Tinubu’s economic pogrom against Igbo continues unabated

• Fueling hatred in Lagos

OUR CHILDREN ASKING US WHY TINUBU HATES IGBO: The President Bola Tinubu administration is so far remarkable for two critical actions. One is an unveiled policy to economically damage the Igbo ethnic group. The other, different but related, is the provinciality and anti-intellectual nature of his administration.

Tinubu’s policies, actions and body language so far have proved beyond doubts that there’s no love lost between him and the Igbo nation. This column is actually trying hard to refrain from stating that President Tinubu hates Ndigbo, but the average Igbo adult can feel the searing heat of Tinubu’s visceral loathing for Igbo. This is even more pronounced after the torrid Buhari era.

Some of our children who are of age and are aware ask us parents repeatedly, why the president is displaying so much “beef” against our section of the country?

It can safely be said that President Tinubu’s attitude and body projections, are responsible for the seething feud between Ndigbo and Yoruba in Lagos.

Igbo and Yoruba had lived together, mixed and married for over 100 years in Lagos. But since the advent of Tinubu to Lagos politics and his attendant vice grip on power in Nigeria’s number one metropolis, discrimination, bigotry and disunity have continued to well up in Nigeria’s burgeoning city, especially at election cycles.

Since the Igbo population in Lagos became a significant factor in election calculations, Tinubu’s garage stalwarts and untutored acolytes have made a duty of taunting, baiting and physically attacking Ndigbo at the turn of every general election.

But Unbeknownst to them, they are asphyxiating our languid mammy water city in instalments and killing her boisterous energy and economy.

All over the world, notable population blocks are courted, engaged and negotiated with. But in Lagos, Tinubu and his crew seek to browbeat, bully, and indeed, exterminate Igbo voters if they could.

In the 2023 elections APC thugs openly disenfranchised Igbo voters, they denied them access, attacked and bloodied them at numerous polling units across Lagos.

Prominent members of Tinubu’s campaign team, like Bayo Onanuga for instance, verbally assaulted Igbo in Lagos for the simple reason that they sought to exercise their right to vote as citizens of Nigeria.

These cases of electoral violence and malpractices are widely reported and documented even by international election observers.

One expected President Tinubu to act the statesman and condemn these barbaric acts upon being sworn in as president. But not a word from him.

That was very much unlike President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (bless his soul), who during his inauguration in 2007, told the world that the election that brought him to power was flawed. He thereupon, convoked a panel to institute electoral reforms. That’s stuff for nobility and principled leadership.

POLICY OF IGBO OBLITERATION: Yes, the Southeast zone didn’t vote for Bola Tinubu with enthusiasm. But election is a matter of choice. The electorate owns the inalienable right to vote his choice. But sharing of the national resources and the basket of commonwealth is not at the whims of a leader. There are always guiding rules.

However, President Tinubu hasn’t only denied Igbo their due of appointments and national resources, but he has blatantly violated the constitution and debased it in his pursuit of Ndigbo. Tinubu virtually obliterated the southeast of Nigeria in two years of apparent scorch-earth policies and denials of due entitlements.

The constitution guarantees every state one substantive federal minister. But today, the five States of the southeast have only two substantive ministers (Works and Science & Tech). The three others are junior ministers!

On the other hand, the six States of the Southwest have not just 12 ministers, but they command the top twelve ministries in the land: from Justice to Finance, Power, Education, Interior and Solid Minerals. Not forgetting the Central Bank, FIRS, Petroleum Corporation, Customs, name it. It is apparent that statutory ministerial positions meant for Igbo have been vired to Yoruba.

ECONOMIC POGROM AGAINST IGBO: It’s a rout; a winner takes all for Tinubu as it concerns Igbo. It’s an economic pogrom against Igbo.
From heads of key departments and agencies; heads of military, security, intelligence, paramilitary agencies and special aides.

President Tinubu ostracized and excluded Igbo so much that after the last round of appointments in which former Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s boy was bequeathed the chairmanship of Bank of Agriculture, Sen. Ali Ndume nearly shed a tear for the southeast.

The outspoken senator representing Borno South, couldn’t take it anymore, he says, “the narrative that the southeast has been abandoned and would not count in patronage distribution should not be allowed to fester for long…
“It is even a breach of the Federal Character principle as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution to strip an entire region of adequate representation…

“This is a big misstep that must be corrected. Every part of the country deserves a sense of belonging in a federation.”

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WAR OF ATTRITION: The attrition against Igbo is multi-faceted. In April, President Tinubu inaugurated a Presidential Committee on the national census. The body is to advise on planning and resource allocations for the forthcoming census exercise. But you need no seer to tell you that this committee shall override the census process.

The committee was headed by Atiku Bagudu, Minister of Budget and Economic Planning. Some other members are: Nasir Isa Kwarra (head of NPC and Secretary of the Committee.

There’s also Wale Edun, Finance Minister; Mohammed Idris, Information Minister; Zaccheus Adedeji, Chairman FIRS; Abisoye Coker-Odusote, DG NIMC; Adeyemi Adeniran, CEO, NBS; Chiroma Ahmed, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance; Ms Daju Kochollom, Perm. Sec, Ministry of Health and Mrs Nathan-Marsh, SSA to President, (Admin. & Ops) Office of the CoS.

Now this is the ‘real’ team to control and direct the census exercise, never mind the National Population Commission. Yet southeast is craftily excluded here!

Here’s another example of marginalisation by stealth.

Consider what is going on at the management of the three premier Universities of UI, UNN and ABU for instance, none has an Igbo Pro-Chancellor. Instead, it’s Yoruba leading both UI and UNN as Pro-Chancellors while ABU is headed by a northerner. This underhanded exclusionism permeates every agency, department, and even minor units of government today.

Never in the life of Nigeria has a government exhibited such an abrasive lack of inclusiveness. Even during the military era, the Generals made sure the polity was balanced enough for every zone to have a sense of belonging; no zone was brazenly alienated as we have today under Tinubu.

We thought Buhari was anti-Igbo, but from hindsight, his was child’s play compared to the last two years of Tinubu.

It goes beyond federal positions and appointments. Federal projects, contracts and favours and political will are also denied the southeast.

Superhighways are criss-crossing other zones. Nigerians in the Southwest, North Central and Northwest have been enjoying modern rail system for a while. None in the Southeast.

Political settlement was immediately effected for Sunday Igboho and Myetti Allah leaders. But Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who the federal government rendition from Kenya is being tried albeit, illegally.

Say, what’s the difference between Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu’s cases? The one is Igbo, and the other is Yoruba.

All entreaties from elders, political leaders and even the clergy from the Southeast have been shunned by Tinubu. To think that no person or group in the entire Igboland has the ear of the president is indeed troubling and a mark of poor leadership.

ANTI-MERIT, ANTI-INTELLECTUAL: In excluding Igbo, the Tinubu presidency has also excluded crucial elements like merit, excellence and intellectualism from statecraft.

Keen watchers of Presidential affairs can see that the Tinubu presidency is the most diminutive in Nigeria’s annals.

Again, even the military regimes, down to Obasanjo and Jonathan, sought out the best minds, the most experienced and the most enlightened in Nigeria for key jobs.

Today, Tinubu would pick his cronies first, his kinsmen, and then play politics with the rest.

For instance why would Babangida’s boy be chairman of the crucial Bank of Agriculture? Crass politicking!

The result of a puny administration is an unenlightened government and a stunted era.

President Tinubu is not running with the best team Nigeria can afford so that may explain the all round poor performance.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Openly alienating any group in a multi-ethnic nation is akin to self-annihilation.

Apart from the president actively and permanently branding himself as a bigot and Igbo hater, he leaves a trail of invidious negative precedent to be replicated tomorrow by his successors.

Worse, deliberate exclusion policy is tonic for disunity and eventual state failure.

>> Osuji was Editor at The Guardian, Thisday and NewAge. He was also Member of the Editorial Board of The Nation