Last Saturday afternoon, the internet broke with viral video of IPOB
coyotes attacking former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu and
sending him out of an event Igbo in Nuremberg Germany organized. In the
said video, Ekweremadu was thoroughly humiliated, beaten, rough handled
and sent out of the even by a rabble that were hooting and fretting at
him as he was shielded out of the event. A crest-fallen Ekweremadu must
have been wondering what possessed the very people he had bent over
severally to please. It was Ekweremadu himself who confirmed the attack
later in the day. He said he was at the event but was not allowed to
settle as irate mob of IPOB members heckled, threw pellets at him and
physically attacked him until he was ferried out of the event. He
lamented that he had been one Igbo that had supported the war cry of
IPOB and the multifarious issues it had raised against the Nigerian
state and wondered how he could be so humiliated.
Personally, I was also confused why IPOB should attack Ekweremadu of all
people because he stands at the very epoch of the crop of Igbo
politicians that have indulged IPOB, its excesses and its rabid hate
politics. Ekweremadu has been at the very zenith of mostly PDP
politicians in Igboland who have pampered IPOB and supported all its
nuances and idiosyncrasies in the feeling that they are getting back at
President Muhammadu Buhari and his Fulani kinsmen for rusticating their
beloved Goodluck Jonathan from power in 2015. That feeling of hurt has
been at the root of the morbid hatred that had been cultivated against
President Buhari, the Fulani and the APC in the South East since 2015
and Ike Ekweremadu remains at the very center of this politics. But
then, with time, IPOB has come to attract the odium and scorn its
vile-ridden politics provoked especially amongst other Nigerians who
remain solidly railed against this politics. Igbo politics has, in the
sequel, plummeted and gone into near-extinction in this mad predilection
to sow anger, bitterness and hatred and Igbo have been so badly
ostracized and negatively profiled in Nigerian politics in such a way
that navigating out of this self-imposed miasma and even staking a
credible claim to the Nigerian presidency in 2023, which many feel
should rightly come to the Igbo, has become a near-difficult task.
But in the face of this bleary picture, Ekweremadu and his ilk have
flowered. They have been winning elections upon elections in Igboland
and at the end of the day, they have sucked the juiciest portion of the
hate-driven politics they have promoted in Igboland leaving Igbo with
the bones. Yes, because their messages are filled with transitory
emotions, they easily mobilise the unthinking rabble to their sides and
were wont to levy death, banishment, ostracizaation on any voice of
caution that as much as ask for little caution in the war cry that
marked the public face of groups like IPOB. Ekweremadu has been
contesting elections in his Enugu senatorial zone for neon years and has
been winning. Not because he is the best. Not because he had no quality
opponents. Not because he has the interests of the masses at heart. Most
importantly, not on the weight of any achievement he has wrought as
either a senator or a Deputy Senate President but because he harvests
the fruits of the hate and bitterness he and his cohorts have made the
mainstay of Igbo politics and which has knocked Igbo off as a major
factor in Nigerian politics today. Ekweremadu and his fellow PDP share
reapers cannot point to one durable, single project Igbo benefitted from
the 16 years of PDP rulership of the country yet they win every election
in Igbo land just by pandering to the ascorbic gospel such groups like
IPOB preach. They win election by a deliberate effort to sound
politically correct in the face of an ochestrated effort to lease the
Igbo political space to an unthinking mob and irascible plebian that
preach death and such other vicarious damage to those that preach
tolerance of others. They win every election in Igboland by the volume
of hate and abuse they heap on other constituent parts of Nigeria and on
President Buhari and his APC!
So while Ekweremadu and his ilk feed fat on the choice fruits of the
hate-filled politics they cultivate in Igboland, Igbo as a race withers
away into hopelessness and pine in utter powerlessness theEkweremadus
prodded the race into. IPOB which they used as a convenient vehicle for
their devious trade has gotten itself proscribed, its ranks and file
dispersed while the Ekweremadus retain their choice political seats and
prospecting for higher grounds for purely selfish aggrandizement.
Perhaps, Ekweremadu thought naively that those that will fall prey to
the poisonous teeth they sharpened for IPOB would be those that support
Buhari and the APC and all those they have tagged saboteurs, efulefus,
slaves and sell outs for advising against the insipid hate-driven
politics they have promoted and not people like him. He must have
thought he was safe enough from the consequences of politics of
self-destruct which he and his confederates nourished in Igboland and
that IPOB would be the guided rabid dog they want it to be; to get at
all those that preach against their bigotry inclination.
Certainly, Ekweremadu set for Germany on another hunt for cheap, ethnic
applause and plaudits. He was on a regular mission of employing every
opportunity of professing his love for Igbo and how those that had
advised Igbo to thread with caution, to liberalize their political
worldview, embrace others and seek for cohabitation against insularity,
are the Igbo enemies that must be exterminated. Without doubt,
Ekweremadu who claimed he was invited as a Guest Speaker in the event he
was disgraced out, must have prepared a speech laden with odium,
contempt, scorn, incitement against President Buhari, his Igbo
supporters, the Fulani, the Yoruba and in fact other ethnic
nationalities and prurient in praise for Igbo for being the best specie
of human beings God ever created. That is the message that resonates
with Ekweremadu’s IPOB and he relishes playing this to the hilt. It
is tragedy to him that his audience were not patient enough to hear him!
He would be biting his fingers that his latest tonic to those he
considers cheap, spendable and pliable rabble, was not allowed to be
ingested by his target audience and his political leverage in Igboland
extended with that effort.
Since the attack on Ekweremadu, there have been a cacophony of angry
voices of condemnation largely from Ekweremadu’s confederates and
associates in romancing evil for political interests, condemning the
attack. It is notable that nearly all Igbo groups and individuals that
have condemned the IPOB attack on Ekweremadu were with Ekweremadu in
cultivating the nuisance of IPOB and their like groups. They were
together in helping IPOB build a riotous cult of brain-washed nit-wits
who violently go against reason and common sense in plying their violent
trades and have been trenchant in campaigning against any effort to curb
the excesses of IPOB.
But having said all these, there is great wisdom in the saying that
whoever rides a tiger will ultimately end up in its bowels. It is
certain that the Ekweremadu and his cohorts who have been cultivating
bitterness and hate and pandering lavishly to the nuances of such groups
like IPOB believed in their unbeatable smartness. What more, this has
been an elixir to their harvesting every political opportunity in
Igboland since they started their devious mission. But it is a rude
awakening to sly, manipulative characters like Ekweremadu who deign no
scruples having their beloved Igbo race plummet to the very lowest depth
of Nigerian politics so long as they continue to maintain their suzerain
hold on the political space in Igboland. I believe that when Igbo engage
in serious thinking about their fate, they would realize the kind of
harm and damage people like Ekweremadu, who profess undying love for
Igbo at every drop of the hat, have done to the race. It is trite to say
that the attack on Ekweremadu remains one of the fallout of any effort
to elevate and romance evil and encourage it, hoping it will go after
only your enemies. Groups like IPOB have gone beyond control and their
targets will remain the Ekweremadus who employ them as convenient
ladders to their own political aggrandizement. Sad for them, their foes
whom they target those groups against, know the diabolical intents of
such groups and have guarded themselves against their nuisances.
I don’t really know what triggered the attack on Ekweremadu and I am
not interested in knowing but those who mischievously invest in the kind
of politics that have flowered in Igboland since 2015, those who con
rich harvest from it while it leads to a great defenestration of Igbo,
those who feed fat on that salad of bitterness and hate, those who have
made Igbo to incur the hatred and repulsion of other people in Nigeria
for their selfish ends, those who believe they will continue to milk
Igboland by supporting cheap, emotional vibes that pit and endanger Igbo
among other people in Nigeria, will certainly reap what Ekweremadu
reaped in Nuremberg Germany; either now or in the foreseeable future.
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com