Jonathan’s probe, an assault on old Eastern Region

Prominent Igbo leader and chieftain of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, Mr. Abia Onyike has stated that the anti-corruption war being prosecuted by President Muhammadu Buhari is an attempt to decimate the old Eastern Region as an emerging power bloc in the country’s politics. He maintained that Buhari can’t govern successfully by alienating the South East zone. Onyike also declared that the anti-graft war will suffer credibility problem in the long run in this interview with EZUGWU OBINNA. Excerpts:

It is only a few days before President Buhari marks his 100 days in office and so much have been going on in the country since he took over on May 29, especially in the area of fighting corruption. How would you assess Buhari’s presidency so far?

First of all, one fact has to be made clear; the anti-corruption drive is only being targeted at some people. What I am saying is that Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade cannot possibly be comprehensive enough, and it cannot be holistic. For instance, I am sure that he cannot probe the Obasanjo administration; he cannot also probe past military administrations.  So he is focusing only on the past administration of Jonathan, and we have to find out the reason for that.

Because of this segregation approach, the anti-corruption crusade will at a stage begin to lack credibility. In the long run, it will lack credibility, and the reason why he cannot approach it holistically is that he himself knows that he cannot go the whole hug of probing all past administrations; all corrupt elements in the Nigerian society. He cannot even confront or probe several prominent members of his own political party who are believed to be stinking corrupt. He cannot do that, and the reasons why he cannot do that or why he would continue to be selective are: first, the fear of the unknown. Because he knows that the ruling class of Nigeria can go to any length to fight back. And possibly threaten his office with impeachment, and you have to recall the fact that when he was a military dictator between 1983 and 85, he tried to talk of anti-corruption but he had to be overthrown by General Ibrahim Babangida. Now the question we are asking is can he also stop the allocation of oil blocs to powerful Northern politicians and retired military leaders?  The answer is a definite no.

The second reason why he cannot go the whole hug is that he wants to continue the old power bloc politics of Nigeria. Himself, and his fellow travelers believe that he came to power on the basis of a Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba alliance, and this same alliance was the alliance which prosecuted the civil war against the Eastern Region from 1967 to 1970. And the conservative politicians as well as military leaders in the core North and the South West, especially believe that there are only two power blocs in Nigeria namely: the North and the South West. So, this group of people saw the emergence of President Jonathan as a slap on their face, thus he was shouted down and out of office.

So the threat to probe his administration is part of the arrogant attitude of this hegemonic alliance to humiliate the old Eastern Region in Nigeria’s power equation. Then I also want to say that the Buhari administration is also waging a secret war against the Igbo by making sure that nobody from the South East is given any appointment since he was sworn into office in May this year.

Now, what he wants to do is to see whether he can subdue the Igbo, and taunt them and psychologically get them destabilized and punish them for supporting the Jonathan presidency. So by so doing he would see whether he can decimate the old Eastern Region, as an emerging power bloc in Nigeria. That is actually what his anti-corruption crusade is out to achieve. It is not a holistic programme and therefore, it lacks credibility.

What can the Eastern Region do in this regard?

Naturally, he would be resisted, it is normal in politics. Everything will not go the way he wants it, because the people of the South East and South-South, that is the old Eastern Region will at the appropriate time fight back. Again, he cannot waste his whole time fighting a particular region in the country. He came to power after 20 years as a military dictator; one would have expected him to try to be as great as Nelson Mandela by running an all-inclusive administration. But he has demonstrated the extent to which he wants to be very parochial. So his administration will eventually lose grip on the basis of his own mistakes and wrong calculations. It is not possible for him to govern the country successfully by alienating the South East.

No leader in Nigeria has been able to do it, even the other military dictators: IBB, Sani Abacha, Adulsalami Abubakar and Yakubu Gowon. No one of them went to the extent that Buhari wants to go now, so he is extremely fanatical and it’s unacceptable. That’s what we are saying, at the appropriate time, he will face resistance.  The way the resistance will come is what I do not know but I know that the people cannot just allow themselves to be decimated.

Some have actually suggested that the best thing for the Igbo to do in this regard is for the governors of the South East to pull resources together and develop the region?

The only thing I would call for is that they should make stronger agitation for the implementation of the recommendation of the 2014 National Conference. People should go back to their regions to develop them.  The centre is too strong; too powerful and Nigeria is a complicated and complex country. We cannot run the government from the centre, and now that the oil price is dropping drastically, it is also a new challenge, even for the Buhari administration which is at the same time contending with an insurgency, the Boko Haram insurgents. So he has a lot of problems to contend with, therefore, a time will come when people will pressurize him to go back to the confab resolutions as the only way that Nigeria can come out of the present crisis, because the crisis is already gathering momentum.

You spoke about the South East and South-South, the old Eastern Region emerging as a strong political bloc. But you would recall that the two zones have not always agreed?

There is nothing like disagreement between the South East and South-South. I don’t believe that; I don’t subscribe to that view. There may have been minor misunderstandings in the past as a result of the politics of the first republic but right now that they saw what happened to them, how the core North fought against Jonathan presidency in spite of the fact that they benefitted more than any other region of the country under him, you know Jonathan gave out the most strategic appointments in his government to the North, but the North could still not be satisfied because of their…  mentality of we are born to rule others perpetually.

And naturally the old Eastern Region is the only region in the country that cannot allow anyone to enslave them. It is in our history, we have never been enslaved before and that is what it is. The major resistance movement and the struggle for independence were led by forces that emanated from the old Eastern Region. The Aba women revolt of 1929 was the most fundamental anti-colonial agitation in the whole West Africa, and the leadership of the entire old Eastern Region; the Azikiwes and all of them, were the people who spearheaded the anti-colonial struggles, even before the Yoruba came into it in 1951 through Awolowo. So it’s a region that nobody can toil with; that’s what we are saying.

A new wave of defection has hit the PDP, especially in Bayelsa. Are you not worried the party may not survive this defeat?

The APC can never win Bayelsa, go and write it down. It is not its catchment area, no matter the maneuvers. They will never will Bayelsa.

There is an increasing quest for a sovereign state of Biafra. What do you think led to this?

The quest for self determination is an inalienable right, and there is a specific provision in the United Nations Charter on Human and Peoples Rights which embodies in it that no human being or group should be oppressed to the extent that they are denied basic political rights. It has become eminently self evident in the Nigerian case that the Igbo people have been earmarked for not only extermination, but also not to be allowed to be in charge of their own affairs.

And you are talking about one of the 10 largest ethnic groups in the world. The Igbo ethnic nationality is large and substantial; it has enormous influence in the world. Therefore, any group of people that have been sustained by the Nigerian rulers since civil war, especially the military leaders. Any plans of emasculating and liquidating the Igbo; or marginalizing them, these are the things that give rise to the struggle for self determination. I mean, it is a natural instinct. Even if you want to kill somebody, the person must struggle before being killed. It is natural. The rise in self determination struggle; the resurgence goes to demonstrate that the Igbo have not been integrated into the Nigerian state. And the way the leaders of Nigeria, especially the Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba hegemony have been behaving towards them shows that they want to enslave them, and as far as you continue to play politics of enslavement, they will continue to react; they will continue to revolt against it and the idea of Biafra will continue to be very popular among them.

And like I said before, the Igbo are a very large group, not minding the national population census that has always been fraudulent and used as a strategy for exercising political hegemony. They don’t want to be scientific; they come with the politics of oppressing the Igbo ethnic nationality through census. But the actual population of the Igbo presently is about 75 million which makes it larger than the population of any other existing independent African country, including Ethiopia which is the highest after Nigeria.

It is thus foolhardy and very unreasonable for the Nigerian rulers to continue their old ways because the way it is now, you cannot oppress and pocket the Igbo and have peace in Nigeria. This is the point we are making because it is more than 10 times qualified to be an independent country. So we should not be relying on what Britain did over 100 years ago. It is no longer realistic. If you don’t want the Igbo, you grant them independence. Let them be on their own. In terms of territory, language, population, location and economic resources available, they are viable to become an independent nation. You cannot oppress them the way you want to oppress ethnic minorities. The leaders have to stop their primitive tactics of trying to oppress the Igbo otherwise there would be no peace in Nigeria.