When the Kaduna killings happened recently, one Ìgbò lady I know here carried it on her head like gala and advocated for the victims. She wrote so passionately about it that one could think she was going to be at the forefront of any formal advocacy for the victims. But I took time to look through her wall then and found out that she’s hardly discussed anything about the killings happening in her own motherland where her parents came from — the very soil from whence she came and whence she’s likely to return. She was more inclined to that nebulous and hazy identity of a “detribalised Nigerian” which many of the so-called Lagos-brought-up Ìgbò pretend to cling to while shortchanging their own homeland in various ways.
Since the IPOB killings happened recently, she’s also gone on with other issues of her fancy, caring not about her 21 young brothers killed by her “detribalised” Nigeria. I have taken three days to observe her before attempting to make this post.
She’s not alone. They’re many of them—detribalised Ìgbò Nigerians fooling themselves, reversing nature by beginning charity from the outside of the home thinking that the theatre they’re performing would be very favourable to them not knowing that it would destroy their own children in time to come.
Observe that someone like the loud and brash Obiageli Ezekwesili, for example, is unlikely to ever speak out or stand up for any killings of unarmed civilians in Igboland by Fulani herdsmen and Nigerian security agents let alone the one that happened recently. But she’s been more than ready to stake her life and everything for the Chibok girls. Take note that Obiageli is from Ụkpọ in Nnewi South and married in Abagana (if I’m not mistaking). But her nationalist interests and theatre are either seen in the West or North.
Beyond Nigeria, did you see how same set of people carried George Floyd on their heads? They (some brave clowns) even re-buried “him” in Mbaise with very serious rites to follow. And other examples you already know of.
Here’s the truth:
These kinds of Ìgbò people I’m talking about, beginning with the politicians and moneybags down to those lost ones raised in Lagos or elsewhere, are not really concerned about the humanist and globalist sentiments they pursue as much they are about being in the mainstream and joining the trending and sensational. Fulton Sheen, a late catholic bishop, said that we are living in a “Sensate Age” and I agree. Most public shows of compassion and empathy in this our age are rather a sensational engagement than emotional fidelity, for if compassion and empathy were true, they are most likely to start from home or reflect in the homefront as much as much as outside. Nothing would stop any sensible person from stepping back and questioning deeply the honesty and intentions of a man who shows love to other women and children but never blinks about the cries and hunger of his own wife and children at home. No matter the seeming goodness, logic can never endorse it without compromising itself.
Compelled by events beyond human control, charity can begin away from home. But if charity lasts away from home, it loses its fidelity to sensation until it withers to self-apathy.
Chi Ngo
Credit: Chi Di
