The myth of Igbo prosperity, by Chidi Amuta
A popular fiction has been normalized and consecrated into a national myth. Everybody believes it. No one questions a myth. It is often said that when a lie gets repeated ever so often, it assumes the status of a truth. Everyone mouths it, repeats it endlessly to a point where it becomes a creed, a truism that is beyond questioning. People parrot myths. They hardly question them. Worse still, myths condition and shape reality and how people relate to it.
You hear the same thing in garbled versions everywhere. The Igbos are a prosperous lot. In beer parlors, barbers’ corner shops, in markets, in the media and social media. The Igbos are a prosperous tribe of Nigerians. Just by being Igbo, people become automatically well off, are conferred with wealth over and above their fellow Nigerians that happen not to be of Igbo stock. Somehow according to this myth, these Igbos seem to have a midas touch which transforms their individual strivings into instant prosperity in the form of retail chain stores, real estate, hotels, shops, whole markets, plush mansions, endless apartment blocks etc. Tenant today, landlord tomorrow, so the catechism goes.
Above all, the Igbos have a way of transforming every part of the federation where they live or do business into islands of prosperity over time. They take home surpluses of their profit to their Eastern countryside. Luxury mansions and castles spring up in most of the Igbo homeland even if most of that land mass remains in primitive neglect and dereliction.
Favourite Igbo business undertakings range from retail trade to inter state transportation, massive importation of sundry goods from around the world- China, Hong Kong, Dubai, Turkey etc , Omenuko is a born wanderer, a compulsive traveler in quest of wares and opportunities.
Other Igbos simply migrate to nearly every corner of the globe where they expand into the professions, establish retail businesses and attract fellow Igbos from all over the place to join them. There is hardly any part of the world where you do not find Igbo enclaves and habitations doing the things they are known for at home: business and hard work in a diversity of endeavours. You do not need to teach an Igbo child to be entrepreneurial. It is in his or her DNA.
Igbos used to be famed for frugality and modesty in spending. They used to save aggressively, practicing delayed gratification and not displaying overt prosperity. Not any more. In recent times, successful Igbo business persons at home in Nigeria have learnt new habits from their Nigerian neighbours. Successful Igbo traders now stage elaborate parties to mark birthdays, naming ceremonies, weddings and burials. At these lavish occasions, Igbos have pushed the excrescence of ‘spraying’ cash to ridiculous extents. Wads, bundles and boxes of mint cash notes are literally pasted or thrown all over the celebrants in assorted currencies.
This has often attracted law enforcement agencies like the EFCC, the police and ICPC in a bid to arrest ‘abusers’ of the Naira. Some law enforcement agents have embarrassingly found themselves policing ‘abusers’ of US dollars and UK Pound Sterling denominations. These are currencies not covered by the local legislation against the abuse of the Naira!
I cannot think of Mr. Dangote asking his bankers to send him $10 million in cash which he goes to “spray” at loafers and lazy urchins at a birthday party! I recall a recent social media clip in which Mr. Dangote announced that he prefers hotel accommodation in places like Abuja, London and Atlanta instead of buying and owning houses all over the world with the attendant maintenance and taxation costs.
Belief in automatic Igbo prosperity has led to other sad practices. During festive seasons, the knowledge that Igbos will migrate home by road or air has skewed the nation’s transportation industry. Air fares sky rocket on Easter routes. Demand and supply you may call it. Fares on land routes equally head for the roof. Police and other security checkpoints increase on routes leading to Igbo homeland. Between Sagamu and Onitsha Bridge head on the Lagos eastern route, people have counted upwards of 60 checkpoints and even more, sometimes an average of a checkpoint every 100 meters literally.
These are ‘toll collection centres’, not security checkpoints. No police statistics has been published to show that this increased traffic flow is synonymous with an upsurge in criminality on these routes. In all of this, Igbo prosperity remains a myth not backed by any known statistics or informed studies. Just speculations based on a widely held perception of the cultural practices of a people.
Traditional Igbo business practices have not helped in dousing this unfortunate drift. Igbos are mostly traders. Trading takes place in open shops. Shops cannot be hidden; they have signage to guide and direct customers. So, the Igbos can hardly hide their sources of money. This exposed business practice means that the Igbos hardly have covert economic powers. Their businesses are exposed, easy to target by arsonists and envious ‘others’. This is the main reason why Igbos and their businesses have been the prime targets of arsonists and looters in upheavals all over the country.
This Igbo visible business culture remains a weakness. Capital accumulation and wealth creation often defy open market trading. Visible shop keeping belongs to a primitive stage in the developement of a market economy. The real process of capital accumulation and wealth consolidation is mostly in the form of “invisible” trade. Investment in the stock market, insurance, the media, telecommunications, the digital economy, fintech, technology, high end manufacturing etc, and all forms of invisible businesses that control other businesses are the engine room of wealth creation and consolidation. Igbo investment in ‘invisible’ sectors of the Nigerian economy remain low. It was in fact only during the Obasanjo presidency that Igbo traders in markets cross the country began to invest in shares and stocks.
Prior to that, the Igbo trader had remained a very conservative, innocuous and traditional holder of wealth in cash. This cash is often hidden in safes at home, mattresses, real estate or cash balances in bank deposits. Part of this traditional business culture includes troves of cash at home, in lockers, septic tanks and overhead empty water tanks and other primitive locations. It is part of this cash trove that is periodically off loaded to ‘spray’ at these lavish new breed parties. Worse still, these parties provide excuses for illiterate traders to over -eat, over -indulge in alcoholic beverages including choice expensive champagnes that would make the average Western party goer green with envy.
For a people reputed for wisdom and prudence in economic matters, the Igbos newfound love for conspicuous consumption has reached a new height. Of all ethnic elites, the Igbos now top the scale in the lavishness of their country homes. Some country yards boast of upwards of 5 to 7 independent mansions –main house, madam quarters, guest wings, family quarters, servants quarters etc. All these for a man who lives in far away Lagos, Abuja, Johannesburg or Houston and only comes home once a year to attend a festivity.
As part of the décor for the new breed Igbo country homes, a $750,000 -$1m latest edition Rolls Royce Phantom is parked in the car lot and covered year long with a silk car cover. The car remains unused for upwards of one year or more. The cover is only taken off to show off the prize (asset?) liability only when the proud owner comes home. At best, this car is driven to the village church for a brief Sunday worship or a wedding as the case may be. These practices have become commonplace among a people who other ethnicities envy for their economic wisdom and prudence in economic matters.
Unproductive conspicuous consumption of this magnitude has never been known to aid capital accumulation or assist any group to ascend to economic pre eminence.
An exploration of the new Igbo pattern of lavish consumption reveals a deep- seated achievement complex in the Nigerian ecosystem. The new Igbo successful traders seem eager to show other Nigerians that they are doing well in spite of their marginalization and open exclusion from public offices and fair opportunities. There seems to be an unstated desire to want to show off the signs of material prosperity in spite of the obstacles that the Nigerian state has placed on their way in the post civil war era. The silent anthem seems to be : “Nigeria, you blocked us from the commonwealth but see how well we are doing”. This new culture of obscene exhibitionism and obsession with material glamour and glitz is however alien to original Igbo economic thinking. A people with an inherently conservative Catholic economic orientation and Puritan work ethic cannot, in all rationality, embrace a culture of obscene materialism and open exhibition.
In contrast, the economic elite of the competing nationalities in Nigeria are engaged in much more strategic forms of investment. Mr. Dangote has cornered large scale manufacturing of essential goods for the entire Nigerian and significant African market. Mr. Otedola has acquired the majority equity in Nigeria’s most significant banks. Mr. Tony Elumelu is perhaps the only oligarch of Igbo extraction that has ventured into banking, power, hospitality and entrepreneurship mentoring.
Mr. Adenuga is the owner of a major telecom firm that is in direct competition with South Africa’s MTN. Other more clandestine investors in strategic industries and sectors abound but are mostly non-Igbo. I recall a recent social media clip in which Mr. Dangote announced that he prefers hotel accommodation in places like Abuja, London and Atlanta instead of buying and owning houses all over the world with the attendant maintenance and taxation costs.
The myth of Igbo prosperity is not naïve and value free. There is political mischief in it. I suspect that it is deliberately formulated and sponsored by Igbo political adversaries in the Nigerian federation. You can hear it loud and clear in major political voices from outside Igboland : The Igbos as a people are already so prosperous and powerful without apex political power. What would happen if you add political power to their economic and financial prowess? Unfortunately, some Igbos subscribe to this toxic myth.
The truth lies in a different place. The Igbos are citizens with inborn attributes and should be accorded their full citizen rights as “they are”. They are born strugglers. The Igbos are not inert wealth carriers. They are beasts of burden. If Nigeria desires goods, the Igbos will supply them. If Nigeria wants errand runners, the Igbos are at their beck and call. If a task seems too far-fetched, requiring unusual grit and grind, send in an Igbo person. If there is a demand for unusual creativity, courage and daring risk, Igbo youth will crack the code. They are in every field. Hard work and adventure brings them returns which they are now showing off to other Nigerians in foolish exhibitionism.
However, Igbos may be embracing hard work because Nigeria has left them no other choice after 1970 than to grind and toil. They are not expecting much from a commonwealth that has condemned them to exclusion and marginalization.
In their current psychology of “otherness” in Nigeria, the Igbo political leadership have continued to subvert and betray their own people. Successive generations of political scavengers and incompetents have assumed power in all Igbo states and further underdeveloped and degraded the zone. If the Igbos are indeed prosperous and enterprising as a people, why has the South East remained an area of darkness and sadness since after the war. The infrastructure remains medieval. The social services remain primitive. In security terms, the area is a hell hole, reminding you of Hobbes’ State of Nature, a bloody and brutish heart of darkness?
The answer lies in the internal exclusion of the best Igbos from the governance of the states in the zone. We have a recurrence of fraudulent scam artist in the name of politicians. Only earlier in the emergence of Jim Nwobodo and Sam Mbakwe and recently in the emergence of Alex Otti and Charles Soludo are we able to see that combination of enterprise, development oriented governance and creativity required to transform the Igbo states into a befitting landscape.
Illustrious and hard working patriots do not necessarily have to be compensated with the highest political office in the land. They are only entitled to the full gamut of rights and privileges due every other citizen including of course the right to vie for and assume the highest office in the land. On the contrary, a political atmosphere in which a myth has been deployed to selectively exclude a group from national leadership does not show an honest commitment to democracy and fairness.
For those who are troubled by the concerns expressed in this piece, there are two certainties that will remain inalienable and inextricable. First, I am a Nigerian of Igbo extraction patriot. Second, I am an unrepentant Nigerian patriot. I will never apologize to anyone about either of these truths which I hold to be sacrosanct, inextricable and inalienable.
