Presidential candidate decries ethnic marginalisation

One of the candidates in Nigeria 21 April presidential election is Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. He was the head of the separatist state of Biafra between 1967 and 1970. Although he lost the war and Biafra once again become part of southeast Nigeria, Ojukwu has remained popular, particularly amongst the Igbo ethnic group that predominates there, coming third in the 2003 presidential elections.

The Igbo are one of three powerful ethnic groups in Nigeria along with the Hausa in the north and the Yoruba in the southwest. But Ojukwu and many Igbo claim the other two groups unfairly exclude them politically and economically. Ojukwu, who is now 73 and almost completely blind from glaucoma, talked with IRIN at his home in the Igbo city of Enugu. The following are excerpts.

Do you think the Igbo people are better off now in Nigeria than in 1967 when you declared the Biafran secession?

Today in Nigeria we are the token people that the government uses to show that they are not too bad. But we live under a glass ceiling. We get to a certain level and then we can't go further. For a people like us who are known for their hard work and vibrancy it is very frustrating.

Yet you managed to come third in the 2003 presidential elections?

So they say... I think I got many more votes but that is all they decided to apportion me. Everyone knows the elections were not free and fair. They put me at third so the elections looked like they represented the whole nation. It is just part of the tokenism I was talking about.

But surely with democracy things have improved?

Things have not improved for us. [In Igbo states] the education system is so poor; the government is having few factories built here and thus our economy is weak. We are forced into doing work that is not totally legal such as smuggling and making counterfeit products.

So how can you now help change things?

I believe I can act as a balance for this country. In Nigeria we refer to the tripod made up of the three biggest ethnic groups [Yoruba in the southwest, Hausa in the north and Igbo in the southeast]. And we have seen in the federation that whenever one leg of the tripod is weak the whole nation becomes unstable.

We the Igbo are not hamstrung by religion, we are a forward-looking people. In a federation you have to show the others that you are not taking them for granted. I am in the election to establish that the Igbo can give good and better governance. The north has had far too much control of this country.

But here we are talking about ethnicity not political parties.

We Africans are at the stage in which our wisdom is centred on ethnicity and so we talk of being Igbo. This is where we are now and we can't change that. The emir of Kano is a good friend of mine but he cannot rule here in Igboland and I cannot rule there in the north.

But why then would anyone from another ethic group want to vote for you?

Well you have to remember that we Igbo are the biggest ethnic group.

How can you know that? Ethnicity was not part of the recent census.

But we do want it known.

Could an Igbo secessionist movement take root again?

You cannot talk of Nigeria today without talking of the [Biafran] war. Since the war ended Nigeria's leaders have maintained the rhetoric of 'no victor and no vanquished'. Yet they continue to celebrate their victory. They continue to make exactions on us and in doing so they sow the seeds of war.

Do you mean in the way that Germany was forced to pay retribution after the First World War and that then was seen as a cause of the Second World War? Are you saying there really could be a second Biafran war?

If the vanquished find themselves is a situation that is intolerable they must eventually react. You see discrimination everywhere, even in the so called 'unity schools' created to bring students from all ethnic groups in Nigeria to live and study together. After graduation Igbo often don't get jobs while graduates from the other groups do, even when the grades of the Igbo students were better. These are not factors for peace. There are already young Igbos calling themselves MASSOB [Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra].

So you are pessimistic for the future of Nigeria?

I am a politician so I must be optimistic. There is no alternative. I tried the alternative and it didn't work.

dh/cs