Igbo's Got Talent

Just got this on WhatsApp. Read and think. How true is it? My opinion is at the bottom.

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"Igbos were allowed to establish businesses and live in other parts of Nigeria peacefully. However, they deny other tribes from simple owning shops in ALL EASTERN MARKETS! Yes! I have gone to many eastern markets for ethnic survey. And no single shop is or was allocated to non Igbo. Please if there is one market with non Igbo, please mention" -
Ahmed Gume

RESPOND:
How many shops do Hausa or Yoruba people own in Cameroon, Ghana, Togo, South Africa, Malawi, Sierra-Leone, Gabon UK, United States, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong-kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Germany, China, Taiwan, South Korea, India and countless other countries all over the world.

Those are not Igbo areas after all. Perhaps, they deny you shops like the Igbo did in all these countries. Igbos own shops and do business in those countries.

This is exactly how lazy people complain when they fail in business. If you can't compete on your own land, how are you going to do that in Igboland or neutral ground?

Every Igbo city has a place exclusively mapped out for Hausas free of charge for temporary use (that is the truth they will not tell you). Of course you know, Hausa man has his own pattern of business and shops mostly in form of kiosk where he sold his patty trades and provisions on free given portion of the street.

Another good business they do in the east is money exchange and cattle business which they control in every Igbo city on a free given land; 100% fact. Go to Owerri, Umuahia, Enugu, Awka. Nnewi. Aba etc.

Igbos don't wait for free land or free portion to be allocated to them, they buy them from indigenes who always have it free by inheritance or by allocation but doesn’t know what to do with them. Only quota system worthless person will wait for allocation before he starts a business.

How many shops do Hausas have in Lagos and other south west states? or do the Yoruba deny them shops too? Can you compare the number of shops and markets owned by Hausas in Yoruba land to the number owned by the Igbos?

Igbos rent shops from the landlords. Igbos Buy lands from the host to build shops. Igbos buy land from their host to build markets. Igbos don't wait for shop or land allocations to start up their businesses.

How many markets has the Hausa built in Lagos? None. How many markets has the Yoruba build in the north? None or do the Hausa and the Yoruba deny selling land to one another too, like the Igbos denied them?

But Igbo have used their money to buy lands from south west and north and build many markets that helps to develop their regions.

To be honest, not every Igbo traders in south west or north can compete with the traders in the east. The traders in the east are real geniuses in trading. They are wizards in buying and selling more than those Igbo traders in the west and north.

You have to first compete with the Igbo traders in your own territory before you think of competing with them in their own territory. Business is based on competition, the question is, can you compete? There are shops in Onitsha main market but can you afford to rent it? Even when you do what do you intend to sell to regain your profit?.

Is it igbo man that sacrifice to be single till the age of 40 to balance his business achievements before marriage you want to compete with? Igbo man who wear warn out cloths with bathroom slippers to save money for his bussiness? Or the one that maintain just one wife you choose to compete with?....The one that married, how many children do they agreed to born, all are the sacrifices in order to save more for his business.

Nobody compete with the fulanis in their cow business or you think they don’t make money in that? Please leave the igbos alone, business is their God given talent.

(c) Chukwudi Anyaogu....copied from Sopuruchukwu Ehidonye's wall.
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My response:

Yes. Chukwudi has some points there. You can't deny Igbo the commitment and aggression in any pursuit they undertake. NAFDAC may never witness a better Director than Dora Akunyili, for example.

But I have been to a country, Guinea Conakry, where Igbos were outwitted in business by the Fulani, who control 90% of the economy of that country. The Igbo packed and left. In most francophone West Africa the story is the same.

And when some of them started the business of armed robbery in Guinea, they were rounded up quickly and meted the law.

Well Fulani and Igbo are cousins, according to linguists. The Fulani in Nigeria were spoilt by generations of scholarship, animal husbandry and power (sarauta) recently. They do not exude the penchant for materialism as their counterparts in more western African countries do, who own very large businesses and shops in Francophone Africa from Senegal to Mozambique.

One very tempting proposition must be addressed. Could it be that Igbo businesses thrive most where the law is weak, like in Nigeria, and many earn quick money through terribly bad means (robbery, kidnapping, manufacture and imports of fake pharmaceuticals, overpricing, etc)?

How many of them would not try to be 'smarter' than the customers all the time? I believe most people have one or more stories to tell about that Igbo 'smartness.' Achebe lamented the extent to which materialism has eaten into the fabric of Igbo character and society. Today, it is difficult to find genuine spare part in Nigeria.

Materialism isn't bad per se but it reaches an extent where it's difficult to reconcile with honesty and humanity. Has that extent been reached by the Igbo generally as Achebe would put in There Was A Nation? Could they on this basis pride in being better than others? I would like Hausa Fulani to be equally aggressive in business but within limits of humanity. What's the humanity in importing substandard spare parts, tyres and fake drugs?

Or am I wrong? But remember I love Igbo since I lived with them. You need to live with them in their place of origin to appreciate the humanity in their majority. Those we are dealing with here are traders, money seekers, a category that is not the best ambassador of humanity in any race or tribe.

But you must tell the truth to whom you love. The association between material success and criminality appears to be higher among Igbo than other Nigerians. It may be the effect of the civil war. It may be that they are just less timid than the rest of us. No wonder that on kidnapping, they have found in their cousins, the Fulani, who are audacious too and have recently suffered brutal armed conflicts recently, more friends than among other northerners - problems that both the Fulani and their Igbo cousins must urgently address.

One day perhaps, the Fulani in Nigeria, after the cows have finished, will learn trade and outwit their cousins as they did elsewhere.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
17 July, 2017

Pls be civil in your response