By Afolabi Ige Esq.
Following the recent restraining/taming of the IPOB tendencies in the Lagoon city state, the whole media space: social, new, orthodox and protestants have been agog with reactions most of which are half-hearted, half-baked, misrepresentative and misleading.
Questions has been raised about our nationhood simply because the landlords in the particularly most liberal state of Lagos have risen up against a particular dangerous tendency peeping to gain ascendancy in the state.
These narratives more often from my “obidients” friends and their sympathizers cast aspersions on our journey of nationhood as if it is meant to be a day assignment or a journey without conductors and gatekeepers.
Nigeria is a country of many nations undertaking a journey to one nation!
If nationhood is a destination through the route of creative statehood then Nigeria of today is indeed at best a country of nations bound together by statehood. In fact that was what was negotiated at our pre-independence conferences by our fathers and that was the Nigeria of the First Republic, the era we now relishes as the golden era. It was not an accident but a statecraft of the British colonialists. Building a nation of nations is not a mince meat in any human society. So Nigeria is on the way. Far from being a finished project but very incorrect and naysaying, to say we haven’t started. Nobody starts from perfection to perfection but mostly from trials to perfection.
We are on course and Lagos is a shinning model of what Nigeria should aspire to be and so we must allow the good work to continue on the established trajectory of intellectualism, creativity and urbane-ness. We can’t afford “sit at homes” every Monday in Lagos without slipping into genocide. The best and only way to avoid a xenophobia in Nigeria starting from Lagos is to keep in check the tendency through our politics and that was what happened last Saturday in Lagos. It is for the good of all not to allow our journey to be disrupted again the way it was done in January 1966 by the mutineers. We should rather continue to improve on our federalism in such a way that the different nations within Nigeria first find fulfilment and happiness and therefrom embrace the journey to a Nigeria nation pursuing come goals and ideals. With benefit of hindsight, our greatest challenge so far in the journey of our nationhood since 1960 was the military accident of 1966 which kept us in and out of hospital bed till 1999. Just 24 years after our discharge from 33 years infamy, we are now blowing American and British grammar as if that is all it takes to build a nation. Identity politics is part of humanity and without it we lost our human pride and dignity. We can integrate into a bigger global identity but it must be by integration and not by conquest or any imaginative figment of it. Lagos is the poster state of Yoruba hospitality. A land for all is not the same as no man’s land. While the former is used complimentarily, the latter is very assaulting to the ego of the landlord. The idea of a state in the Nigeria context is among other things cultural and that is why only Abuja is not a state but a Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria.
Yes, we have our fault lines sharpened by political competition but that is the way it is all over the world. Every people have their differing sensibilities which must be studied and respected. Politicians often explore this sensibilities but that is not limited to Africa or Nigeria.
Notwithstanding this, we are dutifully forging a nation where the Northern Governors of APC, the ruling party says it is the turn of the South to lead Nigeria after 8 straight years of PMB and they insisted, putting everything on the line. We have also gone ahead as hard as that may seem to smoothen one of our sharpest fault lines – religion, to elect a M/M ticket. That is how a nation evolves. That was how the Yoruba nation evolved from its internecine wars to become one Yoruba nation of today. That is evolution of nations.In that same Lagos State, my brother Joe Igbokwe is the Publicity Secretary of the ruling APC; my brother Ben Akabueze at a time was the longest serving Commissioner in Lagos and is today the DG budget office of the federation from Lagos. I have my other brothers and sisters in the House of Assembly like Desmond Elliot and some in the Federal House of Reps, I mean full blooded Igbos and Lagosians don’t give a hoot because they emerge through a competitive process that ensures they are the best! These have shown that anybody can be anything in Lagos but must earn the trust of Lagosians. Endsars’/IPOB activism are negative political credentials which anybody associated with must be kept at arms length of the corridor of political power until fully de-radicalized and reasonably seen to have been so.
•Afolabi Ige, a political analyst, writes from Abuja. Ng.