The Owo Church massacre and the Igbo conundrum 

Casualty figures show that the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria, suffered the heaviest casualties in the Catholic Church attack in Owo, Ondo State early June.

What does this portend?

The Igbo conundrum in Nigeria deepens everyday. It pops up today all around us more than at any other time. The concept is more sharply defined at election time. All the elements that undergird it are brought to the fore in the seasonal contests for power and for the soul of the nation. Yes, at a time like this, the Igbo puzzle manifests like an albatross hanging around the neck of the Nigerian nation.

Even the great Chinua Achebe could only broach the issue most gingerly. He explains it thus: that the only thing the rest of Nigeria is agreed upon is Igbo clobber. That anytime the  need arises to beat down and suppress the ‘troublesome tribe’ around the east of the River Niger, the rest of the tribes rise as one, abandon any other preoccupation and  get the job done. They may then return to their doodling. It is not exactly in these words, but in essence,  this is the meaning and import of Achebe’s submission.

Achebe, of course, refers to the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970 and the attendant human carnage suffered by Ndigbo in the conflict. He also refers to the post war policies and structures designed by the Nigerian State to minoritize a hitherto major tribe and keep her perpetually down.

In a nutshell, it is the attempt by Nigeria, to miniaturize what is probably the largest and most exponential tribe  on the continent of Africa and the unintended outcomes therefrom that approximates to the Igbo conundrum in Nigeria today.

The Igbo conundrum is a peculiarly Nigerian jigsaw. It’s a self-made contradiction. You can’t love him and you can’t leave him. You bury him, he sprouts with fresh verdancy into an iroko. You deny him a factory, he grows an industry. And when you think you have encircled him as in a dot, he becomes the circumference. While the state and her allies are intent on keeping Ndigbo down, Igbo continue to prove to be the very life blood of the nation. He is in every nook and cranny of the land, uncircumscribed, unlimited, charting new territories. 

Let’s illustrate further with current examples: 

Nigeria was founded at independence on a tripod of North, East and West, that is, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. The three major tribes of Nigeria.  Through deprecating state policies like state creation,  local government creation, and flawed census procedures, Igbo is effectively a minority in the land today. They are meted with minority rations of the national cake since after the civil war in1970. So, for the past five decades,  Igbo is consigned to the status of a minority, not large enough to deserve the presidency. He’s a pariah, not worthy to sit on the throne. Today, as another change of baton beckons,  the two other major tribes seem to have conspired to pass the baton of leadership between them: they scramble to take turn after turn between them. They simply believe or pretend they have turned Igbo into vapour or at best vassals. They occupy the two major parties apparently urging Igbo to go to hell!

But Igbo, in spite of her woes, remains the cement that binds the federation. This is exemplified by the recent massacre of worshippers at St. Francis Xavier’s Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State. It was Sunday midmorning on June 5th. It is the period, the Catholic Mass is at its solemn best; when man and his maker are at one in communion. And suddenly, these killers, from the pit of hell, materialized and mowed down worshippers with assault rifles. When the shooting stopped,  at least 40 laid dead and 114 were injured. But the subtext is that, of the 40 fatalities, 25 were Igbo while 74 were injured.

The import is that Igbo are in large numbers in every corner of the land, unifying, building up, creating wealth and even taking bullets; being collateralized in the Nigerian damage. Yet they are not good enough… and they won’t be let alone.

We surmise that Nigeria must, given the quagmire in which we are now enmeshed, quickly determine, how she wants to solve the Igbo conundrum.