By Comrade Sanusi A. S. Maikudi
Nigeria is a vast human, political, social, and economic enterprise of over 200 million people. Within its 924,000 square kilometres live two distinct types of citizens: the Social Citizens and the Natural Citizens.
The Natural Citizens such as the soil, plants, animals, rivers, air, rains, insects, birds, reptiles, hills, valleys, and all elements of the ecosystem are fully aware of the existence of their human compatriots. They house and sustain them, quietly ensuring that life is possible.
Water cures but can also be the most threatening natural citizen if it is not tasteless and clean!.
But the Social Citizens, in their parochialism, live as if the Natural Citizens do not matter. They dwell in golden prisons of tribe, religion, political party, region, social class, gender, age, and technology. They thrive better in solidarity, yet refuse to build a lasting solidarity ecosystem compromising their own resilience. Instead, they exist in perpetual competition, conflict, controversy, and shallow collaborations, leaving no room for true cooperation.
Their founding fathers once laid a foundation for mutual understanding and unity, but greed, arrogance, and short-sightedness made them discard it in favour of the temporary luxuries of their comfort zones.
Meanwhile, the Natural Citizens have worked in harmony for millennia, maintaining delicate balances through symbiosis. But humans; those “basket mouths” and “bags of water” have provoked them by refusing to listen, by destroying ecosystems, and by ruling with imperial arrogance over earth’s resources.
When patience runs out, the Natural Citizens speak and they speak powerfully. In recent times, Nigeria has heard their voice:
Floods ravaging Kogi, Anambra, and Bayelsa in 2022, displacing hundreds of thousands.
Windstorms and gully erosion tearing through communities in Anambra and Edo.
Desertification advancing across Yobe and Borno, swallowing farmlands.
Oil spills and poisoned waters in the Niger Delta. Heatwaves and irregular rainfall patterns affecting farming in Sokoto and Zamfara.
Landslides in Cross River and Ebonyi.
Yet, after each mighty speech, the Social Citizens close ranks in false solidarity, calling these natural messages “disasters,” “hazards,” “risks,” or “catastrophes.”
Martin Luther King Jr. once warned: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” For that, they called him a fool and assassinated him.
Today, the warning is clearer than ever: The Natural Citizens are more powerful, more resilient, and more enduring than the Social Citizens. If we truly want to make Nigeria better for all Nigerians, we must listen to the Other Citizens not merely when they roar in disaster, but when they whisper in balance.
Call to Action
It is time for a national covenant between Social and Natural Citizens.
Let us rebuild solidarity not just among ourselves, but with the rivers, forests, soils, and skies that make life possible. Let us live and govern not as masters of the land, but as stewards.
The primordial and partisan walls dividing into golden prisons must give way to common humanity and multicultural social, political and environmental responsibility.
If we fail to listen, the other citizens will speak again more loudly, and perhaps for the last time.
The author, a FNIM, is of the Kaduna based Network for Justice
