Let Orji Kalu cry (final part)
The Igbo nation’s political subjugation demands self-reflection from our political leaders, mentors and mentees.
They should weigh up why their subservience to the impulses of power brokers, to the detriment of the Igbo’s collective aspirations, has failed to provide them with political relevance.
Since post-independence, the allegiances of our pioneer politicians to the compulsions of Northern oligarchies have ended in fiasco and fatality, yet their successors seem insouciance to iconoclasm. During electioneering, all the southeast governors and some political heavyweights flaunted their gusto to dance attendance on powers that be with their public pooh-pooh of the Igbo nation’s agitation for president.
OUK amplified the contempt further with his infamous declaration that Nigerians are not ready for an Igbo presidency.
Unfortunately, the mushy-headed denigration of his tribe failed to earn him the senate president position, but a lamentation exacerbated by frustration over botched ambition and incarceration.
As we used to say in local parlance, las, las, na everybody go chop breakfast. They will receive the reward of betrayal because no buyer will ever trust a seller of his blood brother.
Unlike some of our uncharitable droves of fawning politicians who ingratiate power brokers for endorsements, President Tinubu used his dynasty to negotiate with the Northerners.
Of course, the rest is history. It is not impugnable that former President Buhari promenaded to power through Tinubu’s influence after he had contested, lost thrice and wept on national television.
While our southeast politicians were seeking endorsement and being cautious for fear of victimisation by the EFCC, Tinubu boldly upset the apple cart with his famous ‘Emi lo kan’ assertion.
Today, he is the president, his political contemporary, OUK, and all the southeast former governors are in the senate jostling for committee chairpersons with his godsons.
Some of the young politicians who served as commissioners, SSGs and chiefs of staff under the administration of these former southeast governors are stranded. Some fortunate ones are Personal and Special Assistants to their successors.
Unlike the Southeast politicians that subject their aides and associates to perpetual servitude, the Northern and Southwest politicians groom and position theirs to support and eventually succeed them. It is the secret of their political supremacy. It is worrisome that the southeast politicians have made themselves political freeloaders in Nigeria. That is why the rest of the country treats Igbos as pariahs and scroungers.
We will not understand the agony until we commit to heart the impunity with which the Lagos State Government destroys Igbos’ properties and businesses and the cruel manner the northern jihadists behead and burn down their shops.
Last week, one Asari Dokubo, an Ijaw militant, was videoed online brandishing AK-47 and threatening to annihilate the Igbo nation. As we speak, law enforcement agencies have maintained a pococurante façade.
The rest of the country has moved on as if nothing happened. If Dokubo were an Igbo man, the Federal Government would have declared him wanted. The military joint task force would have ransacked villages and decimated the number of our youths.
It is shameful that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been in DSS detention since June 2021. The best our politicians have done was to name-drop him during political campaigns to knead their over-inflated sense of self.
They have not started crying. It is still morning. We must enjoy schadenfreude over those who indulged in the public spectacle of the Igbo nation to achieve political relevance.
Stay in the know on Abia politics. Grab a copy of Don Norman Obinna’s ‘Raped & Enslaved: Era of Kleptocracy’.
