If you go to Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State (alias the “Zion” of Ijawland), you will see a quietly-developing city. Apart from government edifices and mansions/hotels owned mainly by indigenous politicians and government officials, the rest are mostly owned by Igbo business class. As soon as the late General Sani Abacha created Bayelsa with an overwhelming Ijaw majority in October 1996, Igbo businessmen, as usual, saw an opportunity. They went in, bought lands, built properties and established thriving markets to ensure people didn’t have to travel to far away Port Harcourt to buy essential things of daily living.
Anambra indigenes in Yenagoa recently embarked on a N150 million cultural centre and meeting venue which they called “Anambra House”. The people of Bayelsa State have never raised undue temperature about selling their lands to Igbo developers, at least, not to my knowledge. I covered the 2011 presidential election in Otuoke, the hometown of President Jonathan. As we were being shown round the site of the Federal University, Otuoke (FUO), a lady carrying a baby by her side heard us discussing in Igbo. She approached us, inquiring if we wanted to buy land. Many projects were already going up, and I was told they were mainly student hostels being developed by “Igbo traders”.
The “Anambra House” controversy was stirred by some excited Ijaw bloggers. Some of them portrayed it as “selling Bayelsa” to Igbo people. Thousands of houses in Bayelsa already belong to Igbo residents. How can one more become a “sell” of Bayelsa? The hysteria being whipped up is increasing tensions between Igbo and Ijaw in Bayelsa. But I can understand where it is all coming from.
There are claims and counterclaims by ethnic activists of both sides over territories and communities in Igboland and Ijawland. For instance, Ijaw activists have been claiming that oil-bearing Ohaji and Egbema in Imo State are Ijaw communities. The Ijaw National Congress (INC) has reportedly been enrolling some indigenes of these communities in their ethnic register. They claim the same for Ndoki communities in Oyigbo (Obigbo) Local Government Area of Rivers State. Ndoki extends to Abia and Akwa Ibom States. They are all Igbo-speaking. On the other side, Igbo activists like Proudly Okrika Igbo, Indigenous Igbos of Rivers State and others, have also been laying claims that most Okrika and Kalabari communities as well as Bonny and Opobo islands are of Igbo origin. Some Ijaws see “Anambra House” as an extension of Igbo territorial forays on Bayelsa. This is obviously a wrong assumption.
The second “grievance” that Ijaw youths often peddle is that it was Ndi Igbo that killed Major Adaka Boro, the first secessionist in Nigeria’s history. Boro’s 12-day armed “revolution” for the secession of the Niger Delta was stopped during the short regime of General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s first and only Igbo military Head of State, in February, 1966, and he was detained. But when the Civil War was about to start, General Yakubu Gowon, created Rivers State, freed Boro and enlisted him to fight for the Fulani-led Federal side.
Boro is accused by many Igbo of being the brain behind the purging of their kinsmen in the riverine areas. History has it that Boro was killed at the war front in 1968, after the mainland Igbo presence in Rivers State had been erased. There are strong speculations that Boro was “murdered” by Col. Benjamin Adekunle of the 3rd Marine Commando to claim sole credit for dislodging Biafra from access to the Atlantic Ocean. Somehow, many young Ijaws prefer to peddle the version that blamed Biafran troops for Boro’s killing. They prefer to leave their heads in the cloud of a narrative packaged during the war to distance them from their majority neighbour. This enabled the North and South West to seize control of their oil and gas resources, leaving them to scramble for mere crumbs such as NDDC, Presidential Post-Amnesty Programme and pipeline security.
Politically, Igbo nation has made several efforts to reclaim the confidence of their coastal neighbours, the Ijaws. When President Umaru Yar’ Adua died in 2010, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo rallied Igbo political leaders and fronted the call for the immediate transfer of presidential powers to the then Vice President, Jonathan. They opted out of the presidential contest in 2011 at a summit held in Nike Hotels, Enugu, adopting Jonathan as their sole presidential candidate. They gave Jonathan the largest number of votes the Igbo ever gave to any presidential candidate. In recognition of this, Jonathan partnered with them in his government. He asked Ndi Igbo to nominate his Secretary to the Government of the Federation, which turned out to be former Senate President, Pius Anyim. He gave prominent Igbo technocrats (particularly Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) commanding positions to drive the economy.
Jonathan also, for the first time since the War, appointed an Igbo Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Azubuike Ihejirika. Under Ihejirika’s tenure, Boko Haram was nearly wiped out, but Northern leaders, including Muhammadu Buhari, Nasir el Rufai and Borno Elders, claimed Ihejirika was “fighting the North”. Jonathan, with hopes of securing his second term with Northern support, removed Ihejirika and handed over his regime’s security architecture to the North. They ran him out of power in 2015 and Buhari emerged as elected president.
One more thing Jonathan did was giving former Biafra leader, Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, a five-star military burial fit only for former Nigerian presidents. But he did not do much to develop the South East or even his own native South-South. I expect the Ijaw nation not to forget so soon what the Igbo and Ijaw collaboration brought them through Jonathan. It was a handshake Ndi Igbo deliberately initiated. It paid abundant dividends. Igbo and Ijaw are neighbours forever. Bigotry brings zero dividends to both sides which are equally embattled by Nigeria. Let Anambra House be.
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