By Mike Kebonkwu Esq
In one of his majestic endorsement of the multivocal imperative, the late Chinua Achebe compared wisdom to a goatskin bag: everyone carries his or her own. This essay is in tandem with that imperative in canvassing its own wisdom on the Nigerian project which has remained a volatile subject of different standpoint and practices of late. Read on!
There comes a time in the life of a man that he has to take a deep reflection to examine himself. The same is true of a country and its people, taking a good look at the mirror to appreciate its image. Great Empires had risen and fallen and even modern democracies have had to break up and go their separate ways without bloodletting. Soviet Union has broken up into dozen other countries without bloodshed. Britain recently left the European Union but they are still doing business together.
This is that time for Nigeria to take a second look and ask itself some basic and fundamental questions. Are we satisfied with the state of Nigeria today with this ethnic hatred and animosity that is fuelling insecurity in the country? Are we comfortable to continue in this carnage and bloodshed across the country with no hope in sight? Indeed, is this country viable in its present temper and form? We may as customary, choose to be politically correct but at what cost?
We seem to be so emotionally attached to the country only in name and nothing more while our leaders see it as an object of fancy to exploit. The letters of the Constitution may have elegantly stated that Nigeria is indissoluble and indivisible sovereign entity but that beautiful phrase did not emanate from the sovereign will of the people. Let’s not deceive ourselves: our living together is not cast in iron.
The entities and nationalities in the political space called Nigeria are unequal partners who do not share common value, ancestry, customs and tradition and no conscious effort has been made to gravitate towards a coherent whole with friendship and assimilation. This is in the main because we have tribal and ethnic leaders whose first loyalty is to their ethnic groups and religion above every other consideration.
No one can decree peace in a country amongst hostile entities with irreconcilable differences through the barrel of the gun. You can only have peace through understanding of a shared value of a common heritage and tolerance. For as long as some federating unit display arrogance of ethnic superiority over others, people will feel uncomfortable in the union and there will always be friction and bloodshed. This was the reason for the gruesome genocide of the Rwandan massacre of the ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutus during the 1994 civil war. Let us not wish away the Nigerian experience and the 30 months Civil war in the late 1960s which had a similar tenor; we are yet not ‘one Nigeria’.
The problems are still very much with us but we have been living a lie and playing the ostrich pretending that the problems are not there. Beautiful as the aftermath of the three “Rs” (Reconstruction, Reintegration and Reconciliations) after the civil war, again, let us ask ourselves whether reconstruction, reintegration and reconciliation was deep enough. Whatever action we have taking in running the country has been veiled behind the facade of ethnic fear and suspicion. The mortifying characterisation of ethnic groups has become an emblematic plague that at the drop of a hat we are ready to chop off the head of someone that do not share the same ethnicity and religion with us.
The South East and the core Ibo group that constitutes the third largest ethnic group appear to have been condemned to deprivation of the leadership of the country as a result of the civil war. While this is true, they have played the victim of this rogue theory and unwritten rule enough and should wake up and interrogate post civil war politics of their leaders and elite which unfortunately is self-centred and mercantile in nature. The Igbo elite see negotiation for presidency as a make up to assuage their perceived grievances to bring them to the mainstream of the Nigerian state. Those who feel that patronage and pacification of the Ibos is the magic bullet will soon realize that they are scratching the surface.
No country grows on the manure of hatred and resentment and sadly our political leaders and religious clerics are the ones promoting the ethnic fault lines and stoking the ember of hatred. We are fixated on the constitution as the problem and do not want to look at other indices and variables. There can never be a perfect document and when you have a leader with supremacist mentality even the best of document can be employed for tyranny. We saw this recently with the former American President, Donald Trump who literarily attempted to subvert the elections results through a coup d’état using extremist racist elements in the country.
Now take a deep breath to consider the constant news item in Nigeria in the last six years and you will discover that insecurity, insurgency, ethnic attacks and banditry are about the only thing you hear, whether it is in the print, electronic or social media. Our diversities have been magnified and mismanaged more than ever before by the Buhari led APC government who make mockery of inclusiveness in his government. The President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria no doubt is overwhelmed by the crises rocking the nation resorting to strong arms tactic as a solution and selective justice.
There is no department of state bureaucracy that offers hope of any kind. The economy has not received any face lift as the country runs on a wheel of debt and government has gone berserk on borrowing spree. The country is not running on any consistent economic model to give vibrancy to 21st century growth. We still have huge infrastructural deficit. Our road networks are in a state of disrepair and unemployment has remained unabated. Schools and homes are unsafe and government would not tolerate criticism but responds with fascistic sinew. This is the stark reality that we try to pretend does not exist while government is talking down on Nigerians as ingrates.
The national Assembly is unfortunately peopled by men with weak intellect and jelly foot without soul of their own. The APC led government has literarily given up on the security situation in the country when the President himself declared that they have done their best in terms of security and we should resort to prayers. Even if we run a theocratic state which we are not, security of life and property should not be left to ecclesiastic intervention and prayer warriors.
The politicians and elites seem fixated on 2023 elections and political transition and peaceful handover of power. Elections and peaceful transition of power is not a pressing problem to us as a nation at the moment. The separatist leader, Nnamdi Kanu may have been arrested but we will soon realize that he did not posed as much challenge to our national survival as the government would want us to believe more than the problems that birthed him. Going after Igboho Sunday is a huge distraction as he is just a product of the failure of the state to live up to its constitutional responsibility of securing lives and property of citizens. If you run an inclusive government devoid of nepotism, bigotry and ethnic arrogance and preferences, everything will fall in step. But this is not the case with us at the moment.
Instructively, the government has not deployed the same force and resources against Kanu and his IPOB to combating the insurgency and banditry which some religious cleric as their guru and spokesperson has continuously justified. Notwithstanding circumstances of the creation of the Nigerian State, a peaceful, harmonious multi ethnic, multi religious and secular Nigeria was possible but for the misfortune of medieval rulers with flawed vision of a modern state.
The fundamental problem of the country since inception is the irreconcilable cultural differences between the ethnic nationalities which have calcified. We have therefore become all the more intolerant and sensitive to religion and ethnicity more than anything else ennobling to bind people together.
We should be honest enough to admit that the ethnic nationalities of the federating states in Nigeria do not have shared values in culture and tradition and also in ideology. We have ethnic characterizations that fuel resentment and animosities and this is often shown in the way we live away from our geographical regions.
We have Hausa quarters in most places in the south where northerners live while non indigenes in the entire north also live in Sabo areas of the northern towns and villages reserved predominantly for those who do not share their language and religious fate.
President Buhari himself has proclivity to rabid ethnic and religious bigotry completely inured to inclusiveness and federal character. To him, equity means to favour his kinsmen and bonding more with his distant cousins in the neighbouring Niger Republic as greater than uniting and harmonious relationship with other ethnic nationalities in the country.
People talking about restructuring do not know exactly where to draw the line; we want to eat our cake and have it by trying to be politically correct; whether it is true federalism or any other idea anybody harbouring. The choice before us as a nation is first to address the fundamental question whether we want to continue to live together as one Nigeria and what terms. Enough of these cleavages of Northern governors forum, Southern governors forum, Arewa Youths, Oodua youths, Ohaneze this and that which promote mediocrity and which are all foreboding omen that we are not one. If it be, “to your tents O Isreal”, so be it instead of turning the whole country into a grave yard.
The author is of Koyen-Hi Kebonkwu Chambers, Wuse Zone 5, Abuja – Nigeria and is reachable on 08055065075
