2023: Nigerian President of Igbo Extraction?

IIn 2010, underwater Photographer Jordi Chias captured this very disturbing photograph of a Loggerhead Turtle ensnared in an old plastic fishing net. This photograph won the One Earth Award at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2010. Whenever I think about the present, and future of Nigeria, this image keeps haunting me. 

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Tellingly, there seems to be a resurgence in the calls for a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction. While few genuinely think that this would be a first step, and perhaps the best way to address the Igbo question, majority of those propagating this campaign, especially from Igboland are doing so simply for their selfish ends. 

Like their counterparts from other regions and ethnic nationalities across the country, they do not care about the Igbo question, they do not care about Nigeria, and they do not care whether the country is perpetually taking one step forward and five steps backward. 

All they care for is political office, contracts, and opportunity to either continue from where they stopped, or create new windows to have their own share, even as the so called national cake is diminishing at a logarithmic proportion. They wouldn’t mind eating only the leftover, or the sugar coatings used as cake toppers. Anything is better than nothing. What a mindset? 

These are the people Ndigbo must watch out for. Ndi o nya akpa eli ozu masquerading as genuine Igbo leaders. They also have their paid hirelings across every media platform. They promise you that with Igbo man or woman at Aso Rock, your problems are over. They promise you that that is the only way to develop Igboland and pave all roads in gold, get hospitals working, build industries and transform your education system. 

They promise you that when we get the presidency, there will be a port at Onitsha, and Aba will become the Taiwan of Africa with factories and industries littering the entire Igboland, kick starting the real ‘Akurulo’ because they know that is your Mumu button. 

Do not mind them. It is their pockets they are amending for depth to get deeper than that of Ganduje, watch as their fashion style will drastically evolve, as they connive with tailors to change the Isi Agu from its slim fit style to a wider styling, even bigger than the Babariga and Agbada. 

And very soon, their red caps will start growing taller than that of Amosun to be able to make more space so as to contain more than what Farouk's cap was able to take in at a go. But the truth is that many Igbo people are tired of this country to such an extent that a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction will hardly scratch it. 

The Igbo want two things: restructure or split. And these Igbo political jobbers and their cohorts from other ethnic nationalities championing the Igbo Presidency project know this more than you do. But as I earlier noted, they do not care. They know that what we have is not working, and the level of decay and regression is a pointer that the Law of Inertia is at work. 

So they have figured they have at least a decade or more to live, so it is better to grab their own share before implosion or explosion whichever comes first to this object at rest. The Nigeria that Lord Lugard and his cohorts at White Hall designed has expired. 

The need to evolve beyond what we have has been knocking on the door over the past five decades when the cracks started showing but we kept patching and white washing it, living in the myth that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable even as we witness advanced societies embark on constant adjustments, to adapt and evolve in tune with demands of the time.

They acknowledge the words of Ernest Renan who in 1882 suggested that national identity is constituted by a daily plebiscite. We must continue to agree or agree to disagree, thus any nation that shuts doors to those reiteratively plebiscitary exchanges especially in the age of instant communication and of backlashes against existing systems is toying with fire.

Like the Turtle, we are all ensnared in this conundrum called Nigeria, and our condition is made worse by the pervasive crab mentality driven by tribal and ethnic sentiments across all strata of the Nigerian society. 

When you imagine the vast natural and human resource that abound in this country, the huge potential, what this country could have become under visionary and committed leadership, if it doesn’t break you, do not bother, you are in the majority among Nigerians who have been numbed to insensitivity, oblivious of their environment. They simply exist. But the political jobbers do not care. Back to the photograph. 

Like this ensnared Turtle. Nigerians can’t breathe. But unlike this Loggerhead Turtle that is struggling to achieve a release, Nigerians are comfortable in their traps. Eating, dancing and merrymaking in cages of different sizes,either totally oblivious of their situation, or they have given up. It is like living in a decaying environment. After a period, you get inured to the horrid smell of decay around you. Only outsiders can perceive your destruction by installment.

Good for the Turtle. The ArtScience Museum is teaming up with National Geographic to showcase Planet or Plastic which brings attention to plights of sea animals from September 12 to March 28, 2021 with the first exhibition to launch at the ArtScience Museum since its re-opening after the circuit-breaker. 

To raise awareness through more than 70 powerful photographs and videos as seen through the lenses of National Geographic photographers and explorers who have witnessed – and are still doing so – the devastating impact of plastic pollution on the natural world, especially in the oceans.

Nobody seem to be interested in the plight of the ordinary Nigerian who loves his enslavement to a level that he is ready to commit murder just to protect his tormentors and oppressors. He is mentally chained, and his environment caged him. 

Worryingly, he is enjoying both.

Written by Kelechi Deca.