What The Igbos Share In Common With The Jews That Has Made Them The Most Envied And Feared Nigerians.

I don’t believe the Igbos are genetically Jewish, but spiritually they are, like all Christians. They are related to this “ingenious” race thanks to Jesus Christ. What the Igbo really share with the Jews is the fact that they are feared for their industriousness and material successes. The recent outcry by the Yoruba people of Ladipo market in Lagos State to their prominent Yoruba men to save them from the Igbos, is akin to the cry of the Germans to their leaders to save them from the Jews before the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s, we know what happened.


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What The Igbos Share In Common With The Jews That Has Made Them The Most Envied And Feared Nigerians
MbuyaziEmmanuel
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I don’t believe the Igbos are genetically Jewish, but spiritually they are, like all Christians. They are related to this “ingenious” race thanks to Jesus Christ. What the Igbo really share with the Jews is the fact that they are feared for their industriousness and material successes. The recent outcry by the Yoruba people of Ladipo market in Lagos State to their prominent Yoruba men to save them from the Igbos, is akin to the cry of the Germans to their leaders to save them from the Jews before the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s, we know what happened.

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Today, as ever, the Jews are a community that adores and encourage the habit of self-development, adventure, Industriousness, and learning. This attitude to life has brought them so much success in life, as well as the envy of other groups. Envy begat fear that ultimately led to their persecution. In the Bible, Pharaonic Egypt had to enslave the Jewish people to check their successes else the Egyptian feared, the Jews would grow so much and stronger to take over their land. The fear of the Jews extended even into Medieval Europe: Jews were encamped in settlements away from the regular European communities, and former to wear badges. They were denied some rights and marginalized. Yet they persevered, with the liberalization of Europe some two hundred years ago, the Jewish communities became one of the most successful groups in Europe.

They were prominent in politics, military, but much more in trade and commerce, and learning. Hundred years ago Jews were one of the most successful racial groups in the world, owning businesses and pioneering and dominating fields of learning and knowledge. They invested in the communities they resided and regarded themselves as citizens, sooner successful businesses and practices emerged across Europe owned by Jews. One again, the tradition that celebrates and encourages industry and learning paid off. Jewish successes began to inspire the envy of other European communities thus the rise of aggressive antisemitism. Some European Communities began to fear that the Jews will eventually dominate and take up their lands.

In Germany for example, the Jews were blamed for the impoverishment of the German people and the defeat of the Germans in the first world war. Most Germans called on their leaders to save them from the Jews – sounds familiar? Well, Hitler and Nazism answered, when they ascended to power in Germany, antisemitism was “no longer regarded as old fashion Jewish hating but a state policy”, borrowing from a line in the Holocaust movie “Schindler’s List.” Hitler and Nazism systematically dispossessed the Jews of their belongings and investments, encamped them in ghettos, and later concentration camps were about six million of them were systematically killed between 1939 and 1945. That is the price of envy and fear, the fear of Jewish domination. The fear of any racial or ethnic group!

The Jews, up until 1948 and their activities in Palestine (now Israel), had been a community that is military and politically passive. They focus more on the aspect of trade and learning, with little interest in politics or ambition to establish a Jewish state or political domination in Europe. Yet, their successes cannot be ignored: as skillful businessmen and brilliant scholars, they dominated business and commerce and fields of learning. It is by aggressive business decisions and daring intellectualism and not political or militant exploits, that the Jews were emerged as a force to reckon with in Europe and the world, even today. This is the very reason why some Nigerian groups are apprehensive about the Igbos.

Of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, the Igbos were the least cohesive in the period before colonization. They loved their lives as it were before the Europeans came, and fought wars – probably the longest of the traditional anti-colonial wars – to protect their societies against colonization, they failed. Their societies were turned inside out and “destroyed”, the reality and mood are captured in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. But the Igbos persevered under the new order, and their adventurism makes them more receptive to the European ideals and life, as well as the desire to migrate to other regions and strive to thrive.

Like the Jews who thrived outside their ancestral homeland in Palestine (Israel), in their new communities of resident the industry of the Igbo led them into establishing enterprises that would sustain them. The Igbo tradition that encourages and rewards individual success pushed the Igbos to work harder, better, and smarter. They acquire western knowledge and excel in their endeavors, be it learning or business. Between 1900 and 1960, the Igbos have emerged very successfully that the became the envy of others and inspiring fear in them. The fear of Igbo domination.


While Interviewing the then Premier of the Northern Region of Nigeria Sir Ahmadu Bello at his residence at Arewa House Kaduna, the Premier was asked to explain the northerner's obsession with the Igbo, he responded that “the Igbos are more or less the those of people whose desire is mainly to dominate everybody”, that was a dangerous submission. Considering the fact that the Igbos then had no militia whose aim is to conquer and dominate other communities, they are businessmen who only desire to succeed and increase, well were so good at it that their successes were watched with suspicion and adjudged as a deliberate attempt to dispossess others of their privileges. Ahmadu Bello embarked on the Northernization policy to check the Igbo encroachment, and that fear of the Igbo might have been so ripe to harden the people to orchestrate the pogrom targeting the Igbos during the 1960s – a sinister act akin to the holocaust.

It was the fear of the Igbo man that undermine the sincerity of the first Nigerian military coup, the coup was concentrated by a core of largely South-Eastern Igbo officers. The fact that no prominent Igbo was killed during the coup, as well as the emergence of Aguiyi Ironsi as Head of State, heighten the suspicion of a grand Igbo agenda to dominate others. Ironsi fed this suspicion with his unpopular Unification Degree which abolished regionalism and centralizing power.

This was regarded as proof and confirmation of the Igbo domination intention to dominate others. In order to end the grand plan to dominate others by the Igbo, the nation was dragged into a bloody counter-coup and 30 months old civil war in which millions of lives were lost and properties destroyed. The Igbos suffered more and lost more too. Like the Jews after the holocaust, the Igbos emerged from this devastation with nothing but between 1970 and today, they had bounced back to prominence on the sheer strength of smart industrious decisions and actions. And the new success is still envied and feared, even though they Igbos had not produced a Head of state or President since 1966.

Some Yoruba men at Ladipo market came out lamenting that the growing Igbo businesses are taking over their lands, and were calling on their leaders to save them from the Igbos, even though all they needed to do is compete aggressively with the Igbos – they have the home advantage even! They claim they Igbos are using millions to buy or “take” their lands away from them. But this is not done by the force of arm or intimidation but mutual and transactional understanding and agreement.

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Odumegwu Ojukwu (as Biafran General), was encouraged by Igbo elders in 1967 following the pogrom against the Igbos in Northern Region of Nigeria, to break-away from Nigeria. He did and that was how Nigeria plunged into a state of war that will last for thirty months (Image: historytoday.com)

The Igbos buy lands and properties where they dwell and do business as a business necessity and not as an agenda to infiltrate and take over as the Jews did to the Palestinians. Like the Jews, it is the act of distrust, envy, and fear of the Igbo business successes and growth that had often alarmed most Nigerian communities to rise against them. It is this unwelcoming and intolerant treatment and opinion of the Igbo that has made some of them to lost confidence in the Nigerian state and union. It is the fear of the Igbo that fuels the fires of self-determination which presently is been exploited by Nnamdi Kanu to sustain the agitation for Biafra. Just as it was desirable for the Jews to establish the state of Israel.

The Igbos like the Jews are a community that had developed and maintained the tradition that encourages self-improvement, industry, adventurism, and acknowledges and celebrates success. This has made the Igbos the most successful ethnic group in Nigeria. But their successes and the desire to grow and expand in societies outside their homeland has always been viewed with suspicion, that they nurture the agenda to overwhelm and dominate their host communities. This was the reason why the Jews were feared and hated in Germany, and why the Hausas and the Yoruba of Lagos fear the Igbos.

When the nation finally segregates, we shall how what all these chest beating will favour Biafra.

Omo the story long gan...but that last picture of Ojukwu with his beard beats all the current beard gangs I have seen. No wonder Patience Jonathan said his Manhood lives forever.