EXCUSE ME, Your Excellency. If anybody tells you that I hate the Igbos, that person is far from the truth. The fellow does not even know me. I say anyone who insinuates that I do not like the Igbos is just being silly. God knows I love the Igbos, and I will tell you why.
Some of my best friends on earth are Igbos. I cannot count them on my fingers and toes. They number more. They are a lovable people. They are industrious. They work like ants. They work round the clock. Each ant trains the other ant from birth, from infancy.
Apprenticeship is a golden rule of thumb amongst the Igbos. You must understudy your senior and seek to surpass them in buying and selling. Every Igbo man knows that there is an anthill to build in the savannah, and every ant works tirelessly towards that idyll.
The Igbos see life as a chess board upon which they must take the best step from the onset of the game. Every pawn and every lord, right up to the king and queen, know they exist because they must build the anthill they found their fathers building.
I could jolly well pass for an Igbo man, and I have often been mistaken for one at Onitsha market, to say nothing of Ariaria market. Take it from me. I have been fascinated by Igbo culture and language from the day I read Eze Goes To School and Things Fall Apart.
You don’t have to ask me before I tell you that Chinua Achebe’s sense of plotting is masterful, and I have every reason to make that point crystal clear every time I read a book written by Achebe, perhaps Nigeria’s most gifted prose stylist. I shudder to think that he is of blessed memory. His voice, his raw opinion on the state of the Nigerian nation, cannot be heard any more.
Whoever reads Things Fall Apart is more than likely to be affected by the story in a personal way. I still feel goose pimples on my skin when I think of Ikemefuna. I was virtually there, in the pages of the book, when Okonkwo hacked him to death along a narrow path in the forest.
Go and read the story again. Not many readers can feel at home, on the other hand, with the turgid prose of Wole Soyinka. Achebe’s contemporary. Feel free to quote me on this. It is unfortunate that Chinua Achebe did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature in his lifetime.
So now you know why I love the Igbos. I have additional respect for Achebe on account of the simple reason that he had the presence of mind to start the Association of Nigerian Authors, the first body of writers in Nigeria. That was in 1981, a year after I passed out of Nembe National Grammar School. I was not even aware of the milestone event at that time, ensconced as I was in my father’s house.
That is a legacy that remains abiding, and I share in that legacy. I have the privilege of being the one writer who followed the example of Chinua Achebe in the brand new state of Bayelsa. I count as the pioneer chairman of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Glory Land chapter.
So, you see, I love the Igbos. My favourite Igbo phrase, the expression I look out for when the news is translated on television is this: “...odina ndoro ndoro ochichi.” Don’t ask me what it means. I took note of it from the days when Chief Jim Nwobodo was Governor of Anambra State.
I will go so far as to say that I count as a Nigerian poet today because I assimilated the poetry of Pol Ndu and Christopher Okigbo. As we speak, I am undertaking a special book project on the poetry of Okigbo entitled “Tiger Mask & Nude Spear.”
Let’s just put it point blank. The Igbos know how to sell themselves. Every Igbo man with a shop to his name has a selling point. Feel free to quote me on that as well. I grew up as a boy in Igboland, before the war, when my father was a classroom teacher at Basden Memorial College, Isulo, somewhere in present-day Anambra State. My immediate younger brother, Fakuma, was born in Isulo. My father was a teacher in Onitsha when the war broke out.
My mother sang Igbo songs in my ear, in church and at home when we baked bread together. I still love the music of Steve Crown, Samsung, Buchi, Joe Praise and Chioma Jesus. I even studied the Igbo language as an optional course for one whole semester at the University of Port Harcourt, and Professor Kay Williamson was frank enough to score my efforts with a B plus.
But that’s as far as it goes. My territory is mine. My space belongs to me. As peoples of the Niger Delta, our boundaries are clear-cut, carefully delineated by language, history and sundry cultural practices. So far, we have lived well together as neighbours, we and the Igbos. Why should anyone wake up one morning and insist on making me subservient to a dream I do not share?
Do you get my drift, Your Excellency? It seems I did not make myself clear in my last epistle to you. I said nothing about the Niger Delta Republic. I did not mention the new country that shall be ours, if indeed Nigeria were to disintegrate into pocket nations with pocket flags of their own.
For the third time, quote me on this. I am saying that Biafra should feel free to declare their own president, and the Niger Delta Republic should equally feel free to name our own president, if it comes to that. The two countries shall remain good neighbours, and the twain shall know their boundaries.
The Niger Delta States run along the coastline. The landlocked Igbo-speaking states cannot go that far. Their boundaries are set and well defined, and they will do well not to breach them. Somebody please pull the ears of Nnamdi Kanu. Let the kite perch, and let the egret perch too. He who says no to the other, let his wings break. Ask Chinua Achebe.
By Nengi Josef Owei (Pope Pen)