Aku and the journey to the home – Some considerations for Ndi Igbo By Paschal Emeka Egerue
The Igbos have this belief that they are of Jewish stock. Often times, other people who are not Igbos join in this belief that the Igbos are of Jewish origin. This belief which festers without thorough scientific investigation and confirmation has its root in the ability and instinct of the Igbo man.
This famed ability was tested during and after the war. How Ndi Igbo pull out from the doldrums and march forward competitively remains bewildering even to the Igbos themselves. The Igbos lost the war but won the spirit of every person with their sheer enterprise which they carried to the remotest parts of Nigeria. In the process, despite all odds against them especially, government policies that tended to close all doors to prosperity and career progress against them, the Igbos made tremendous forays into the informal sector of the Nigerian economy and regained the wealth and pride they lost in the war.
Two unfortunate developments down the line which made this article necessary and urgent need to be stated. First is the rather unnecessary triumphal feeling of most Igbos evident in insensitive ostentatious display of wealth in host communities outside Igbo land. This has continued to breed jealousy and hate for them often expressed in snide remarks and ethnic profiling including actual hostility against them.
The second is the failure of the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari to address most of the concerns of Ndi Igbo especially creating level playing ground for private businesses to thrive and prosper in Nigeria. The Igbos feel hurt the most in this circumstance because they are largely self-driven businessmen. This situation has not been helped by reprehensible inequity in distribution of national resources and development infrastructure including imbalance in appointments to public offices. The nepotistic disposition of the people in power which ensures that federal infrastructure in the East were allowed to deteriorate and dilapidate while massive investments done with loans to be repaid by all Nigerians go on in the North and West and even up to Niger republic. This unfortunate situation has bred angst among the Igbos and led to a loud call by the youths for self-determination. A fall out of the interplay of these unsavory developments is the strident calls today by Ndi Igbo for akuruo ulo.
Akuruo ulo is a new wave philosophy that enjoins the Igbos to keep more of the wealth they generate outside the East at home in the East than keeping them wherever such wealth was made. What drives this reawakening is the evident danger the wealth of Ndi Igbo faces in Nigeria and elsewhere. Encapsulated in this philosophy is a new orientation that shuns materialism but places high premium on investment in skills and beneficial knowledge. In this philosophy too is the idea of Onye aghala nwanne ya, which enjoins all Igbos to be of assistance in lifting every Igbo man out of poverty, illiteracy and ignorance. This philosophy revamps and reenacts the famed Igbo apprenticeship system through which many billionaires were created among the Igbos in the past. The Akuruo ulo philosophy seeks no dependence on Government but partnership towards creating enabling environment for business growth and profitability in the East.
By this, the Governments in the South East are challenged to think out of the box on how best to use their revenue earnings and allocations to create agricultural, residential and inter city access by roads and light rails. This win-win private public sector partnership will impact positively on other sectors such as revamping of the largely decadent health and education infrastructure in the East. By creating the enabling environment for the famed Igbo enterprise to flourish, the Governments in the East will cause consequential enablement for growth of the rural and urban economy and thus provide the momentum for escalation of internal revenue generation. This is considered achievable because of the strong background of high per capita income and literacy level in the South East of today. Thinking out of the box holds the key to unlocking the business opportunities in the East.
With so many negative things happening and affecting Ndi Igbo in Nigeria – banditry, kidnapping, religious intolerance, terrorism, arson, burning and demolition of markets and residential buildings, high and multiple taxation of businesses etc, the Akuruo ulo philosophy has now caught up with most Igbos like fever. Even with the orchestrated insecurity in the East, most Igbos especially the diaspora Igbos are singing this new song of akuruo ulo. They just want to go home and enjoy their wealth in peace and with the hope that the political elites that have largely mismanaged their common patrimony would have learned enough lessons and are now prepared to do the very simple and basic things required of them to attract the wealth and investments of Ndi Igbo outside Igboland back home.
In rational economic thinking, wherever aku (wealth) resides depends on return on investment and general risk rating of the business environment. The Igbos didn’t take wealth to the cities where they presently reside but only brain, skills and guts with which they generated tremendous wealth. These cities will continue to be attractive and indeed a pull to them. The Igbos will therefore continue to remain strong in these cities as long as they make reasonable returns and have good leverage to do more business. However, asset holding strategy may have to change in future from owning eye popping, envy inducing mansions to having assets in highly convertible and near liquid forms.
A strategic realignment that promotes diversification and duplication of assets in a ratio of 3 to 1 in favor of the Eastern location or at least 1 to 1 is imperative in the Akuruo ulo philosophy. This imperative will essentially call for a thorough evaluation of the possible risks in transferring wealth and investing same at home in the East by Ndi Igbo. This is absolutely necessary as no person should, on the altar of uneconomic altruistic consideration, put at grave risk of loss, the wealth earned elsewhere. An Igbo proverb says it all. Iga ghi aguta oku na mba bia nulo sonyuo ya (you don’t bring fire (light) from a distant land and extinguish it at home). To do that is sacrilegious. There are, without doubt, obvious and hidden risks in returning to South East to invest. These risks, must, however, be dispassionately discussed because they could derail or ruin the akuruo ulo philosophy.
Let us go through a few of these risks:
✓ The issue of security: Insecurity is currently at an all-time high in the South East. There is agitation for self-determination which is over heating the environment. There is confusion everywhere. There is a self imposed sit-at-home every Monday amidst violence unleashed by unknown gun men. The governments in the South East have so far not been able to get a good handle on the situation.
✓Omonile land tax system: This is one negative culture Ndi Igbo have taken home from their stay in places like Lagos. The traditional rulers look the other way while the youths in their kingdoms are chasing away investors through all manners of illegal taxes being extorted from people buying land and buildings.
✓Property devolution problems and issues: In most places in the East, buying old houses for remodeling, demolition and rebuilding is like passing through the eye of the needle. The natives fight against such sells with threats of reversion rights on land that their forebears sold in time immemorial. This is why dilapidated buildings litter everywhere. Without making it easy to buy these houses, renovate or rebuild them and make them a lunchpad for establishment of business presence at home, the akuruo ulo philosophy will be mere sermons.
✓Cost of acquisition of property in the South East: The cost of acquisition of land and buildings in the East is far higher than acquiring same in some places in bigger cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, yet the appreciation is higher in these cities. A lot of things led to escalated cost of land in the East such as the Yahoo yahoo ego mbute effect, do hot money, people in dire need and must buy at all cost, politicians that want to create illusions of industrialization and employment generation and have the fund to buy off any land in town at irresistible high offer. Other reasons include the fact that properties fit for purpose are very few and costly. In most cases, mutual jealousy and hatred manifests more when you go down to invest in rural communities. Some people will deliberately block you and will never allow you to purchase land no matter how juicy your terms of offer are. Most times these are just land needed to create access to the main property or for exchange with another. Generally, most of our people don’t easily welcome investment perhaps because of deception they have suffered in the past. This is made more complicated by our fragmented land ownership system and the fact that the head of family which in part of our customary law is the custodian of family lands and have had his powers eroded by poverty and arm twisting by other members of the family especially in heavily polygamous family settings.
Apart from the above, there are also hidden risks which must be evaluated properly.
1) Urban status of some communities: Some rural communities have been gazetted by government as urban areas. This fact has completely altered the status of their land in accordance with the Land Use Act. This may have affected the quality of title held on most existing land and lawyers should be involved to clear the hurdle in each case. Sadly, the Local Government Administration in Nigeria hardly recognizes or appreciates their role under the land use Act and are thus totally indifferent to the opportunities the Act offers them for revenue generation by mere act of ensuring ease and safety of transactions on lands within statutory oversight of the local government administration. Most land titles are thus in real sense not properly conveyed and may as our society gets more complex, be a source of conflict and litigations.
2) There is hardly skilled and honest labor in our rural communities: This is unfortunate. The unskilled ones we have distract themselves with irrelevant social meetings on daily basis rather than do their work. Thus, satisfactory delivery time for projects is slowest in our rural communities. Stealing, pilfering and compromise of standards are also more in these rural communities. These are serious disincentives to the akuruo ulo mantra. A lot of people try to bridge this gap by recruiting people from other ethnic groups as far as Benin republic to do minor works that otherwise would have provided gainful employment for youths in the rural area. This defeats the essence of akuruo ulo philosophy and creates unnecessary jeopardy for investors as the local youths who lose out in this process end up becoming the greatest enemies to the project.
3. Added to the above is the fact that most of the youths in Igbo land of today lack patience and staying power: They want quick money and not work. Once you employ them, they plot their exit from day one by seeking to make quick money through being dishonest in whatsoever assignment you give to them. First and foremost, they have this notion that the investor has too much money from uncertain sources and that his coming home to invest is an opportunity for them (youths) to take their own from him.
4. Before now and even now, there has been this dangerous gossip in the rural communities that most affluent people made their money through dubious ritualistic means or corruption: This is the unfortunate situation in which every person is in Nigeria. Corruption and illicit fund is so perversive that the poor and helpless accuse those they perceive to have money as ritualists, cultists, blood money suckers and all manners of idiotic things. This is most unfortunately fueled in some worship places where the clergies feel that the only way they can explain away poverty is by running down the entrepreneurs in our midst and destroying their momentum to bring their (aku) investment home.
5. All these will get worse now as mkpuru mmiri enters and takes the center stage: The signs are ominous. It is possible that all the restlessness and insecurities we see today in Nigeria are drug driven. This is why we lack coherence in simple things such as understanding that the incessant sit-at-home orders in the East is ruining the economy of the East. As it is now and indeed most regrettably so, only the real paranoids will dare to invest in the East under the present environment with all its existential threats. All hands must be on deck to restore order and peace. The akuruo ulo philosophy is not to be misconstrued as Igbo specific. Every other Nigerian irrespective of ethnic origin is encouraged to embrace it. Let us develop the rural areas and minimize the chaos in our cities.
Paschal Emeka Egerue, B.Sc (Hons), M.Sc, MBA, ACII, FIIN, FCIB, LL. B (Hons) is a Lagos based Insurance and Management Consultant, a Community development enthusiast and President of Nsu Elite Congress (NEC).
