No
bad idea is regurgitated as constantly as the notion that the solution
to chronic violence in Nigeria is for her to “break up.” The case for
Nigeria’s disintegration surfaces routinely after tragic episodes of
violence and has emerged following the recent increase in sectarian
terrorism. Some perspective is necessary. Since the days before the
Civil War, beating the drums of separatism has become a sort of
pre-programmed response to national calamity. Rumours of our impending
divorce attended the 1964 elections, the June 12 1993 crisis, the death
of Moshood Abiola in 1998 and the Sharia controversy in 2001. In 1990, a
gang of over-ambitious soldiers attempting to oust the Babangida regime
even purported to evict five northern states from the federation. Thus,
current debates about the durability of Nigeria are nothing new.
It
is intellectually lazy and astonishingly parlous thinking to suggest
that the solution to our national crisis is disintegration. It is true
that much life has been expended on the Nigeria project to no apparent
redemptive effect but what we owe the dead and the unborn as well as
ourselves is clear-minded thinking on the fate of our union rather than
just emotive polemics.
The
usual suggestion is that Nigeria be divided between a “Muslim North”
and “Christian South” or among its so-called big three – the Hausa,
Yoruba and Igbo. Beyond these imprecise propositions, there is little
specificity as to what shape post-Nigerian nations would look like
except perhaps for the preposterous suggestion that every ethnic group
should become a nation. These arguments are fallacious. Nigeria is not
and has never been a country of monolithic religious halves. Christians
and Muslims are scattered in substantial proportions and ethnic variety
across the country. There are Fulani Christians and Igbo Muslims.
Millions of Yoruba families contain adherents of both faiths. Nigeria is
far more complex and diverse than the Hausa-Yoruba-Igbo tripod. Making
each ethnic group a nation throws up problems. What would we make of
Ijaw communities who hug the coastline stretching from the south to the
south west? The
sheer diversity and interlocking spread of hundreds of ethnic
nationalities makes tidy disintegration a virtually impossible
proposition.
A
popular fallacy is that prior to the advent of the colonialists,
Nigeria’s ethnic groups existed in self-contained cocoons of utopian
bliss unburdened by the necessity of interaction with others. But many
of the ethnic and regional identities which are now presumed “sacred”
are in fact colonial creations. For instance, it was only after
colonization, that the term “Yorubaland” began to be applied to the
realms of all rulers who claim descent from Oduduwa, instead of only to
the Oyo Kingdom. Before the British came, the Egba, Ijebu, Ekiti, Ijesha
and Ilorin peoples fought costly interstate wars among themselves. The
longest pre-colonial civil war was the sixteen year Kiriji war which was
fought between Yoruba city states. Yoruba nationalism was forged by
Obafemi Awolowo who rallied the descendants of Oduduwa as a political
force in the new nation. Similarly, Igbos were organized into separate
and autonomous republics. Many of them had scant contact with each other
with some entirely oblivious of others before the advent of
colonialism. Consequently, Igbos fought no wars as a collective. Igbo
national consciousness was largely the handiwork of Nnamdi Azikiwe who
at one point preached the manifest destiny of the Igbo in Africa. Hausa
city-states co-existed through times of war and peace. Even when Uthman
Dan Fodio’s jihad established the Sokoto Caliphate, the new emirates
were never synonymous with “the North” which was a later British
invention and was fortified as a political identity by Ahmadu Bello.
Significantly,
pre-colonial societies were not based on ethnic units but rather on age
groups, occupations, residence and settlements. Instead of monolithic
tribal blocs competing for a share of the national cake, city-states,
inclusive kingdoms and republics for the most part made up the area that
was eventually christened Nigeria and experienced centuries-long
commercial links and cultural cross-pollination.
Dissolving
the Nigerian federation will not resolve the violence that bedevils
places like Jos, the conflicts between the Ife and Modakeke in Osun, the
Aguleri and Umuleri in Anambra or the Ezza and the Ezillo in Ebonyi,
the Jukun and the Tiv or the Itsekiri and the Urhobo. Nor will it end
conflicts between nomadic Fulani pastoralists and agrarian communities
stretching from the north to the south. These are essentially either
local or intra-ethnic conflicts.
Ethnic
homogeneity cannot indemnify society against conflict. Somalia, the
world’s poster child of failed statehood, has only one ethnic group, the
Somali, only one language and is one hundred percent Islamic. South
Sudan which only recently celebrated its divorce from Sudan is now
embroiled in inter-ethnic conflict within its borders. Back home, we
need only look at Bayelsa State and other ethnically homogeneous states
to establish conclusively that ethnic homogeneity is not a predictor of
peace, social justice or smart governance.
While
prodigal political elites practise divisive politics, the Nigerian
people themselves live in a socio-economic reality of interdependence
and integration. The use of oil wealth from the Niger Delta in
sustaining state bureaucracies all over the country may be the most
obvious example of this. Less remarked is the dependence of southern
urbanites on northern produce for food. The Fulanis are the main
custodians of Nigeria’s livestock population, holding over ten million
cattle, twenty million goats and millions of sheep. Their industry
significantly accounts for protein consumption in the south. The north
remains Nigeria’s food basket.
We
are so captivated by the witchcraft of separatism that we fail to
appreciate the fortuitous or providential alignments of ecological,
geographical, cultural and economic factors that have fostered
interdependence and integration. For example, if violence in the north
was simply about anti-Igbo hatred then it would be saner for Igbos to
stay home in the east. But the east is disadvantaged by its
erosion-prone poor soil which cannot sustain the population density of
the area and which accounts for the comparatively high level of
migration of Igbos to other parts of Nigeria. Despite everything, Igbos
(and other Nigerians) continue to migrate and mingle because human
coexistence dictates it. No man is an Island. Aliko Dangote, Africa’s
richest man is from Kano but has most of his investments in the south
and employs more southerners than northerners. Millions of Nigerians
have become socio-cultural hybrids through intermarriage, cultural
adoption and transplantation.
Nigeria’s
problem is not her diversity but the failure of the state to affirm
Nigerian citizenship as the ultimate identity superseding all other
allegiances. It is our failure as citizens, intellectuals and
politicians to articulate an all-embracing Nigerian ethos. Rather we
waste valuable time and energy rebooting hackneyed definitions of
Nigeria as an artificial creation or a mere geographical expression. Yet
all nations, possibly except Australia, being creations of human
political will, are artificial and begin as geographical novelties; they
are not received from heaven. It falls on succeeding generations to
transform them from mere geographies into socio-political moralities; to
create transcendent solidarities where none existed before. This is
what nation-building is about and this is what we have failed so
spectacularly to do. Sectarian politics thrives largely because of the
dazzling scale of ignorance that Nigerians demonstrate about their
history, geography and each other.
It
is foolhardy to believe that the failure to treat ourselves as citizens
rather than as ethnic and religious partisans will disappear if we
dissolve Nigeria. If we cannot treat each other humanely now that we are
compatriots, how on earth are we going to do better if we become
foreigners? Last year, the Abia state government fired thousands of
Igbo-speaking “non-indigenes” from its employment to make room for
equally Igbo “indigenes.” Significantly, most conflicts in Nigeria are
between so-called “indigenes” and “settlers,” a dichotomy that at times
seems to defy ethnic or religious solidarity. These petty bigotries and
manifestations of apartheid will not disappear with the Nigerian union.
The challenge of civic security is inescapable for there is no possible
post-Nigerian construct that would not contain either religious or
ethnic minorities. It is worth noting that Biafra, the most serious
separatist effort in our history was undermined both by the superior
power of the federal forces and the reluctance of ethnic minorities who
feared for their own prospects as citizens of Biafra. The problem
remains creating a just, fair and equal citizenship that shelters all of
us regardless of creed, ethnicity, class or gender. Nothing suggests
that new ethnic republics would in any way be more peaceful, stable or
more prosperous than the current Nigerian reality. In short, it would
require less effort to renew the Nigerian enterprise than to construct
afresh new polities.
Having
said all this, nations are not eternal but finite, expiring when they
have outlived their usefulness to history and humanity. Nigeria is no
different. Nigeria does not currently face immediate disintegration but a
slow and steady erosion of federal authority by sundry paramilitaries,
warlords and terrorist gangs, until the nation slips inexorably into
failed statehood. Already we see signs of this in the brazen terrorism
of pseudo-religious extremists who seek to establish alternate
governments as well as the rise of oil-bunkering pirate gangs in our
southern coastal waters.
It
would be a pity if we were to let Nigeria fail. No one who has studied
her history, encountered her acute humanity, sampled her cultural riches
and researched the dreams of her founding fathers can fail to sense her
ordination for higher purposes. For us to abort this purpose would be
nothing short of cosmic treason. As Eme Awa once remarked, “If we were
to dissolve the federation, a future generation of people will pass the
verdict that the Nigerian elites committed suicide while of unsound
mind.” Nigeria has not been tried and found wanting. We simply have not
invested enough of our intellectual and moral energies into actualizing
her promise.
(All Images are sourced from Google Images.)
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