Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, representing Abia South Senatorial District, has called on Ndigbo to prioritise collective growth over individual success for the development of Igboland.
Abaribe made the remarks during the 2024 Annual Conference of the Nkata Ndi Inyom Igbo (NNII) held on Tuesday in Abuja.
The conference, themed “Driving Transformation Through Value Reorientation, Inclusive Leadership, and Sustainability,” was convened by former Minister of Women Affairs, Iyom Josephine Anenih, the founder and president-general of NNII. It had in attendance the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu; former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim; and the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, among others.
Abaribe said the tendency to prioritise personal success over communal progress in Igboland has undermined the people’s unity and growth.
“We now emphasise individual success over collective progress. Before this time, at the time we were growing up, we all knew that there were some leading lights but everybody was happy, let the whole Igbo be moving. Right now, all we have is that everybody wants to stand on his own and so when we stay in silos in this way trying to be individualistic brilliant, we find that we fail collectively.
“So, when we come together politically, we find it difficult because everybody will say if not me, it shouldn’t be another person. And today, we have the rather very sad part for Ndigbo, where we seek external validation rather than self-contentment.
“And our people, instead of waiting and making sure that we’re doing things for Ala Igbo and doing this for ourselves, we want to go and look for somebody from outside to come and tell us who is our leader, who will come and point out to us who we are going to make governor, senator and so forth. That is not good for Ndigbo and this impacts our social values,” said Abaribe
He also expressed concern over a gradual shift in the values in Igboland, saying the emphasis on community and education is being overtaken by the pursuit of quick wealth.
“…Education and knowledge were the fundamental underpinnings of the Igbo person and every one of us strived. That is why even though the Yoruba got education before us and met the British and all that, we as Ndigbo overtook the whole of Nigeria between 1950 and 1960 because everybody strived for education.
“Zik (Nnamdi Azikiwe) pioneered this, he paid for people to be taken abroad to go to school and come back and develop their place. But today we find that only women want to go to school. Our young men and our youth are more interested in something called ‘Ego Mbute’. They want to get rich quickly and that has left a very very bad foundation in Igboland,” he said.
Abaribe added, “Ngigbo were known as very hospitable and generous. We used to take care of our people…this hospitality was what made us. If you come to Onyeigbo’s house, he will first bring our Nzu (chalk) to put on your hand and then bring Oji, which is the kola nut that we use to welcome guests. So, if you go to an Igbo person’s house and there’s no kola nut, know that you are not welcome. If he doesn’t have, he will plead and make it up with something else.
He, however, lamented that there’s now a conflict between the traditional Igbo values and the new phenomenon he called ‘Ego Mbute’.
Quoting the senator, “All our youths only want is to be rich, they no longer want to follow the path that takes you through hard work, striving, education and putting in your intellect to get to where you want to go.
“What everybody wants to do is take a shortcut and look for native doctors to give you the things that are going to make you rich. That’s why I said I’m going to make some uncomfortable statements for Ndigbo today. So, please forgive me.”
According to Abaribe, the situation has led to the breakdown of the once thriving ‘Nwa Boi’ apprenticeship system which served as a vital tool for economic empowerment and community building in Igboland.
“This our Nwa Boi system which everyone knows has been the biggest incubator of entrepreneurship in the world and was even studied by Havard to understand how we create so many very wealthy people using this Nwa Boi system,” he stated.
“Not many of our youths now want to gbaala boi. What they want to do is to do a shortcut. They stay with their master and in a short while, they steal their master’s money and run away. They don’t want to wait so that they earn the course and be given their pay off which would set them up because, for us, the Nwa Boi system, none of the people who are invested in it or who do it are afraid of creating another millionaire. They are already millionaires and want to create and they mind if you are the person.
“Today, we now have the twin evil. First is the young men no longer being faithful to their masters and also for some masters, who when the time comes for them to settle their progenies, look for means and avenues of not to do what is already contracted.”
In his view, there’s a need to deemphasise personal achievements which he said have fragmented the traditional Igbo communal spirit.
“We have to reconcile our values so that we can sustain the development of Ala Igbo. First, we must balance individual success with community well-being. Second, we must go back to the old values of education, we go back to where we were, where we had the first vice-chancellor, Eni Njoku, and all the great people in the past who were making waves in Nigeria through education.
“We must also remember to be humble. Our traditional values have degenerated to such an extent that all that we want to know is big titles like Onwa na etiri ora. Things that only mean vanity and not for community. We must go back to having respect for our leadership and elders.”
Other speakers at the event were former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, and Muhammadu Sanusi II, the Emir of Kano.
Anyim argued that Nigeria’s problems stemmed from the breakdown of the people’s belief system and that without commitment to justice and fairness, no amount of value or policy can bring about lasting change.
“Any society that does not promote Justice and fairness will neither have peace nor progress and what this means is that there must be a moral curve of every society from which values derive.
“I think the problem with us today, both in our families, in our nation and in our tribes, is that that moral curve has been broken and so the values cannot stand.
“Whether we like it or not, the problem of Nigeria today is the fact that unless we return to what is fair and just to all, there is no amount of value that will stand and there is no amount of peace you will achieve,” he said.
On his part, Emir Sanusi spoke on women’s role in developing society and the need to prioritise their needs and well-being.
“In my days in the central bank, we declared 2012 the year of women in banking and pushed through policies or compelled banks to make sure at least 50% of new recruits were females, to make at least 40% of senior management female and to make a least 30% of the board female.
“We started this in 2012 and I think the result is that by last year we now had at least 9 female bank CEO’s in this country, And the banking industry has the highest number of female directors on the Nigerian stock exchange. I said this because the woman holds the key to development and as the UN Secretary-General Advocate for SDGs, I’ve always said that if we’re looking for a single silver bullet that goes through most, not all, of the problems that we are facing in development, it is to educate the girl child.
“And you can think of all the issues, starting from antenatal care, malnutrition, lack of immunization out of school children, and child marriage – all of those issues are addressed simply by providing the infrastructure and the support for the girl child to be educated up to the age of 18 to 20.
“Once you have that, it has such a wide intergenerational impact that the numbers that we worried about – infant mortality, maternal mortality, out-of-school children, drug addiction, even poverty, all of those numbers simply crush. Because all we keep you in this country with these statistics, I was in the Central Bank and I saw these statistics, is that we are being fed with numbers after the fact every day.
“Today I was reading the numbers of malnutrition in Kano. Kano State now accounts for more than 10% of the malnutrition burden in the country and every year you tell me this is the number of stunted children and this is the number of wasted children but the question is, [why do] we wait for the children to be stunted and wasted and then we count them? Where are we when the women got pregnant? When she needed nutrition support, where were we when that baby was born? When he needed nutrition? The baby meets the government at the age of 6, when he enters primary school by which time it is too late.
“So, until we begin to look at the women as the centre point for development and build our policies around women, we will never address these issues. Babies are born in villages, in towns, in wards.
“You need to know when a woman gets pregnant, you need to know that this woman is pregnant and what she needs and what the baby needs in those nine months and provide for that. You need to know when she’s breastfeeding and be with her. If you can do that and if you educate her enough to know what to do, you will address these issues. So, for me, I always say a country that does not recognize the pivotal role and the importance and the centrality of its women will never develop.”