One of the best pieces written about #Nigeria's Igbo problem by a non-Igbo person was recently republished by @DavidHundeyin in his @BusinessDayNg column.
Reading both articles, no one should be surprised about the almost visceral reaction to my tweet from a few days ago in which I quoted something that Chinua Achebe wrote in 1983.
The interesting thing is that if all the people making noises about "victim mentality" and "bigotry" and "disunity" had bothered to look at the tweet just before that, they'd have realised that my tweet was actually addressed to my own people...
You see, #Nigeria has an "Igbo problem", and no matter how many times people try to deny it, it is there.
But increasingly, I'm of the opinion that even we, ndi Igbo have some work to do on ourselves. I made a thread about that a year ago.
This need for us to change our ways and adapt to our environment is even more urgent as #Nigeria is headed for an enforced renegotiation.
We would be making a strategic error if we enter that renegotiation as the group that everyone loves to hate.
Let me repeat what I said on @IgboHistoFacts 10 days ago, something I've been consistent with: I'd rather not have an Igbo man replace Buhari next year, for the simple fact that the disaster the man has wrought on #Nigeria is so great, and it's his successor that will be blamed.
Nigerians tend to do collective guilt. It's the way we've been trained since colonial times.
Yes, all those "punitive expeditions" conducted by people like Trenchard trained us to hold a village responsible for the actions of an individual, and you can't undo that sharply.
There are two counter-arguments to mine about not wanting an Igbo man to succeed Buhari, and it would be good to address at least one: that we should not be afraid of pushing our best forward to change things in the challenging environment that will be post-2023 #Nigeria...
This argument has merit, and our culture encourages people to take on challenges. After all, our ancestors said, "Mberede nyiri dike, mana mberede ka eji ama dike."
True, but our ancestors also said, "Ikpe aghahi ima ọchịcha ebe ọkụkọ nụọ."
Sadly, despite all the apparent suffering in the country, Nigerians are not quite ready to have that conversation about the hard decisions necessary to change the fundamentals of the country, so there is no point in putting one of ours in the bull's eye to make those decisions.
I'm of the opinion that the whole thing has to run completely aground first, and stay aground for a while before people's eyes will begin to clear.
#Nigeria is not there yet, and wouldn't be for another five to 10 years.
Having said all that, if the rest of the country decides that they want an Igbo person to succeed Buhari, then I'll go with the maxim that "vox populi vox Dei", even though I don't believe that God speaks through anyone in #Nigeria any longer...
But my point is buttressed by the attention, scorn, and near disdain that is greeting the opposition to Peter Obi's attempts by various quarters, so let's remind ourselves of a bit of fairly recent history...
In 1999, a majority of the country accepted that the Yoruba people had been cheated of the Presidency six years earlier, and as a result, for the first time in our history, every other group stepped back and only one group, the Yoruba, produced the candidates for the election.
I was just a young man of 19 at the time preparing to vote for the first time ever, but I don't recall anyone telling the Yoruba that "you are not united", "give us just one person to vote for", "but you have threatened to leave Nigeria", and other such crap we've recently heard.
This is the kind of language that we have been hearing from a lot of quarters in this day, when many Igbo people and even non-Igbos such as @nigeriasbest and @phoenix_agenda feel, rightly or wrongly, that it is time to "give" the Presidency to the South-East.
Is that fair?
It is patently unfair that at various times, #Nigeria has been able to agree that "it's the turn of a group" Yoruba in '99, Niger Delta in '07, North in '15, then suddenly when the Igbo use the same argument the rules appear to change.
But as I've pointed out, I don't want an Igbo person to take this poisoned chalice because, for us, the rules change, and that is a reality we have to live with and plan according to.
For those who like to pretend that #Nigeria has no "Igbo problem", udo diri unu.
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One of my best friends offline is @ose_anenih, and for quite a few years he kept warning me about the error of my ways in my rather (at the time) stubborn stance in refusing to use my block button.
Thanks to Buhari's #TwitterBan, I saw how criminally naive I was in that stance.
Some people who come to one's mentions to chat shit do so with no measure of good faith. They aren't here to learn, they are here to worship their god, and derail your thoughts.
Flee from such demons of the twitterverse as they make your experience ugly.
I just blocked a few.
Considering the fact that I complained about our lack of tourism on this twitter before 2015 (the app has a search function), and complained about same theme back when I was active on @nairaland (pre 2010, again you can search), how the fuck was yesterday's thread about Buhari?
In researching before my visit, I learned that it attracts more than a million visitors a year.
Look at it this way: an adult ticket to Stonehenge is £22. You are encouraged to make a £5 donation as well, but let's stick with the lower figure...
By the time we finished the tour you can't leave the #Stonehenge ground without passing through the gift shop.
Unless you are an absolute Philistine, you are going to leave the gift shop probably £30 lighter.
So we're looking at £52.
As you're stepping out of the gift shop to head to the car park, the sweet smells of the kitchen assault your nose and remind you that you have been walking around for the last four hours.
Meal: £10.
So the whole excursion (minus travel and lodging) cost me £62.
I’d like to begin this by saying something important: the attack on Ukraine is immoral and wicked, and deserves all the uproar that has accompanied it from wherever.
Sadly, that is about where it will get.
The world of geopolitics is not a moral place, and to quote the Athenians when they sent an ultimatum to the Melians during the Siege of Melios, “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
Herein lies the meat of the matter from my POV: in the end, the world of international geopolitics is about might being right, not about anything else.
#Syria's war has been going on for 11 years killing 3,746 people last year.
#Nigeria is not officially at war but its death toll from insecurity in 2021 was at least 10,366 meaning that an average of 28 Nigerians were killed each day of last year by deliberate malicious intent.
Some days ago, more than 200 people were brutally killed in Zamfara, we've shrugged, and moved on. This is not front-page news.
We are now inured to violence and accept it as a routine part of our lives.
There's a story in today's @THISDAYLIVE where Emma Nwaka, @OfficialPDPNig's chairman in Abia is pleading with @HQNigerianArmy "to exercise restraint in their reprisals on the communities of Obuzor and Owaza,"
These are the kind of things that tell you that #Nigeria is a banana republic where people have no confidence in the system to a) protect them, and b) give them justice.
Why the fuck should we be pleading with our own army to exercise restraint? What kind of country is this?
Of course, the army has form in this kind of matter.
Starting from Ugep in 1975 where they slaughtered the community because a soldier disappeared?
Later it was found that he was drunk and had died of asphyxiation.
I've read a lot of the back and forth with respect to @AfamDeluxo's suggestion that @nwanyi_ocha be made a commissioner in @CCSoludo's government.
At first glance, it looked to me like it was harmless banter, so I was shocked by what I can only describe as racism that followed.
To be honest, though, those who say that Afam wouldn't have made that suggestion if she was ethnically a non-Igbo Nigerian, or even from another country in #Africa, probably have a point.
But that point, whatever it is, does not remove the fact that Nwanyi Ocha has immersed herself in Igbo culture, and done everything to promote it.
That on its own deserves recognition if she so desires, an ambassadorship of sorts wouldn't be out of place.