The Igbo ethnic group is very industrious. One of, if not the most enterprising ethnic groups in the world. Ndi Igbo are scattered across every habitable inch of the globe. Perhaps, it is this adaptiveness that has made the race one of the most communally designated people on earth.
Ndigbo, an estimated population of over thirty-four million people, can literally give water and life to an arid, infertile land. An average Igbo person is conscious and courageous. Ndigbo resent indolency and idleness. In the past, a successful Igbo man was measured by the acres of his farmland and size of his barn.
Basically, an Igbo person who makes wealth outside his homeland is bound by tradition and conscience to invest home, hence the witty Igbo axiom: “aku luo uno, okwuo onye kpatara ya”. It is a simple fact: he whose wealth is felt only outside of his home, is not wealthy in Igboland. The aku luo uno mantra is fading away like a badly scripted rumour. The investments of ndi Igbo at home depreciate steadily.
A headline in one of Nigeria’s national dailies had read: “Police Dispel Rumour of Attacks on Igbo Traders in Lagos”, while another headline read: “Northern Youths Declare War On Igbos In The North, Ask Them To ‘Leave’ Within Three Months”. Those worrisome heads illuminate the threatened status of a people who have turned their face away from the teachings of aged wisdom.
Igbos are developers. Most of the popular internationally recognized markets in Nigeria are dominated by Ndigbo. But it is not just trade. The Igbo investments in each of the 36 states of Nigeria and Abuja run into trillions of naira; spanning across housing, industries, agriculture and other high capital investments.
In 2007, the then Minister of FCT, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, was quoted as saying that “Igbos had bought 73 percent of lands in Abuja”. Such mindless investment by one people, however, often goes beyond the line of common sense. Ebe onye bi ka ona awachi (where one resides is where he nurtures), a witty Igbo remark that illustrates the nursery attitude of care and consciousness of whichever environment an Igbo person finds himself, has been taken too far by most misguided Ndigbo who would rather invest billions abroad than take a penny home.
Truth be told, the notoriety of developing another man’s land while your own land is barren and bare is stark folly. Reference was once made about a man who had become a very successful medical expert abroad, but his kinsmen have died as a result of common fever. His like-mind in yet another place had become so wealthy and taken up the costliest ceremonial title in that “strange land”, yet his kindred is a cluster of kids who have dropped out of school because their parents could not pay their tuitions.
The ugly reality keeps going on and on, and you bump into another rich Igbo person whose profile rates high because his multi-billion dollar investments litter across states, unfortunately, potable water remains a mystery to his community. As if to consciously crown their litany of self-deceit, the roads leading to their fathers’ houses have been left to the pity of gullies and death traps. They are probably cursing and abusing the government for those self-inflicted wounds too.
That sad reality is not to dissuade a believer in the Igbo philosophy of onye aghana nwanne ya (let no one leave his brother behind), or to annul the validity of ndi Igbos’ communal mindedness and fraternity. The Igbo race stands iroko-tall in the discourse of ethnic successes.
However, the near-extinction of Igbo fundamental ideal of home-consciousness must be avoided lest the wise saying that: A’na esi n’ulo mara mma puo n’ezi (Charity begins at home) becomes mere mockery of our ancestral wisdom.
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