#TrueFederalism: Nigeria Must Not Let The Igbos Leave This Union, By Tony Osborg

In terms of their industrial spirit, the Igbo are probably the only nationality that has built several industrial estates across Nigeria. In 1997, an Igbo engineer, Ezekiel Izuogu, produced Nigeria’s first indigenous prototype car in Imo State. Africa was excited by his ingenuity. However, due to financial constraints and dirty Nigerian politics, the Izuogu Z-600 model could not hit the Nigerian market as a mass produced car. His workshop was later vandalised and his efforts destroyed. The dream died. Few decades later another Igbo, Innocent Chukwuma, has launched Innoson cars, making him the first indigenous car producer in and from Nigeria.

Anambra and Enugu States alone have over six indigenous estates. By indigenous I mean industrial estates built by indigenes, and with little or no government support. Nigeria’s first indigenous car is made in one of those estates – in Nnewi precisely. The industrial estates are hosts to several other indigenous manufacturing companies, including one of the biggest plastic manufacturing plants in Africa. One would be pleasantly surprised to see what the Igbos are producing in their industrial estates. It will not be wrong to say that Igbos are driving the indigenous manufacturing sector of the Nigerian economy with little or no government support. The first indigenous Nigerian company to produce an internationally certified brand of computers, Zinox, is Igbo, by the name, Stanley Nnamdi Ekeh from Imo State. The Igbos dominate the electronics market and have built a series of ‘computer villages’ across the country. Nigeria’s leading pharmaceutical companies – Emzor, Juhel, Orange, Rico, etc. – are Igbo owned. Anabel Mobile, the first indigenous Nigerian phone manufacturer, is also Igbo owned. There are several industrial breakthroughs the Igbos have made in Nigeria than I can presently count.

On the level of trade and retail businesses, Igbos are the most successful traders and retailers in Nigeria, and possibly around the world. Across every Nigerian city, they do not only control the major retail markets, but they equally dominate small and medium scale industries, and are synonymous with the description of being ‘importers’. Their natural inclination towards economic activities has driven them across the globe in search of opportunities. There is hardly a country in the world where you don’t find an Igbo man doing one legitimate or illegitimate form of business. The Igbos have proven to the rest of Nigeria beyond reasonable doubt that they are not lazy people.

In Literature, the father of modern African Literature is an Igbo man by the name Chinua Achebe. His work, Things Fall Apart has remained one of Africa’s most read book, which brought international attention to Nigerian literature. Chinua Achebe remains an inspiration to most African writers.

In politics, the Igbo are the only nationality to have successfully executed Nigeria’s first and only political revolution, with the subsequent military coups being merely revenge ploys and schemes for political power. In 1966, a group of senior Igbo officers forcefully took over power and wiped out a set of corrupt politicians in a bloody putsch. Although with the intention of installing the imprisoned opposition leader, Obafemi Awolowo, as president, however the coup was unfortunately altered by another senior Igbo officer, Aguiyi Ironsi, who not only distorted the initial plan but ended up making himself a military ruler and at the same time ended Nigeria’s federalism by decreeing a new form of unitarism. While the Igbos laid the foundation for political revolutions in Nigeria, today they are demanding for an independent nation. The Igbos like to fight for what they believe in and they always do while damning the consequences of this.

The Igbos control a fair share of the oil and gas servicing industry in Nigeria. The biggest indigenous oil servicing contractor in Nigeria today is Igbo owned. The first indigenous and independently (without any shred of government funding) owned gas power plant was built by an Igbo in Aba – the Geometric Power Limited. From haulage to logistics, procurement to real estate, finance, sports, entertainment, manufacturing, engineering to medicine, science, etc., the Igbos have been making Nigeria proud, locally and internationally. The Igbos might be arrogant and even exploitative in their quest for profits and expansionism, yet Nigeria can ill afford to lose them from the union. They technically control the formal and informal sectors of Nigerian economy and they are everywhere making progress, with or without political patronage. I was surprised to find out sometime last year that Igbos still engage in rural-riverine-onshore trading across the remotest villages of the Niger Delta. In this remote village near the Atlantic ocean in Bayelsa State that is only accessible through water and the air, these entrepreneurial Igbos have designed a floating market. They bring in their goods, dock their big boats once in two weeks, make sales and move to another village along that dangerous terrain – a business idea the indigenes of that area have never considered venturing into. The Igbos are definitely risk takers!

In this community where I have stayed for the past few months in Anambra state, the number of modern houses in this non-industrial, non-commercial small Igbo village is more than I have seen in all the oil communities I have visited in the Niger Delta put together. The Igbos are that successful and they always remember to invest in real estate in their home states.

The Igbo influence in the Roman Catholic Church worldwide is amazing. An Igbo, Cardinal Arinze was once rumoured to become the first black Pope! The Igbos have a strong affinity with the Roman Catholic Church and they have made a mark on the church globally.

Anyone who thinks the Igbos cannot survive as an independent nation might need to have a rethink. Just less than four decades after they were defeated in a bloody civil war and denied their property and work spaces across Nigeria, they have risen to produce one of the highest number of billionaires, entreprenuers, and industrialists, etc in Nigeria. They have risen from being a defeated nationality to becoming the dominating factor in the Nigerian economy. They have built indigenous industrial cities, turned out to be the most literate people in Nigeria, dominated several industries and have made Nigeria proud on the world scene. If a people can rise to achieve these with little or no governmental support, one can only imagine what they will become as a republic of Biafra.

Enugu has sufficient coal to power the energy needs of an industrial economy. Anambra, Abia and Imo states have abundant reserves of crude oil and natural gas. They also have access to the sea through the Imo and Niger rivers. Anambra has three commercial and industrial cities concentrating on manufacturing and trade. Ebonyi is the agriculture base of Igbo land; producing rice, salt, and other farm produce. Abia has Aba as an international marketing hub, and over 100 untapped oil wells, with a series of indigenous manufacturing firms.

In contemporary fiscal management, the Igbo states have managed to stay afloat and sustain recurrent and capital expenditures, even when major oil producing states are already endangered. Anambra, Enugu and other Igbo states have proven that there is an economy beyond federal allocations and free oil money. They have scored high in security, education, healthcare, job creation, entrepreneurship, sports, trade, etc.

Many people have argued that the Igbos would lose their investments across Nigeria if Biafra happens. This is an archaic and primitive way of thinking. An independent Biafran nation will not likely alter any Igbo socio-economic relationship with the outside world, Nigeria inclusive. An independent Biafran nation will not stop Innoson vehicles from been sold in Nigerian markets, and also Juhel pharmaceutical products. A new Biafran nation will not stop any Igbo man from being a landlord in Abuja, Kano or Port Harcourt. It will not stop an Hausa man from still trading in Onitsha. An independent Biafran will only give the Igbos a political status in the world order which will in turn further stimulate their reorientation towards profit repatriation to further the development of their homeland and eradicate their perception of a federal neocolonialism as presently engendered by Nigeria’s skewed political system. An independent Biafran Nation has the potential of becoming the Japan of Africa.

The Igbos want autonomy and control of their lives without feeling marginalised and oppressed. Nigeria can give them this sense of autonomy, without necessarily losing them. This is the direction every sensible federal leader should be looking at. How do we satisfy the desire for autonomy by the Igbos and other Nigerian nationalities without necessarily losing them as members of the federation? This is where true federalism comes in.
True federalism will not only give the Igbos a sense of autonomy but will equally position them to further drive the national economy through healthy competition and regional integration. True Federalism will enhance the possibility of Igbo land becoming the Japan of Nigeria. It is possible.

Nigeria has a choice to restructure or let the Igbos go. If the Federal Government does not make the right choice, the Igbos will make it for themselves and Nigeria will be the loser. I believe boundaries should be destroyed and not further created in our time, which is why we ought to support restructuring, rather than secession. The Igbos have nothing to lose with their secession agenda, and it is Nigeria that will lose. This is why Nigeria should now be proffering solutions and not fuelling the agitation.

I believe the Igbos will be better positioned under a restructured Nigeria.

I do not believe in secession as a solution even though I respect their right to secession.

I believe true federalism will fix Nigeria and give the Igbos their desired autonomy while remaining as Nigerians. I believe we all have a choice to make true federalism happen as soon as possible before Nigeria reaches the limits of its elastic point.

Tony Osborg writes for The Federalist Movement of Nigeria.