First Aviation
Minister in Nigeria’s First Republic, Chief Mbazulike Amechi has taken a
critical look at issues bordering on the unity of Nigeria. He talks
about Nigeria of his choice and the antidote against agitation for
separation from the rest of the country, apportions blames and tell the
Igbo what they would rather do as an alternative to Igbo presidency. He
spoke at his country home, Ukpor in Nnewi South Local Government Area of
Anambra State.
President of Igbo origin
Presidency is a very key and strategic
office in Nigeria. But it is not the beginning and the end. In 2019,
there will be another presidential election and you have been talking
about Igbo presidency as if to say that a president of Igbo extraction
is the only way Igbo can survive.
First of all, let me say that I do not
think that Igbo presidency is realistic for anybody to go for. There is
a Northern President and the North fought desperately to capture the
presidency two years ago. The President that was elected has been in
and out of hospital. He has not really been an effective president
since his election. We don’t know how it will all end up, whether he
will still return from hospital to continue with the job. But let’s
assume that he does come back. By 2019 will he or will he not want to
contest for his second tenure. If he wants to contest, it is reasonable
that he should be given an opportunity to complete his second tenure so
that the North would have had their full two terms. If he is not in a
position to contest, the North will still want to put up their own
candidate and will stoutly fight to get the person elected. And so,
there will not be any chance for any President from Igbo land or any
other ethnic group in 2019. This is being realistic.
The basic thing is that if presidency is
all that the Igbo are talking about, if a new leader is elected in 2019
form the North, he would like to complete his two terms and that gives
the North three terms, that is if Buhari does not go for a second term.
Before it will be possible or easy for an Igbo to make it at
presidency, many years must have gone. It is not only through
presidency that the Igbo can effectively make themselves relevant in
Nigerian politics.
The truth is that so far, since the end
of the civil war, the Igbo have been calculatedly pushed out of
Nigeria. The only time the Igbo were able to fully belong to Nigeria
was during the four years Presidency of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. But
again, just at the beginning of Shagari’s second term, Buhari conspired
and frustrated the possibility of an Igbo man succeeding Shagari. That
government was then toppled, thereby pushing the Igbo back again into
the position in which the other parts of Nigerian have conspiratorially
relegated Ndigbo to after the civil war.
In my opinion, therefore, the only
reasonable thing to do is for the Igbo to use what God has given them,
the gift of hardwork, the gift of entrepreneurship, trading expertise
and the gift of their technological superiority, exploit them and look
homeward to develop Igbo land industrially and technologically to such
an extent that the rest of Nigerians, or at least majority of other
parts of Nigeria will be forced to depend on Igbo technology, expertise
and industry. That is the way the Igbo should go instead of building
skyscrapers in Kano, factories in Shagamu, factories in Lagos, building
factories in Port Harcourt. They should bring those things back home.
That is think- home philosophy. It is not only when an Igbo man is
president that you can assert your position. That is if the Igbo will
not be pushed out of Nigeria. If the people who rule Nigeria now do not
misrule Nigeria to such an extent that there would be an implosion and
explosion. Read more
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