In a viral video released on June 23, 2022, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials were forced to flee for their lives as Moslems assembled to disrupt the voter registration exercise because it was a mostly Christian crowd waiting to be registered.
After the Deborah Samuel’s barbarism in Sokoto for which the killers were only charged with ‘disturbing the peace’, the INEC officials wisely decided to save their lives and abandoned the registration exercise.
After all, the president could only order an extensive investigation into a non-existent ‘blasphemy’ law, only advising that they must not take justice into their hands. This statement alone already condemned Deborah Samuel as a law breaker since the mention of justice assumes there was a just cause for which her murderers took justice into their hands!
Many Christians, including myself, will tell the impossibility of getting PVCs in 2015 and 2019, especially in the Northern states. Christians in Abuja could queue all day and watch impotently as underage Moslems groundnut sellers and wheelbarrow pushers were registered and we were disenfranchised and there was no recourse.
Why has the long disenfranchisement of Christian voters become a matter of violence?
Because for the first time in Nigeria’s history, Christians of all ethnicities have woken up to realise what years of complacency has yielded – total subjugation and disenfranchisement in Nigeria. For the two main political parties to field two Moslem candidates after a solid eight years of Buhari’s administration shows the total contempt with which the Islamic establishment now view the rest of Nigeria.
For Ndigbo, the contempt is even greater. This is the region responsible for Nigeria’s independence which Nigeria would have got before Ghana in 1957 if Nnamdi Azikiwe had not asked for a delay for Northern Nigeria to catch up with Eastern and Southern Nigeria.
The PDP is the work of Alex Ekwueme, the party that morphed from his fight for democracy under General Sani Abacha. At its first primaries in 1999, his handiwork was hijacked from him and handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo, fresh out of jail. Yet when it finally came to the turn of the Southeast to produce the next president after 24 years under the rotational agreement reached at its inception, the PDP jettisoned it and a former Customs officer, Atiku Abubakar, ‘emerged’ as the flag bearer in a dollarised extravaganza that left the EFCC helpless to act. And lest we forget, he is the MACBAN elder who preferred to explain why he would not condemn the murder of Deborah Samuel, but thinks Christian votes are his right.
The PDP primaries were the nadir of the Igbo in Nigeria’s post-war history, but an unusual phenomenon occurred. Peter Obi, who left the party about a week to its primaries and joined the Labour Party was suddenly catapulted to prominence as he suddenly became the focal point for the national anger of the disenfranchised and oppressed.
Before we address the phenomenon, it is proper for all of us to acknowledge the incredible patriotism and heroic sacrifice of Pat Utomi, who selflessly sacrificed his own personal ambition and handed his own position to Peter Obi. History will not forget this sacrifice when the victory song is sang.
Some may ask if I am not being premature by mentioning victory. But the answer is a resounding ‘no’. The victory is assured if only we can understand the true essence of strategy. There is the victory of winning the presidential election, which under the current Nigerian anomaly is nigh impossible.
But there is the victory of defeating the two main parties, which is as easy as ABC if the oppressed will listen and understand the power they hold.
First of all, we have to work with the system given to us, which means that every candidate must get 25 per cent in every state. We all know the perfidious role played by Southerners, and especially Eastern governors in the 2019 elections to ensure that the APC got the requisite 25 per cent in their states. We forgive them because we know the EFCC threat hanging over all of them if they did not comply.
But we will not forgive this time. This time, it is mandatory on all Eastern governors to ensure that the real votes are counted and the real results given. It is incumbent on all voters to remain on the field until the votes are counted before cameras and announced on the field. Neither Atiku nor Tinubu must get even three per cent of the votes in Eastern Nigeria. Once neither PDP nor APC gets the requisite 25 per cent in the five Eastern states, then automatically, Ndigbo have defeated both of them. Then, and only then, can the Southeast matter.
If other states join this train – especially Benue, Plateau and the South-south states, then that which has been denied us since 1967 will be guaranteed – renegotiation of the terms of the Nigerian union, which expired in 2014 – 100 years after the forced marriage called amalgamation.
This is the only way that all attempts at restructuring, regional government, state creation, regional/state police, derivation, control of minerals in each state, VAT, local governments etc, can be addressed – ever.
It is only when the two political parties fail to get their necessary 25 per cent in many states that the failed experiment called Nigeria can finally be restructured.
Nigerians should note that the reason that all previous attempts have failed is the lopsided ‘majority’ given to the North right from inception by the British. The 1962 Census showed categorically that the South had more people than the North, but that was immediately cancelled and the 1963 census restored the fake Northern majority – a ‘majority’ that has stifled and killed all attempts to change the constitution, restructure the country and even address such matters as marrying under-age girls after Sani Yerima, then about 50 years old and a serving Senator, brought a 13-year-old Egyptian to be his ‘bride’. He and his co-travellers blocked the attempt to legislate a minimum age for marriage in Nigeria after the horror of his action. They oppose any change because they produce nothing, but eat everything.
The people of the South-south are the least beneficiaries of the oil money that has decimated their farmlands and fishing waters. Their money has gone to build a rail line to Niger Republic and Daura and look after IDPs in the Northeast and rehabilitate Boko Haram murderers. But when the loans taken by President Buhari since 2015 come up for repayment, all of Nigeria will be liable unless we renegotiate this in 2023 and ensure that those that benefitted from the loans repay the money. Simple!
So, strategy is imperative. We must recognise the power we hold and that power is not in an outright win, but denying the others the win and forcing them to come to the table to address the terms of forming a coalition government and in doing so, the terms of belonging to the entity called Nigeria.
Peter Obi must start building the alliances within the Southeast and map out an agenda for negotiation. He must not agree on any terms to be anybody’s deputy. He must return to APGA and negotiate its support at the presidential level and seek to do the same with all parties in the Eastern region and map out our Eastern demands in writing with a time frame so that negotiations do not take time. The Church – Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal – must be involved. University students, especially in state universities must be mobilised and their views incorporated.
Only those states from other regions that actively join the train will have a place at the negotiating table. Thus, if the South-south, Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Adamawa and Taraba join in, imagine the power in that small coalition? All the minerals in Plateau –gold, precious stones, tin etc, will now be in the hands of the state to develop instead of the current situation where the Federal Government will not let them make any agreements with experts to exploit their God-given blessings?
Benue was the food basket of Nigeria, but must join the train so that the marauding Fulani terrorists who have taken over their land will be ejected and sent to their ancestral land in Central Africa to practice their 1,800 mode of living and the people of Benue can return to their farmlands without fear of being raped or slaughtered like cows.
As for the East, since the civil war, the littoral states have been denied that status so as to reduce the revenue to the East. The minerals in the East – from coal to oil – can finally be mined and exported or refined as was the case during the civil war. We can demand a sixth state if we are to remain in Nigeria. The universities can again teach Engineering, which was removed from the curriculum after the civil war because they created Ogbunigwe – a multi-headed missile – that nearly decimated the Nigerian army. The regions can use the expertise of its indigenes in power generation and distribution, oil refining, mechanics, engineering etc. Even the cargo airport in Anambra can be utilised and the Niger River finally dredged for cargo purposes. That is how to become a modern nation.
This is the time that we can renegotiate our education curriculum and add history to our education because as the adage goes ‘ those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat its mistakes’. We can determine the aggregate points for our students and remove the pernicious Federal Character system that makes somebody from the North with 120 points guaranteed university admission whereas our own indigenes with 300 cannot get a place. Worse, Federal funds from VAT and oil from our region is used to give them full scholarships and our own indigenes must pay for their full tuition and boarding fees. This must end in 2023.
Every fool with a mouth has made it their pastime to tell the Igbo what they must do in order to be accepted by ‘the North’, ‘the West’, ‘the so and so’. Enough. Why do they think they can foist an Atiku, Buhari, Tinubu or whoever else on us without question, but we need to prove ourselves to them? Which of them can stand up to Peter Obi, Pat Utomi, Ogbonnaya Onu etc, in terms of qualifications? ‘No-Certificate’ Tinubu or Customs Officer Atiku? Which qualifications make them better than the Igbo candidates?
If we do not seize this incredible opportunity, then one day, Ndigbo and Nigerian Christians will find themselves refugees in the rest of Africa or reduced to serfs serving cows in their land.
So, when I say vote for Peter Obi, remember that denying either the APC or PDP an outright majority is victory.
Get your PVCs. Fight for your right to vote. If your state governor gives you the right to bear arms, buy weapons and be ready to fight for the right to vote if the security forces will not protect you.
But if President Buhari was a sincere person, he would have ordered the army to guard registration centres. But since he did not keep his word to only contest for one term, how can we trust him not to seek a Third Term by engineering a state of emergency to permit him to continue in office? Register. Mobilise. It’s now or never!
*Lian writes from London