With the professor’s contribution to organizing African unity, and the OAU resolved to a level of action that reasonable people would accept, the dialogue continued in astonishing chronology.
Setting: In the 1950s and 1960s, the Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo tribes were rival young brothers to their father, Nigeria. Now they are old, but like all brothers, sometimes they come back to kill each other.
Divulgation: The answers are not verbatim quotes from Professor Austine SO Okwu; rather, they are interpretations and extrapolations, based on my understanding of the issues discussed.
ask: Why did Nnamdi Azikiwe, also known as Zik, who undoubtedly fought for Nigeria’s independence more strongly than any other citizen, never become the all-powerful Prime Minister of Nigeria, instead his importance was reduced to that of a mere ceremonial president?
Answer: Good question, my dear Anselm. He followed a short rest. ‘By the way,’ continued the professor, ‘my son Anselm, you look very well today; Sometimes I feel like killing you for your haggard look, but today you look good. Her wife Sandra is doing a good job, my congratulations and congratulations to her.’
Initially surprised by the unexpected adulation, in the midst of the praise I got from her participation I laughed and had a mild attack.
When the laughter stopped, an embarrassed silence filled the room. In the moment of expectation, I saw in the professor’s face a man reaching into the depths of the story, examining the content, and wondering if the outcome could have been different. When he had found the right tone and gesture, he answered him.
‘Zik wanted to be the Prime Minister. Nigeria wanted him to be the first prime minister, and his party, the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, the NCNC, wanted him to be the prime minister; but the British thought he was too headstrong for them.
Through his newspaper West African Pilot [1937- fifties]Zik had been a thorn in the flesh of the colonialists.
Even though I had anticipated this response, my head still dropped to rest on my left fist. After I recovered, he continued.
“You know, my dear Anselm, the British will give you freedom but not power, not authority.” In order to deny Azikiwe, an Igbo man, along with his party, the National Nigerian Citizens Congress (NCNC), and their southern constituencies any real authority, the British produced an unsubstantiated tally that found northern Nigeria to be more populous. than the southern part of Nigeria. the country. On the basis of this calculation, which they entrenched in Nigeria’s first constitution, colonial Britain allocated northern Nigeria 51 per cent of the representatives in the central government, and southern Nigeria 49 per cent.
Since the enclave that holds the majority of representatives produces the Prime Minister, the position fell, in 1960, to Allahaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Hausa, the key man of his political party, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC).
Ask: Much has been said about the ‘Igbo fear of domination’ of the 1950s and 1960s, which was to some extent one of the accelerators of the civil war between Nigeria and Biafra. Where did this feeling come from, who were these Igbos who dominated Nigeria and on what basis did other tribes think that the Igbos dominated them?
Answer: “Again, another great question, and I love that you brought this up.” Then a pause, shorter in time but, depending on the level of attention, deeper in thought than the pause in the first response.
Fear of dominance was a mixed bag in which one can find errors of perception and errors of unbridled emotion, but of course also some undeniable reality. The country feared two categories of Igbos; those of the private company and those of the federal civil service.
The Igbo are great travelers who travel to the north and west of Nigeria. Igbos travel out of necessity. We have a large population but a smaller land mass and our soil is not as fertile as in other parts of Nigeria. However, stores thrive when our people put them up. Life flourishes when our people move into communities.
In small shacks, the Igbo sell leather, become traders, trade palm seeds and weave baskets to sell, establish bicycle and shoe repair services, and open barbershops and hairdressers.
What the Igbo saw as versatility in manual labor, other tribes saw as evidence of dominance.
Thinking for a few seconds and remembering the civil service sector of that time, he said, ‘Yes, there’s no denying it, our people were plentiful at the federal level.’
The Igbo are pragmatists. On one level, they led the national struggle to wrest power from the colonialists, but on another level they imitated the white man’s way of life, helping them with the government, attending their schools, cooking for them, cleaning their houses, and tending their gardens. .
The Yorubas, the other main tribe, were less delighted and highly distrustful of the white man. They consulted their gods and assaulted the white man with ghostly punches, talismans, and seven serpentine witches.
Due to the Igbo’s continuing relationship with the white colonialists, upon the latter’s departure, more Igbo took over their duties as federal civil servants and law enforcement officers.
Envy, resentment and paranoia grew among the other major Nigerian tribes against the Igbo and their relatives, the professor lamented.
Smelling the bloodshed, I fidgeted. Where my right palm had soothed my cheek a fever had developed, higher than on the third day of malaria fever.
- Nothing new: the devil in man will always find reasons to brutalize another man.
Many Nigerians joined the mob mentality of the 1960s with the Igbo as scapegoats. Slander is the fuel from which chaos springs; in this case, the Nigerian-Biafra war, which lasted from 1967 to 1970.
End.