It is difficult to say if Igbo and Yoruba are friends or enemies or merely tolerating each other. On the surface, they seem to be friends, because you rarely hear of any clashes or killings between
the two in over 100 years. People from the two ethnic groups work together, live together, laugh together, worship together, and play together. Everything seems all right. Nobody wants to be seen as publicly making any comment seen as tribalistic or intolerant.
But if you look deeper, there seems to be something you cannot truly place a finger on. It’s like a volcano waiting for the least provocation to
erupt. It only needs an excerpt from Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country to be made public, or for Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos to
“deport” some Igbo to Onitsha for hell to be let loose. Commentators immediately line up behind their ethnic groups, releasing venom against the
other side. Luckily, such altercations usually end in words and not in violent acts.
But on Nigerian online sites like the punchng.com and others, where commentators can use anonymous names, such fights are a daily affair,
and they always get embarrassingly nasty. At such times, combatants throw caution to the wind and rake up gut-wrenching jibes dripping of hate and bordering on insanity. You wonder if the purveyors of such vitriol would feel at ease afterwards interacting with someone from the ethnic group they have maligned so viciously. Some see it as fun, but many don’t. They see it as a war that must be won at all costs.
Regrettably, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, whose direct and indirect action and
inaction sowed the seed of hate and distrust between the Igbo and the Yoruba, have died without uprooting that dangerous plant or even
denying it water and nutrients. Therefore, till this day, the Igbo and Yoruba still enjoy shooting at each other with accusations of betrayal,
expansionism, hate, ingratitude, greed, as well as trying to prove that each ethnic group is superior to the other.
And it seems the contest for superiority is at the root of that frosty relationship. The Igbo and Yoruba are unarguably the most competitive in
Nigeria. They are the ethnic groups that easily and forcefully ask for the removal of quota system in all national life. They believe that if things are done on merit, they will excel. The Igbo think that the Yoruba are the major competitors they have in Nigeria, while the Yoruba think that the Igbo are the key competitors they have in Nigeria. This shows in almost all spheres of life. The Yoruba had a head-start in western education
because the British colonialists and missionaries arrived on their land first. The Igbo, who resisted and rejected the British initially, eventually
accepted them and thereby began a sprint to catch up with the Yoruba. And they succeeded.
Whatever the Igbo achieve, the Yoruba have an answer to it, and whatever the Yoruba achieve the Igbo have a response. So, if you have a Wole Soyinka from the South-West winning the first Nobel Prize for Literature in Africa, you have a Chinua Achebe from the South-East holding the record of the most popular and most-selling literary writer in Africa. If you have a Rangers International Football Club of Enugu shaking the
Nigerian football scene in the 1970s and early 80s, you have the Shooting Stars Football Club of Ibadan shining brightly at the same period. If
Rashidi Yekini is noted for scoring Nigeria’s first World Cup goal and being Nigeria’s all-time highest goal scorer, then Nwankwo Kanu boasts of
being Nigeria’s most decorated footballer, while Austin Jay-Jay Okocha flaunts his status as Nigeria’s most glamorous and mesmerising
footballer. If Genevieve Nnaji boasts of being named by Oprah Winfrey in 2009 among the most popular people in the world, Omotola Jalade-
Ekeinde will show off her name in TIME magazine’s most influential people of 2013.
BY AZUKA ONWUKA
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