By Charles Ogbu
As an Igbo person or an Igbo organisation, the best and most honest way to help Ndigbo and Ala-Igbo is by engaging in community/human capital development programs such as pulling funds together to build and equip health centres and hospitals, build schools and equip existing ones, initiate skill acquisition programs in our communities to give purpose to our teaming youths, offer scholarships to provide education to brilliant kids, embark on construction and rehabilitation of community roads, build community market with toilets etc.
This is the truest and sincerest way of proving you care for Ndigbo and Ala-Igbo.
I work in the rural areas and there is hardly any Igbo state I have not toured. In all honesty, the condition of some of our communities will leave one looking for where to pause and cry themselves to sleep.
You might say that the things I listed are the job of the govt. I agree completely. But from the dawn of time, the Igbos have never relied on the govt because govt, over the years have proven they cannot be relied upon. The Igbos were amongst the first set of people to demonstrate that a people can thrive in spite of the near-absence of govt. Onye ajulu, o na aju onwe ya? So if we cannot fix our local politics for whatever reason, we should at least be able to revive our age-long spirit of Community Development
Most of the Igbo graduates of old were trained by communal effort. Most of the infrastructures and public facilities you see in Ala-Igbo today including the police stations, some of which have existed for decades were built by the community people, not the govt. During the days of the old IGBO STATE UNION – in the good old days when treetop was still the abode of the squirrel – Igbos pride themselves in pulling resources together to do all of the things I listed above. They didn’t wait for any govt. Even the Sam Mbakwe airport was initiated via public donation.
Not too long ago in Ala-Igbo, your qualification for any title in your community is measured mainly by the quantity of the public works like tarring community roads, training people in schools etc you’ve done for the community, not by how much money you’ve acquired or how many cars you drive.
Then, Igbos and Igbo organisations in cities outside Ala-Igbo and outside Nigeria compete amongst themselves over who will execute more community projects for their town.
But now……
God save Ala-Igbo!
Everything has fallen apart.
We are becoming increasingly too individualistic. You come to a community that has millionaires and billionaires and the only health centre in the community still uses local lanterns, the windows have no net, the only bed there is in bad shape. No water and the toilet is not working. Yet, such a community has a town union PG and a countless number of wealthy people. No borehole in the town. The only few ones are safely locked inside the well fenced and gated house of the individual ‘big men’ who own them. (If you want specifics, please chat with me privately and I will provide names and videos of such communities I personally visited myself)
Now, you see community leaders, Igwes and town union President Generals (PGs) recommending for chieftaincy titles to people who have absolutely no record of contribution to the community development.
Now you see different ‘ndi aka na akpa’ fighting tooth and nail to get leadership positions in Igbo organizations solely to use same to advance their selfish interest. Some of them don’t even visit Ala-Igbo except for burials and marriage ceremonies or to take titles paid for through bribing the Igwe or the PG.
Now, you see Igbo organisations who have done absolutely no Community project in any part of Ala-Igbo going from one WhatsApp forum to another priding themselves as the real Igbo patriots simply because they spend all their free time shouting “Fulanis are killing us” and issuing worthless press statement blaming everyone but themselves for being the cause of the Igbo problem.
Now you see Igbos boldly and unashamedly telling you that the best way to LIBERATE Ndigbo is by burning everything down and inflicting more suffering on the already impoverished ordinary Igbos.
I have said it before and I will keep repeating it even if no one is listening, we the Igbos are co-authors of our misfortune.
We have delivered and continue to deliver the “most unkindest cut of all” to the IGBO BRAND.
To most of us, THE IGBO BRAND is just some kind of merchandise, an article of trade. Nothing more.
Imagine if every Igbo person, group and organization resolve to think more of what they can do for their respective community instead of hiding behind siege mentality and victimhood to mask their own complicity in the Igbo woes??
To solve the Igbo problem, we must first be humble enough to admit we have all contributed to the problem. We have played the blame game for far too long.
We have thousands of different Igbo groups, all claiming to be fighting for Ndigbo and taking monies from Igbos scattered all over the world but most of them have zero presence in any Igbo community. So what then is their raison d’etre?? If everyone were to focus on our individual community, would the entire Ala-Igbo not become better for it?
The govt is useless. The Nigerian state has been unfair and unjust to us. These are an undeniable fact.
But one question every Igbo person must ask him/herself is, apart from endless wailing and finger-pointing,
WHAT HAVE I DONE EITHER IN MY INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY OR AS A GROUP TO IMPROVE THE CONDITION OF NDIGBO AND ALA-IGBO???
How many Igbo kids have I put in school? How many Igbo families have I provided with shelter? How many Igbo health centres or hospitals have I ever visited to find out how I can help to make their condition better? How many times have I contributed to my community TOWN UNION to carry out one community project or the other???? How can you be answering ‘Aka ji aku’ and your community health centre doesn’t have something as common as a generating set?
