By NnaEmeka Chukwujindu:
The Nigerian Constitution guarantees, among others, that –
“The State social order is founded on ideals of Freedom, Equality and Justice. (2) In furtherance of the social order- (a) every citizen shall have equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law; (b) the sanctity of the human person shall be recognised and human dignity shall be maintained and enhanced.” (Chapter II, Article 17)
Decrying margination and discrimination in national affairs have long been the rallying cry of the Igbo nation and their umbrella “common interest” organization, Oha Na Eze Ndi Igbo – a collective of Igbo intelligentsia, elders, and political and economic elites. Even as the Igbos clamor for more federal presence and infrastructural projects in the Southeast, high on the laundry list has also been the quest for an Igbo presidency, so called.
Glaringly left unaddressed by these Igbo elites, their elected Governors and legislators, are the discriminatory practices, flagrant injustice, primordial and primitive customs and traditions, and flagrant constitutional violations being perpetrated within the Igbo nation and their respective states and communities, villages and towns – stretching from the flood-ravaged fishing and agrarian villages on the Eastern banks of the Niger river, through the erosion-plagued gullies of Agulu Nanka and the hilly terrains of Enugu and Abakaliki, including also vast swaths of Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo and Abia states.
It is no secret, however, that in many Igbo communities, hundreds of thousands, or millions, of fellow citizens are being denied the basic constitutionally guaranteed human dignity, respect for personhood, citizenship rights and opportunities of full participation in communal leadership and other activities on account of long disputed and discredited spurious and flawed historical antecedents and customs – that have positioned our fellow citizens as either “unclean”, “stranger elements” and/or “settlers” regardless of whether their ancestry is traceable and stretching back many generations in their respective towns and villages.
Consequently, in modern day 21st century Igboland, fueled and enabled by pseudo-intellectuals, legal and political elites and in some cases, esteemed Church leaders of all Christian denominations, customary purification rites are being initiated, promoted and/or supervised by sundry community leaders, as well as taxpayer-funded government-appointed “traditional rulers” – our modern-day incarnation of Colonial-era warrant Chiefs – more than a few of whom consider themselves exclusive and superior. These ceremonies reportedly include the unconscionably immoral, occultic and satanic sacrifice of cows and goats, kolanuts, alcoholic drinks and/or other prescribed items to fellow humans – by those who have been labeled as inferiors that have been so cajoled, constrained, intimidated, shamed and oftentimes bullied into such diabolic ceremonies for the redemption of their humanity.
Unconstrained and unburdened by easily enacted and enforceable guardrails, legislatively or through Executive orders, more than a few, albeit too many parochial community leaders and so-called traditional rulers have freely orchestrated and promoted these primitive practices that have remained stubbornly pervasive among the Igbos. Any, and all opposition to same is deemed as threatening and inimical to communal order and customs.
It is not uncommon among the Igbos and some communities that those who resist or question such inhumane practices and constitutional violations are often mischievously threatened with, or served, spurious and frivolous lawsuits that trumpet so-called “historical customs, culture and traditions”. Indeed, a cursory search of online or other database of recent and not so recent judicial filings in Igboland and their respective States would readily yield a hodgepodge of morbid references to “dead ancestors”, “ostrich feathers”, “cowrie shells” and “regal/chieftaincy paraphernalia”, among others.
Based on historical precedents, and regardless of the outcome/s, especially, absent constructive and meaningful governmental and political interventions, it is evident that the trajectory of events would remain endlessly unaltered, and resultant decisions, one way or the other, could only rend our already fragile social compact and, potentially, exacerbate communal crises.
It is incontrovertible that regardless of understandable political and social divisions, or other flickering loyalties, the Igbo leadership has shamefully and universally failed, and is failing, woefully, to address the very urgent and burning internal issues and contradictions of legitimacy and flagrant injustice that ravage their lands.
Unlike our elected political leadership that are ascribed constitutional legitimacy and authority to their respective offices through the ballot box, these “life-time” government-appointed traditional rulers – serving at the pleasure of the Governors – should consciously and deliberately work assiduously and diligently to earn the legitimacy and approval of their respective communities. State governors should, at the barest minimum, hold these errant traditional rulers accountable, by exercising their unfettered powers to remove or dethrone those rulers who, demonstrably, fail to uphold basic constitutional dictates or who refuse, by design, practice, or malice, to ensure balanced representation of various constituents and groups in their village cabinets.
It is, therefore, no surprise that many Igbos would rather seek to settle and pitch their tents in the volatile Boko Haram-threatened territories of the Northeastern states and even the outer boundaries of the deadly Sambisa Forest, where their personhood and dignity is arguably better respected or not as circumscribed as in some of their respective Igbo homelands.
As biblically instructed, the Igbos should first seek to remove the log in their own eyes before removing the speck in the eyes of others. With their moral posturing and much vaunted, but increasingly, besmirched egalitarianism, the Igbos can no longer hide their heads in the sand in the manner of the proverbial ostrich. Caught in-between the nexus of evil and the devil, and the glaring headlights of inevitable Change, the Igbos must urgently address and redress the corrosive cultural and customary practices that are ravaging their many communities or remain resigned to the unfortunate truth that strife and instability and rampant insecurity would continually pervade their lands, just as insidious, or more so, than the terror of Unknown gunmen, kidnappers, and the so-called Fulani herdsmen.
As has been said elsewhere, this thing called culture will kill us; the asinine insanity, and pathologies of which an Igbo presidency will not resolve. For many of our Igbo compatriots, the struggle is real and personal, and it begins from a place we all call home.
Undoubtedly, the people who are most impacted must be the solution. To quote Emma Lazarus – “Until we are all free, we are none of us free”.
