By Rev Fr Gerald Nwafor
“The Igbos do not sell land to non-Igbos.” The statement was made by Dr. Reuben Abati on national television (Arise News). When one of the anchors in the station, Ms. Ojy Okpe, tried to correct Dr. Abati, he became confrontational and threatened to come after the co-worker.
I would say that I am not surprised, given the way some ethnic nationals see the Igbo people within the Nigerian construct. I will make this discussion as civil and factual as possible so that I do not fall into the category that Ojy Okpe was trying to present to the Doctor, but he felt that he was above correction. Ojy Okpe said that you should not paint the whole Igbo people with one brush.Has this not been the story of humanity (Single story syndrome)? However, Dr. Abati was not ready to be corrected because he thought that he was the king of the media.
Dr. Abati remembers that book knowledge is not the same thing as common sense (Passing six is not passing sense). You may be an academic doctor but from your position on the land sales in Igboland, you have not achieved a doctorate in that area, so you need to be humble about it. I know that you are a lawyer, and lawyers do not take hearsay very seriously. You said that the information you have was given by T.O.S Benson, a former minister.
Now you were reporting what the minister said as the gospel truth. You could have asked what Umunna is and why it was difficult for T.O.S Benson to acquire Umunna land if that position was true. The Igbos buying lands in different parts of Nigeria are not doing it for the wives. The Igbos buying land contributed to the economic growth and welfare of the people they came to live with. They will build their businesses and pay taxes.
The Igbos do not ask for a handout of lands because they are married to your daughter or sister. You should have known better. But I believe that you do know better, but decided to turn a blind eye because it is an Igbo anthropology. You studied in Calabar; I have a brother (Barrister Williams) who studied in UNICAL also, but his behavior shows that the Malabites are smart all around. If you, a one-time secretary to the president of Nigeria who is an Igbo man, should have this kind of thought, I am really worried about what you did in the presidential villa for four years.Dr. Abati, let me remind you that the owner of Arise News is an Igbo man who has contributed tremendously to the welfare and economy of Lagos and Abuja, of which you are one of the beneficiaries.
You did not buy a piece of land outside your tribe, or try to buy it, and the people rejected it so that you can have a case in point but you base your assumption on what somebody said about building a house for the wife. Now you are crying more than the bereaved.
The Igbo people of Nigeria do not only buy land from Nigerian people, they do buy land all over the world. On the other hand, the Igbo people do sell land to strangers too. I lived in Onitsha and Enugu. Near the popular Onitsha main market is the mosque, on a very lucrative piece of land that was sold to the Hausa people. My friend Maruf Adeneyi, a Yoruba man, has a house in Sokoto Road Onitsha, and his father, Mr. Adeneyi, has a house in Kano Street Onitsha. And many more people from the north have houses all over Onitsha. In Enugu, many Yorubas and Hausas have houses in independent layouts.
I do not want to make this piece about the litany of names of non-Igbo people who had bought and built properties in eastern Nigeria: no, that is not the motive of this article. The sole aim is to expose your lack in areas where you could have used your common sense as an academic to stop peddling lies on national television.
Secondly, to inform you that no one is a custodian of knowledge as you claimed to know all things, and did not even allow your co-presenter to tell you about the other side of the story. Your arrogance and audacity to shut down Ojy Okpe was something of worry, and infantile.
Go back to the tape again as you claimed, and you will discover the level of wrong grammar you spewed out (I provided a context in which I was spoken) because you did not allow reasoning to flow. If T.O.S Benson did want to contribute to the people of eastern Nigeria, he should not go to his wife’s village to ask for a piece of land to build a house for the wife. If the wife’s family wanted to build a house for their daughter, they would do that. For the in-law to say on national television that the wife’s people rejected his offer should be a thing of pride to the Igbo people, not a thing of shame as you are making it to look.
To stand on that premise, as a lawyer, and to draw a universal conclusion about the Igbo people, is a sign of something more sinister and bad towards a people that have contributed to the growth of Nigeria in all respects. Ojy Okpe, please stop correcting the all-knowing Dr. Abati (Eze onye agwanam). He will soon go to the public with an unclean backside.Finally, to say what you are not sure of in public is not a good way of communication. To use the words of your co-presenter, “Do not paint a whole tribe with one brush,” it is a sign of parochialism.
And to boldly double down or defend the indefensible is a sign of incorrigibility. The Igbos are the oil of the Nigerian industry. The only reason we have Nigeria today is because of the Igbos. I do not have a problem with Yoruba people, but I have a problem with Yoruba people who refused to see that the Igbos are intrinsically travelers and commercially enterprising.
No amount of calumny, nor the ethnic card would change the majestic movement of the lion (ka ugani adina nwa agu agaro ata afifia, oga alacha lili obala). If I visited your village, the offer I would give your people for your house would be so irresistible that by the time you retire from Arise News, you will be looking for somewhere to lay your head.
Do not be jealous of the Igbos because the more ‘the hatred,’ the more ‘the success’. The Igbo people are the odudu of Nigerian contraption (Nkili nkili ka ana ekili odudu, ejiro odudu eni ozu). The Igbos cannot be buried or dislodged by lies and hate.
