WRITTEN BY HON ECHEZONA OKECHI
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the greatest Nigerian that ever lived, remains, to this day, the only person to be made the patron of Ohaneze Ndigbo.
Yet, on the day he was being honoured by the nation with the commissioning of the long-awaited Zik Mausoleum, the Ohaneze leadership chose to desecrate his memory and, of course, the entire
Ndigbo and the Nigerian nation, if not the whole Black world.
Once it was announced that President Muhammadu Buhari would commission the mausoleum on Friday, January 24, the Ohaneze leadership chose to fix a meeting of Ime Obi at 10am of the day the president was visiting. Statutory, Ime Obi members include Ministers from the Southeast who, of course, were bound to be with the visiting president. In other words, the Ohaneze leaders did not want Ministers and other prominent Ime Obi members to attend.
Well meaning Igbo leaders like Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, who is chairman of the South East Governors’ Forum, advised that the meeting be shifted to another day so that it could be more inclusive.
Ohaneze leaders refused, but accepted to shift it to 4pm the same day. Other Igbo leaders like Dr Chris Ngige protested because the president would still be around with his Ministers and other aides from the Southeast till 6pm when he was scheduled to return to Abuja from Akanu Ibiam Airport, Enugu. At this point, the Ohaneze President-General, Chief John Nnia Nwodo, announced that the meeting would now hold at 7pm, and it was widely publicized.
However, before 6pm, the Ohaneze leaders had concluded the meeting at Nike Lake Hotel, Enugu. For instance, delegations from Ebonyi and Anambra states, comprising top government functionaries, who arrived early enough, were shocked that the meeting had already taken place.
There was no Ohaneze leader in sight at the hotel by 7pm. None could be reached on phone either. The meeting had only one agenda: adoption of a presidential candidate in the 2019 poll. The Ime Obi Ohaneze, as expected, chose Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
It is worthy of note that the only time an Igbo man came very close to being Nigeria’s president since the Civil War ended in 1970 was in 1999 when former Vice President Alex Ekwueme was almost winning the PDP presidential ticket. As Ekwueme was about to pick the ticket unopposed, the PDP wing, known as Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), led by Atiku Abubakar, went into an emergency alliance with army generals and joined the PDP.
Their sole mission was to stop an Igbo from becoming Nigeria’s president. They succeeded. Ex President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had just been released from jail and knew next to nothing about events in the country and made no contribution to the party, was handed over the PDP presidential ticket.
Again, Ekwueme was living quietly in his hometown of Oko when northern politicians, led by Atiku, prevailed on him to run against the sitting president in 2003, pledging to support him all the way. Ekwueme reluctantly accepted. But at the Presidential Election Convention in Abuja, where Ekwueme pledged to do only one term to enable Atiku take over as president in 2007, Atiku again chose to humiliate Ekwueme, as he and his powerful group supported Obasanjo.
It is a grave paradox that the same Atiku is now being celebrated by a couple of Ohaneze officials as an Igbo messiah. Great Igbo leaders like Dr Azikiwe, Dr Ekwueme, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Akanu Ibiam, Dim Emeka Ojukwu, Chief C. C. Onoh, Dr Sam Mbakwe and others must be turning in their graves that Ohaneze leaders have done it again.
Just four years ago, they declared, without any sense of embarrassment, that Dr Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw from Bayelsa State, is Igbo. Ohaneze leaders then made sure that Jonathan did not rehabilitate one single federal road in the Southeast for the six years he was president. They made sure he did not touch the Second Niger Bridge which he pledged at a town hall meeting to complete in 2013 or else go into exile.
They also made sure that Jonathan, whom they gave the middle Igbo names of “Ebele Azikiwe”, did not touch the Zik Mausoleum started by the Sani Abacha regime 23 years ago, not asking about the huge amounts approved for the projects.
Many observers believe that endorsements of presidential candidates by Ohaneze are fast turning into death kisses. Though Ohaneze’s endorsements are a mere public relations stunt as they carry little electoral value, thoughtful Igbo people have been warning the organization against such acts because of the high risks for Ndigbo.
Top Igbo leaders belong to various political groups, and so it is a grave error to endorse one candidate or party.
Ohaneze should be an umbrella organization for all Igbo, and not a partisan association. The Ohaneze Ime Obi meeting of last Friday was obviously informed by a sinister agenda. Those who conceived and executed it have desecrated the Great Zik of Africa, Ndigbo and the whole nation.
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