(Being the Keynote address by the President of the 100 IGBOS USA, INC at the 4-day Conference of the IGBO USA in Diaspora with Ohanaeze Leadership, Held in Chicago, May 11-14, 2017. With the Theme: (EBEE KA ND’IGBO N’EJE?)
Protocols
It gives me great pleasure to welcome our august Visitors, the President-General of Ohanaeze Nd’Igbo and his Delegation of the Executive Committee of the Ohanaeze.
In times past, we would have been asking our Visitors how the home people are doing but technology has reduced the whole World to one global village now and so we are as acquainted with the situation at home as those who are in Nigeria.
I therefore just say; Welcome Sirs to the United States of America.
My Presentation will be guided by the PG’s Post-Election Speech of January 2017 transmitted to us upfront, the Conference Proposals which outlined the Objectives of this Meeting as well as the robust up-to-date knowledge of goings-on at home, enabled by the various tools of Technology including internet, WhatsApp, Facebook and all other applications which enable not only a real-time following of events in Nigeria, but a good measure of participation by way of Forum/Group Discussions of news, developments and issues relating to Nd’Igbo.
There have been a few significant developments at home since after the January 2017 Speech by the PG, which are worthy of examination especially as they relate to the overall engagement with the subject of our Meeting.
One such developments is the release from Prison Custody of Nnamdi Kanu on bail, the continuing incarceration of his Compatriots and the issues thrown up by the whole Trial and the Igbo Question in Nigeria, which seems to have been reformulated as the “Biafra Question” by the actions of the Biafra Agitators.
THE PG’s SPEECH.
The elaborate Post-Election Speech of the PG gave a fair overview of the Igbo situation in Nigeria from many perspectives and raised a number of queries, answers to which shall, in my view, define the current Administration of Ohanaeze.
I find one phrase in that Speech, summarizing the challenge before the current Igbo Leadership.
That phrase is where the PG says “WE CAN DO IT AGAIN”, as he looked back at the glorious exploits of Eastern Nigeria in the days of Premier Michael Okpara during Nigeria’s First Republic, when Eastern Nigeria was the global reference for development for the emerging Economies of the time, (so-called Third World to which all the Asian Tigers of today also belonged at the time).
The crux of our responsibility, as the new Thought-Leaders of our People, is to find out what really went wrong, beyond the known physical devastation occasioned by the 1967-1970 War so that we can remediate the situation and put Igboland back on the glorious path dictated by the incredible endowments of our People.
My little research shows that the big change which altered everything against us to where we have now fallen, has to do with the Unitary Constitutional Instrument imposed upon us by the Victorious Alliance of the rest of Nigeria, as opposed to the Federation Model with which Premier M.I Okpara performed the Economic Miracles we still celebrate to date and with which the Western Region of Nigeria of the same era took a leap into the future.
The 1999 Constitution which creates a 36-States/774 LG Structure that renders Alaigbo a negligible Political Minority, also imposed a 68-Item Federal Exclusive Legislative List which hijacks and confiscates into the hands of an omnipotent Federal Government, all key Economic Assets and the Rights of the Constituent Units, to work those Assets for the benefit of their People. Eastern Nigeria was the target of this Constitutional heist and is without doubt, the worst hit by its operation.
The Countrywide Agitation in Nigeria for reversion to the Federal Constitutional Model, away from the Military-imposed Unitarism, has been couched as a Campaign for “Restructuring” Nigeria. The North has of course been adamantly opposed to the rest of the Country on this.
The “Biafra Agitation” is to my mind, an escalation of this demand for a return to an equitable Federation by a younger generation in Eastern Nigeria.
It is my firm conviction that if the current Leadership of Alaigbo, guided by Ohanaeze, can find a viable answer for this Question of Constitutional Model, it would have addressed this most debilitating factor against the development and peace of Igboland.
My humble prescription would be that Ohanaeze, which already identified with the struggles of the younger generation for the resolution of these existential issues should lead the search for some kind of common ground between the Biafra Agitation and the Federal Government which has so far shut out the possibility and prospects of Restructuring and by so doing, driving more frustration into the already very restive youth of Alaigbo, which the PG described as a ticking time bomb in the East.
In my view Sirs, the least the Igbo Leadership can do now, is to, on the one hand bridge the gap of trust the PG already identified, between the Older Igbo Generation cum Leadership and that restive younger generation, and on the other hand, to propose a Settlement Plan to the Federal Government to the intractable and rapidly expanding “Biafra” Imbroglio.
That gap can be bridged and that Settlement Plan can be offered, if the Igbo Leadership Collective makes a demand today that the Igbo Question in Nigeria, 50 years after the 1967 escalation that became War, and now framed as “Biafra Agitation” by a younger Igbo generation, be referred to a General Referendum of the People since it is basically an issue of Self-Determination which the global Community settles by the mechanism of Referendum in the 21st Century.
This immediately decriminalizes the Self-Determination Quest of the East (whether it is Restructuring or Independence Agitation) and also restores the waned confidence of the younger Igbo generation in their Elders. It puts the Federal Government on the defensive in the situation in such a manner that should precipitate an acceptable resolution of the longstanding Constitutional Disputation.
I know that there is a robust movement towards the aggregation of all the Self-Determination Initiatives in Eastern Nigeria into one Referendum Campaign and if a demand is made by the Igbo Leadership for referring the Igbo Question to a Referendum at this time, it will dovetail into the much needed Regional Consensus that will force a fair resolution of the issues of equitable mutual coexistence for Nd’Igbo in Nigeria and that Movement has a formal presence here the United States.
Let me for the records, state my preference and support of the Lower Niger Congress (LNC) as the Flagship Platform for that aggregation.
The LNC-USA for us in the greater diaspora, is the US arm of the LNC Coordinating its Diaspora Operations
In the face of the nature of the grave existential issues confronting Nd’Igbo in Nigeria today, engaging the Proposed Issues for this Chicago Conference, especially the Policy Development cum Delivery Capacity and the Strategic Reassessment of the Foundational Aims of Ohanaeze from the perspectives I have outlined above will entail defining a clear Desired Destination for Nd’Igbo at this time and a Roadmap, all things considered.
Once this Desired Destination is distilled, it becomes the new basis of securing the much needed sustainable financial support that will make Ohanaeze independent of the debilitating influences imposed on it by the lack of financial capacity.
I wish us happy deliberations and fruitful outcomes.
Respectfully
Mazi Jay Oji,
President, Igbo 100, USA.
May 11, 2017.
Chicago, USA.
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