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Ethnic Blending: Any Hope For Nigeria? By Abdullah Musa It is one of the recurring ironies of life that what we sometimes hate with much rabidity; we end up being its very carbon copy. Psychologists may have an answer to this puzzling human tendency. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo hated rabidly, the former Head of State Late General Sani Abacha. Whoever puts you in jail, slams life sentence on you, can surely not be your beloved. We are however not interested in the relationship that subsisted between the two ex-dictators (according to some Nigerians) in this discourse. Our focus is on our inability to tame our ethnic instincts in order to operate as Nigerians, particularly when it comes to discharging our obligations as public officers. There are many indicators that would inform a casual observer of the Nigerian political setting, that there is really no binding national principle which guides the actions of those saddled with the responsibilities of public offices. During the eight-year tenure of former President Obasanjo, at any time a Chief executive was mentioned for a federal institution or parastatal, you would not err three out of four times when you came to the conclusion that the anointed holder would be a Yoruba man or woman. The case of FAAN, a parastatal under the supervision of Ministry of Aviation was best exposed by the coverage of either weekly or Daily Trust, where they observed that each new Minister appoints his or her own Managing Director to manage (or mismanage) the milk cow for him or her. This is usually done in the full glare of the public; and the public will be the one to say one day that so and so was corrupt, while the foundation for corruption was laid with their connivance of either silence or stupidity. There is an established precedent of Ministries being ‘donated’ to certain groups or tribes, and it is automatic that tribesmen or women would have to be positioned to man the funds- flow pipe; all other Nigerians will be second class citizens in that particular Ministry or parastatal. One Ministry that seems to be permanently ‘donated’ to the Igbo tribe is the Ministry of Aviation. The current Minister has given the sack to the Managing Director of FAAN, because he ‘is not ready to implement the necessary reforms needed’! I thought we heard the last of ‘reforms’ when Chief Obasanjo stepped aside. A new reform seems to be in the offing. Democracy might really be a tool in the hands of capitalists to divert the resources meant for the common good to the hands or pockets of a privileged few. I am inclined to this reasoning, for the ‘mother’ of all democracies seems to show that it can invade another country in the name of installing democracies, while in real fact it is sheer banditry with the sole aim of placing puppets who would cooperate in the looting of the unfortunate nation’s resources. This line of thinking is attested by the revelations that United States’ Government was issuing contracts for re-construction work in Iraq even though the war had not commenced. Whether it was in the first Gulf war, or in the recent invasion, the US President was warning those European countries whose leaders refused to send armies to the war, that after victory they would not partake in the reconstruction contracts! A nation may thus be destroyed in order to create business opportunity for the destroyers! Ethnicity took its toll in Plateau State. There were many crises, lives properties were lost; and even now, there is no surety that more is not to come with regards to the issue of the relocation of the headquarters of Jos North Local Government. More contentious will be the issue of the indigene ship law to be passed by the State’s house of Assembly. That law promises to treat the Hausas who had lived in the area for more than two centuries as non-indigenes. By this law, it means that certain rights which one would have as an indigene would be lost by any who has been described as not being one. One festering problem is the uprising in the Niger Delta area of South East Nigeria. We all know that it is from this area that most of the crude oil and gas are obtained. Yet certain Nigerians, called militants due to our escapist tendency, are making sure that the nation is being gradually suffocated. For one thing we are being faced with the reality that we have no control over the region. And where a part of a country is being made ungovernable by a set of determined people, (boys or men) you still believe that you are not in war situation? The Niger Delta is the highest form of manifestation of the un-blending nature of Nigerian ethnic groups. To my knowledge, every Nigerian is free to live and work in every part of Nigeria. Nobody is saying that Niger Deltans should all be made to vacate their ancestral homes to go and live in other parts of the nation. But would the Niger Deltans still have behaved in the same manner were the ethnic composition of Nigeria made up entirely of fellow Ijaws and so on? It is my opinion that such would not have happened. I am also of the view that there is an external military strategy to the problem of Niger Delta. Somebody somewhere focuses his searchlight to see areas of weaknesses in certain parts of the world. Such weaknesses should either throw up opportunities to earn influence or the likes in mischief. The region spews out millions if not billions of dollars. And it is not doing so by producing cotton, or palm oil or other similar valuable products. It does much more than that. It spews out black gold, that substance which drove President Bush of USA to sanction the displacement of over two million Iraqis, and the killing of hundreds of thousands, in order to control Iraqi oil. Now here is Nigeria, a hopelessly un-cohesive and under-developed entity, with it soil and gas resources situated in swamps, totally un-protected. What is more ‘rewarding’, the host community are a minority within the larger ‘parasitic’ whole. What should the strategist do, but to create situations for the following: - Illegal bunkering - Pipeline vandalization - Hostage-taking - Militancy and the likes The local champions who are not accorded due respect in the nation by virtue of their being Lord Manor of the nation’s black gold mines, even though in minority by tribe; find it highly lucrative to team up with the outsiders for immediate and future gains. This is the price to pay for the negligence of not developing an all-embracing principle that would unite the nation. We are fully aware that the principle of secularism is bandied about in order to achieve just that. But has it succeeded? It has not. Even though secularism may be used to douse religious tensions, it seems helpless against ethnicity. One columnist of Daily Trust newspaper was siding with a scientist from the Western world for saying that blacks are less intelligent than the whites. Of course we are less intelligent than the Whiteman in so far as the yardstick is science and technology. It may interest Alabi to know that ethnicity is one strong factor that accounts for Blackman’s under-development. The recent episode at Egbin power station will attest to this. Juju is claimed to have taken three lives of workers there. It is likely that more than 70% of the workers at Egbin are Yoruba, and they bring into production of electricity the juju culture meant for Stone Age. Who is now wondering why our electric power stations collapsed; or who is optimistic that we will have stable power in the future with type of mindset? Nigeria is a contradiction. It is different scenario all together for people to meet in the market place to buy and sell from each other as Igbo, Hausa, Nupe, and Itsekiri etc. It is an entirely another ‘volcanic’ pot of tea all together for these diverse people to be conglomerated into a whole, and asked to work in unison, without a binding national ethos. In the United States of America, the current President, Mr. Bush is described as a Texan. He has his ranch there, and must have been born there. In his first term’s election bid, he was helped in what might be seen to be a dubious way by his brother who was then Governor of Florida. He must also be a Texan, while Texas and Florida are definitely two different States. Kano must be the only real ‘cosmopolitan’ State in the Nigerian federation. Its Governor in 1983 was touted to be of Nupe origin, while many in the cabinet of Shekarau, current Governor of the State, are clearly non-indigene. The only ‘snag’ is in the binding ethos: the non-indigene must be fluent Hausa speaker, and must be a Muslim. The father of a one-time Senator representing Kano State was said to be an Igbo man. So it is clear that even if we are able cross the hurdle of ethnicity through inter-marriage, that of religion will seem to be most difficult to conquer; in this regard, it is the Yoruba, the Igalas and other minority tribes that are models; for they do not forbid marriage between Christian men and Muslim women; and they may all end up in the Church during Christmas singing choir in perfect harmony with their Christian ethnic brothers and sisters; blood is thicker than religion you may say. Where will Nigeria be in 2020? Our hope is that it will still be where it is today! There is no known precedent in human history for a society to develop when its component parts are working at cross purposes. The likelihood is that the gulf will get wider, and those straddling the centre will find themselves torn apart by the drift. It is also possible that stagnation may come to be considered as a form of progress, and then we would be models per excellence: Adedibu as President and Akinwuli as his Vice. A perfect recipe; is it not?
Abdullah Musa |