation and political party strategy. Being the principal organising secretary of the NCNC and being in everything in the NCNC as a party; this is my field, this is my specialisation. If Ndigbo wants to be president, let them come to me for advice. I have the key. Let them come to me to tell them what to do because you don’t get president by merely wishing to be president.”
