The Igbo Scapegoat: how Nigeria ethnicises its institutional failures
1. One of the tragedies of Nigerian education is that it produces too many people who can identify a problem but cannot understand its origins.
2. People who see the branches of a dying tree but never question the disease in its roots.
3. Today, as @NafdacAgency intensifies its campaign against counterfeit products, Opeyemi Famakin, @aonanuga1956 and others have introduced an ethnic narrative that risks presenting the Igbo as Nigeria's principal counterfeiters.
3. Certainly, some Igbo people manufacture fake products.
4. So do individuals from other ethnic groups.
5. Criminality has no tribe, and poisoning Nigerians should never become an ethnic competition.
6. In September 2026, locally produced alcoholic concoctions contaminated with methanol caused at least 48 deaths in Ondo State, with 182 cases recorded.
7. No established finding attributes this tragedy to Igbo producers.
8. In Lagos, Kehinde Raji was arrested in 2025 for allegedly mixing spoiled yam flour with harmful colouring chemicals.
9. These are Nigerian problems, not Igbo problems.
10. But there is something even more disturbing.
11. We demand the death penalty for counterfeiters while tolerating politicians whose corruption destroys the institutions meant to protect society.
12. Consider the connection.
13. A politician loots public resources.
14. Industries collapse.
15. Regulatory institutions weaken.
16. Employment disappears.
17. Poverty spreads.
18. Desperate producers exploit a poorly regulated market, while impoverished consumers purchase dangerous alternatives.
19. One man's stolen billions can become another man's kidney failure.
20. The politician steals from the treasury.
21. The counterfeiter poisons the marketplace.
22. The poison in the bottle and the poison in government can both leave families burying their dead.
23. This does not excuse counterfeiters.
24. Poverty cannot justify poisoning innocent people.
25. But neither should political office excuse the destruction of millions of lives.
26. It is my form belief that Nigeria needs functioning industries, affordable quality products, reliable authentication systems, strong regulation and consequences for corruption.
27. I believe those who deliberately manufacture lethal counterfeit products deserve the gravest punishment permitted by law.
28. And if Nigerians insist that such crimes merit the death penalty, they must confront why political corruption capable of destroying entire communities should attract lesser moral outrage.
29. Justice cannot begin at the marketplace and end at the government house.
30. You cannot destroy a society through corruption, create conditions in which criminal industries flourish, and then pretend that punishing the desperate and the dishonest alone will save the nation.
31. The counterfeiter must answer for the poison he sells.
32. The politician must answer for the country he destroys.
33. And neither should hide behind ethnicity, poverty or political power.
@Uwkuhc They are not being downplayed it is about the Algerian football fan support frenzy. They literarily bring everything to the game to support their team.
@UnkleAyo Do you know that many of them do consider these criminal acts as something that puts them at advantage to access heaven. So its either they do it or encourage and defend those that did it.
@maxvayshia I will also add my own by saying that "whenever Health workers go on strike or are planning to do so; citizens should lend their voices and support because whatever that will be the outcome will have a direct impact on the citizens". I am not a Doctort but i know it.
@ChuksEricE It is imported and the foreign exchange and customs duty rates have gone up. Same as the cost of power and diesel to run cooling facilities have have gone up. So the price of your favorite fish has also gone up.