The Joseph paradox

Joseph’s brothers sold him. Years later, Joseph possessed the institutional power they needed for survival. History is full of such ironies. The man you undermine today may be the man you need tomorrow. The political influence you ridicule today may be the influence required to negotiate tomorrow. The person whose ambition you destroy today may have been capable of opening tomorrow’s door. This does not mean that every Igbo politician should be supported. Absolutely not. Bad leadership must be exposed. Corruption must be challenged. Incompetence must be criticised. Financial claims must be audited. Political promises must be tested. Peter Obi is not exempt from scrutiny. Neither is Soludo. Neither is any governor. Neither is any minister. Neither is any president. But accountability is not the same as political annihilation. And political rivalry should not become collective self-sabotage.

Then comes Nnamdi Kanu

And here the argument becomes even more uncomfortable. Maazi Nnamdi Kanu remains behind bars. Whatever one’s position on his ideology, methods or rhetoric, his continued imprisonment is not a matter that should produce political indifference among Ndigbo. Not because every Igbo person must endorse him. Not because separatism must be accepted. Not because accountability disappears when politics becomes emotionally charged. But because a people that repeatedly complains of injustice cannot afford to become indifferent to the unresolved grievances represented by his imprisonment. The prisoner is Kanu. But metaphorically, something larger is imprisoned with him. The unresolved Igbo question. The accumulated grievances. The demand for dignity. The frustration with the federation. The feeling that something fundamental remains unsettled. And perhaps our own political courage. That is why the Kanu question should not merely produce shouting matches between his supporters and opponents. It should produce serious questions. Why did his message acquire such resonance? What failures produced the audience for it? What grievances remain unresolved? What legitimate concerns can be addressed within the constitutional order? What should justice look like? What should reconciliation look like? What should political restructuring look like? Those are questions of statesmanship.

From Kanu to Onitsha

Here, the connection becomes clearer. Kanu is in prison. Onitsha Port is trapped in a different kind of limbo. One is a human being behind bars. The other is infrastructure behind bureaucracy, neglect, inadequate dredging, insecurity and political inertia. The metaphor is powerful precisely because it should provoke thought rather than literal equivalence. What else must remain trapped before we decide that collective action is preferable to collective lamentation? The port has been built. Rehabilitated. Commissioned. Concessioned. Discussed. Recommissioned. Yet, the full promise remains elusive. Meanwhile, new port projects are being structured elsewhere. This is not necessarily evidence of deliberate anti-Igbo policy. We should be careful here. The available evidence does not establish that the Federal Government is deliberately excluding Onitsha because it is in the Southeast. There are genuine technical and commercial issues surrounding inland ports, including dredging, river navigability, security, road connectivity, patronage and the economics of moving cargo by inland waterway. The World Bank had identified some of these risks years ago, including dredging requirements, security and institutional issues. That is precisely why the response should not be another emotional complaint. It should be a serious technical and political campaign. Dredge the river. Secure the corridor. Connect the port by road and rail. Provide modern cargo-handling equipment. Create incentives for shipping lines, importers and exporters. Integrate Onitsha with the national logistics network. Publish the concession obligations. Publish performance benchmarks. Tell Nigerians what has been spent. Tell Nigerians what remains to be spent. Tell Nigerians when the port will operate at commercially meaningful capacity. That is advocacy. Not lamentation.

The South-South lesson

There is another lesson in the latest federal announcement. The South-South is not waiting for somebody to remember that ports matter. Stakeholders have continued to demand activation and investment in eastern maritime infrastructure. The Federal Government has now approved modernisation of Onne, Rivers, Delta and Calabar ports as part of a broader national strategy. That is how political pressure works. Issues are identified. Stakeholders organise. Arguments are made. Governments respond. The lesson for Ndigbo is not to envy the South-South. It is to learn from the politics of organised interest.

The thinking cap

So, Ndigbo, put on the thinking cap. Not the party cap. Not the factional cap. Not the campaign cap. The thinking cap. And ask: Why has Onitsha not become a functioning commercial inland port after more than four decades? What exactly is preventing full operation? Who is responsible for dredging? Who is responsible for security? What does the concession agreement require? What has been delivered? What has not been delivered? What is the current investment requirement? What is the timetable? Which roads must be fixed? What rail connection is required? What cargo volumes are realistically available? Which manufacturers and importers can be brought into a guaranteed patronage framework? What can Anambra contribute? What can the five Southeast states contribute? What can the Federal Government contribute? What can the private sector contribute? Those are the questions of an intelligent people. Not merely: Why are they doing this to us?

The larger indictment

We cannot complain about marginalisation while allowing every political quarrel to consume our collective attention. We cannot complain about five states while behaving like five unrelated political planets. We cannot complain about federal appointments while measuring political success by how many of our people receive individual appointments. We cannot complain about infrastructure while fighting over which politician deserves credit for requesting it. We cannot complain about a missing seaport while spending more political energy fighting the brother who might help secure one. We cannot complain about Nnamdi Kanu’s imprisonment while imprisoning ourselves in factionalism. And we cannot complain about Nigeria’s failure to think strategically about the Southeast while refusing to think strategically about ourselves. That is the uncomfortable mirror.

No more crumbs

Perhaps, it is time to retire the politics of crumbs. Not because crumbs are worthless. A hungry person needs bread. But because a people cannot build a future by permanently negotiating for crumbs from somebody else’s table. Build the bakery. Build the institution. Build the infrastructure. Build the political coalition. Build the bargaining power. Build the strategy. Build the regional consensus. Then sit at the table as a stakeholder, not as a supplicant. That is the political transformation Ndigbo need. Not another hero. Not another saviour. Not another faction. Not another political messiah. An institutional strategy.

The nagging question

Ogun has secured a $7 billion-plus port-and-economic-zone framework with DP World. Lagos is receiving port modernisation. Onne, Rivers, Delta and Calabar have now been approved for comprehensive modernisation. New deep-seaport projects have been approved for Ibom, Bakassi, Agge, Gateway, Ondo and Bonny. And Onitsha? Onitsha has history. Onitsha has a port.

Onitsha has a concession. Onitsha has a commercial hinterland. Onitsha has demonstrated demand. Onitsha has received rehabilitation. Onitsha has received commissions. Onitsha has received barges. What it still lacks is sustained, commercially meaningful functionality. That should not be merely an Anambra question. It should be a Southeast question. And perhaps this is where Ndigbo must stop asking whether all this matters. Of course it matters. A port matters. A road matters. A railway matters. A federal institution matters. A political appointment matters.

Nnamdi Kanu’s imprisonment matters. Peter Obi’s political future matters. But they do not all matter in the same way. The greater question is whether we possess the political intelligence to connect these individual issues to a coherent collective strategy. Because the greatest tragedy would not be that Abuja overlooks us.

The collective tragedy

The greatest tragedy would be that we become so busy fighting over who gets the crumbs that we stop noticing that the bakery is being built elsewhere. And while we fight over the crumbs, another region negotiates a port. Another region negotiates a rail line. Another region secures an industrial corridor. Another region builds an economic zone. Another region positions itself for the future. And we hold another meeting. Issue another statement. Launch another faction. Attack another brother. Defend another godfather. Celebrate another appointment. And then, at the end of the day, return to the oldest complaint: “They are marginalising us.” Perhaps. But then comes the question we have avoided for too long: What are we doing about it? Not individually. Collectively. That is the question. And perhaps the time has come for Ndigbo to answer it without the comfort of excuses. No more crabs. No more crumbs. No more political cannibalism. No more confusing proximity to the Master’s table with ownership of the feast. Put on the thinking cap. Turn the leaf. Look beyond the next election. Look beyond the next appointment. Look beyond the next political quarrel. Look at Onitsha. Look at Oguta-Orashi. Look at the map. Look at the ports. Look at the infrastructure. Look at the federal structure. Then look into the mirror. And ask the question that may be more consequential than every complaint we have made against Nigeria: If the door to the future is opening elsewhere, why are we still fighting over who gets to hold the key?

The collective plate

Why does the crab mindset drive some of us to rummage through the rubbish heap for a “file of indictment” that may exist nowhere except in the puerile imagination of the crab? If Providence has, at this particular juncture, thrown up an Igbo man willing to take a shot at the presidency, why should the mere fact of his Igbo identity make him anathema to another Igbo man? Why must the impulse to interrogate his record be so easily corrupted into the manufacture of imaginary dirt, phoney files and dubious figures, all for the purpose of presenting one of our own to the wider Nigerian public as supposedly unfit? Political scrutiny is legitimate; fabricated indictment is not. Accountability is a civic virtue; the weaponisation of unverifiable allegations against a fellow Igbo is something else altogether. And here the old Igbo wisdom deserves to be placed before our collective mirror: “Onye kpọ ọba ya mkpọkọrọ, agbatobi e jiri ya ahịhịa” – when one dismisses one’s plate as a worthless piece of furniture, neighbours may eventually turn it into a dustbin. What, then, are we doing when we so readily denigrate the plate that belongs to us, only to watch others decide what use should be made of it? What does this proverb say to the happy slave content with crumbs from the Master’s table? What does it say to the crab that would rather pull down a fellow crab than ask why the basket itself has remained so small? Perhaps the real question is not whether one Igbo politician deserves anyone’s support; that decision belongs to every citizen. The harder question is whether Ndigbo have finally learnt the difference between legitimate scrutiny and self-sabotage; between holding one another accountable and furnishing outsiders with the very dustbin into which our collective possibilities may be thrown.

The door to the future

The port is the metaphor. The crumbs are the temptation. The crab is the warning. The plate is ours. What we do with it is the political question. Suppose Providence, at a particular moment in the nation’s political history, places before the Nigerian people a son of the East willing to knock on the door of the highest office in the land. Does his ancestry automatically make him worthy of endorsement? Certainly not. Does it make him immune from scrutiny? Absolutely not. His record, his claims, his figures, his policies and his political conduct remain legitimate subjects of public interrogation. Evidence must have the final word. But what happens when scrutiny loses its evidence and acquires a shovel. That is no longer accountability. It is self-sabotage wearing the costume of vigilance. The lesson is that scrutiny must remain faithful to evidence, and political competition must not degenerate into the manufacture of weapons against one’s own. If Providence places a plate before us, we may examine it. We may ask what it contains. We may question whether it is clean. We may even decide that it is not the meal we want. But to smash the plate merely because another brother is carrying it—and then complain when someone else turns the fragments into a dustbin—would be a peculiar understanding of collective self-interest.

If the door to the future is opening elsewhere, why are we still fighting over who gets to hold the key?

The ultimate liberation

Perhaps, the time has come to put on the thinking cap, turn a new leaf and ask the question we have too often postponed because it hurts: Are we, like the proverbial crab, still pulling one another down for the crumbs because we have forgotten that we, too, can build the table? The answer may be inconvenient; it may sting the pride, disturb the comfort and puncture some cherished narratives. But an honest answer is precisely what this moment demands. Ndigbo cannot negotiate a larger place in Nigeria while remaining prisoners of the habits that diminish their collective leverage; i.e., celebrating access to the Master’s table instead of building institutions capable of negotiating the terms of the feast; fighting over who holds the key instead of asking why we do not build more doors; pulling down the brother who climbs while lamenting that nobody gives us a ladder. The political prison, in that sense, has walls that are partly external and partly self-constructed. Its bars are made not only of exclusion, broken promises and unresolved grievances, but also of factionalism, suspicion, petty rivalry and the politics of crumbs. The magic wand that can unlock that prison is neither another personality cult nor another round of lamentation. It is the courage to confront ourselves with an inconvenient truth, convert grievance into strategy, rivalry into productive competition, personality into policy, and scattered influence into collective institutional power. Perhaps, then, the real liberation of Ndigbo begins not when somebody finally invites us to the table, but when we acquire the imagination, discipline and political will to build one of our own—and to ensure that no brother has to pull another down merely to find a seat.

(Concluded)

Agbedo, a professor of Linguistics, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Fellow of Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, is a public affairs analyst.