By Ikenna Emewu
The first time I heard that the Igbo don’t sell land to Yoruba people was from a journalist, Demola (second name deliberately withheld) in our Press Centre at the Igbosere High Court, Lagos. That should be in the year 2000.
We assembled at the place the High Court reserved for the media team that covered the courts.
Immediately he said that, the person that replied him was another colleague, also Yoruba.
That person that replied him was Bash Adigun of Channels TV then. Mr. Adigun who is a personal friend might not remember, but I still do and I boldly use his full name because it’s a positive tale.
His response started by asking the man that made the allegation if he ever lived in Igbo land, to which he responded in the negative.
Adigun told the man that he did his NYSC in Owerri in around 1985 or so, and knew 6 Yoruba people within Owerri who had their properties (landlords). He knew them because they were like patrons and elders to all of them who were Corpers as we call them.
That instance just shut the accuser up as Adigun advised him to speak on such issues when he had facts.
Growing up in Onitsha, the Fegge District of the city was an area most Yoruba resided in. In some other cities of Igbo, there are such clusters, especially in places like Enugu, Orlu, etc. I never heard any of them complain about maltreatment or that they wanted to buy land and were refused because they’re Yoruba.
More Hausa people live in Igbo land than the Yoruba, for known reasons of economic class and the nature of the business they do.
In all Igbo cities and some towns, there is always the Hausa quarters or community (Ama awusa)
The Igbo give them swathes of land where they build their markets and homes. So, if the Hausa get land in Igbo land, how valid is a claim that the Yoruba are refused when the Igbo and Yoruba have closer ties, especially through marriages?
In 2003, I was in Borno State for some special reports. When I visited the livestock market – Kasuwan Shanu, reputed as the largest of such market in West Africa, immediately the people I wanted to interview heard of my mission, they started calling and searching for a particular man to talk to me. The man was simply known as AKIGWE (their pronunciation of OKIGWE) in Imo State. They called him OKIGWE because he grew up there, and even visited Maiduguri then to buy livestock. When I met him, he told me that he had lived at the Okigwe cattle market (Ama Awusa) for 15 years and knew everywhere in Igbo land. As I mentioned my hometown, Edda, he laughed at me and described our market and some villages.
However, an Ile-Ife man of the Yoruba race built and owns a hotel right in my hometown. Edda people, typical Igbo, sold land to him for his investment. We see him as a positive force and we cherish him.
This issue or allegation that the Igbo refuse to sell lands to Yoruba is quite unbecoming of a senior person in the media as Reuben Abati. It sounds too low that a journalist who is supposed to be informed should profile a people. What Abati did was actually profiling the Igbo as unwelcoming of strangers. I can’t imagine how I would brand an entire people as all the same. Even the white that take blacks for nothing still have the good ones among them
It may interest Abati to know that, the Igbo land he said doesn’t sell land to outsiders is still an economic desert. While Abia and Imo are NDDC states, there is nothing about NDDC economic development projects in any of those states.
As recently as when Buhari was in power, he commissioned the AKK Gas Pipeline project, activating it from Ajaokuta up to the North. However, those gas pipeline facilities emanated at Izombe in Imo and Owazza in Abia. He deliberately excluded that region, consistent with the existing policy from the utilization of the gas to hold the South East down, economically.
Abati may not know or pretend not to know that the National Gas Pipeline grid excludes the South East of Nigeria. It’s a fact. And that’s the only zone excluded.
If you build a factory in the South West, you can link it directly to the gas grid just through a valve. All factories in Lagos and Ogun enjoy such gas incentive that makes them not rely on the epileptic electricity system as alternative power. I have close people in manufacturing and I say this as fact. The gas supply through Shell is quite cheap as a power source, compared with electricity.
There have been in the past, national economic development plans targeting some areas of Nigeria. Can Abati mention any of such that had the South East as focus? Summation is that since after the war, it’s an existing policy of the federal government to make that region an economic desert.
If you build a factory anywhere in South East, even as bad as the electricity system is, you must provide your power supply or rely on NEPA (as we know it) which is not so in other regions of Nigeria. It’s deliberate to emasculate the region, make them depend on others for existence and deny them any lift.
What would a major economic player from South West who wants to invest or buy land be coming to the South East to do when Lagos has been the centre point of Nigeria’s economy through government support? Abati should drop his cheap bias and explain that.
Why would a big player from South West leave Ibadan and Ogun State to go to the South East to invest?
That the Yoruba big players didn’t go to the East is because there were no incentives there.
That was also the reason the Igbo spread out, not just because they are all too itinerant, but because their home was not conducive for economic pursuit since 1970.
It is difficult in history to see economic migration to a war-ravaged area. Not possible. Abati chose to forget that the Igbo land he is talking about was an entire battlefield for 30 months while the entire South West and the North only heard about the war on radio. When did the government rebuild Igbo land to attract outsiders to invest there?
When Abuja took off as the federal capital, the Yoruba were almost not there because their attachment to Lagos was bone-deep that they didn’t believe Abuja was going to be a reality. If the sole controllers of Nigeria’s economy between the 1970s and up to 1990s, and all Nigerian businesses were centred in Lagos, what would they be looking for in a desert called Igbo land?
There are so many sentiments people like him from the region hold against the Igbo till now.
I read the story of a Benue State young man born and raised in Sokoto who was posted for NYSC in Anambra, and his mother almost died worrying that his son won’t return alive because the Igbo eat human beings. That was in 2021. Is it people you hold such disdain against that you will go to their place to buy land?
Even though I heard that Abati said he was told such things, he failed terribly at his age and professional calling in denigrating his audience. It’s against the ethics of journalism to denigrate your audience. But he did that, and it casts him too low.
Now facing the reality, Abati should ask questions again and find out, without relying on his biased sources, how many Yoruba own landed property in Igbo land. They’re many.
Furthermore, let’s step away from this notion that the seller is superior to the buyer in the marketplace. Two of them are equal, benefitting mutually from each other. If you sell land to a people you didn’t do them favour independent of your own benefit. You also gained and the buyer also did you a favour for buying.
This trend of doing the Igbo unequalled favour that has been the hate instigated by the Tinubu political clan is really too puerile but unfortunately gathering momentum.
This is the Yoruba nation, a great people that embrace the world and also own properties all over the world, having this crowd of haters and little minds denigrating and attacking the Igbo for buying land in their domain. Abati has unfortunately enlisted in such a class of low minds. They’re quite few and don’t represent the Yoruba race or their general views of the Igbo. I am persuaded by that because I live in Yoruba land and I know they are not bad people.
The Igbo have an adage that guides our relationship with other people – any land that rejects strangers never makes progress. That’s the philosophy of the Igbo, and it’s true.
If Abati wasn’t choking on his bias that stripped him of reasoning, he should have asked Yoruba people who live or lived in Igbo land if the people are hostile to strangers.
