Indeed time is now at hand. Ndigbo must once again be reminded of doing the needful. The primary elections of all parties are over with exception to that of Anambra PDP that shall and always be resolved in the court of law. But before this time, that is the election proper, Ndigbo needs to be reminded of the hard fact that 2015 is a very crucial year for Igbo survival. It is of necessity to inform Ndigbo that owing to the precarious nature of things especially as concerns the politics of Nigeria, we do not for any reason need to dare gamble with the forthcoming election especially as regards electing candidates, particularly, candidates of bold conscience.
Across Igboland, if one is sincere to himself, if one looks into the menu of the past renowned Igbo politicians, only one man, apart from the older generations, is a resonance of the attributes of the past dedicated leaders of Igboland. I wouldn’t say in the common parlance of “the last man standing” because I learnt and I do know that from “age to age Divinity gathers men for himself so that from east to west even a perfect offering may be made”. So, greatness and great men must continue to be as long as the earth stays. But, what is of great importance is the collective interest of Ndigbo, the crucial moment that is the period we found ourselves in Nigeria, and sending bold and courageous representatives to the Upper Chamber knowing fully well that Nigeria as it is currently constituted, only fearless, courageous Igbo politicians can survive the present tide.
Recently, in the just concluded National confab, though not by election, Igbo men and women were selected and sent to represent their folks. Among the things that generated heated debate was the five percent oil revenue to North East as a result of the believed wanton destructions by the terrorists. All the South East representatives were fully present when the North befuddled the rest of the country into adopting the five percent oil revenue for the reconstruction of the devastated infrastructures by the Boko Haram not minding that after more than forty years of Nigeria/Biafra civil war the Nigerian Government have not found it a sine qua non to rebuild the East where over two million persons lost their lives to the bloodiest war in the history of black Africa. Surprisingly, when some Igbo representatives were confronted over the implication of abdicating five percent of our oil revenue for a reason in which there is no justice and fairness, our fickle representatives were rather irked by that attempt to call them to inner reflection. Ndigbo kept quiet again until a late comer to the conference who on arrival perhaps because of being at home with what the predicament of Ndigbo is on one hand, and having gone through the tutelage of Igbo legends of both dead and alive on the other hand, effortlessly discovered the blatant injustice in giving five percent of our oil revenue to a part of the country that has continued to murder Ndigbo with the attendant destructions of their means of livelihood. We are in full knowledge that many of our brother representatives refused to botch the bill from going to plenary session for as for them this matter has been debated and adopted by the committee and any further intervention is stupid. Chief Umeh stood his ground at the plenary and shouted to the high heaven over the injustice that would have almost been passed as a law in the whole Republic supposing the Confab recommendations were adopted as working document. Being a man of bigger spirit, he got the enemies of the people to concur on his protest and at the end the five percent oil revenue was given to all the parts of the Federal Republic.
Still on the National confab, our brothers were all seated when one of the Northern representatives deployed a demeaning language reinstating that Ndigbo is not part of Nigeria. None discovered that when you refer to a thing as so-called or a people as so-called that what you are saying is that in the real sense that thing does not exist. And the Northern representative unabashedly qualified Ndigbo as so-called South East zone and for all our representatives seated, this is not a wrong doing. This is because in the real sense of it they are not true Igbo or if Igbo, are not qualified to be there to represent their people as their quietude in the face of such demeaning of a people they are representing indicates that they are not abreast with the laws, customs and struggles of the land they claim to hail from. Succour came again from Umeh who brought retired General Ike Nwachukwu to register the protest and the northern representative was brought to recant his statement and apologize to Ndigbo.
Putting the confab aside, Ndigbo in trying time as this need predictable characters as their representatives. The case of our brothers backing out from struggles that will benefit our common goal is not news. And we see that more often than not the reasons are flimsy and this points to the fact that the people in question ab-initio are not abreast with the customs, laws and the struggles of Ndigbo but are people who due to the confusion of things found themselves in the corridors of power. The case of Chief Peter Obi the former governor of Anambra state defecting to PDP five months after he had deployed the same system for eight years to govern the state is an eloquent instance of a man who doesn’t know what and who is Ndigbo in the first instance.
Even though APGA is not an Igbo party, Igbos have much domination in APGA. What it means is that after all said and done the only political platform Igbos can through it express their political interest is APGA. APC and PDP in all their sagacity have excluded Ndigbo from either the presidential ticket or vice presidential slot. So ensuring the survival of APGA and her spread becomes, I believe, the collective responsibility of every Igbo man knowing very well that APGA is the only city of refuge for Ndigbo and that APGA’s support of Jonathan is pure temporal business with a definite date of expiration as Jonathan’s tenure if elected in the forthcoming election expires by 2019 such that if APGA is not built and prepared for 2019 elections Igbos by then may have been absolutely relegated to political dungeon of irrelevance.
If all that I have said cannot be established to be untrue, it now becomes necessary to say that it appears very strong, I suppose, that considering the trend of things that Chief Sir Victor Umeh’s political ambition in this time coincides with the political future of Ndigbo, that is, considering the hard fact that Ndigbo is in dire need of a robust representation on one hand, of which considering the candidates in Anambra central senatorial zone (where Victor hail from) we know that among them Victor Umeh has exuded more energy, boldness, courage, consistency as regards Igbo struggle. On the other hand, considering that Ndigbo cannot actualize Igbo political destiny without establishing a hegemony on a political platform considering that they have been sidelined in the other political platforms, it therefore becomes important and urgent to put to the mind of Ndigbo that they should be in the know that the failure of a man who have exuded much strength in sustaining that platform, of whom now could be seen as the arrowhead of the APGA struggle, whose political destiny coincides with the Igbo political destiny will be very disastrous. What it means is that the failure of Chief Umeh to clinch the senate seat may mark the death of that system we can say from all I have said as the only residual means of salvaging the battered Igbo political destiny.
What it means is that Chief Umeh represents the face of the new Igbo political struggle and that his victory is a victory for all APGA and Ndigbo. Victor’s senate from his antecedents is not just Anambra central Senatorial thing, rather Victor’s senate is Igbo’s senate because Victor from his antecedent, as we have duly established, shall give leadership to all Igbo senator’s if not all other senators. What it means further is that Victor’s senate is a senate Ndigbo must rally round to secure for just as in one time or the other in the evolution of people and nations one man’s destiny may be tied with the destiny of others. Ndigbo must be desperate about this!
Elo Afoka holds a PhD in Logic
Mobile: +2348039229982
