INVESTING IN IGBO ECONOMY OVERSEAS

Chigachi Eke

Email: chigachieke@yahoo.co.uk

Imo State Governor Owelle Rochas Okorocha lures foreign investors to develop his agriculture and tourism. He has 10,000 workers who cannot be reabsorbed into the civil service. Unemployment is rife. Respite should come from these investors who are saying the fog of war is over Nigeria for business. Out of desperation he turns to northern states to employ 5000 Imo teachers in an exchange programme, the very states with anti-intellectuals violently opposed to Western education.

Okorocha's dilemma is not peculiar. Imo is mirror image of Igbo communities outside Nigeria. Prolonged unemployment is forcing adult Igbos into a second childhood. Even with a resident permit, the Igbo exile is redundant whereas the Chinese who arrived after him is running his own businesses. Ask yourself why? Simple: Your Igbo is a lone castaway strictly on his own but the Chinese is anchored on a Chinese economy planted ahead of his arrival.

The Igbo queues for menial job in Brussels. The Chinese is given a lock up store at the Chinese Shopping Mall eight hours after arriving Europe. This Chinese-owned, Chinese-occupied mall is built by Beijing using its resident citizens. A year later the Chinese employs the Igbo as security. What I'm saying is nothing new. Chika Onyeani has said it all in the "Capitalist Nigger," a book no foreign investor wants Okorocha to read.

I aim to argue that Igbo governors can kick start a buoyant Igbo economy worldwide by setting up Igbo-owned, Igbo-occupied and Igbo-managed trading posts in the Diaspora. Citizen Okorocha could return to world capitals not to look for foreign investors but as one using resident Igbos to achieve his objective. Our case study is Igbos of South.

The insecurity of Igbo lives and property in Nigeria compels us to rethink investment. Following the 2011 attack on Igbo businesses in Kano, Maiduguri, Bauchi and Jos, we witnessed Igbo exodus to foreign lands. Taking investment to them overseas as interventionist measure is the rationale for this paper.

Shortly after the 22nd April 2009 South African general elections, an overwhelmed Chief Baldwin Obasi, National President General of Ohaneze Ndigbo South Africa, called an emergency general meeting. Not only were Igbos selling drugs, the angry complaints of aggrieved South African women of Igbos touching their backsides in the streets had reached the ears of the ruling African National Congress, ANC. It was a great embarrassment for Igbo leadership.

Ohaneze just formed partnership with ANC whose only prayer to Obasi was for him to remove fierce looking Igbos from their street corners. Didi Oguguo, our chief negotiator with ANC, warned the president and Chief Frank Times Ifeanyichukwu (Onyendu Ndigbo South Africa), that if nothing would bring us to daggers drawn with South African men it was this thing about Igbo boys tampering with their women in the streets. None must forget last year's xenophobic attack; he advised removing Igbos from street corners immediately. But removing them to where? That, exactly, was Obasi's headache.

Since every Igbo in South African prison rationalised his failings with the phrase, "Obu ihe obodo nyere," it is what society gives (that you take), Ohaneze candidly acknowledged that our lives were harshly bitter. Unemployment was our number one problem. It was our number two problem. It was our number ten problem. It corrupted good morals turning one Igbo against his brother.

I believe you realize that Igbos of South Africa cargo home more dead bodies than Igbos in North America. And we're just less than a quarter of a million. Ask the immigration at the MMIA Lagos; there is no given day a dead Igbo does not pop up from Johannesburg. Most of these victims gypped their brothers in business and were cut down. Others were bludgeoned to death protecting the paltry sums hoarded over the years. A careless comment spelt their doom.

Also, Igbos of South Africa are the most ill-mannered, prone to violence and criminal minded among world Igbo population. This trait has nothing to do with environmental determinism. Our excesses have everything to do with a vindictive mindset seething with anger. If an Igbo was welcomed with a head butt, you can be sure that he would never live at peace with himself till he head butted another Igbo,"Obu ihe obodo nyere." Only in Johannesburg you'll meet a forty year old who tells you he's twenty five, displaying mannerism very consistent with that age group. It is also in this grey zone that an Igbo teen talks intelligently to you like an old man, his defence mechanism against being swallowed whole by the wolves around him.

After an open debate President Obasi put heads together with Prince Kennedy Okafor, his gentle deputy. When he looked up again he said he was setting up a presidential committee to study Ndigbo and their problem. This committee, known as Research and Planning Committee, had the University of South Africa, Unisa, law student John Unachukwu (Chairman), Romanus Okoroigbo (member), Uche Obiorah (member), Samuel Obiorah (member) and, myself as secretary.

Ohaneze intentionally picked us for our backgrounds. Uche Obiorah played professional football in Israel. He represented our sportsmen. Unachukwu, a solid giant, heads the Youth Wing. Okoroigbo ships your container to Lagos and Samuel Obiorah owns business; Igbo businessmen trusted both. I represented Igbo professionals without profession, tragic fellows who tell you Christ's second coming holds no terror for them. We had one month to report back to the house.

Based on their common retort when we asked them how they would like Ohaneze to help them economically, we concluded that this angry tribe wanted their own business premises, like Indians, to go legitimate. That was what every Igbo said and, what every Igbo also believed was most improbable. A man has been there when his pessimism defies faith. We also discovered something else. This was the double agony of the Igbo man forced to abandon his wife and children in anti-Igbo Nigeria. We wrote and submitted our report.

Our recommendation on how to get Igbos out of the street into meaningful endeavours was for Comrade Jacob Zuma and ANC to allocate Ohaneze Ndigbo South Africa land to build Igbo Market in Johannesburg. Our preferred site was the Crown Mine area. We were prepared to build our own lock-up stores with direct labour. Three years running we never heard again from the powers that be. Igbos still marked the street, euphemism for criminal activities. Nothing about us has changed, just as change always manages to pass us by.

The 22nd September 2011 Newswatch report on Okorocha's efforts to create employment in Imo inspired me. My prayer is for him to also be magnanimous to Igbos trapped between heaven and earth in foreign lands. For as little as Thirty Million Naira (N30, 000 000), Okorocha could buy a title hold where Ndigbo can build their lock up stores and launch themselves into mainstream South African economy. Right now we're on the periphery.

Ohaneze Ndigbo South Africa is convinced the depressing economic reality of Ndigbo in South Africa is untenable, calling for some Marshal Plan. By opting for home support, we're not asking for charity but investment. India built Oriental Plazas all over South Africa for Indians. No black is given store in these plazas, democracy or not. In Chinese markets Igbos and blacks are also not allowed to trade there. Our Igbo governors and local government chairmen, not just Okorocha alone, must never undermine the cloak and dagger aspect of globalisation.

There are immense benefits in having Eke Ndigbo Market in Johannesburg. Such will usher in a prosperous Igbo community capable of rehabilitating Igbo exiles upon arrival, in addition to creating ready market for Igbo labour and products back home. Oh yes, Igbo economy exists in the Diaspora. All that is needed is organization, in particular, and home investment; without which we perish. I subscribe hundred percent to Onyeani's new thinking that only an economically free Igbo can be politically free. I do not know how Okorocha or Obasi can convert Igbo outlaws into holy men if not by gently leading them to self-sustenance and self-redemption.

War is another consideration why Okorocha must prepare off shore sanctuaries in times of peace. General Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu saved Igbo children in the civil war by flying them to safe haven in Gabon. Whichever way the cat jumps in 2015, trying times are ahead. We need more than one safe haven today, just in case. That we desire peace is no guarantee that war won't be forced on us, like before. I mean, Ndigbo are not in a position to start or stop hostility in Nigeria. Let us not lie to ourselves. All we can do is fight, or die.

Igbo communities overseas, therefore, must now be fortified economically with investments from Igboland that when the latter sends out distress calls for humanitarian assistance the former should be buoyant enough to respond massively. This symbiotic exchange exists between the State of Israel and World Jewry. It is also the type of exchange programme I would like Okorocha to privilege.