Nigeria: Why do the Igbos hate Buhari?

Buhari

Forget about the lies and hateful propaganda against the person of President Muhammadu Buhari from some noisy, frustrated, hypocritical and angry persons and groups from southeast Nigeria. They churn out all manner of lies that Buhari “hates the Igbos” and that’s why he has not considered, or does not consider them for appointments into plum positions in his government.



But is it true that President Buhari hates the Igbos? I have seen statements and lamentations like “Why does Buhari hate Igbos?” coming from groups like the Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo, the Aka Ikenga group and other Igbo socio-cultural groups, and I have often wondered whether that question and lamentation should not be the other way round. I sincerely believe the right question should be, “Why do the Igbos hate Buhari?”

Don’t get it twisted; I know quite a large number of Igbos that are fanatical supporters and promoters of the Buhari Project, and I have an inner knowing that even if you put a knife on the throats of these people to denounce Buhari, they will proudly refuse to denounce him. Unfortunately, these Igbos that are staunch lovers of Buhari are regarded as outcasts in Igbo land and are therefore treated as scum.

The first time Buhari took a shot at contesting the presidential election was in 2003, and who did he pick as his running mate? A notable and credible Igbo man called Senator Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo, a former President of the Nigerian Senate. And where did the Igbo votes go to in that presidential election? The second time Buhari took a shot at contesting a presidential election was in 2007, and, again, who did he pick as his running mate? Another notable Igbo man called Rt. Hon. Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, a former Speaker of the House of Reps. And where did the Igbo votes go to in that presidential election?

Twice the Igbos rejected him, in spite of picking some of their prominent men as running mates.

For the next two presidential contests Buhari took part in, he moved towards the Yorubas for a running mate. Once in 2011, the Yorubas rejected him in spite of the man having one of them as running mate, but in 2015, they accepted him. But in all the four presidential contests Buhari participated in, he was massively and resoundingly rejected by the Igbos, which, again, asserts that the right question should be, “Why do the Igbos hate Buhari?”
In all fairness, is it not outright mischief and shamelessness to expect plum positions in the government of a man you have perpetually rejected and insulted with all manner of derogatory words? And even while they are making hypocritical noises about appointments, they keep saying that they are proud of the way they voted in 2015, and that if given the chance again they will repeat voting for an absolutely corrupt regime that was resoundingly rejected by Nigerians and the global community, and yet they want to be incorporated into Buhari’s kitchen cabinet? To promote the values they cherished in Jonathan’s sordid regime for which he was overwhelmingly rejected?

You want to be part of running a government of CHANGE after deriding the CHANGE MOVEMENT right from inception up to election day?

They want to be military service chiefs in Buhari’s government but yet they don’t want any “Boko Haram” prisoner in any federal prison built in any of their towns? They want power without responsibility or even a shred of shared responsibility? A case of looking for “juicy appointments” without sprucing the fruit trees in the garden, or a case of seeking to enjoy omelettes without the simple hassle of breaking the eggs shells, or a case of seeking to enjoy federal power without being federalist, or a case of being Biafrans while being Nigerians at the same time, right?

Also, they want to be either Senate President or Deputy Senate President but deliberately hooked themselves to a notoriously corrupt and dying political party and thereby walked themselves out of the Hurricane of Change that blew across the country, and had to rely on subterfuge and alleged forgery to “kidnap” the position of Deputy Senate President, and yet they want more other top positions?

Does Federal Character mean an Igbo man succeeding an Igbo man as SGF even after an Igbo man spent about five years in that position? Or does Federal Character mean the other 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria should not be appointed into positions which they label as “juicy”? Or don’t they know and understand that they are just one of the 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria?

Without doubt, the Jonathan regime was an Igbo regime, for the man truly put them in many strategic and “juicy” positions, especially in almost all the nation’s finance institutions. But how has this Igbo domination of the Jonathan regime helped the Igbos or the southeast in general apart from the hefty bank accounts of those Igbos Jonathan “empowered” with those “juicy” appointments? The famous East-West road and the Second Niger Bridge were merely turned into cash cows for the Jonathan gang. So what is the rationale for their loving such a hopelessly corrupt regime that did not even serve any part of the country with services except the deliberate promotion of ethno-religious sentiments, which, in itself, was a ploy to perpetuate that same distasteful regime through national disunity?

What should serve as a metaphoric description of the contradiction in the “love story” between the Igbos and Jonathan’s government is a heart-rending piece titled ‘The Road to Arochukwu’ written by ace writer and Editor of THIS DAY newspaper, Segun Adeniyi, on the back page of the paper on Thursday, July 23, in which the writer lamented the deliberately neglected Arochukwu road in Abia State. According to him, he and other travellers who had cause to use that road for a condolence trip spent about two hours on a journey of just 34 kilometres, which ordinarily should last for about 15 to 20 minutes. This was because the road was in complete ruins despite being a federal road, and the government of Jonathan that was so loved by the Igbos and had a lot of Igbos nicely tucked in in very “juicy” federal positions, yet they could not deploy their “juicy” positions to influence the fixing of that road and, perhaps, many other such roads in their region!

In a follow-up piece on the same road by Segun Adeniyi on Thursday, July 30, he exposed how the contract for the reconstruction of the road was awarded in 2012 by the Jonathan regime to a firm called Beks Kimse (Nigeria) Limited owned by Professor Kimse Okoko from Bayelsa State at the cost of a little over 4.7 billion naira. The company was promptly paid around 2.5 billion naira as mobilisation to commence work, and the flag off of the project was done on March 29, 2013 in the presence of the Abia State Governor at that time, Chief T.A. Orji, and the late Senator Uche Chukwumerije, and other prominent politicians and businessmen from the area.

Well, since the flag off was done, the contractor did just less than one kilometre and abandoned the project after! Since the work was abandoned, no one has ever heard the Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo or any other noisy Igbo group demand to know why the project was abandoned by the contractor and the Jonathan government. Rather, they were all busy endorsing and promoting the Jonathan 2015 presidential project!

So, what is the nature of the “mutually beneficial” relationship between the Jonathan regime and the Igbo elite on the one hand, and between the Jonathan regime and the Igbo downtrodden on the other in the light of the fact that the Arochukwu road project seemed to be a cash cow for a Bayelsa contractor and some highly placed Igbo politicians? And, was the alliance of Bayelsa politicians and contractors with their Igbo counterparts just an elaborate financial benefit scheme for their elite class at the expense of the manipulated downtrodden Igbo peasants and small time traders? And was the massive propaganda of lies and hate that emanated from that region against Buhari prior to the presidential elections another elaborate scheme to chain down the downtrodden Igbo in perpetual slavery to the whims and financial benefits of their corrupt elite?

President Buhari should not allow his administration to be blackmailed and intimidated by angry and frustrated “Federal Character” chanters who never even believed in it nor in its practice in their six years of looting, rape and plunder of the country’s wealth. Buhari should just focus and concentrate in building and empowering our national institutions, and providing good governance irrespective of whoever he uses.

The Nation