Being a good governor in Nigeria does not translate into national electability. Competence, prudence, integrity, accountability, even visionary governance count for almost nothing at the national level. Nigeria rewards power alignment, patronage infrastructure and ethnic arithmetic. Politics, not performance, is the currency of ascension. Anyone who has done the political math with cold honesty will not be shocked that Igbo politicians are folding themselves into the APC in search of survival, not glory.
At the heart of it sits a brutal question: do the Igbo still believe in themselves as a political nation or have we quietly surrendered the collective dream while pretending to debate strategy. The evidence is uncomfortable. We have no bloc cohesion. No ideological discipline. No institutional loyalty. No cultural reverence for hierarchy. Our political class negotiates for crumbs dressed as relevance rather than the seat at the table. The ambition of an Igbo presidency is now treated as a punchline by the same leaders who ought to be its custodians.
The tragedy is not that Nigeria rejects the Igbo from the apex office. The tragedy is that many Igbo leaders have come to accept that rejection as natural. They have shifted their horizon from the presidency to appointments, from appointments to contracts, from contracts to photo ops. The dream has shrunk, not because it is impossible, but because it is no longer defended with the ferocity that built markets in deserts and transformed slums into trading hubs.
Anyone who believes that the ADC will simply hand its presidential ticket to Peter Obi out of kindness must either be new to Nigerian politics or new to the study of human nature. Power is not gifted. Power is negotiated ruthlessly in smoke-filled rooms where numbers, leverage and alliances speak louder than sentiment. The ADC would rather bargain with the presidency than surrender the prize without extracting blood and concessions. That is the real game.
Yet beyond the calculations of party chairmen lies a darker sentiment spreading quietly across Ala Igbo: that an Igbo will never smell the presidency or even the vice presidency in our lifetime unless a northern alliance births it. We can deny the thought publicly but we whisper it privately to our children and our friends in gloomy resignation.
So what then is the meaning of 1970. Was that year merely the end of a war or the institutionalisation of a new caste arrangement. A conquered people cannot aspire to the apex of the republic that conquered them. They can trade. They can build. They can prosper individually. But they cannot rule. That is the unwritten constitution of the Nigerian federation. A federation where the Igboman is useful but not admissible into the command tower.
Small wonder many are checking out of the national project entirely. They relocate. They detach. They choose exile as sanity. They tell their children that there is dignity outside the confines of a country that treats them as tenants of the nation rather than co-owners of the republic. No people can endure that contradiction forever. It breaks the spirit slowly and invisibly.
Worse still, a new crisis is emerging: the collapse of cultural confidence. The Igbo child today is raised without ownership of place, without the luxury of national belonging, without historical vindication, without political horizon. The stories that used to anchor us have been replaced by survival strategies. Pride has been swapped for pragmatism. Vision for compliance. Destiny for escape.
So what exactly are we still doing in a Nigeria where we cannot aspire to the highest office. Are we shareholders or are we labourers. Are we citizens or are we stakeholders with limited privileges. Are we partners in the union or are we the last child of the republic whose role is to clap for others as they rotate the throne among themselves.
It may not yet be too late, but the clock is no longer generous. Nations do not survive indefinitely without collective purpose. If we will remain in this union, then we must negotiate our destiny with clarity. If we cannot, then we must at least tell our children the truth about the country they were born into so history does not accuse us of cowardice.
For now, the Igbo remain the only major ethnic group in Nigeria that can build wealth, create industry, dominate commerce, survive hostility, outcompete rivals and still be told they are unfit to lead. Food for thought.
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
Leave a comment