The Igbo ethnic group appears to be a piece of bone stuck in the throat of Nigeria of which its removal has become impossible because the hard choice open for solution to the quagmire is unpalatable to the victim and its minders.

This anecdote is true of Igbo question in Nigeria. And that question is what to be done with the Igbo ethnic nationality in Nigeria.

What is it about the Igbo that it is feared in its corporate whole and in its individual members? An answer is difficult to proffer.

Some Igbo have tried to wager possible cause(s). This writer in 2004 in a paper entitled ‘Igbo Question and its Resolution’ presented at the Ohanaeze Ndigbo meeting in Abakaliki offered plausible explanation.

Thereafter the essay was serialized and published in the Hallmark newspaper of March 16 and 23, 2004. Fears scientifically expressed as phobias are difficult medical mental condition which demobilize its sufferer rendering the victim incapable of reason and rationality.

There have been phobias in human history and in each case, there have been disastrous consequences. Egyptian Pharaoh’s fear of Jews led to oppressive policies and actions against the Jews until Moses delivered them. But it was the European anti-Semitism that became existential threat to the Jews.

European anti-Semitism was a reaction to the dispersal to the Jews in AD 70 forcing migrations throughout Europe and these unsettled European states.

The possible reason for European Anti-Semitism was the compact mass of the Jews wherever they settled and their unflinching upholding of their culture. Adolf Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ to Jewish Question resulted in the killing of six million Jews.

Germany’s fear of the Jews denied it Jewish talents in science, arts and high finance. These Jewish talents were made available to western powers led by USA leading to the manufacture of atomic bomb that decided the outcome of the war in favor of western powers. This Jewish experience is necessary lesson in the Igbo Question and predicament in Nigeria.

Prior to 1914, the Igbo ethnic nationality fought hard against British conquest, subjugation and colonisation between 1903 and 1916. Quite unlike the Fulani who submitted to British conquest and cooperated with it, the Igbo remained restive and never accepted British domination as expressed in the Aba Women Riots in 1929.

This Igbo’s love of freedom pitched against Britain who never forgot and never forgave her. Meanwhile, once the fact of British colonisation became fact of national life, the Igbo accepted this fact by spreading out throughout Nigeria to take advantage of this colonial political economy and the bureaucracy.

They joined the civil service, the officer corps of the colonial army at officer grades and engaged in trade and menial jobs as artisans. Igbo migration was most noticeable in northern towns where due to British colonial urban habitation policy, the Igbo and other settlers were herded into Sabon Gari enclaves.

In 1947, Tafawa Balewa leading Northern delegates to newly created Central Legislative Council in Lagos had decries what he called “southern invasion” of the North warning that British project of creating Nigeria was not acceptable to the North (meaning Hausa/Fulani).

After independence (1960) Northern Region Government headed by Ahmadu Bello had devoted a whole legislative session in 1964 pillorying the Igbo and warning that it retains the power to deal with the Igbo especially in seizing their land, denying them civil service jobs and market stalls.

These official attacks created grounds for the 1953 Kano riots and the 1966 pogroms on the Igbo in Northern Nigeria. After the Biafra war, Northern military generals-led military government supervised the war reparations against the Igbo between 1970 and 1999 as expressed in Abandoned Property Decree that cleansed Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa States of Igbo populations by seizing their real estates.

Igbo monetary holdings were sequestered and in return given just £20. A glass ceiling was placed on Igbo in the public service. A campaign of calumny was hatched and expressed as the eternal quest by the Igbo to dominate Nigeria. For the past 54 years, Nigeria has held down the Igbo after defeating them and in consequence both the conqueror and the conquered have been locked in terminal lockdown of immobility. History is cyclical. The 1960s’ Igbo phobia tragedy is repeating itself in 2015-2023 as a farce.

The military generals retreated from power transferring it to one of its trusted members, General Olusegun Obasanjo who perhaps remains the best ruler Nigeria has had. Having ruled for 8 years and headed over to Umaru Yar’Adua who died in office leaving

Nigeria has nothing to lose rather, it will gain peace of mind that a bone struck in its throat has finally been removed through surgical procedure

his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan an ethnic Ijaw to take over power, but bungled the chance; hence General Buhari a trenchant religious bigot and tribal chauvinist defeated Jonathan in shambolic election. Buhari as president is best remembered for his ethnic baiting of the Igbo and in one accession asked what the Igbo want in Nigeria and taunted them as a “dot” in Nigerian circle.

Having facilitated the rigging of 2023 presidential election in favour of his party APC, to ensure that an Igbo in Peter Obi does not win the election, he retired to his Daura home observing the boiling cauldron they have made out of Nigeria.

The 2023 presidential election was a youthful revolution to sack the retrogressive forces that have held Nigeria down but the political dinosaurs aborted it.

But the most significant was the loss of Lagos State by APC to Labour Party. This loss poses mortal danger to kleptocratically entrenched Lagos autocrats that seized the state since 1999 to date.

And who are suspects responsible for this electoral revolution other than the Igbo? Since 2020 ENDSARS, Lagos autocrats have been targeting the Igbo. After the 2023 general elections, the speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly abused his legislative gavel to decree that the government will review land title holdings by the Igbo and revoke same to cleanse Lagos of Igbo domination.

Bayo Onanuga has weighed in on anti-Igbo sentiments which culminated in the Lagospedia movement to expel Igbo people from Lagos starting from 20th August, 2024. There is no other reason for these antiIgbo sentiments in Yorubaland’s most cosmopolitan city other than Lagos APC politicians who consider the Igbo as present danger to their tenuous hold on the state.

Since 2019 General election when Oba of Lagos threatens Igbo people with drowning them in the lagoon if they failed to vote for APC governorship candidate, or the recent 2023 general election when Igbo were physically attacked to stop them from exercising their electoral franchise, present rulers of Lagos State and Nigeria cannot say they were not aware of these homophobic attacks but they kept silent except for the recent feeble statements against Lagospedia’s movement against the Igbo. Because these criminals are doing their masters’ biddings, they cannot be arrested and subjected to due process law.

Igbo Question like its historical cousin, the Jewish Question will be resolved one way or the other; that’s either Nigeria accept the Igbo as equal partners in the difficult amalgamation Britain created or allow them to go and found their own nation-state within the “dot” in Nigerian circle which God in his infinite wisdom has consigned them.

Either way, Nigeria has nothing to lose rather it will gain peace of mind that a bone struck in its throat has finally been removed through surgical procedure.