By Pini Jason

LAST August the Governor of Abia State, Chief Theodore Ahamefula Orji issued an order sacking so-called non-indigenes from the public service of Abia State.

In a directive dated August 25, 2011 entitled: “Backloading on Transfer of non-indigene in Abia State Public service to their state of origin,” the Governor directed that all non-indigenes working in the public service of Abia State (including Local Government) be transferred to their states of origin effective from October 1, 2011. To be excluded from this purge are non-indigenes in the tertiary institutions in the state.

Question mark on Igbo politicians

This policy has expectedly drawn appropriate flaks from Igbo nation for those affected by this purge are mostly fellow Igbo. There have also been some sympathisers who have tried to rationalise Governor Orji’s action. The main plank of Orji’s defence rests on the need to pay the newly enacted minimum wage of N18,000.

My view is that the purge is unnecessary, inexcusable and puts a sharp knife through the thin ligature of Igbo unity. It puts a question mark on the penchant of Igbo politicians to cry about marginalization and injustice in the Nigerian nation. I have always suspected such cries as self-serving. Orji’s action proves me right.

For a gregarious people who have been at the forefront of the advocacy for Nigerians who have lived almost all their lives in any part of this country to be accorded citizenship rights, I think this purge is not a very thoughtful one. It has a tendency to backfire as I have read somewhere that Anambra State is retaliating Orji’s action! I hope to God that it is not true.

Gov. Theodore Ahamefula Orji

As if the policy is not bad enough, the implementation has become untidy. The affected workers who were supposed to be “backloaded” to their home states on transfer were given letters of disengagement, instead of transfer. This leaves them in no man’s land! For anybody involved in the agitation that made Gen. Ibrahim Babangida to split the East Central state into four states, giving rise to Abia and Enugu state, this xenophobic policy makes the heart to bleed. The states were not created to parcel out little kingdoms to sophomoric Hitlers!

Prior to the creation of the new states of Abia and Enugu states in 1991, the core Igbo nation got only two places in any thing in Nigeria in which state is used as unit of allocation, while our critical competitors got five or six. Even now that inequality persists, as the South East has only five states against six in other geo-political zones.

Thus, when in 1989, after the creation of Katsina and Akwa Ibom states, the military regime of Gen. Babangida declared the issue of states creation closed, Commodore Ebitu Okoh Ukiwe led a few Igbo patriots to say the matter cannot be closed without redressing the inherent injustice to Ndigbo. It was a daring move at that time and many cowardly Igbo dismissed the agitation as futile while others abused Ukiwe and his group in order to ingratiate themselves to the reigning military dictators.

After the states were created in 1991, Ukiwe and his associates briefed key Igbo Stakeholders at Enugu, at the palace of Igwe Edward Nnaji. Those in attendance included late Dr. Pius Okigbo, late Chief C.C Onoh who took the campaign to Ndigbo in diaspora, late Justice Anthony Aniagolu, late Chief R.B.K Okafor (RBK Nwamadu!) Eze Nwadinobi and many others.

The main purpose of the meeting was to remind Ndigbo of what they were losing by being boxed in two states. It was made clear that the purpose of the states creation was not for compartmentalisation of Igbo nation into isolated haciendas, but to open Igbo land for inflow of additional resources and development.

Moreover, we reasoned that some of the states may be less endowed with manpower and each of the states too weak for major projects. So we advocated for free flow of manpower and joint venture projects among the states.

In anticipation of the type of retrogressive step Governor Orji has just taken, a Harmonization Committee was set up under Justice Aniogolu. The Committee was mandated to tour the states and stem unnecessary displacement of people who before the states creation had lived their lives in a particular part of Igbo land.

I cannot recall now if that Committee functioned because as we were leaving Enugu, the Enugu State Government gave Justice Aniagolu another assignment. But it is to the credit of the Governors then that there was not much disruption of lives of the people, which would have turned the states creation into a curse. Even when a former military Governor of Enugu touted the idea of asking non-Enugu indigenes out of the state, he was firmly told to perish the thought!

Walking backwards all day

To visit fellow Igbo with this atrocity 20 years down the line is like walking backwards all day just because you discovered that you are wearing your pant the other way round! To rationalise it with the minimum wage issue is simply a lack of vision.

This is one of the reasons why I have never allowed myself to be hoodwinked by this annual noise of Igbo presidency and the lip service to Igbo unity! Those who mouth these things are essentially insincere and selfish propagandists using that to position themselves for filthy lucre.

How can you be sincere about Igbo unity when you instinctively atomise Igbo land? Such atomisation has caused the death of mega industries that could generate employment for Igbo youths. An example is the death of Nkalagu Cement.

Think through the problem

If the minimum wage was the problem, why not try at least to rigorously think through the problem? Three steps could have been taken by visionary leaders. One is to recognize and insist that the Federal Government had no right ab initio to legislate minimum wage for the states.

You therefore negotiate with the labour Unions on that basis; let them accept that minimum wage is minimum wage and NOT a general salary increment award and therefore should only affect the lowest paid workers; then for a quid pro quo the Unions must accept that position while the governments give specific number of jobs to unemployed youths!

The second step should be to drastically reduce the bureaucracy in the South East, especially political appointments. The bureaucracy in each of the states that formed the former East Central state is larger than the bureaucracy used by late Ukpabi Asika to administer the East Central State, and you can say the same thing for the bureaucracy of each of the states that made up the former Eastern region vis-à-vis the bureaucracy under Dr. Michael Okpara as Premier of Eastern Region!

When a Governor runs amok, making ridiculous appointments many of which he may never remember, he loses the argument about minimum wage. And a Governor who sacks as much as 10,000 employees, all indigenes of his state, for political vengeance loses his own argument against Governor Orji!

The third step, if it ever came to sorting out indigenes and non-indigenes, wouldn’t have been for the five Governors of the South East to sit down with the numbers involved in each state and have a programme of assisting the states with larger number of such workers to net off the costs. But this was never done!

These Igbo, for crying sake, are not just people who worked in Abia or Imo or Anambra; they are Igbo people who have LIVED greater part of their lives in those states. They were there, citizens (indigenes) of one state before the creation of the new states!

They paid taxes there, not to their home states; they created values there and developed those states, not their home states! If they were not helping to develop Abia, why did Governor Orji make exception for those working in Tertiary institutions as either teachers or medical personnel, eating his cake and insisting on having it?

The Igbo are huffing and puffing about additional state in the South East, without agreeing on what state to apply for and thus not taking any meaningful step beyond wishing for it. May be they think that, in a democracy, David Mark, a retired General, can create states with a military fiat or by writing it into the constitution as an amendment. But should that become a reality, is this the type of “benefit” poor Igbo workers in wherever the new state may be created would derive from the exercise?

In many Igbo meetings, what you hear people sing is “how the Yoruba do it” and “how the Northerners do it”. I always wonder what such silly contributions are intended to achieve. Given similar conditions, the Igbo are so spiteful of themselves that they cannot act either like the Yoruba or the Northerners.

Today, when the Yoruba talk of self-determination, they are essentially asking for the political space for economic integration of the South West. They may decide that since the zone has similar educational policy, why not have one Commissioner to implement it? Why six health Commissioners instead of one?

Economic intergration in the zone

In 2009, there was South East Economic summit in Owerri organized by Sun Newspapers. Out of spite for one another, many of the Governors in the Zone did not attend, or they did not consider it serious enough to attend. One topic that dominated discussion at that summit was economic integration in the zone in order to jointly create mega industries and employment opportunities for citizens of the zone.

Recently, another summit was held in Enugu. Again, economic integration was the key topic. It is sad that instead of working along the line of self-determination through economic integration, the Governors are now going to pursue self-defeating atomisation triggered by Governor Orji!

Every time I watch a movie on the pogrom, I ask myself are the Germans proud of what they did to the Jews? I reframe that. Are the Germans proud of what the Nazis did to the Jews? Are Abia people proud of this xenophobia that Governor Orji inflicted on a people that prides itself as the Jews of Africa? I think Governor Orji should be prevailed upon by elders of Igbo land to rethink this very bad policy.