The Ibo people of Nigeria.

THE IBO PEOPLE OF NIGERIA.

It had often been argued, that the south eastern part of Nigeria is predominantly populated with men and women whose principal occupation is trading. The same argument also holds that the south west practices the most of economic related activities like public service, private sector manufacturing and investing. The northern part of the country seems to be mostly interested in agriculture; this involves cattle rearing and also crops cultivation. A large number of them are also in the armed forces.
Trading in tangible goods as preferred by the Ibos of the eastern part of this country, seemed to be a good choice since the average Ibo man is very creative in turning a little space into a goods supermarket. Some people had disagreed with this notion; they insist the Ibos love for commerce stems from their love for money, hence their preference for businesses that will always make them touch cash on a regular basis. A visit to any part of this country will show that the prime shops and trading places are managed by people of eastern origin, especially the Ibos. No market worth its salt can be opened in any part of the country without the popular eastern young men, taking up almost ninety percent of the shops on offer. Examples abound where these young men created full fledged markets out of open spaces, yes they are markets, even when the grounds they are trading on are illegally obtained as was the case in Abuja, federal capital territory.
For the westerners, early education seems to be their priority. On graduation from any higher institution of learning, they gain employment into the public service, either in the numerous manufacturing or service companies that abound in the south west especially Lagos. They do very little trading in tangible goods. Instead they like working and investing their money in several investment vehicles like the stock market, money market etc.
The westerners are fully abreast with information about economic changes and opportunities, quite unlike their eastern brothers who pay little or no attention to happenings on the news media. Little wonder all news papers, magazines; radio and television companies all have their head offices in Lagos state. In this country, only in the west can you find people that know how to enjoy their money long after they have retired from public service. They amass shares of listed an even non listed companies. This is a sure way of perpetrating themselves in the public service as the directorial and management positions they acquire allow them to influence company decisions in terms of employment of fresh workers in the industries. They had often been accused of employment and protection of the rights of their brothers, fellow westerners.
The outbreak of the Nigerian civil war in the late sixties didn’t help the cause of the easterners one bit. They fled their abode in Lagos thereby abandoning their positions in the public service. Those who were lucky to enough to return with their lives from the battlefields of guerrilla war soon found out that their positions had been filled. The east lost out in the scheme of things as a generation of intelligent and experienced men and women found it difficult assuming their former positions, hence the generation gap opened in the early and mid seventies. These positions were taken over by the available westerners and northerners. Some business premises and landed properties of some rich easterners were confiscated by the powers that be.
On its own part, the northerners seem not to understand the real importance of the education and investment bug that has bitten the western part of this country. They are not also commercial crazy like the easterners. Majority of my northern friends seem content with selling suya, chewing gum, sweets and biscuits or polishing peoples shoes rather than engage themselves in viable business opportunities. They never seem to be interested about the whole thing. For the girl child of northern origin, education is a pipe dream. Her parents will never acknowledge her need for education or self improvement. She is traded off in a marriage arrangement even before she could learn how to wash her under wears.
A lot of effort has been made to connect our northern brethren to the national grid, not of NEPA or is it PHCN, no I am talking about the national education grid. Free education has been dangled in front of them, all to no avail. Straight admission into the varsities for those daring enough to attempt JAMB, but how many of them even bother to complete primary education. Or have we forgotten the efforts made for nomadic education, where some people were paid to chase others around in the bush to teach them, and sometimes their cattle a few tricks about writing their names. The situation is bad enough and calls for serious reflections if we all are to have equal opportunities in the scheme of things.
And if you think that it’s only the north that suffers from lack of complete education, you better think again. In the east, boys that are barely able to know their left hand from their right are plucked out of primary schools and sent straight to the markets to learn one trade or the other, all in an attempt to catch up on money making. Whether they succeed in money making or not is a matter for another days discussion as what we want to concern ourselves with is the ability or otherwise of the easterners to effectively and efficiently manage the numerous economic opportunities around them.
It would have been easy enough to assume that the easterners mastery of commercial activities will make them good economic managers, but events has since proved that economic activities doesn’t in fact start and end with buying and selling of tangible goods and materials. It is quite larger than that. Investigations have shown that less than five percent of large manufacturing and service companies in this great country has its chief executive officer as an easterner. Why should this be so? Upon enquiry a few people tried to explain to me that this is a direct result of our limited educational pursuits as compared to the west. But another school of thought believes that in fact the easterners are bad financial administrators, if a spade is to be called its proper name. These people had argued that when a firm is not directly owned by these easterners, there tend to be mismanagement of resources.
This same school of thought was trying hard to convince me that the easterners always have this disturbing get-rich-quick syndrome in them. They were even insisting that the advance free fraud (419) has so messed up our public image that trust becomes a scarce commodity among the easterners. Stories have been told of men who had become millionaires with the proceeds of donations entrusted to them to execute one project or the other in their own village. These men come back few years later in gleaming jeeps to be crowned chiefs by the same people they swindled. And yet the project still remains undone, pity the poor.
Until quite recently, the easterners were allowed to take up only some types of ministerial appointments. Maybe it was because of the fear others had of their financial and economic management. Not until the advent of the Soludos, the Okonjo-Iwealas, the Akunyilis and others that have stood up to be counted, carting away several laurels from both the local and international agencies. This is the first time we are being taken seriously by others. These dynamic men and women have made us proud again. They have come out to assure us that all hope is not lost. That the bone can still rise again, that the rejected stone can still be the corner stone of a mighty mansion. We now have seen that we should not only handle the information ministries, but be allowed to contribute our quota in turning this country around for the better. On a final note I wish to state here that the easterners can break the strangle hold which the west had maintained over all the public companies in the country. We can wrest the dominance of economic management from them, if only we could try. Then only can we prove to be the most dynamic part of this great country.