Indeed time is now at
hand. Ndigbo must ones 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 full well that Nigeria as it is currently constituted, only
fearless, courageous Igbo politicians can survive the present tide.
Recently, in the
concluded National confab that has just passed, 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 the 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 given 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 full 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 knowing full well that 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 the 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
Email:[email protected]
Mobile:
+2348039229982
Can Victor Umeh represent Ndigbo at the senate?
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Rating:
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
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