The IKB slander

KWENU! Our culture, our future

The IKB slander

CHINEDU MADUAUM

Onitsha, Nigeria

Saturday, August 21, 2004

I read with utmost dismay an interview granted by Chief Ikechukwu Igboanugo (IKB) to the SUN Newspaper and published by the same paper on the 31^st of July 2004 and was also published in Vanguard Newspaper on the 9^th of August 2004 in which he was soliciting for support for former military junta Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) to succeed the incumbent president come May 2007. This paper is not intended to discredit chief IKB’s support for the former junta, as it will tantamount to destroying the spirit of freedom of speech. However, I will like to call the industrialists’ notice to some of the comments he made.

Chief IKB in the interview was full of praise for the former leader and went ahead to ask his people – the Igbo people to forget the presidency in 2007. Rather, they should join him to support IBB, which according to the chief is the only one who can rescue Nigeria from her present predicaments. It was very interesting to read/hear from the Chief that IBB is a card-carrying member of the P.D.P, the same party, which he (IKB) condemned in an interview granted to www.africanabroadonline.com/politics1a2.htm. According to the chief,

“…PDP is a total failure in Nigeria and it is only the UNPP that will be able to unseat PDP throughout the federation…”

In addition, he went further to explain that if the Igbo people support IBB, he will make sure that the Igbo get the presidency after his (IBB) tenure. It is very possible that an Igbo will be president after IBB’s regime, no doubt about that, and may be the Chief is nursing that ambition having earlier shown an interest in 2003 when he taught his godfather would vie for the 2003 elections. See the same website above for more details. It did not workout and they are back again and the chief is telling you and I to support IBB just because he (IKB) benefited during his regime and will like to continue the continuity.

In addition, the chief did not tell us when the IBB regime would end, if he clinches the ticket in 2007. I believe it is very momentous we know, so as to know when we will start campaigning for an Igbo president because once a soldier, always a soldier.

Chief I.K.B also cited lack of financial strength, as the major setback the Igbo people will face in trying to contest with IBB. According to him, Igbo businessmen in Lagos generated N270m and N500m during the 1999 and 2003 presidential elections respectively to support Dr.Alex Ekwueme and late Dr.Chuba Okadigbo respectively, but the amounts were not enough. According to him, such amounts cannot carry presidential campaign.

I am not flabbergasted that the Chief emphasized so much on money because it is the language he understands very well. I am therefore compelled to let the Chief decipher that politics is not all about how much money one has. It is a mentality that has chopped the Igbo society to our detriment – no thanks to people like the Chief who still preach about money as the primary factor to winning an election. In politics, of which he is very much ignorant by virtue of his comment, money is not the primary factor in what one needs. How much, if I may ask, did Obasanjo have prior to the 1999 elections?

It is not as if money did not play its part in ensuring that the Igbo people lost the presidential elections of 1999 and 2003. However, it was largely because we disclosed our hearts to those who shut theirs against us and the fact that some of our sons and daughters failed to utilise their positions and influence to the right direction. That is what we should be looking to correct and not build a “wall of Jericho” around the minds of ones own people for ones morbid aggrandisement as the chief is presently doing in this morbid support for IBB

His comments are clear evidence that the chief just as in 2001 when he made a similar comment in a full-page advert carried in Thisday of January 22, 2001 is yet to differentiate between personal and collective interests. By virtue of his comment, he has only presented himself as one of those who build their names on the ruins of another’s fame. In the full-page advert of 2001, he cited that importation was booming. And I was not surprised because importers like him were allowed to turn Nigeria into a dumping ground for all sorts of unwanted scrap and toxic wastes – no doubt he wants him back.

The Chief may be pretending not to be aware or afraid to confess that IBB’s regime is in record as one of the most corrupt regime, and his failure to appear before the Oputa Panel has further portrayed the General as a lawless person who has no respect for constituted authority. I am sure Chief IKB knows, being a business man, that with the increased pace in technology, communications, and transportation, the world of business has tended towards larger global markets operating within free trade zones. This advancement is not only in the business sector but also in politics and, the way Nigerians think and reason, 10 years ago is not the way they think today and it is not likely going to be the way they will think in 10 years to come. That is why it is always good to move with one’s generation even if it means asking someone to assist.

Chief Igboaugo is my brother; at least, we are both of the Igbo clan and from Anambra State. This is why I am advising him to seek for advice before making public comments, more especially against his people. There is nothing as being comforted by your own people and that is what most of our political “microphones’ fail to decipher. I was thinking that by now we would have learnt our lessons from the Jim Nwobodo saga in 1999, where he decided to disclose his mind against his people only to be dumped by his enemy-friends.

We are therefore approaching another presidential election as the Chief observed and, instead of planning from our previous mistakes, our sons and daughters like Chief IKB who can play important roles in ensuring our success have started campaigning against the Igbo candidature, even when they have not been called to do so. Yet they will want to be called before they can pledge their loyalty to their own people. Instead of winning a vote for their people, they are busy trying to disunite the atmosphere of peace and unity that is very evident in the Igbo sociopolitical area, which even the Chief apprehensively observed. If chief I.K.B had advised on how to solve the problem of disunity, which he cited as our major problem, it may have gone a long way to solving the problem. But as it stands, he represents one of the so many fallouts, who will have to appear before the “Oputa” panel, when the Lord shall restore the pride of the Igbo nation through a group of committed and determined generation of Ndiigbo that is coming up.

On a general note, the Igbo people may be passing through difficult times presently but it will not be forever. The eyes and ears of the coming generations are wide open for in no distant future when the Lord shall put an end to our travail, a new generation of people shall be brought forth and in them shall the mantle rest and they shall cleanse the land without fear or favour.

Let us therefore unite against the spirit of sabotage.