2011 Election and the Orka Agenda

2011 Election and the Orka Agenda

Aminu F. Hamajoda

Inadvertently the Daily Trust of April 18 2011 in using a graphic map to report the 2011 presidential election ended up actually showing the States Major Gideon Orka wanted to excise in his failed coup attempt in 1990. Could this be a coincidence or the dawn of a plot? The brazen attitude of politicians to the few national consociational strategies, the anachronistic call for regional federalism, and the violent hostilities and cleavages in the middle and northern parts of Nigeria, all point to an increasing sabotage of the few measures taken to forge a national identity.

Back in 1990s, the core of Gideon Orka’s speech was preceded by an intense focus on the ‘Hausa –Fulani Hegemony’ discourse by the southern press, in beer parlors and group lamentations in the middle belt and the south. Orka summarized the theme of the discourse in his startling coup speech by saying; ‘Our history is replete with numerous and uncontrollable instances of callous and insensitive dominatory repressive intrigues by those who think it is their birthright to dominate till eternity the political and economic privileges of this great country to the exclusion of the people of the Middle Belt and the South. They have almost succeeded in subjugating the Middle Belt and making them voiceless and now extending same to the South’.

Orka’s coup was foiled and his speech was ostensibly condemned, but the discourse of ‘Hausa-Fulani domination’ continued until, using the same prism, the ‘Yoruba ascendancy’ of 1999, when Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn-in as an Executive President of Nigeria. After that, the discourse on hegemony miraculously disappeared from the national newspapers, or has it? There were sudden agitations for a national conference and the anachronistic campaign to reconsider our federation. These discourses, mainly in the press again, culminated in Obasanjo inaugurating a National Political Reform Conference in 2005 whose final days were deadlocked on issues of resource control rather than on other issues like structure of governance, electoral reforms and party formations.

Bringing up an issue that many prefer to be subterranean is important because educated Nigerians prefer to adopt different personas for different occasions. This penchant is more so with the ruling elites. Different personas are adopted for different occasions, inter –religious forums, multi-ethnic and inter-regional conversations, and most importantly at various national political forums where this miasmic posturing is taken to a phony extent. These personas never really reflect actual beliefs and feelings portrayed in religious, ethnic, political, and other unicultural solidarity forums.

It is when these variegated personas are played on the national stage, that it becomes hypocritically nauseating. A typical example is the recent inauguration of a 22-member panel comprising Nigerians from different professions, religions, and culture to investigate ‘remote and immediate causes’ of the 2011 post election violence. The committee is one among several others setup in the past to investigate violent conflicts. However, as in all others, in the end, the central point will be missed; that the mobs that went on rampage in Akwa Ibom, Gusau, Kaduna, Kafanchan etc do not have the split personas of the ruling elites. Their world spaces (waltensung) are limited to whatever little knowledge they have of their religion, their unmasked view of the ‘others’ and the political and economic disadvantages they experience.

We are actually running parallel societies of western educated citizens who are capable of variegated solidarity personas and the lumpen who do not have these different senses of solidarity. The situation is worst in the northern states where the gap between a western educated person and a petty trader who went through the gardi system of traditional education is abysmal. These social and identity gaps remain a fodder for cycles of violence. No sooner does this cycle of violence rear its head than our leaders appear on the media with the same banalities, ‘a call on all Nigerians to eschew their differences’ and ‘to learn how to live together with one another’. What will teach Nigerians to live together? Forging a nationhood goes beyond such platitudes! Successful nation building requires more than false piety and appeal to duties by political leaders. Since 1963, Nigeria is actually regressing in terms of forging a national identity because the very elites who are beneficiaries of the state are continuously attacking the few representational and consociational strategies designed to forge nationhood.

There is nothing wrong with 250 ethnic groups staying together in a national boundary whose creation has a historical source. Several countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe are facing similar challenges that Nigeria is facing. Ethnic and religious loyalties have proven as great challenges to establishing democratic governments all over the world. In Africa and Asia however, such cleavages are leaving many nations tittering on failure. It is important to realize that the advanced countries of the west that are taken as benchmarks for development have no extensive ethnic organizations that impede their national identities.

Here in Nigeria and indeed the whole of Africa, there is need to take the strategies designed to mitigate the failure of nation states seriously. The strategies, based mainly on representation and consociation are not whimsical but well thought out. States and local governments’ creation started after the civil war to replace regionalism and to ensure representation and veto power among the various ethnic groups. Similarly, the Federal Character policy is designed to ensure proportionality in legislative seats, government positions, and distribution of public funds. It is nefarious for some groups to turn the clock back by calling for sovereign regions, to question federal character representation, or to toy with consociational strategies as was done during this republic. At this stage in our history, we need a strong federal government that will be a true grand coalition at the centre that is capable of dealing with elements that are bent on undermining our mutual trust and emphasizing divisive identities. The federal and state governments can accelerate the path to unity and development by working furiously to eliminate the scandalous social and economic gaps existing in the country.