The Phenomenon of

The Phenomenon of "Settlership" and the Fate of Nigeria

Mike Ikhariale

There is the overwhelming evidence that the idea of Nigeria is still quite distant and somehow alien to most people despite their being “trapped” within its territorial jurisdiction. They continue to identity themselves as “indigenes” and “subjects” of their respective tribes and ethnic nationalities while others are regarded as intruding aliens or settlers in their territories. The position of our Constitution (until 1999) was that every Nigerian has the status of a citizen and that status remains valid wherever he finds himself within the territory of Nigeria . That simple juridical postulate has proved to be too difficult for our people to accept, governments and individuals alike, and has contributed in no small measure to the ruination of the Nigerian Dream upon which the federal republic was built, namely, unity in diversity. Rather than “unity and faith” as the original motto of the republic prescribed, we are growing apart in “disunity and despair” as we now wear the derogatory labels of “aliens” and “settlers”, depending on where we find ourselves in the country.

It is either the colonial administration that turned over sovereignty to the emergent Nigerian State in 1960 could not eliminate the strong affinities that subsisted between the colonialised people and their hitherto existing pre-colonial ethnic nationalities or that the nationalists that took over power from them mischievously repudiated the sovereignty of the new state and reverted to their ancestral nationalism in their myopic hope of carving out little monopolistic empires for themselves out of their various tribal cocoons.

The truth however is that both positions cannot be valid in the face of the new political realities that gave meaning and signification to the idea of Nigeria as a sovereign entity. It is a proposition too plain to be contested that when individuals obtain their citizenship from the same source, none can claim superiority over the other. Illusion aside, the only legitimate linkage between a Nigerian and the State is the status of citizenship. Unless we say that the concept of Nigeria has gone legally and politically otiose and therefore out of relevance, then, there is no other valid classification that can be made about any Nigerian citizen without running the risk of defamation, more so, when it is a fact that the highest honour that the state can bestow on any of its member is that of citizenship. That is why the President is often described as the “first citizen” among citizens, first among equals, and no more. How come that some people lately have been making some arcane distinction between themselves and other Nigerians as “indigenes” and “settlers”, respectively?

Reading through contemporary literature on Nigerian politics or even ‘eavesdropping’ on political gossips by our loud partisan analysts give a picture of a house that has actually gone under; each group promoting deep-rooted grudges against the rest and with such intensity that would make the relationship between the Iraqis and their American liberators in Baghdad and in the so-called Sunni triangle green with envy. But ask these disputants why they peddle so much bad blood against others, they will proceed to recant the same propaganda that their political elite have sold to them in which every Kano man would have to atone for Abacha’s transgression or every Abeokuta man is treated as Obasanjo’s emissary. It does not matter that these fellows would not be able recognise the subject-matter of their misguide alliances or mutual bitterness, and that that those elite over whom they battle themselves so bitterly do clandestinely pay homage to Abuja to share in the loots together with their ‘enemies’, and more importantly, that these ethnic and sectarian juggernauts will never fail to attend the wedding ceremonies of each other’s siblings. A picture is thus given of a people who have been misled into baseless bitterness against each other by the political and sectarian wing of the exploitative ruling class. So, from Warri to Jos, Numa to Zango Kataf through Ife and Modakeke, all we see are needless bloodletting by people who have no knowledge why they are made to bear arms against each other beyond the fact that their local chieftains have told them that the other groups are the sources of their misfortunes, misfortune that are the direct out come of the misrule caused by the same people bad-mouthing themselves

In the colonial days people moved far and wide to trade, school and domicile freely. While people belonged to ethnic groups for cultural and sectarian renewal, they saw themselves first and foremost as Nigerians, able to settle anywhere they liked. Many Nigerians went as far afield as the present day Gambia , Sierra Leone , Cameroon and Ghana and domiciled there. They were welcome and are still in those places today without the daily reminder that they are “settlers”. Nationals of those lands also migrated across the length and breadth of British West Africa . But today, not to belong to or identify with one ethnic group or the other in Nigeria is to open oneself to severe vulnerability within the larger society as the official mechanisms for citizens’ protection have all broken down. Notably, the ethnic card has been very helpful for mediocres in government who shamelessly play it up to obtain what ordinarily is well beyond their ability and the result of that is the progressive devaluation in the quality of services from government. The same can be said about the nation’s educational sector where the quota system and allocation of spaces along nepotistic ethnic lines, euphemistically called federal character, have killed merit thereby leading to a generation of mediocres.

The 1999 Constitution which was foisted on the nation by the retreating military oligarchy seems to have added additional impetus to the settler/indigene nonsense by making it constitutionally mandatory for certain positions to be filled in accordance with the appointee’s indigeneship. This is a veritable recipe for national catastrophe and what is happening now is merely the harbinger of greater evil ahead as the scramble for the dwindling nation’s oil money becomes more and more intense. It should have been anticipated that good-for-nothing political scavengers would latch on this indigeneship clause inserted into to the constitution to foment trouble if only to keep others from the so-called national cake. We must, at this juncture, congratulate Governor Tinubu of Lagos State who bravely broke out of this myopic bondage by hiring people according to their competences once they are Lagos residents, instead of their ethnicity. I do not know of another state of the federation where civil commissioners who are known to be from ethnic groups outside the state have been appointed. In some bizarre cases, the fact that they belong to the state and of the same ethnicity is not enough, they have also to be of a particular religion and, indeed, of a particular sect!

I recall that when the President said recently that anyone who cannot die for Nigeria is not fit to be a Nigerian, many people derided him as one of those his presidential mis-peaks. But I think he was quite right. The only missing element in the equation is that Nigeria does not seem to be capable of avenging the death of its martyrs simply because the State itself is in trouble. The prevalent of the indigene/settler dichotomy is one of the unmistakable symptoms of a failing state. Now, people no longer see themselves as Nigerians simpliciter but citizens of their ethnic loyalties from where they obtain protection and affinity.

The strength of Nigeria ought to be in her diversity. Many nations that had played the racial cards in the past paid dearly for it and were forced to abandon the divisive ideology. America , for example, has since discovered that it became a better nation only after it embraced cultural diversity and today, the man who argued that a person should never be judged according to his tribe and tongue but according to his personal qualities, Martin Luther King, is a national hero. Same with Nelson Mandela who ably transformed apartheid South Africa into the “rainbow nation” that it has become today. Unfortunately for Nigeria , we continue to have tribal bigots as political leaders who in turn fuel ethnicity simply for their political relevance. A political leader in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society like Nigeria that insists on ‘little things’ like dressing to identify him with his tribal roots or decide to become a religious freak in order to cover up his inability at state management, is only sowing the seed of discord and that was what state men like Madison and Jefferson saw centuries ago but which still continue to elude us at this day and age.

Why did the military, especially under General Babaginda, introduce divisive criteria as bases for disbursing public positions and recklessly ventured into sectarian indiscretion like joining the Islamic OIC, thereby undermining the secular nature of Nigeria ? It is true that some individuals due to their myopic orientation have been canvassing the obvious heresy that Nigeria is no longer a secular entity. My take is they are naively unable to appreciate the philosophy under which the Nigerian state was brought into being or that they do not know yet that bringing religion in state affair is a double-edged sword that often destroys both foes and friends alike. Such pseudo-theocratic tendencies also served their "divide and rule" stratagem because they were usurpers of power. Even now it is still only those with strong military ties that are in power. So, instead of strengthening the federation by inclusive polices, these sectarian freaks selfishly embarked on a misguided unitarism that actually promoted divisions and mutual hatred amongst the various peoples of Nigeria . Our religious businessmen who collected money from abroad in order to promote a deity that they know not much about in Nigeria must be ashamed of what is happening today in which brothers are killing brothers over belief systems that they hardly understand the tenets. Instigating believers against non-believers on confirms their ignorance about matters of God because the Lord is more than able to fight for Himself. Another explanation is that the idea of “indigenes” and “settlers” in postcolonial Nigeria is a painful reflection of the fact that the Nigerian state is yet to gain subjective acceptance before the people especially as result of its failure to provide the very basic of social and economic relief for its poor and toiling citizens as well as the failure of contemporary leadership to prove its relevance to their every day life. The vacuum thus created by such abysmal state failure is being filled by the manipulative ethnic and sectarian tendencies.

It is a shame that after forty years of nationhood, we are still debating who and who is a Nigerian and what rights do they have. For a country that fought a civil war to preserve its corporate existence, such ideas ought to be by themselves treasonable, but when the government and its officials continue to allocate public resources on the basis of ethnicity, religion and other petty considerations, then, it is good time to question the viability of Nigerian state.

As a federation, Nigeria is necessarily partitioned into states and citizens ought to be able to live in any of them without any sense of inferiority, vis-à-vis anyone, no matter how long they have been wherever they are. Accordingly, residents of a particular state may claim certain privileges that are directly derivable from their higher responsibilities of sustaining that state over non-residents but such privileges must not be allowed to derogate from the fundamental rights that are constitutionally attributable to all Nigerians irrespective of where they come from. The idea of “state of origin” or “indigeneship” as official classifications is clearly counterproductive, if not discriminatory. We should rather be talking about “states of residence” instead of “states of origin” because we may never know the origin of our origins since the whole of humanity has been proved to be of a common genealogy. Something is really, really wrong when citizens of the same political entity are being told by their fellow citizens that they settlers. It is even worse when groups that came over as part of the natural process of human interaction would be treating those they met on the ground as conquered peoples. Either way, we are simply courting disaster of the highest magnitude down the line.

The present constitution is fundamentally flawed as an instrument intended for nation building and until it is replaced by a more forward-looking one, our attitude to the Nigerian Project may never be positive. What is happening in the country amongst the various nationalities and religious sects is more than the ordinary. It is indeed more than the usual rivalry, which is to be expected when different groups live together. It is an undeclared war which is being fuelled by inexplicable hatred and deep suspicion. Yet we expect the Nigerian state to survive under such a stressful situation. I think there is a great deal of self-deceit going on. The nation has been turn apart almost beyond repairs and our situation is further complicated by the fact that there is a dearth of truly nationalistic individuals at the top echelon of our leadership who can stand up at this hour and proclaim the truth– a man who rode the ethnic and sectarian ladder to the top is not likely to understand the virtue of respecting others’ views and it is the truth that many people ‘made it’ up that way in Nigeria.

As things are today, the substratum of the present federal arrangement has caved in and has become a source of danger to those beneath it. In other words, things have fallen apart for the union and only a self-deluding person who would still fail to see that it is gradually becoming an empty shell devoid of hope. Since the real bone of contention in the ongoing acrimonies are basically ethnicity and religion, the case for a Sovereign National Conference SNC thus speaks for itself and it is only a government and a people that are playing the ostrich or simply incapable of reading the handwritings on the wall that would refuse or postpone it.

In any case, there is the real possibility that by the time such a gathering takes place, if at all, the government itself would already have withered away into irrelevance. It is no telling, therefore, that the evil dichotomy of settlers/indigene is a challenge to the Nigerian state, if not its nemesis, and the earlier we tackle it frontally, the better for us all.