Veteran Journalist and Author, PETER ANOSIKE, currently the Executive Director of VOP 90.3 FM, Lagos, writes on his encounter with late sage, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, and the secret about Nigeria the former Anambra State Governor shared with him about Nigeria

I met Chukwuemeka Ezife one-on-one in February 2014. Then I was the Publicity Secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Lagos State and South West Zone and also a journalist with The Sun newspapers. I had written a book titled, “100 Years of Amalgamation: Igbos, What Hope in Nigeria?” The book was in commemoration of 100 years of a country that came together as a result of 500 pounds deficit.

For those who did not know, the main reason why Lord Lugard decided to merge Northern and Southern protectorates to become one country was because his administration was running a deficit of 500 pounds in the North but was making profit in the South, so he decided to merge the two together to balance his account. That’s how Nigeria was born as a country.

My intention for writing the book was to donate it to Ohanaeze Ndigbo South West Zone to launch and use the proceeds to give scholarship to indigent Igbo students living in the Southwest geo-political zone and I was therefore looking for a credible Igbo man that would write the foreword to the book.

Three years earlier, 2011 to be precise, I had written a blockbuster of a book titled, “Dangote’s Ten Commandments on money,” which Wall Street Journal, the biggest and highest circulating newspaper in the United States, had rated as one of the best development books in the world and here in Nigeria, it was adopted as a workbook for grooming entrepreneurs by the Small/Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN). The Minister of Information then, Prof. Dora Akuyili, had written the foreword to the book.

A year later (2012), I had gone to Owerri, Imo State, to see Rochas Okorocha who was the Governor then to use the book for his programme called IMYES, meaning Imo Youths Empowerment Scheme. The idea was that giving youths money as a way of empowerment without giving them the requisite knowledge on how to use the money would tantamount to them wasting the money.

After Okorocha had scanned through the book, he said thus, “Peter, your book makes interesting reading but I cannot promote the book of my rival. If it is me that you wrote about, I would have taken it up and promote it all over the world.”

I understood clearly what he meant. But one thing that I know how to do very well is making my greed to submit to me. My father had taught me that “A na-ebu aguru aju nri (You can be hungry and still reject food”).

But imagine a situation, because of a few millions of naira, after you have left this world and gone to rest in peace, some people would be haunting your descendants and linking you as part of the problem with Nigeria because one crooked politician who had stolen Nigeria blind wrote a foreword to your book. I always try to avoid that and the only way is to make sure that credible people write the foreword to my books.

So, after I had written the book, we set up a committee to select who would write the foreword and Chukwuemeka Ezeife was overwhelmingly voted among a list of 10 people.

I set out looking for him and when I met him and gave him the synopsis of the book, he had said excitedly: “I will take the opportunity of writing this foreword to this Centenary Book to talk to my Igbo people and other people, especially friends of Ndigbo, so that they would gain new insight from your book.”

Continuing, he had said: “Our problems are many and varied: the ones we created for ourselves, the ones other people brought on us and the ones divinely generated against us from other people.

“Just imagine the Igbo, before whom the white man confessed inferiority and most Nigerians adored in awe, are today scorned and despised – they are now the wretched of the country. It may not be quite so. But the once-highly envied is today scorned. The Igbos are blamed for so many things. They are blamed for blaming themselves. One accomplished Middle Belt politician one day told me that nothing made him more angry than hearing some Igbo bemoan or regret their decision to go to war, rather than celebrating the courage of that decision and their ingenuity, inventiveness and tenacity, which converted a proclaimed “48 hours Police action” to almost three years of all-out war, even with major foreign powers fighting on the Nigerian side! Again, our women are now said to be ten for a kobo, in contrast to an epoch when it was said that some men from the other parts of the country would avoid washing hands after shaking Igbo women. So, you can see to the extent we have fallen. But I strongly believe that Igbos should be very proud for fighting the civil war and what they have achieved. Now show me that group of Nigerians who have been out of central power for about half a century and still remains half as much united, cohesive and coherent as the Igbo. Look around. Don’t be myopic. Don’t look westwards because their tight grip on the Nigerian media squeezes water out of political rocks for them, and they have controlled central power. Think of the North! Be objective! What has happened to the ‘born-to-rule’ mentality? When, as Governor, I was naming Anambra State ‘Home for All’, Sokoto State chose ‘Born to Rule’.

“Can we trade the excessive individualism, borne out of our republicanism and egalitarianism for their assumed conformity?”

However, Ezeife sounded very optimistic that even though Igbos seemed to be down at the moment, they would rise and be great again.

“We are,” so the World Bank states, “the highest developed rural Africa. Imagine what will happen if we think home and pay greater attention to investing in our home land? Of course, we must think home, but we should also remember that the resources that developed rural Africa were earned from outside the area. In every area of Nigeria, we are the most populous group after the native indigenes. Consider the potential it holds for the good governance and rapid development of Nigeria. Our sons and daughters are making waves at the frontiers of technology in foreign lands; this is well known. Only the Igbo, of all African, Asian and Australian peoples, are given the honour of recognition for contributions made to the building of the United States of America. This honour is institutionalized in Igbo Village in Virginia. Tell it loudly and tell it everywhere: The Igbo are God’s gift to Nigeria. Is there any Nigerian spot where impacts of Igbo developmental, commercializing, civilizing, motivational zeal and efforts have not reached? Is there any such place in Nigeria?”

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