by Azubuike Ishiekwene

I felt a bit ashamed and awkward reading Fani-Kayode’s piece. It is not a piece that should have been written by a former federal minister. Nor does it, in my view, reflect the deepest sentiments of many Yorubas I have known, lived and worked with, among whom are my mentors and best friends to date.

In his recent piece ungraciously entitled “The bitter truth about the Igbo”, my friend, self-confessed half-Lagosian and former minister of aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, painted the picture of Lagos I could hardly recognise. This is the place I have known and lived over 40 years of my life. Yet from Fani-Kayode’s piece, it looked like a fool’s paradise. Why am I taking it personal? After all, being from a Delta minority ethnic group, I’m not, so to speak, in the direct firing line. It’s not personal, seriously. I just thought I should do this for the sake of my children all born and bred in Lagos and perhaps to correct the disservice done to our collective history and the memory of the Lagos I know.

Fani-Kayode said while he recognized that there were many non-Yorubas who have offered their two cents to make Lagos what it is today, he was particularly upset that former governor Orji Kalu described Lagos as “no-man’s-land”. If he had taken on Kalu alone, whom he fondly described as his very good friend, that might have been all right. But he did not. And however much he tried to disguise it, it was obvious that he had it for the Igbos and their cousins who don’t get it that Lagos was built by the sweat and blood of the Yorubas. Of course, that is an important piece of history. No less important is the fact that, to honour the memory and legacy of pioneers and founding fathers, we must also constantly ask ourselves what we are doing to defend and improve on their legacies.

The urban renewal drive by Lagos and other states is obviously an expression of the desire to leave our community better than we met it. From the favelas of Rio to the inner streets of Brooklyn, urban renewal is a tough job, often requiring painful and even unpopular choices. But let’s not forget that the growing army of Nigeria’s underclass was created by rogue governments, which have robbed citizens of everything including their pensions, driving millions into despair, destitution and death. If all the states knew what they know now, I doubt that they would have handled their urban renewal programmes in the same way. From Fani-Kayode’s piece, however, he would probably have done worse. He would have herded all non-Yorubas in Lagos to a deportation camp, from where they would be shipped off to their homeland after a lesson or two in ethno-banditry.

I felt a bit ashamed and awkward reading Fani-Kayode’s piece. It is not a piece that should have been written by a former federal minister. Nor does it, in my view, reflect the deepest sentiments of many Yorubas I have known, lived and worked with, among whom are my mentors and best friends to date. I agree with the former minister that Yorubas are perhaps the most educated. That’s precisely why the discerning will be concerned by his careless use of facts. In an apparent haste to sacrifice facts on the altar of grudge, he said Herbert Macaulay founded the NCNC. That’s convenient half-truth. Many accounts I have read said NCNC was jointly founded by Nnamdi Azikiwe and Macaulay. The latter was, of course the first president, while the former was the first secretary of the party. If the first coup on the Nigerian soil was staged in January 1966, I’m sure there are those who would argue that the first coup attempt was staged three years earlier when Awolowo was tried and convicted for alleged conspiracy to overthrow the civilian government.

Fani-Kayode also gave the impression that Adekunle Fajuyi liberated the Midwest. That’s neither fact nor history. Contrary to Fani-Kayode’s account, many credible accounts of the civil war have it that Biafra was rooted out of the Midwest under the command of Murtala Muhammed, who then put Samuel Ogbemudia in charge of the region. Again, the first Igbo doctor was not Dr Akanu Ibiam but Dr Onwu from Udi who graduated probably before Ibiam was born in 1906; the second was Dr Okonkwo from Ufuma.

And what’s the point in despising the economic contributions of the Igbo through malicious revisionism? Even though the indigenisation decree, coming just after the civil war, left them with 40 acres and a mule, they have rebounded impressively, controlling a reasonable share of the $48.2billion informal sector economy of Lagos. According to the minister of information and communications technology, Omobola Johnson, the Computer Village in Ikeja alone contributes $2billion annually to the country’s economy. Alaba International Market, the largest single electronics market in West Africa, contributes perhaps 10 times more. And that excludes other major trading locations in Lagos, which keep hundreds of people productively engaged.

Don’t we have enough problems in Jos and elsewhere caused by settler-indigene animosities? Why stir the pot? At a time when the country is hurting from tensions rooted in a leadership adrift, the last thing we need is a former federal minister to remind us of just how deeply divided we still are. That there are Yorubas who don’t trust Igbos and vice-versa does not mean that even among the Yorubas they don’t have it for each other – between the Yewas and the Remos, the Oyos and the Ogbomosos, the Ijeshas and the Oyos, the Aworis and the Egbas, the Ara-Oke and the Ara-Isale. Where will it end? Let Fani-Kayode, the half-Lagosian, try contesting the next governorship election in Lagos and see.

Trust me. The Igbos are and have been their own worst enemies, betraying their best chances to regain lost political grounds with their own hands. Ask former vice president Alex Ekwueme. But that’s a problem their elite has chosen to have; it hardly justifies Fani-Kayode’s gratuitous insult.

I have been mostly in Abuja now for three years. Against every prediction that I would soon be purged of the “madness” of Lagos, I still long for the city, warts and all. I cherish the raw creative energy and irrepressible exuberance that harness the city’s diversity to make it one of the world’s truly great cultural melting pots. Like most of the world’s great capitals that have witnessed significant growth and development in the last decade – New York, London or Rio – Lagos owes its vitality and the renewal of its heritage to the creative spirit of its indigenes and migrants.

Fani-Kayode could use a copy of Thomas Sowell’s “Migrations and Cultures: A World View” for his own redemption. He needs to claw his way back to the facts.

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Read this article on the  allAfrica website

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.