Ala Ngwa and leadership in Abia State. I can still remember my first encounter with the negative perception that Ngwa people have suffered in the hands of our brethren, our Igbo brothers and sisters. I was still in my early years at primary school at Aba-Owerri Road Primary School right there in Umuocham, a stone throw from my own village of Abayi. A close family friend of mine who, also of Ngwa extraction, during school break one day came and whispered to me dont speak Ngwa here! They will laugh at you!. A quick one plus one immediately played out in my head and I figured that there must have been something wrong with the dialect. But I wasnt bothered because I hardly even know how to speak the dialect, my family having spent our earlier years in Aba main town, surrounded mostly by people from Old Bende and Isukwuato. Those were the dialects I was then fluent in. None-the-less, I would have none of that advice, because I was quite proud of who I was. So I never hesitated to declare myself to be from Ngwa. But I was still bothered so I began prying into the matter, why would I want to hide the fact that I was Ngwa. It was then that I began to hear of how Ngwa people were supposed to be cannibals and so on. At school also I came to find out that my fellow children made fun of the Ngwa dialect...it sounded funny to them! Then I also began to understand how it was thought that Ngwa people were backward and they wouldnt hesitate to sell their land for a money to marry a new wife or any mundane purpose. We were thought of as not being willing to endeavor for success. And so through the course of my life, I remember being in so many arguments and exchanges, defending the integrity of the Ngwa, disputing outlandish myths of cannibalism and others and even getting into a few fights doing so. I have grown up to become convinced that because of the fact that Aba became an urban center, the non-Ngwas who migrated to Aba, developed this condescending view because the saw the Ngwa in his village form, women carrying baskets ugu and akpu on their heads from the farm, palm-wine tappers conveying their cargo on bicycles to Ahia Umungasi, or AforUle, or EkeOha and others. When they see these scenes they forget that they too came from villages, where people still lived in the same natural ways, they downgrade the Ngwa to a lesser status in their thinking and attitudes. While my perception may or may not be exactly accurate, it is undeniable that the Ngwa man today is still feared, mistrusted, misunderstood and basically demeaned in many ways, by our Igbo brethren. Particularly, when the subject of an Ngwa person being a governor of Abia State comes up, people are always ready to make it abundantly clear that such a possibility is one that they are not and will never be willing to accommodate, as if there was something inherently evil about Ngwa people. The reality and dangerous implications of this mindset became abundantly clear to me in 2011, when at Ariaria market, I over heard market union members going from shop to shop to remind traders that Reagan Ufomba was and Ngwa man and therefore shouldnt be voted for. For me its really difficult to understand since Ngwa land still habours the second largest population of Igbos after Onisha. The Ngwa stock is also the most populous of all Igbo clans and has produced its fair share successful, accomplished and respected men and women in all fields of life...why not a governor?! Therefore, in-as-much as I dont subscribe to the notion held by some that an Ngwa governor would solve all the problems of Ngwa people or will be the only one to develop Ngwa land ( as a matter of fact I dont want an Ngwa governor that will develop only Ngwa land and leave the rest of Abia) I still support the emergence of an Ngwa governor, in view of the mistrust we have suffered. It has become necessary to debunk the myth we can not govern the state, that we can not organize ourselves to produce one credible candidate or that non-Ngwas have anything to fear if we do. The notion that the Ngwa will take back all the land theyve sold to Umu Ohuhu from them is simply too laughable to be given any accommodation in our minds....where has anybody seen such being done? That is also why it is particularly disheartening that our people can fight themselves over who should be governor, at this time when the decades of being overlooked and maligned seems to getting over. If we can not unite over this and settle on one person, if we continue to bicker and fight, then were only proving our detractors right and some of us will just give up on the dream and vote any non-Ngwa person on the ballot on the election day. We need to get our heads right and nip these issues in the bud now!
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 13:40:49 +0000
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