By Bola BOLAWOLE
John Azuka-Mbata’s emergence as the President-General (we love big titles!) of Ohanaeze, the Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation, has again ignited the controversy of whether or not the Ikwerres, of whom Azuka-Mbata is one, are Igbo. If Ikwerres are not Igbo, why elect a non-Igbo to lead an exclusively Igbo organization as important as Ohanaeze? And if Azuka-Mbata does not consider himself Igbo, why foray into or fish in Igbo troubled waters, so to say?
Immediately he was announced, Azuta-Mbata’s ethnic nationality in Rivers state, speaking under the aegis of the Ogbakor Ikwerre Cultural Organization Worldwide, not only distanced themselves from him and his appointment but also stripped him of his Ikwerre nationality
because, according to them, “having freely taken a position to be an Igbo man, and to occupy the position of President-General of Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo… he is now seen, regarded, and declared as a stranger living in Ikwerre land (and, as such) has been barred from participating in any… gathering, meeting or political representation (of the Ikwerre people)”! To them, Azuka-Mbata’s action, taken without consultation and without the consent of his kinsmen, deserves the strictest possible sanction of total excommunication.
Former Rivers state governor and now the Federal Capital Territory minister, Nyesom Wike, has been outspoken in his views that Ikwerre is not Igbo. Wike is an Ikwerre man who wastes no time in denouncing any assertion or inference that he is Igbo. Confronted with fellow Ikwerre man, Azuka-Mbata’s new cap as Ohanaeze’s President-General, witty Wike rebuffed the suggestion that this singular fact makes him, Wike, an Igbo man. And the allusion he made to the North was very profound: The fact that some people call everyone in the North Hausa-Fulani does not make all the hundreds of ethnic groups there Hausa-Fulani. And the fact that some non-Hausa-Fulani elements in the North abandon their own roots and joyfully attach themselves to the Hausa-Fulani does not make everyone else Hausa-Fulani. And my mind immediately went to the arguments in a seminar paper presented by Azuka-Mbata some 41 or so years back.
Azuka-Mbata and I were classmates in the Post-graduate class (1983/1984) at the University of Ibadan’s Political Science Department. You could hardly miss him in class. His big frame, light skin, and the boisterous way he carried himself announced his presence, making his absence, which were not few, easily noticeable. He was seen then as more of a businessman than as a student because he always had something taking him away from class. When he became a senator (1999, 2003) and, then, Senate president extempore, many of us his classmates were not surprised. I wouldn’t know if he still remembers the seminar paper that he presented in the class and the views he canvassed in it. Titled “A critique of Margaret and Harold Sprout’s man-milieu relationship: Being a contribution to Political Science Post-graduate Seminar on Foreign Policy (POS. 453)”, it goes thus:.
“Harold and Margaret Sprout’s “man-milieu” relationship thesis is essentially concerned with how environmental factors – the milieu – are related to political phenomena. They defined the general concept of the milieu to include all phenomena to which the environed units’ activities may be related. So defined, the milieu includes both tangible objects; non-human and human, at rest and in motion. And the whole complex of social patterns, some embodied in formal enactments, others manifest in more or less stereotyped expectations regarding the behaviour of human beings and the movements and relations of non-human phenomena. This definition includes the environed units’ own ideas or images of the milieu – what they referred to as the psychological environment or the psycho-milieu. Exceptions to this definition are the environed units’ own hereditary factors, which are internal to it. This conception implies an environmental relationship between the object encompassed and a set of factors.
The environed unit may be “a single human being or group or, in the context of diplomacy and international politics in general, a single policy-making agent of the state, as some ad-hoc policy-making group; as a formal agency of government, as some non-official groups within the body-politic, as the population of the state as a whole, as the state itself; viewed as a corporate entity, or as some supra-state grouping such as the Atlantic community”. What would constitute the milieu in such instance would derive from the definition of the environed unit: “If, for example, the environed unit is a formal agency of the government or some ad-hoc policy-making group in the government; a great many factors physically external thereof” may constitute the milieu. However, if the state as a corporate (entity) is the environed unit, only factors external to it may be considered to constitute the milieu. For instance, other actors in the international system.
Rosenau points out the problem with the “concept of a group or corporate entity as the environed unit”. A group is not a biological entity endowed with hereditary characteristics in any sense analogous to the human beings who comprise the group” The Sprouts contend that environmental factors can limit the human individual’s performance. The first contention borders on cognitive behaviouralism “which assumes that a person consciously responds to his milieu through perception” and “in no other way”. The Sprouts acknowledge the negative consequences of “failure to perceive the limiting conditions, inflated illusions about and misinterpretation of geographical circumstances. Deriving mostly from other disparities or otherwise between ‘images or ideas’ which the individual has formed from his perception of the milieu on the one hand and his ‘schemes of values’, conscious memories and sub-conscious stored experience” (on the other). The latter implies that the actor could perceive what he expects.
Limitations to the cognitive perception of the decision-maker reside mainly in the apparent negation of “rationality” as a human quality in decision-making. Rationality is basically a “psychological, intellectual as well as a ‘social bargaining process’ in which various competing, conflicting, and accommodating forces and pressures in the external environment clash to produce a synthesis”. In this perception, policy-makers would “strive towards the application of reason for the sake of avoiding error”. The notion of the milieu cajoling decision-makers, even though not specifically mentioned, is implied in the Sprouts’ argument.
With respect to policy-making and the content of decision-making, the Sprouts contend that what matters is how the decision-maker imagines the milieu to be (and) not how it really is. But with respect to the operational results of decisions, what matters is how things really are and not how the decision-maker imagines them to be. In the Sprouts’ judgment, this is the essence of the confusion in the discussion of environmental factors in international relations. Lastly, the Sprouts emphasize that technology and social change play a prominent role in man-milieu relationships. Environmental factors, the environed unit, the psycho-milieu are all inter-related; hence, substantial change in one of the milieu would produce significant, often unsettling, sometimes utterly disruptive consequences in other sectors.
Suffice it to say that the inter-relatedness of the ecological paradigm has grown increasingly with the mounting complexity of modern society, resulting from expanding populations and advanced technology. The most serious defect in geo-political speculation has been the almost universal failure of the geo-political theorists to anticipate and allow for the rate of technological and other changes on the one hand and their apparent oversight of the ability of man to manipulate, modify or change the environment (on the other).
CONCLUSION: Since a critique is not necessarily an exercise in negativism, one may concur as concluded by the Sprouts that the ecological perspective and frame of reference provides fruitful approach to the analysis of foreign policy and the estimation of state capabilities. Second, it is helpful in the study of international politics, not as a substitute but (as) a complement to the behavioural and other approaches to the study of foreign policy and the international capability of states. Finally, it has broadened the study of international politics by integrating into it relevant theories and data from Geography, Psychology, Sociology, and other systems of learning”.
That was the reasoning of Azuka-Mbata over four decades ago. What influence, if any, has this thesis of man-milieu relationship on his decision to put himself forward for Ohanaeze’s high office? What “environmetal factors” influencing “political phenomena” made him decide to become its President-General? What similar “environmental factors” influenced his electors? Were they swayed by how they expected the milieu to be (and) not how it really is or by how things really are (and) not how they imagined them to be?
Azuka-Mbata is a politician. In his milieu or environment, the reality on ground is that the Igbo are the largest and most economically powerful group. They also have the numbers and a rich history of political struggle behind them. In the same manner are the Fulani masters of the North and the Yoruba masters of the West. You may not like it but that is the reality on ground. Witness the sudden catapult in profile that the Ohanaeze appointment has fetched Azuka-Mbata; it is unlikely his Ikwerre apex organization could have done that much for him. He needs an enhanced profile even as Ohanaeze itself thirsts after an enlargement of coast. Azuka-Mbata might have (temporarily?) “lost” his native Ikwerre but he has, for now, gained the entire Igbo land in compensation. For how long, however, remains to be seen!
* Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Westerner newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in the New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
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