THE IGBO VOTER APATHY, ITS POLITICAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL IMPLICATIONS

Whenever I listen to Igbo people talk about being marginalized in the Nigerian scheme of things, a lot of things actively run through my mind and one of them is how we as a people seem to have chosen to personalize and adopt a disease called “selective amnesia”. My choice of word here is as a result of the fact that despite all that happened during the war, we have consistently failed ourselves by not coming together as a region to create a well mapped out path to chart a course of regional development for the Igbo people in its entirety by getting involved in the electoral processes to choose leaders who would serve us effectively.
When you diligently search the history books, you would be well informed on what led to the 1967 Biafran war with Nigeria which had between 500,000 to 2,000,000 civilian casualties. It would interest you to know that this war was prosecuted on the strength of the marginalization of the South Eastern people of the Nigerian nation as at then.
Col. Odimegwu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu led his people into a secession to protest against the unjust treatment of the Igbo people but unfortunately at the end of the day, that war did also not yield so much for the Igbo people in Nigeria.
The reason why I said so is strictly because if the aim of the war had been achieved basically, the Igbo nation would not have been dealing with human menace in the person of Mr. Ralph Uwazuruike who enriched himself stupendously at the expense of the spilled blood of many Igbos who were outrightly gullible of which some of them are still languishing in prisons uptil now, with respect to his promise of granting them freedom from the Nigerian State.
When the MASSOB secessionist leader was done with his own form of agitation, we thought that the Igbo nation would have learnt from the ugly incident, little did we know that a certain Mazi Nnamdi Kanu of the IPOB stock was on his way with a more violent form of the agitation. One laced with so much extreme orders and perpetual allegiance to the Jewish religious faith,
that I doubt if it has yielded any good for us as a people. The IPOB struggle as they term it is one of the reasons why Mondays in the South East are completely useless for the masses and beyond that, it is a day slated for criminals to operate and take as much lives as they wish unchallenged.
These backgrounds were good to be established as it would aid in giving shape and form to the Igbo Voters apathy conversation. The Igbos who live in the South Eastern part of Nigerian are a dominant ethnic group in the Nigerian society who are republican by nature and enterprising in all shapes and form.
Their disposition to trade and commerce over the years seems to have been the reasons why they have perpetually ignored the political process and have always had a poor voters turn out during elections. One thing these South Easterners have failed to understand is that political power in the hands of responsible and committed leaders is all any sane nation needs to draft and execute policies that would guarantee a prosperous nation where trade and investments thrive unhindered just as we can see in Zambia at the moment.
The South Eastern political elites from every indication have consistently sold the narrative of being marginalized by the Federal government to the citizens with the sole aim of distracting the masses from asking the leaders in the South East questions about what they have used our common wealth to achieve for the masses. These very poor commitment of the political class to provide effective leadership for the South Easterners is why you seem to have a huge number of unemployed youths who are always easy to be manipulated and used for various selfish purposes by these agitators which in most cases makes a hero of the agitators because they always come with the promise of liberating a people from the shackles of oppression by the people in power.
The apathy in the South East remains one of the reasons why we are always not at critical areas where strategic decisions that pertains to the wellbeing of the nation are always made. This also explains why our people seem to be more disposed to cry about marginalization forever than actually standing up to seek way on how to fix this marginalization challenge in our favor.
Unfortunately, the few times that we were supposed to have stepped out in our numbers to make political decisions that would have given us the unreserved leverage to negotiate our way out of the marginalization, we have consistently given that off on the altar of very flimsy and weak excuses.
Until the Igbo nation come to terms with the reality that galvanizing themselves most strategically and being involved in the political process is the only way we as a people can confront this issue of marginalization while sitting at the dinner table with the many stakeholders of the Nigerian State to make clear decisions on how to allow every Nigerian citizen to exist as equals while having very fair opportunity to contest or aspire for whatever one is committed to then we would have not made any progress as a people.
Therefore, citizens of Igbo descent must be deliberate about using their power to elect leaders very well and this must be done deliberately. We must come to terms that people who want to plunge us into another war, should be resisted at all cost as such characters do not mean well for the people after considering what happened to the Igbos during the war and also more recently what the Ukranian government is suffering in the hands of Russia even though they are not the best of examples to use at this time.
The Igbo people must deliberately come together to unleash their power at the polls to support a candidate with whom they can have conversations about inclusivity in government with while the various State Governors and political office holders from the South East work towards serving the masses and using the resources they are able to access through their political offices in the interest of the masses.
Finally, I am of the opinion that the Igbos should perish the thoughts of seceding from Nigeria but rather engage strategically on how to be carried along in the Nigerian State so that everyone can have the freedom to dream and aspire to be whatever one chooses to be in the Nigerian nation. MASSOB deceived the South Easterners to not be involved in the census of 2006. Guess the implication today? The region had a poor turn out which also affects us as a people when resources are allocated till this day.
Today the IPOB is about to deceive their very gullible followers on one hand, then on the other hand when the political choices are made, we would still fall out to cry about being marginalized while we chose not to act when it was possible to stand up, make a choice and be counted.
Until we tell ourselves the truth as a people, the harsh implications of voters’ apathy would continue to hunt the South Easterners and we would continue to deceive ourselves with various separatist groups leaders cashing in on our naivety to stupendously enrich themselves and become exceedingly powerful. We must ensure that we always get involved with the voting process because in it lies our salvation as a people.