His Excellency, Deacon Udom Emmanuel is a great friend of mine.He is a gentleman of admirable refinement and elegance who has laboured against tremendous odds to earn the honour bestowed on him by his ethnic group,the Ibibio,on Monday,May 10,2017,at Asan Ibibio.In my opinion,he thoroughly merited his moment in the blazing sun;his memorable snapshot in history.I do not here seek to devalue that noble and massively attended event.
However,as President General of Oron Union,the oldest ethnic organization in this part of the world,I have a responsibility to correct any distortion in the narrative of our treasured historical experience.The case in view is an assertion carried on page 12 of the souvenir programme of the Reception where Oron is provocatively listed as Riverine Ibibio and Oro,Okobo and Effiat Mbo languages as dialects of Ibibio.It seems to me that that slip may have been inspired by tired staff swept along by the enormity,the frenzy,passion and excitement which characterized that grand event.
It is a widely accepted sociological concept that a people have a right to define themselves and to be accepted on their own terms.That is what the Ibibio attempted to do at page 12 in a brief historical discourse titled,"History of Ibibio Nation".In a new-found irredentist impulse,the writer either nostalgically or futuristically cast the dragnet of Ibibio ethnic coverage so broadly as to include communities stretching from Akpayafe in Bakassi to Andoni in Rivers State.
One began to wonder if truly they owned it,would they have surrendered it so meekly to Cameroun?This was a resurrection of the lingering quest to claim Oro as Ibibio.We are emphatically disowning Ibibio ethnicity.Is it a precondition for belonging to Akwa Ibom State?
We say now as always that we are not Ibibio.Why can they not live with that?The Aro of Ibom in Abia State,where the Ibibio last settled during their migration, are comfortable with the fact that not every group in their geographical neighborhood,however closely related,can justifiably be claimed as theirs today.They too could lay claim to the Ibibio!
To be sure,Oro does not proclaim ethnic purity.No group can.We acknowledge the presence in our midst of products of ethnic exchanges from earliest times as well as others who arrived through exigences of unfortunate,commercial pursuits of the time.They have over the years never been of a magnitude to change the ethnic configuration of Oro.
Oro had similarly played host to other friendly immigrants such as Efik,Ekoi,Usakedit and Ijaw without losing its central core.Would that fact entitle them to lay claims to Oro?Oro has always been at the crossroads of profound social and economic traffic.The cultural consequences may have rendered Oro a bit distinct and its language largely unintelligible to its neighbours.
Oro is Oro and has the Ibibio as neighbours.They need not be Ibibio to have them as neighbours. Indeed,Oro dreams of Akwa Ibom unity as a salad bowl in its diversity and not a melting pot,as the diverse endowments promote strength, beauty and resourcefulness.
It is counterproductive to compel Oro to be Ibibio.They never were,they never will be.A few more illustrations may suffice.
1)The founding of Oron Union(1925) and Ibibio Union(1928) is well known. What is not so well known is that in 1902,Obolo National Union(Idaa Obolo)was inaugurated in Oron.It pooled together Obolo people of Andoni,Ibeno,Oron,Ohafia,Bukuma,Tombia,Ogbolafor,etc, into an ethnic unit.Put differently,Oro already knew where it belonged a long time ago.This explains why Oro did not team up to form Ibibio Union when it was first proposed in 1923.
2)When Ibibio Union sponsored its "Argonauts" (apologies to K O Mbadiwe)to study in the USA in 1938,no Oron citizen was among.On the contrary, Edet Ebito had already graduated in Law in 1928 from Howard University,Washington, DC,the year Nnamdi Azikiwe gained admission there!
3)Could the Ibibio have sited their institutions,school(Ikot Ekpene)and hospital(Abak)without extending one to their "Riverine province"?Or should we uphold this as a cogent evidence that marginalization has a deeper root than previously thought?
4)Some years ago,the Ibibio in a similarly large assembly christined,"Ibibio Converge", did the honourable thing and admitted that those called Ibibio constituted only 14 LGAs"in Akwa Ibom State.Was this a shameful admission or are the revisionist assuming control?The restructuring (not that term again!) into Ibibio north,Ibibio west,Ibibio south and Ibibio west,sounds like a parody of Prof Alagoa's perception of the Ijaw in his "History of the Niger Delta."Moreover,does it not question the validity of the claim on that page that the Ibibio are the 4th largest ethnic group in Nigeria?Why have they been unable to make it count as the Ijaw,their rivals,at the national level in power and influence?Or is it a question of a very big fish being satisfied with dominating a very small Akwa Ibom pond?
5)The Ibibio have curiously appropriated the oil wealth of the State for its own exclusive development.The oil producing communities that bear the brunt of enduring devastation,the coveted "Ibibio provinces",enjoy no Ibibio sympathy.Or is the latter day ethnic inclusion an afterthought to promote peaceful economic exploitation of the provinces?For those who care to know, unbearable injustice is the visible wound of decades of crippling economic and social emasculation of the minority groups by the advantaged Ibibio.
6)The Ibibio in their self-designed gesture of inclusion and oneness,found not one person of Oron,Efik,Ibeno,and Andoni to include in the planning committee for the grand reception!Our people may have accepted the tag in the past when Calabar represented everybody as the centre of enlightenment and seat of colonial power.Must it remain so after a proper discovery of themselves and their ethnic consciousness?
Oro has paid its dues to Akwa Ibom State in blood,sweat,tears and oil.Oro demands to be left alone.The consequence of adding insult to injury in a mindless pursuit of majoritarian domination and rabid ethnic nationalism which seeks to suffocate others,may,in the long run,be utterly regrettable and,perhaps, too ghastly to contemplate.
Dr Efiong E B Edunam
President General
Oron Union
No comments: