AN ADDRESS TO THE WORLD IGBO CONGRESS HOLDING IN DALLAS FT. WORTH, USA. ON THE 30TH AUGUST 2013 BY CHIEF DR. SIMON NSOBUNDU OKEKE, OON (OCHENDO AMICHI). UNITY IN IGBOLAND AND DIASPORA On the 4th of September 2010 when I addressed a faction of the World Igbo Congress which met in New Jersey, I delivered a key note paper titled “our option for Igbo Presidency, year 2015”. Thereafter I tried in vain to meet up with the other group in Pennsylvania. I am glad that you now once again have one united World Igbo Congress and I want to send my warm greetings to all who have worked to bring the much desired unity in this important Association founded mostly for our people here in USA. I congratulate all of you for living up to the old Igbo dictum “Igwe bu ike” which is true in all our political, economic and social pursuits in life. We cannot do it all alone or by each person to himself. Individual efforts never go far in achieving people’s dreams or goals. I made mention of this at the 2010 edition of the World Igbo Congress and let me, for the sake of emphasis say it again. Unless and until our people work in unity whether in business or politics, we will remain spectators operating on the periphery in both commerce and governance. YEAR 2015 As some of you already know, I have tried to be consistent in championing the Quest for an Igbo person to be president of Nigeria in one day, making inputs for the publications of some books on the presidency projects, leading critical organizations, and investing resources and time. I shall keep doing so as long as God gives me life, strength and good health. It is an incontestable fact that our President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan GCFR, is serving his first term in office and therefore is constitutionally entitled to a second shot at the Presidency in 2015. He deserves all the support we can muster as we had done before. As a people sharing in collective destiny and commonwealth of this country Nigeria, it is sacrosanct that we secure our destiny as well as our heritage from further decimation. All we need to do as a people is to work out a properly negotiated accommodation from the president for the collective interest of our people Ndi Igbo. To get the best for our people, we must be seen to stand together as one entity or people using our first eleven in the art of negotiation, to get the best terms for the best communal interest of our people. Our people gifted, with the art of diplomacy and negotiation, must say no to self interest of whatever kind. Our sons and daughters who have been blessed to find themselves in positions of authority and those who are in the corridors of power in our country must regard themselves as holding such positions in trust and the litmus is on how they relate with our people in the performance of their duties. OUR DEMAND 1. There ought to be at least a Federal government sponsored 500 barrel per day of crude oil MEGA REFINERY sited between Abia and Imo states and then a MEGA PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY strategically sited to serve Anambra, Enugu and Ebonyi states both aimed at providing jobs to our teaming young graduates. 2. The entire South East is lying on a bed of natural gas hitherto unexploited. Our people must sensitise both government and private sector industrialists to heavily invest therein to provide both power, jobs and wellbeing for our citizens. This will also change the rural-urban migration and brain drain being experienced in our land. 3. There ought to be a standard guage Eastwest Railway line incorporated in the 2nd Niger Bridge design, to run from Onitsha westwards to Lagos and its seaports and Eastwards to Enugu,Owerri, Port Harcourt and Calabar. 4. Still on Think Home Syndrome- If each of our sons and daughters in Diaspora could aim at providing JUST ONE JOB TO ONE YOUTH at home, it will be a master stroke to the current kidnapping and drug trafficking trend at home. The same goes to the current brain drain. 5. Our people today have no competitors in the art of commodity trading but our people will definitely be much better off if we are the manufactures of the commodities we sell. Our Zone is devoid of any Federal Government sponsored Industries and we must negotiate for them. POLITICAL IDEOLOGY Due to our being habitually in a hurry, we have never sat down to fashion out our Indigenous political philosophy/ Ideology as the other major ethnic groups have done. We must come up with our own indigenous political ideology rather than being an appendage of what does not really belong to us. Today we operate just on the periphery of major political parties. May be this is responsible for our not being in any of today’s political calculations as we are being branded as a group without any political discipline. It will be difficult, if not impossible for any nation to willingly concede its presidency to a “group with a perceived image of unseriousness and political indiscipline”. We are suffering today within the Nigeria state, not necessarily because of civil war but because we are deluded by the misconception that our individual economic power alone can make us relevant. It is probably this obvious lack of operating via a tough central figure or body that is our undoing. Until the Igbo Academia, Politicians, Businessmen and the rest of our citizens come together as a people and strategize and agree on a common Igbo political agenda and pursue it holistically with focused cohesion, the presidency and in fact other positions of authority in the Nigeria nation and its administrative units will remain elusive to us. More importantly, we need more than Ohaneze Ndigbo as constituted today, to realise this goal. The present circumstances that Ndigbo find themselves, following the continuous attempt by various groups to sub-due both our economic and political strengths, places us in a precarious position. Therefore, I strongly believe that zoning and rotation of major political offices amongst the major ethnic tribes and geopolitical zones can guarantee our people a better deal in the Nigerian political scene today. OUR MOTHER TONGUE Our new generation of Ndigbo prefer to adopt English as a language of communication with their fellow brethren and even inside their homes. What is most worrisome is that at present, most parents I have had the privilege of interacting with, indulge in the use of English, either in its natural form or in a broken context (pidgin) for communication purposes within the home. This is predominant even among both literate, semi literate and illiterate parents and grand parents most of who cannot distinguish between “is” from “was”. Our school administrators ought to review the school curriculum to make Igbo language a compulsory subject in all nursery, primary and secondary schools. A credit pass in Igbo should be a condition for admission into tertiary institutions cited in Igboland, especially for students of Igbo origin. I wish to draw your attention to an advertorial published in Nigeria’s Daily Sun of Tuesday August 20, 2013, page 13 captioned “OBJ, TINUBU, OONI of Ife, Mike Adenuga etc storm London”. The reason for this said advertorial was to herald the take off of a N3b Yoruba village project. This is said to be the brain child of the Yoruba Elder’s Council (YEC). How many of our Igbo Leaders and billionaires have identified with such similar project conceptualized by our own people both here and at home? KNOW YOUR HISTORY Our youth today know nothing of who they are nor anything about the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War- the most significant event in our contemporary history. Our primary and secondary school curriculum must be overhauled with an aim of making our children to know who they are and what brought us to where we are today. You in Diaspora will help significantly in pressing for this in appropriate quarters at home. We need to liberate ourselves, and more importantly, our children, our youth from the apparent confusion and bondage associated with not knowing one’s HISTORY, CULTURE, LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, IDEOLOGY, FABLES AND POLITICS. The Igbo philosophy of “Igwe bu ike, onye aghana nwanneya, Ego di n’iogwu Egbe belu ugo belu” etc ought to be inculcated in the minds of our youths anywhere they are. THE LIFESTYLE OF OUR YOUTH By dint of a collection of characteristics evident in the typical Igbo man including hard work, high risk bearing, endurance and fearless adventurism, luck often has smiled on faces of many of our people, especially the relatively young ones. Unfortunately, this came with a new trend of ostentatious lifestyle and arrogant display of wealth hitherto unknown in Igbo traditional culture. This probably is a fall out of the negative consequences of the civil war upon our people. This is in contrast to the Igbo man’s way of life in the olden days which was very modest, no matter the amount of wealth he possesses. By being too loud and ostentatious, we curry the envy of both our neighbours, our host states and our competitors. Moreover this flagrant lifestyle invariably exposes our people to unwarranted psychological and physical attacks. We need to note the following:- 1. Our do or die pursuit of money- the end justifies the means- This has led to many of our youths struggling for a breathing space in prisons all over the world i.e Europe, America North and South, Far East, Japan etc. (Last month, it was reported to the whole world that of the 20 prison inmates in Iran awaiting execution, 18 of them are Igbo). 2. Imprudent spending: - When 5 of our South East governors collectively donated N25m at a fund raising for a new Federal University outside Igboland, two of our money bags declared that they are calling off the shame by donating N250m each. It will be interesting to know how much they have contributed to Universities in Igbo land. 3. 80% of all decent hotels in Abuja are said to be owned or co-owned by Ndigbo. Judging by the fact that these hotels are 3, 4 and 5 star quality one begins to ask “how many of such are existent in Igbo land?”. 4. In the late 80s and early 90s, The Balogun Business Associations, a body made up of our young successful business and professional men/women, invested over N20b to build the biggest and best shopping complex of West Africa in Lagos. How many of such scale of investments have been sited in Igbo land? (I however share in the guilt, my firm SNO Consultancy LTD being the professional consultant of the Association from inception to completion). A CALL FOR CHANGE IN INVESTMENT PARADIGM What I am saying in effect is that now, we ought to think of home in our future investment destinations. A poser: - What will be our fate if at the worst case Scenario and as has been the rhetorics by various speakers recently, Nigeria breaks up today? When the political situation got out of hand in 1966/67 and our lives and properties could no longer be protected outside our homeland, Igbo’s of the South East Zone in particular, were all forced to return to their ancestral homes and it then dawned on them that there were not enough house stock to accommodate the returnees. Most of them were forced to sleep inside their trucks and cars, schools and church buildings converted to make shift refugee camps. The after effect of this is that today, every Igbo man/ woman has made provision of a decent house in his homeland as his first priority no matter where he settles abroad. As a result, today people hire caretakers for their country mansions and palaces! If therefore it happens again we would reasonably be accommodated. But can we just return home, stay put and admire ourselves, morning, afternoon and night without anyone finding one form of job to do for a living? There is an abysmal lack of any meaningful investments in our homeland today. Let us make hay while the sun shines. Let us think home especially in our industrial investment decisions. This ought to be at the back of the minds of our political and business leaders. Our people’s support for high political office seekers must be anchored on a well negotiated accommodation for our people no matter which political party. I thank you all for listening. God bless Nigeria. Chief Dr. Simon Nsobundu Okeke, OON B. Sc (Lond.) FNIVS, FRICS, LLD
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 05:21:34 +0000
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