Why Other Nigerian Tribes Are Surprised At The Cries Of Marginalization By Igbos

By Anayo M. Nwosu

The young Theophilus Obafemi Awolowo was transfixed as he watched Nnamdi Azikiwe, a fellow African speak so eloquently and so impactful at a rally in 1940.

Awolowo suddenly realized that his secondary school education at Baptist Boys' High School (BBHS), Abeokuta and the further training at Wesley College, Ibadan were not enough.


The young Awolowo no longer regarded as sufficient his correspondent studies' degree in Commerce from University of London.

All he wanted was to speak like Zik.

He reasoned that the only way to be like Zik was to school in England, the home of the colonial masters and the owners of the language Zik used to mesmerize him.

By the time Awolowo traveled to the U.K. to read Law in 1941 and was called to bar in 1946, Zik was already a household name in the whole of British West Africa especially in Ghana and Nigeria.

Soon after his return to the country, Awolowo worked so hard to establish himself in the mainstream of pre and post independent Nigerian politics with main focus on making the greater number of Yoruba people, his people, get quality education.  He could see the transformative powers of good education.

Awolowo understood the need to position his people in the scramble of the soul of Nigeria only possible through education and he painstakingly campaigned amongst his people to smell the coffee.

The Igbo saw the value in the whiteman's ways after embarrassing defeat of Igbo gods and decided to studying him and his ways by sending their children to school.

Besides those Igbos educated by the missionaries, many communities in Igbo land had been taxing themselves and sponsoring their willing and brilliant sons and daughters in schools in Nigeria and abroad.

That's why by 1932, an Nnewi man, the father of Chu Okongwu, the former Nigeria's finance minister, had already obtained a PhD; the first Nigerian to so do.

Therefore, it was not by chance that right from early 1930s till the independence in 1960, the Igbos had occupied majority of the colonial civil service positions both in the senior and middle management cadres.

All the country's security services and the critical positions in government were also dominated by Igbos while other tribes watched.

Colonial federal government ran a merit driven system that focused on employing only the most qualified. There was nothing like Quota System. It's all about merit.

Other tribes used to resent the lope-sided staffing of the civil service at the federal level but couldn't do much because they could not convince the whiteman to illogically employ the less qualified in place of the more competent applicant. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

Awolowo fought this Igbonization of employment positions in Nigeria by creating unbelievable educational opportunities for his people.

While many enjoyed free education, some others were sent to U.K. for sound education.

It was not long until the Yorubas became very competitive and could match Igbos profession for profession and skills for skills.

Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, one of Nigeria's founding fathers who was later to become the premier of Northern Nigeria made a huge effort but not as hard as Awolowo in bridging the skills gap of his Hausa-Fulani constituency.

In a video interview with BBC in the 1960s, Alhaji Bello gleefully said that he had stemmed the "proliferation" of the Igbos in the Northern Nigeria civil service through a carefully thought policy.

Alhaji Bello systematically implemented his policy of "Northerner First" whereby a northern got the available job first m; and where there was no northern applicant, the qualified Igbo job seeker would be engaged on contract and later be replaced once a qualified northerner is found.

Better still, Alhaji Bello would employ an expatriate instead of an Igbo applicant. By so doing, he believed that he had excised a cancerous or annoying proliferation of the Igbos in the Northern Nigeria.

The Igbo dominance of all areas of Nigeria official space continued after independence until 1967 when they had to abandon their duty posts out of fear  of being killed to found their own country, Biafra.

By the time the war ended, the Igbos lost everything except their spirit.

During and after the civil war, Obafemi Awolowo as the Nigeria's Finance Commissioner and the Vice Chairman of Gowon's Federal Executive Council, designed and carefully implemented various ingenious alienation policies aimed at permanently taming the dominant tendencies of Igbo both in economy and federal civil service.

Nigeria's other tribes watched and laughed as Igbos struggled to survive the civil war induced backwardness. They thought that the issue of Igbo dominance had been settled.

It is baffling to the former commanders of Nigerian armed forces during the 1967-1970 civil war and their civil servants counterparts that the children of the defeated Igbo people have now grown with so much courage to shout and complain about marginalization.

Could they be agitating because they were not annihilated during the war or allowed to die of kwashiorkor?

Igbos should know that Nigeria shall never allow them dominate all sectors of the country's national life again on the altar of merit. Other tribes cannot willingly water the ground for an Igbo dominant seed to grow again. Never!

The painful aspect is that Igbos talk down on Nigeria's other not so gifted tribes, who they openly treat as inferior citizens who in turn see Igbos as arrogant, boisterous and dangerously dominant while waiting for a slight opportunity to give them quit notice geared towards seizing their property.

Today's Nigeria watch as Igbos "seized" and are treacherously dominating the Nollywood, Automobiles Industries, Pharmaceutical Trading, Real Estate in Lagos and Abuja etc.

Now they want to control the government. Mbanu!

Anybody who asks: "what do the Igbos want?" cannot be blamed.

Igbos now accuse other tribes other than themselves of Nigeria's backwardness and are planning to jump ship. No way! All of us must stay together just as our ancestors promised Lord Lugard.

It smacks of insensitivity for the Igbos to demand for merit in schools admissions, employment and appointments. It won't happen. The selfish agitators want Igbos to take over everything. Nobody will allow that.

Igbos should better ask for something else from Nigeria than the annoying agitations for a merit driven country that would only conduce to Igbo dominance.

Just like other footballers painfully recognize the extraordinary skills of Lionel Messi or Cristiana Ronaldo, all the Igbo haters know that Igbos are gifted people capable of beating the whiteman in his game. But it ends there.

Notwithstanding the ingenuity of the Igbo race, other tribes of Nigeria will never allow themselves to be colonized by their fellow Africans. Never!