Good People, join me to congratulate Senator John Azuta-Mbata for his election as the 13th President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide. I am hoping that his election will restore an enviable leadership which Igbo Elders demonstrated after the Biafra War. That leadership quality has since been muted.
So, Senator Azuta-Mbata is tasked to re-activate that excellence which enabled the Igbo Nation to rebuild one school after another, one market after another, one church after another, etc, despite all the impending odds, after a war.
If you studied what those men and women did between 1970 and 1980, you will agree that Africa has produced one of the finest leadership case studies. The renaissance which the Igbo Nation demonstrated is even more legendary than whatever China has accomplished. Yes, China did not rebuild from a war! Among many things, the elders focused on two things: rebuilding knowledge infrastructures and providing ways to earn incomes.
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For the first part, they got the schools back because they did not want their sons and daughters to fall well behind on education since during the war, other regions were in schools when all schools were closed in the Igbo Nation. How did they do that? They asked ALL communities to set up community development unions, and challenged everyone to contribute. In my village, we have the Ovim Community League which saw that all schools were up and running, under enormous sacrifices where people rebuilt schools before their homes!
Then they exported talent, tasking young people to leave for other areas. Notice that there were no opportunities in the Igbo Nation, meaning that jobs were limited. But as those young men were leaving the Nation, elders reminded them of one thing “onye aghala nwanne ya” [do not leave your brethren behind]. The grand idea was clear: we will do all to support you to go to Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, etc, but once you find success, please come back and pick a brother or sister. Upon that thesis was the Igbo Apprenticeship System built, crystallizing a virtuous circle which within 20 years, the region got into parity with other regions in Nigeria, despite the loss of their bank balances and other assets.
Simply, not many development experts see the Igbo Nation as a place they need to support in Nigeria even though it was the theatre of a brutal war which destroyed centuries of assets. For Senator and our PG, we need leadership to re-engineer that sagacious leadership era for the Igbo Nation and Nigeria at large.
Good People, I appreciate all the elders who came before us, to ensure that all of us today from the Igbo Nation have the opportunities we have today. Yes, go through the histories of nations, most times, after such wars, the region is lost for decades, but they did not allow that to happen.
But of course, the challenge of the 1970s is back in the Igbo Nation. And Senator Azuta-Mbata has to find a new leadership template that will reignite economic vibrancy, citizenship partnership and shared prosperity for all. I wish him good luck because we need that leadership desperately, not just for the Igbo Nation, but all of Nigeria.
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Ohanaeze Ndigbo does not have any viable enforcement mechanism, and amidst competing values and interests, including those with obtuse and misguided notions of what Igbo Nation should be like, you are left with deploying only your persuasion skills. How the leader will be able to harmonize all these competing values and interests, and then advance the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, only time will tell. We wish the man Azuta-Mbata well.