Senator Orji Uzor Kalu happened on Abia politics during General Sani Abacha’s ignominious transition to civil rule on the platform of the United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP). The party was among the rogue four that had all its roots and branches inside Abacha and gleefully adopted the dictator, who was transmuting into a politician as their consensus presidential candidate in a transition programme that was a sham and shambolic.

Of the defunct parties, scorned as five fingers of a diseased hand by the late erudite Bola Ige, the UNCP stuck out in every material sense as the thumb. Barring Abacha’s sudden passing, Kalu was primed to win its nomination for Abia Government House.

But obvious was that the politicians who endeavoured to deodorized the skunk that Abacha’s transition was, unfurled in no unclear terms to Nigerians as solipsistic dregs, who lived in the dictator’s rectum.

Whatever Abacha wanted, Kalu and others were present and available as tools to confer a semblance of legitimacy on it. Kalu and the few who volunteered as pawns in Abacha’s chessboard were in those heady days, the only politicians in the country who walked free, lived free and slept with both eyes shut.

All others were endangered. Among Nigerians who despised Kalu and the rest of the cheerleading rump in the Abacha’s political programme of annihilation was the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Tinubu and NADECO members were the conscience of the Nigerian society, which Kalu and company on the other hand endeavoured to suppress. Tinubu and other pro-democracy figures offered the mass of the people hope against the Abacha moving train and its occupants. Outside the murderous train and its obnoxious occupants, every citizen who dissented risked life and limb; faced hell and high waters and all manners of every day existential threats. Scores were dispatched, trying to redeem our society from the cut-throat political space Abacha, Kalu and others transformed it to.

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Those who went down fighting did so for the enthronement of unfettered participatory democracy and decent clime. Nigerians craved for a breather as jail houses swarmed with opposition figures; as bullets flew at against them at every turn and hurried self-exile the only life line for opposition voices. While the evils raged, Kalu and others worked for the perpetuation of the repugnant system, which only benefitted them.

With the dawn of democracy in 1999, it was incongruous that Tinubu and Kalu who pursue diametrical ideals would sail in the same boat. The former found family in the progressive hue Alliance for Democracy (AD) while the latter nestled in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) whose successes had the fingerprints of the departing establishment.

One of the peculiar oddities of the Nigerian political space is its high turnover of itinerant politicians. In our country a politician can change his political leaning far much quicker and at a frequency more eerie than the famed British weather. Here, it fits perfectly for politician to be a progressive in the morning, a conservative in the evening and anything in-between the belts. This best explains why the likes of Tinubu would beat their chests as progressives and a Kalu we all know would materialise to claim the same badge.

Sharing the same party makes it even all the more dizzying to some observers. But not to many because our land is that of absurdities, perhaps the only place in the Universe where light and darkness cohabit in a perilous union against everything that enhances life and living for the citizens.

Kalu is the subject of this discourse simply because of his treachery against his party, the APC and its presidential candidate in the lead up to the February 25 presidential election in both his Abia State and the South-east region.

His public display of his ballot paper, thumprinted for APC in the presidential election scarcely obliterates the fact that he didn’t show up in any South-east, APC presidential campaign for Tinubu. Kalu was not seen any of the presidential campaigns held across the entire six regions of the country.

It will not obviate the fact that he neither sponsored a single Tinubu campaign poster in the whole of his Abia State, much less a billboard advertisement. Those who walked their talk for the party, particularly in Kalu’s Abia pinned him pants down in negotiating off the patronage of his Abia North voters to a rival political party for the presidential election and the opposite for the National Assembly election in which he contested.

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Few posers have become compelling: Why did Senator Kalu ensure that he shied away from APC presidential campaign rallies in all of the South-east? Was it for nothing that he did not identify with his party’s presidential flag bearer during the campaigns in his Igboland? Knowing the disadvantages the APC faced in his Abia, Abia North Senatorial District and the entire South-east was Senator Kalu incapable of financing the production of campaign materials as lowly flyers and hand bills for his party’s presidential candidate? Was it possible he wasn’t acting out a personal agenda against Tinubu? These are not hypothetical questions, they’re fact-based and demands reasonable explanations from the Senator.

While a few may have forgotten that all Kalu wanted was the APC presidential ticket for his former classmate, Senator Ahmad Lawan-the outgoing Senate president-not a few expected that he would work for the presidential candidate of his party with the primary won and lost.

There are no surprises that Kalu right now has his eyes fixed on the position of the Senate Presidency, which may be micro-zoned to his region but what circumstances would support for a man to reap where he did not sow? Kalu should be reminded that the same Bible he now quotes copiously disapproves that a man who did not work should not eat: 2 Thessalonians 3:10. This engagement is a fair challenge to Kalu to make known his efforts at working for the electoral success of the President-elect, Ahmed Bola Tinubu and the APC for all to hear and see besides his thumb print for the party and the public show he made out of it.
Voting for Tinubu after laying traps and preparing the terrain for his fall at the electoral field is a classic facade which takes the definition of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds to a whole new level.

Who and what exactly is Kalu fearful of when he took to his verified Facebook handle to nag at his percieved opponents for the Senate Presidency over character assassination and politics of calumny, when none of his targets has even had time to bother about him? Any wonder the Bible declares in Proverbs 28:1 that “the wicked flees when no man pursueth.” While it is his prerogative to dream to be Senate President, he needs not be reminded that it is only fair that those who worked or at least made attempt to work must be numbered first for reckoning.

Any system that rewards treachery and betrayal cannot guarantee peace and cohesion. And only beckons on unavoidable implosion. Kalu knows this because he has been a governor.

He also needs not be reminded that every ruling party has a sacred responsibility of ensuring that who ever is to emerge a Senate president must not be a saboteur to the president or even remotely seen to be one.

This engagement would be incomplete without also drawing the attention of APC leadership in Abia and the national secretariat to the fact that the bitter pills Senator Kalu served Tinubu in the February 25 presidential campaigns, he served Ikechi Emenike, the party’s governorship candidate in the state.

READ ALSO: OPINION: Tinubu And My Journey To ‘Exile’

As it was with Tinubu, Kalu shied away from issuing any kind words in favour of Emenike’s quest in the state and also did not show up in any of his campaign rallies. If these are not definitive of anti-party activities, pray, what else does, especially from a principal officer of the Upper Legislative Chamber, who ought to be a rallying point and leading light in APC’s electoral battles in unfriendly Abia and Igboland?

How would the party make in-roads in the South-east with the exaggerated sense of self-importance from a polarising figure like Kalu? It is counter-productive and injurious to the party for Kalu to just remain APC by words of mouth and for his egotistic interest of riding on its wings for his individual political survival.

Emeka Chidiebere writes from Aba

The above article is strictly of the writers’ opinion and does not in any way translate to that of INFO DAILY MEDIA

Tunde Odesola

Cleveland, a city in Ohio, USA, was long regarded as the sufferhead among American cities. Bearing on its big head the weight of an unfortunate nickname – The mistake on the lake – Cleveland shares a few similarities with Nigeria. How did Cleveland get its nickname? This is how.

As recently as the late 1960s and 1970s, Cleveland was described as a city where ducks flew upside down because there was nothing worth dumping on. An unforgettable incident happened in June 1969 that made the appellation of a rundown city stick to Cleveland like a mask.

Just as Nigeria has River Niger, Cleveland has Cuyahoga River, where the city’s factories dumped their waste with reckless abandon. The Cuyahoga River, by the way, empties into Lake Erie, which is the 11th largest lake in the world.

On a fateful ‘Ọjọ́ burúkú, èsù gbo’mi mu’ day when the devil was horribly thirsty for evil, a spark from a moving train on a bridge above the river ignited the toxic chemicals floating on the river, resulting in an inferno five storeys high. The fire was quickly put out and nobody died from the incident.

If such an inferno occurred in our beloved Nigeria, your guess is as good as mine; fake pastors would’ve had a field day, the opposition would’ve accused government of arson, government would have said the fire was God’s wish, and Bubu wouldn’t visit the scene; Garba or Adesina would’ve issued a statement silent on casualties, calling on Christians and Muslims to watch and pray. The hopeless country would’ve moved on.

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Commerce, industry and life folded up in Cleveland as the former 5th largest city population in the US shrunk to become the 54th largest. The river of tears rolling down the cheeks of the Nigerian masses bearing the brunt of misgovernance such as naira scarcity and poverty is bigger than the fast-shrinking Lake Chad, slowly drying up rivers Niger and Benue, and the polluted rivers in the Niger Delta.

But Cleveland has rebounded and is holding its own as America’s third largest iron and steel producing city, arts and cultural hub, topnotch healthcare destination, champion of environmental protection and progenitor of Rock and Roll.

If Cleveland was a ‘Mistake on the Lake’, Nigeria must be a ‘Disaster on the Niger’. Or a ‘Blight on the Benue’. Nigeria’s socio-political history paints the picture of domination, suspicion, hate and jealousy among her various tribes.

The seed of tribal domination, suspicion and hatred was sown with the nation’s first coup d’etat when Igbo soldiers, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu and Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, in the night of January 15, 1966, led other coup plotters, who were mainly of Igbo extraction, to carry out a pogrom on Nigeria’s political elite that included Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, and more than 20 top politicians, senior army officers including their wives, and junior soldiers on duty, even as another Igbo soldier, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, seized the reins of power when the country was descending into anarchy.

Apart from Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna, other majors that were the masterminds of the first coup in Nigeria were Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Chris Anuforo, Dan Okafor, Adewale Ademoyega, and Humphrey Chukwuka.

A list of the casualties in the January 15, 1966 coup include Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Premier Ahmadu Bello, Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh, Ahmed Musa (Ahmadu Bello’s aide), Hafsatu Bello, Mrs Latifat Ademulegun, Zarumi Sardauna, Ahmed Pategi (Bello’s driver).

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Others include Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, Colonel Ralph Shodehinde, Colonel Kur Mohammed, Lt Colonel Abogo Largema, Lt Colonel James Pam, Lt Colonel Arthur Unegbe, Sergeant Daramola Oyegoke, Police Constable Yohana Garkawa, Lance Corporal Musa Nimzo, Police Constable Akpan Anduka, Police Constable Hagai Lai, and Philip Lewande. Unegbe was the only Igbo killed during the coup.

Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, luckily escaped being killed in the January 1966 coup plot because he had been sentenced to a 10-year jail term for alleged conspiracy to overthrow the Balewa government in 1963.

Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the President of the country, who was on a cruise to the Caribbean when the coup occurred, had transferred powers to the Senate President, Prince Nwafor Orizu.

Then came the counter-coup of July 1966 aka ‘July Rematch’ which was more senseless and sickening than the January coup as an undisclosed number of Igbo soldiers, including Ironsi, were murdered, setting Nigeria on the path of a civil war that started on July 6, 1967 and ended on January 15, 1970 – lasting exactly 2 years, 6 months, 1 week and 2 days.

It’s true to say that the spine of the fragile unity of Nigeria was broken by the January 1966 coup, it is truer to say that the Igbo have never recovered from the Biafra War. No tribe can ever recover from a war that killed an estimated three million people.

Aborigine Indians never recovered till date in the US, Tibetans, Taiwanese and Uyghurs never fully recovered in Chinese hands, natives never recovered in Canada – in wars wherein genocide, starvation and sterilization were potent weapons for forceful land takeover and imperialism.

War is always terrible and avoidable. It’s like the bullet, once shot, it hurries to wreak havoc. It’s sane to say that the January 1966 coup was a military action, whose consequence shouldn’t be visited on an entire tribe. But warmongers would say that everything is fair in war and that the Igbo got what they deserve. However, is it right to kill an ant with a sledgehammer? Is it right to kill a dog because it barks?

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The whole concept of Nigeria’s amalgamation is insane, unnatural and pretentious because after the Biafra War, ‘No victor, no vanquished’ became the new song on every lip, whereas suspicion, mistrust and contempt sit in the belly of each tribe.

With the 2023 general elections, the chickens have, again, come home to roost. The elections have, once again, widened the national fissures of ethnicity, religion and hypocrisy accentuated by the headless regime of retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari – a beneficiary of coups. Buhari divided Nigeria so much that when people are killed anywhere in the country nowadays, the first question that comes to mind is, “I hope my tribe isn’t involved’.

Sadly, ethnicity, religion and hypocrisy have been critical factors determining the swing of electoral victory in the 2023 elections, just like past elections. Sadly, this is what the political elite designed for the masses, and it’s bearing bountiful harvests.

If not hypocrisy, what would you call Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who, as the day of election reckoning nears, has gained rapid demotion from being Lagos State foreman to being Lagos State groundsman ready to hug the homeless, lick the vulcaniser arse and stand at church entrance like a stranded sexton.

If not for ethnicity and hypocrisy, why haven’t the Igbo ever been this concerted, assertive and vehement in condemning bad governance in Igbo land especially, and across Nigeria generally, as they’ve now been rooting in Lagos?

Inasmuch as I’m an advocate of giving the job to the best hands, notwithstanding religious consideration, I’ll be remiss and insincere if I claim that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim was altruistic. That political act was in disregard of Christian religion, and could embolden an encore by the political class in future elections. Its unforeseen fallout is what’s making Sanwo-Olu’s heart beat 1,000 times per minute at the mention of Elluu Pee.

For one thousand and one reasons, the All Progressives Congress should’ve been punished at the polls but it exploited the nation’s faultlines, like other parties also did, to garner votes nationwide in confirmation of the weaponization of poverty.

No doubt, the memory of Biafra wracks the Igbo till date, the same way the loss of Ilorin, a Yoruba land, to the Fulani, rankles the Yoruba still. This is why ‘Lagos is no man’s land’ mantra provokes instant disgust in the Yoruba.

If the Labour Party loses Lagos governorship election on Saturday, the Igbo will come to great political pain, and return to the old song, “We want Biafra.” I join in the song; if the Igbo cannot aspire to be what they want in Nigeria, let them go.

Tunde Odesola is a senior journalist, columnist with The PUNCH newspaper and a guest writer in INFO DAILY.

Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @tunde odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola

By Suyi Ayodele

Someone staked his claim to the presidency of Nigeria with the audacious slogan of Emi L’okan (it is my turn). And he seems to have got it using the Hausa/Fulani/ Kanuri alliance to drive his claim. The real owners of Lagos are on the street now demanding their right to rule themselves. They seem to be saying, “Awa L’okan” (it is our turn), also forging an alliance with southern ethnic groups, particularly the Igbo. Now, the ajoji godogbo (audacious alien) is jittery and threatening the landlord because the owner wants to rule his land.

For those who think only the Igbo are behind the February 25 tsunami in Lagos, if truly they are Yoruba and have roots in the Yoruba cosmology, I recommend them to find out the full meaning of the name of a renowned Babalawo of yore: Kuro-ki-Onile-jeun (leave so that the owner of the house can eat). Kuro-ki-Onile-jeun has two other siblings: Oju (Eye) and Ahinhun (The one who snores). These trio were the powers behind any divination, according to the legend. No diviner, no matter how dexterous, could be successful without giving due recognition to them. Oju spoke for the people. Ahihun represented the poor masses. The third, Kuro-ki-Onile-jeun, was the minister in charge of indigenous (home) affairs. Once a Babalowo had any of the trio against him, he simply packed his divination bag and headed home. Could it be that for the past 24 years, the political godfathers of Lagos have neglected the real people and the day of reckoning is now? There is a saying that amplifies that: “Ko mo oju, ko mo Ahihun, ko tun mo Kuro-ki-Onile-jeun, oluhun fe se awo asedale (he does not know Oju, neither does he recognise Ahihun and completely neglects Kuro-ki-Onile-jeun yet boasts of a lasting divination expedition). If people can be comfortable with the Emi L’okan (it is my turn) philosophy, why should the same people feel bad for Lagosians saying “Awa Lo’kan” – it is our time?

We are in a very interesting time at the moment, political wise. By this Saturday again, Nigerians will file out in their millions to elect governors and state legislators across the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Whatever tension we are feeling across the states cannot be divorced from the political tsunami of February 25, when the presidential and national assembly elections took place. That date will remain in history as the night of the long knives for all political gladiators, who were thoroughly demystified by the outcomes of the elections. Great was the humiliation hitherto the lords of the manors suffered that ever since, there has been “no peace for the wicked” in the camps of those who were lords over us for decades. Interestingly, the vultures have momentarily forgotten their feud. They are all back in Lagos begging and asking for mercy from a people they have spent the past 24 years raping with crass impunity. They are scared!

FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Tinubu And My Journey To ‘Exile’

On a personal note, I feel greatly satisfied, and elated that for once, Nigerians showed uncommon resilience and demonstrated their capacity to do that which is right, ideal, and noble. The outcome of the February 25 elections and the attendant disappointments, especially the remarkable ineptitude displayed by INEC, pale into insignificance for me, given the loud messages Nigerians sent to the locust that have eaten up the nation’s political and economic fields over the years. The lessons from the elections are something Nigerians, and this time around, the youths, should keep for future political engagements. The political equation is almost balanced. The APC has 57 senators-elect as against the 42 by the other opposition parties. While APC has 162 House of Representatives members, the opposition parties have a total of 165 members. All the opposition parties need to do is to get their acts together and no single party would be able to pass any anti-people bill in the National Assembly. That is a great win for the people.

Since February 25, politicians, who in the past would have been sipping cognac in their living rooms, celebrating the ‘victory’ of the presidential election, are practically on the street as vote canvassers. Interesting! We have seen governors in the last two weeks going from one market to the other and from one worship centre to another. One of them in the Niger Delta region was spotted kneeling down to beg traders for votes. The souls of the 24 states where the gubernatorial elections will take place on Saturday, March 18, are up for grabs. Nobody is comfortable again. Governors, ministers, big men and women, are, to use the exact word of a Nigerian billionaire, “pounding the street”, for votes. The commoners are no longer common. Teachers in Delta State suddenly had their service years extended from 60 to 65 years. Wow! In Lagos, the epicenter of the current tension, residents who had their vehicles impounded and auctioned at very ridiculous prices have suddenly become the darlings of the erstwhile tough-talking Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu. The almighty LASTMA officials have abandoned their old acts. They are now seen counselling Lagos drivers on “safe driving”. God bless February 25, 2023! More importantly, God bless those resilient Nigerians, who, through their votes, showed that power resides with the people. How are the mighty (godfathers) fallen and the weapons of war (politics) perished. How would Nigerians have believed that the strong man of Lagos motor park, who, three weeks ago threatened those who would come and vote for any other party, apart from his APC, with fire and brimstone, would one day turn a preacher of peace. Oh, you did not see the video of MC Oluomo, begging Lagosians for forgiveness and preaching peace like the one who “preached in the wilderness”.

The most interesting thing to me now is the type of tension brewing every day in Lagos. Eko Akete, Ilu Ogbon (Lagos the centre of wisdom) is no longer at ease. Different narratives are flying all over the place. The Centre of Excellence is no more excellent politically. Those who have held the state by its jugular for over two decades are now changing the narrative. They are yet to come to terms with the devastation visited on them by the avant-garde political movement headed by the underrated Peter Obi of the Labour Party. Labour Party, which to me, is the party of the future, did not only demystify the ‘owner of Lagos’ and proponent of the Emi L’okan political philosophy, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the party, and its supporters ensured that Tinubu did not only lose Lagos on February 25, but that he lost Ikeja, where he voted and lost the polling centres on Bourdillon Road, where he resides. Nobody expected it, not even yours sincerely. But it happened. How? Who did it? Why did they do such a thing? Trust them, the lords of Lagos have a single answer to these questions. Ask them how, and they tell you “Igbo”. Who did it? – same answer, Igbo. Why? They want to take over Lagos, they say shamelessly as if the Lagos votes were cast by the Igbo alone. Now the Igbo race has become the hydra-headed political monster. That is funny.

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The abrasive sentiment in Lagos now and to a greater extent in many parts of the South-West, is “we must not allow the Igbo to take over our land”. I hear that tale every day. I shudder at how otherwise educated fellows suddenly turned tribal bigots. I asked a fellow what will be the gain(s) of an average Nigerian in Lagos, if Sanwo-Olu wins the March 18 elections. I asked him to also educate me on what an average Lagosian will lose in case Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the LP wins, too. The fella gave me the parrot line: “the Igbo will take over Lagos”. Really! Who is in charge of Lagos at the moment? I asked him. He said I would not understand. And I want to understand. This is why I am probing further. LP scored 582,454 votes on February 25. Are we saying that only the Igbo in Lagos gave Peter Obi that figure? The APC of Tinubu also scored 572,602 votes. Is anybody by any reasoning saying only the Yoruba group did the figure? Did, for instance, a Joe Igbokwe, vote for Peter Obi because he is an Igbo at the expense of his political benefactor, Tinubu, who rehabilitated him such that he can hardly find his way to his native Nnewi hometown in Anambra State? Which ethnic nationalities gave Abubakar Atiku of the PDP his miserable 75,750 votes at that election? Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa/Fulani community or voters from Mars? Can we just wake up and smell the coffee before it goes cold and stale.

How come the Igbo race is now a threat to the Yoruba land of Lagos? How did that happen? In the history of this political era, who has empowered the Igbo in Lagos more than Tinubu himself? Why are his ‘friends’ of yesteryear now his ‘enemies’ today? Something is wrong and those plying the wares of “Igbo will take over our land” know the truth but it is too bitter for them to either acknowledge or swallow. Fact is that the rabble-rousing crusade of Obidient political war cry is an idea that has come of age. Lagos is peculiar. In the current dispensation, all original Omo Eko (indigenous Lagosians) know that from 1999 till date, ‘strangers’ have been ruling and pillaging their fathers’ farmlands. From Tinubu to Babatunde Raji Fashola, from Akinwunmi Ambode to the current Sanwo-Olu, an Isale Eko man will tell you that the roots of the foursome cannot be found in Iduganran to the backwaters of Agboyi. None of these four governors can boast of original Lagos ancestry. So, if the true Lagosians are now saying they want their land back and they find the remedy in a Lagos Islander, Rhodes-Vivour, it would not matter to them if the vehicle for such actualisation is driven by an Igbo, a Kalabari, an Ibariba or a Tapa from Nupe land. That is the current reality in Lagos today. It would not matter to them if Rhodes-Vivour’s mother is Igbo, his partner’s grandmother is from Kutuwenji and his first cousins are descendants of El-Kanemi of Bornu. All they want is a clear break from the old order; only God can stop that!

I have argued here on the rights of the minority in a piece titled; “Oodua Anthem and the Rights of the Minority Groups”, published on May 18, 2021, which was in defense of the Ijaw people of Ondo State. It is rather unfortunate that an Ikechukwu Ibeto, who has lived his past 50 years in Lagos is no longer regarded as a Lagosian because a gubernatorial election is in the offing and his distant cousin is on the ballot. It is equally more unfortunate that an Adebayo Omosule, who sold his grandfather’s grave to an Uzoma Nwokeabia, to build a warehouse on Ikorodu Road, is now the one shouting “Igbo will take over our land”. How did we, for instance, allow the political class to brainwash us that their fight for political survival is the survival of the poor people on the street? The early 70s, especially after the civil war, were fascinating to me. A room exists in my father’s house today which we, all the children, know as “Yara Ibo” (the room for the Ibo). The room was so named because it was where all the Igbo people who came for casual jobs in our fathers’ cocoa plantations, after the civil war, were first housed before being distributed to other cocoa farmers in the town. We called those Igbo “Onise Odun” – A year-labourer- because they were not paid for their labour until December of each year when cocoa would be at its peak. Their children attended the same L.A. Primary School East, Saint Andrew Primary School and Saint Thomas’ Catholic Primary School with us. They ate our pounded yam, and we shared their akpu (fufu) and ofe’onugbo (bitter leaves) with them.

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I went to Lagos during my undergraduate days to see a friend around Mafoluku. My would-be host was on morning shift when I got there. The couple who received me and entertained me before my friend arrived, were Igbo husband and wife. There were Yoruba and other tribes in that building, who knew me as a regular caller but never catered to me. Is that fantastic Igbo couple part of the ‘strangers’ we are being told want to take over Lagos? For the five years I spent in Lagos in my last employment, I can count the number of times I paid transport fare from Ketu, my base, to Victoria Island, my office. Why? A friend, an Igbo, from Imo State, would always pick me up at the bus stop in the morning and drop me off in the evening. When it rained, he would take the extra effort, veer off the expressway, to drop me off in front of my house. On the job itself, one of the greatest supports I got came from another Igbo fella from Anambra State. I can bet that many people share the same experiences as mine. Now the political class and its nauseating selfish disposition is asking us to do away with that love and some people are clapping! Can’t we distinguish between good governance and ethnic jingoism, anymore?

It is true that we have some very bad Igbo guys. There are very many of them. It is equally true that not every Yoruba person on the streets of Lagos is without faults. We have them in large quantities too. No tribe is extremely bad, and no tribe is extremely good. We are like the proverbial talking drum (Gangan), which backs some people and faces others. The locust political class should go and wean itself of the fallacy of hasty generalisation. There are so many people who are angry with the hegemonic hold of the Lagos biggest landlord in the state. They want the lord’s knees off their necks so that they can breathe. Among them are the EndSARS victims and their parents. You have the Lagos elites and those who are genuinely tired of the shenanigans of the past 24 years. The real Lagosians (Omo Eko gangan) are in that group, too. The huge Igbo population, with their misplaced aggression, are there also. Aggrieved APC members queued behind the LP during the last elections. Undecided voters, who were pissed off by the activities of the many MC Oluomos of Lagos numbered among the lot. These were joined by other tribes. The only thing is that an Igbo man led the revolution. But that is not limited to Lagos. LP has about six senators and 34 House of Representatives members from that election. These guys won across the states of the federation; voted for by all Nigerians who seek the good of the land. March 18 is another day to circumcise the New Nigeria born on February 25. Let the consolidation be nationwide and let Nigerians have a fresh breath of life in many states across the country, Lagos inclusive. Let Awodi (hawk) soar and let Alapandede (Swallow) fly; whoever says no to the other, let its wings break!

Suyi Ayodele is a senior journalist, South-South South-East Editor, Nigerian Tribune and a columnist in the same newspaper.