In “A Journey Through Time”: Igbo History, Identity and political possibility since 1960. I stated as follows:-
“Institutionally and structurally, the Igbo are marginalized in Nigeria. I guess several other groups and entities also make a compelling case of their own plight. The Igbo plight is rooted in history – the civil war. However, 37 years later, that is a generation and seven years, the scars are still present”.
Continuing, I observed that “they are to be seen in the deplorable state of the roads, the sheer absence of strategic Federal industries and manufacturing centers, the sheer absence of strategic Federal institutions and the politics of discrimination that still hurts the Igbo in the security sector in terms of strategic postings, recruitment and promotion”.

Concluding, I observed that “those who oppose this quasi-official policy of some administrations, and who risk all to bring to the theatre of national dialogue the plight of their people, are castigated, hunted from pillar to post, are financially disempowered and politically humiliated”.

Before proceeding further with the substantive analysis on the institutional and structural contexts of marginalization in Nigeria, I will cite but one example of the continuing vulnerable and marginal position of the Igbo in the Nigerian polity. This relates to the zoning arrangement on the sharing of certain high offices by the ruling PDP, an unfair arrangement that zoned the Presidency to the far North (West and East); Vice President to the South- South; Senate Presidency to the North –Central; Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the party and the Speakership of the Federal House of Representatives to the South-West and Deputy Senate President and National Chairman of the Party to the South East.

Between May 29, and the end of June, 2007, almost six months now, the President from the North West, the Vice President from the South-South, the Senate President from the North-Central, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and the Speaker of the House of Representatives from the South –West have all been sworn-in, have assumed their respective positions and have been influencing state policies, including award of contracts, choices of other key appointive positions in the country and the extension of patronage to both deserving and undeserving people. The only real viable position allocated to the Igbo, the National Chairman of the party, is yet to be realized. Treated with utmost contempt and inconsideration; and generally made to realize their irrelevance and worthlessness in the party, its National Convention at which the Igbo National Chairman would have emerged, has been inexplicably postponed, first from 9 December, 2007 to 5 January, 2008, and now indefinitely.

While it is justifiable, in certain respects, to describe the plight of the Igbo elite in the PDP as self-inflicted, particularly given the clientele disposition of a number of them in the service of outside interests and abandonment of their people’s true causes and needs –a case of one reaping what one sows – the situation is much more Fundamental than this. It explains probably as nothing else can, the descent of the Igbo to the lowest depths of national reckoning and their present pathetic status as the nation’s excess baggage in the minds, consciousness and actions of those who despise them, and who hold them in contempt, starting from ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo who enabled the current situation in the PDP, and who deployed coercive apparatus of state to hound out of the party some of the finest sons and daughters of Igboland.

In certain respects, Nigeria was a historical accident, and accidents we know disrupts the natural Law or order of things. It is to the patriotism, nationalism and heroism of the nation’s founding fathers that we owe its continued existence, and its gradual transformation from an accidental historical venture into a coherent Modern nation-state. And it is equally to the capacity, patience, struggle and labour of contemporary Nigerian people and leaders that the country has continued to persevere, to endure, and to occupy its present leadership position in Africa, and respect by the international community.

The success of the Nigeria story and project, and the actualization of the Nigerian idea have not been achieved without tremendous, stress, pain and dislocation. Without a doubt, one area that has remained fundamental in the context of group relations, national integration and the pursuit of the causes and tenets of equity, justice, fair play and equal access to power and opportunities is the issue of institutional and structural marginalization.

During the First Republic, the issue of marginalization was firmly located in the agitation of the nation’s minority ethnic groups who felt excluded from the commanding heights of the nation’s institutions by the major groups. Indeed, the mechanical mode of the nation’s Federal structure which merely divided the state into three unequal parts of North, East and West, in which these three regions were composed of over 300 distinct linguistic, cultural and ethnic groups contributed significantly to this sense of exclusion.

Eventually, the Midwest Region was carved out of the Western Region to provide a wider platform for the development of the Federal structure; and with the military and political crisis of 1966 and 1967, a 12 state Federal structure was put in place, partly to break the backbone of the emerging Biafran resistance and partly to satisfy the yearnings of Eastern minorities who benefited from that exercise. Of interest too in the 1960s with regard to the issue of institutional and structure marginalization are the rejected census figures of 1962 (which many groups felt was designed to marginalize them); the negotiated census result of 1963 which many other still felt marginalized them; the Action Group crisis of 1962 and the subsequent treason trial of its key leaders, which the Yoruba saw as an attempt to marginalize them in terms of institutional and structural penetration of the polity; and most importantly, the tragic events that led to the break away of the eastern part of the country in 1967 to form the republic of Biafra, a national situation the people of that region found intolerable as a deliberate attempt to systematically push them out of the country.

Indeed, the tragic events of the 1960s which consequented in the civil war of 1967 – 1970 defined the context of marginalization in Nigeria for nearly 25 years, before the politics of oil, poverty, underdevelopment and ecological degradation of the Niger Delta provided its own impetus in the appreciation of this national problem.

Indeed, I made this point as eloquently as possible in “A Journey Through Time”. In that piece I commented as follows:
“The Igbo paid a huge price for these omissions, sentiments and chauvinism that defined the period (1960). A people who are noted for their wide travels and spirit of adventure and enterprise; a people who inhabit all national villages and communities, and who identify with their hosts’ aspirations, as well as respect their institutions and values; a people whose political machine powered the anti-colonial engine and who elected to participate in a unity government for the stability of the young nation, found themselves isolated, alienated and distantiated from the mainstream of national political and economic processes”. Continuing, I further stresses that though.

“It is true that the blow of the defeat of Biafra in 1970 was substantially cushioned by the “no victor, no vanquished” mantra of the federalists and (though) it is also true that the institutional agenda of the 3rs – reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction enabled a fresh start for a profoundly traumatized people, the scare of the 1960s and early 1970s remained deeply etched in their memories and consciousness for quite a while as they struggled to rebuild shattered lives and rekindle hope on the idea of Nigeria as a divine gift”.

There are clear indications that successive regimes and administrations over the intervening years have pursued the cause of national integration and equal access to power and opportunities with varied degrees of success. But with history as a backdrop and the civil war as a ready reference point, this policy has had its limitations and omissions with regard to the Igbo. What has been observed in the implementation of measures that will restore hope to the people is an incremental, gradualist pattern of integration that still leaves them with a substantial catch up ground. Examples can be readily cited in the area of public infrastructure, particularly roads, the absence of critical and strategic federal institutions, the inability of successive governments to resuscitate critical institutions like the Orji river power station, the apparent lack of will and commitment in exploring potential oil and gas deposits in Igbo land, and the structure of most security sector institutions which is skewered in their disfavour.

It is not my intention, at this stage, to venture into the area of political marginalization in Nigeria in great detail because such an analysis will involve a detailed examination of all the contentious issues, which this article cannot accommodate. For example, the question of power succession and power dynamics in Nigeria should be closely looked into both in the context of the previous military regimes and the transition to civilian rule in 1979, 1990 –1993, and from 1999 to the present time, and from the perspective of these regime’s core and principal personnel and the attendant benefits that may have accrued to certain geo-political entities on the basis of their character.

Significantly, the Niger Delta quagmire has pushed the issue of marginalization to the front row of national political, social and economic discourses. It has earned that region considerable national and international exposure and created an enabling environment in which its plight is being tackled in a special way, using special institutions, with special funding. It is also hoped that this massive intervention in the region will reawaken the national consciousness to the need of addressing the institutional and structural dislocations of the civil war in the Igbo heartland, using special institutions and special funding.