By Azuka Onwuka
One statement that has gained currency since 2015 when Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) became the president of Nigeria is that the Igbo or South-East do not know how to build bridges. It has been so repeated that it has been accepted as the truth, even by many Igbo people, without any form of interrogation.
The reason for this statement is that even when Buhari chose his running mate twice from the South-East, in his bid to be the president of Nigeria, the South-East people still voted massively against him. And even after Buhari became the president in 2015, the people of the South-East continued to distance themselves from him.
Many have used it to engage in ethnic blackmail against the South-East by saying that the South-East people hate the Fulani or the North or other regions. But that statement is hollow. Please let us look at Nigeria’s political history and see if there is any merit in that statement.
In 1944, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) was formed by an amalgam of groups and nationalists. Herbert Macaulay from Western Nigeria was its first president, while Nnamdi Azikiwe from Eastern Nigeria was its first secretary. NCNC was the most prominent political party fighting for Nigeria’s independence from colonial United Kingdom. Macaulay died in 1946 and Azikiwe eventually became the president of the party.
At the 1951 election, NCNC won the election in Eastern Nigeria. In Western Nigeria, neither the Action Group nor the NCNC won outright majority. Later, some candidates of the smaller parties “crossed the carpet” to Action Group, which gave Action Group (AG) the outright majority it needed to form the government. That action raised some dust and has continued to do so.
Neither the Northern Peoples’ Party (NPC) nor the Action Group could replicate what the NCNC did by winning many legislative seats outside their core area of influence. NPC won mainly in the North, while AG won mainly in the West.
At the national election of 1959, which would hand over power to a Nigerian prime minister, none of the top three parties got a clear majority. The government that took over from the British was formed by an alliance between the NPC, led by Ahmadu Bello from the North, and NCNC, led by Azikiwe from the East. The NPC produced the prime minister (Tafawa Balewa) while the NCNC produced the governor-general (Azikiwe) and also the senate president (Nwafor Orizu).
In 1963 when Midwestern Nigeria was created, the NCNC produced the premier of the region (Dennis Osadebay), making the NCNC the only party that controlled two of the four regions of Nigeria.
In 1979 when the Second Republic kicked off, something similar happened. Azikiwe’s party, the Nigerian Peoples’ Party (NPP) teamed up with Shehu Shagari’s party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), to have the majority in the legislature. Consequently, although not the majority party, NPP produced the speaker (Edwin Ume-Ezeoke) and some of the ministers. Awolowo’s party, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), was the main opposition party, supported by Aminu Kano’s People’s Redemption Party (PRP) and Waziri Ibrahim’s Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP).
When the idea of the Third Republic was mooted, the military junta of Ibrahim Babangida created two political parties, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC) and railroaded all politicians into them. Elections started from the local government areas in 1992 and progressed to the presidency in 1993. Even though the vice-presidential candidate of the NRC was Sylvester Ugo, who was from the East, the votes of the East were split between Bashir Tofa of the NRC and Moshood Abiola of the SDP. Abiola won at least 40 percent in all the four states of the East then. Tofa got a total of 790,371 votes from the South-East, while Abiola got 739,748. The difference was just 50,623 votes. Unfortunately, the 1993 election was annulled for no cogent reason, and Nigeria was thrown into turmoil.
In 1999 when the Fourth Republic started, the South-East people were firmly in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), where their son, Alex Ekwueme, was the frontline candidate for the presidency. In the All People’s Party (APP), which later changed to All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Ogbonnaya Onu, emerged the presidential candidate, but later handed over his ticket to Olu Falae of the Alliance for Democracy (AD). Ekwueme was edged out of the PDP’s presidential candidacy by the military generals, but he still led the South-East to support Obasanjo at the general election. The South-East buried its ambition for power to shift to the South-West in 1999 to compensate the South-West for the injustice done to it in 1993 when the election Abiola was poised to win was annulled unjustly.
In 2007, even though there were complaints of widespread electoral fraud, the official results showed that the South-East voted for Umaru Yar’Adua from Katsina State in the North-West. When Yar’Adua was unable to carry on his duty as president because of ill health, the South-East supported Goodluck Jonathan to take over. Dora Akunyili, who was the minister of information in Yar’Adua’s cabinet, led the charge.
From 2010 to 2015, the South-East supported Jonathan firmly in office. At the 2011 election, many people from the South-East were killed in the riots that erupted in the North following Jonathan’s defeat of Buhari, because of their support for Jonathan. Before Jonathan came into office, the South-East and the Ijaw ethnic group were not in the best of terms because of the feelings by most South-East people that the Ijaw did not support them during the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970. Despite that, the South-East strongly supported Jonathan, who is from the Ogbia subgroup of the Ijaw ethnic group in the South-South.
Similarly, in 2019, the South-East supported Atiku Abubakar, who is from Adamawa State in the North-East of Nigeria.
All these are instances of the South-East building bridges and helping other ethnic groups realise their presidential dreams. However, just because the South-East people have refused to support Buhari in response to the type of person he is, they have been blackmailed as not knowing how to build bridges or working with other ethnic groups. Note that Shagari, Yar’Adua and even Atiku Abubakar are from the Fulani ethnic group of the North but were supported by the South-East. Yet for not supporting Buhari, who has displayed deep-seated ethno-religious biases against the South-East people, they have been blackmailed, as if Buhari is synonymous with the Fulani or the North or Muslims.
From the Nigerian political history, no zone or ethnic group has helped other zones or ethnic groups achieve their presidential dreams like the South-East people have done. They have built bridges by supporting the presidential ambition of others since 1960 to the present.
The question to ask is: Can someone name one instance when other zones or ethnic groups reciprocated this gesture by building the so-called bridges with the South-East and supporting the presidential ambition of someone from the South-East? Or should we believe that people from the South-East are the only natural civil engineers in Nigeria who know how to build bridges while others are natural drivers who know how to drive over the bridges to get to their destinations?
• Onwuka is a newspaper columnist and author.