I thought I was done with writing about Biafra – after three articles on the subject that sought to address the issue from different perspectives. However following the bold effort by Dr Jibrin Ibrahim to re-frame the Biafra discourse and the flurry of reactions it elicited especially from Professors Chidi Odinkalu and Okechukwu Ibeanu, I had a strong urge to weigh in on the conversations.
For me, when I read any article on the agitations for Biafra, there are usually two questions in my mind: How do we frame the agitation? And what should be the prognosis for action?
In his widely circulated article last week, ‘Resolving the Igbo Question’, Dr Jibrin Ibrahim (Jibo), contends (rather cynically) that the “Igbos we are told need emancipation from an oppressive Nigeria which has been oppressing and marginalizing them since independence. Karl Marx would ask them if all groups in Nigeria have not been oppressed and marginalised as well.” Jibo further argues that what “the Igbo intellectual class has done”, is to “develop a coherent marginalisation thesis, which the Igbo lumpen proletariat took and is running with.” He concludes by arguing that the “biggest failure of the Igbo elite is the incapacity to play the political game.”
Chidi Odinkalu, in his response, which is replete with ‘rhetorical flourishes’ and a few inaccuracies (such as accusing Jibo “conflated race and geo-politics” in his analysis – when Jibo is as Black as they come) accused Jibo of being a latter day convert to identity politics, arguing that being “a long-standing advocate of inclusive civics, this article corrodes coexistence and disappoints on many fronts.”
My friend Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu in his rejoinder, ‘Resolving the Igbo Non-Question: Pitfalls of Jibo’s Single Strand Ethnic Narrative’, accused Jibo of “a single strand ethnic narrative”. Ibeanu contends that “the Biafra agitation is more than relations between an ethnic elite and ethnic lumpen youths. Those young people are framing a struggle steeped in their material conditions of life – unemployment, poverty, etc. The leadership of their States (and nation as well) has failed them, but not because they are Igbo leaders, but because of broader issues of political economy, which you very well understand”
I have issues with both Jibo’s article and the interventions by Odinkalu and Ibeanu.
Contrary to the arguments of Ibeanu and Odinkalu I do not see anything wrong in using ethnicity to frame what Jibo called the “Igbo question”. There are group dynamics in politics all over the world which is why even in the USA people will talk about the Hispanic votes, the Black votes or White votes. Ethnicity, regionalism and religion (in no particular order) remain the main organizing principles in Nigerian politics which cannot be wished away. Jibo rightly argues that all ethnic groups in Nigeria are marginalized but failed to use the premise to advance the discourse further such as by articulating a causal hypothesis of why some Igbos are agitating for Biafra while other ethnic groups apparently are not doing so. This failure led Jibo to develop several checklists of why the Igbos are unable to play ‘the political game’, without telling us which of the checklists are causal factors and which are aggravating factors. Jibo was also unable to tell us whether the Igbos’ supposed inability to “play the political game” is structural (i.e. caused by the structure of the country) or something essentialist among the Igbo political elite. In particular one will be at a loss whether the assumption of a certain co-ownership of the Jonathan government by the Igbo elite and the prominent role they also played in the Obasanjo regime was because the Igbo political elites once were able to “play the political game” but lost that art along the line. Jibo was equally wrong to assume that winning the presidency is the Holy Grail that will resolve what he called the ‘Igbo question’. One may in fact be tempted to ask whether producing a President and Vice president of Yoruba extraction (i.e. Obasanjo and Osinbanjo respectively) has been able to assuage the Yoruba agitation for sovereign national conference – which could mean anything from a meeting to agree on a looser federation to a meeting to dissolve the Nigerian federation?
While I disagree with Ibeanu that ‘the ethnic’ cannot be used to frame the ‘Biafra question’, I agree with his charge of “single strand ethnic narrative” and “ethnic reductionism” because Jibo failed to go beyond the ethnic to tell us how the other ethnic groups are responding to their own perceived senses of marginalization or develop a robust causal relationship among his checklists on why the Igbo elites are unable to “play the political game”.
Ironically while Ibeanu accused Jibo of ethnic reductionism, he was himself guilty of ‘economic determinism’ because for him those “young people are framing a struggle steeped in their material conditions of life – unemployment, poverty, etc.” I disagree that poverty and poor governance can be used to frame the Biafra agitation. Though all states in Nigeria are poor (despite the portraiture by some ‘Internet Warriors’ that their parts of the countries are el Dorados), it is possible to talk of ‘poorer’ and ‘less poor’ states. Certainly none of the Igbo states can come under the category of ‘poorer states’. Similarly in terms of Internally Generated Revenues (which are also indices of economic activities in states), all the Igbo states will come within the top ten bracket. Equally when it comes to governance, there is no evidence that the quality of governance is better or worse in the states in Igbo land than you find in other places. We must therefore seek explanation for the Biafra agitation elsewhere, not in the poverty and poor governance argument.
The truth is that the desire for some nationalities that make up a diverse country to be independent is natural. For instance despite being part of the United Kingdom for over 300 years Scottish separatism has remained a feature of the politics in the United Kingdom. In the USA there has been a movement for the secession of Texas from the country since the 1990s. In Nigeria groups that have threatened secession in recent times include Arewa People’s Congress for Arewa Republic, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta and Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force for Niger Delta Republic, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People for Ogoni country, Oodua Peoples’ Congress for Oduduwa Republic and Boko Haram for the Islamic Caliphate
You can call the natural desire by some nationalities to become independent the causal factor of the Biafra agitation. But it is not even clear to me that what the agitators want is Biafran independence.
In addition to the causal factor you have the aggravating factors such as the fact that in newly democratizing states, there is often a tendency for pent-up feelings that were not allowed expression during periods of dictatorships to be released under the freedom of speech guarantee of liberal democracy. Also Nigeria’s inability or unwillingness to deal with what they often call the ‘national question’, has led to the erroneous belief that only groups that can hold the state to ransom by an overwhelming claim to certain entitlements will have their grievances addressed.
In a public lecture at the Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, South Africa, in January 2012 entitled ‘Boko Haram as a symptom of the crisis in Nigeria’s nation-building’, I argued that Boko Haram was the clearest manifestation that groups and individuals were feeling alienated from the Nigerian state and delinking into primordial identities often with the state as the enemy. I also argued that there was no difference between Boko Haram and the politicians who steal us blind, or law enforcement officers who turn the other eye at a little inducement because each group regards the state as an enemy and attacks it using the means at its disposal.
It is precisely because I see both Boko Haram and the agitations for Biafra as springing from the same crisis in the country’s nation-building with the consequent delinking of groups and individuals from the state into primordial identities (often with the Nigerian state as the enemy) that I disagree that the fundamental problem of the country is fighting corruption. For me, unless the stalled nation-building is restarted and properly serviced any solution thrown at our problems will only end up compounding the problem more.
Jideofor Adibe is Associate Professor of Political Science at Nasarawa State University Keffi, a columnist with the Daily Trust and Publisher, Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd (www.adonis-abbey.com).
Email: pcjadibe@yahoo.com
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