By Oluwole Ogundele
Nigeria means the “Niger Area”. It was coined by Flora Shaw, a British journalist who later became Lord Lugard’s girlfriend during the tail end of the 19th century. This vast landmass with numerous autonomous kingdoms and chiefdoms was once administered by the Royal Niger Company, with its headquarters in Lokoja, now the capital city of Kogi State, central Nigeria. Nigeria was sold to the British government like a personal property in 1899. But despite this huge disrespect to the sensibilities of the various ethnicities that formed the geo-polity, the local political leadership should have learnt to rise above the mess. The new administration headed by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu can begin to change the narrative as quickly as possible.
In this connection, visionary leadership is of the essence. Nigeria can still become a prosperous country, despite the numerous challenges being faced now. The roots of our backwardness or challenges are traceable to the trans-Atlantic slave trade (from the mid-15th century) and colonisation (between 1861 and 1960). At least 250 ethnicities such as the Yoruba, Edo, Igbo, Itsekhiri, Urhobo, Ijaw, Igala, Idoma, Tiv, Hausa, Kanuri, Berom, and Ebira were the owners of the vast territory christened Nigeria in 1914, with the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Protectorates by Britain. Each one of these ethnic groups profitably managed its socio-economic space before the advent of Europe. There was historical and archaeological evidence of progression in terms of cultural/technological formations. These developments were difficult to neatly separate from the phenomenon of flows and interconnections. There is also a great deal of comparative/historico-linguistic evidence to support this claim. In other words, today’s ethnic groups have some shared values and social histories. Each Nigerian language including other facets of culture is kaleidoscopic in nature.
Nigeria has to begin to derive benefits from its cultural diversity. We should stop seeing our multi-cultural/multi-ethnic position as an encumbrance to sustainable peace and progress. The country has a wide range of huge natural resources to craft a prosperous landscape, despite the large human population. It is time to stop showing a lamentable lack of understanding of Nigeria’s chequered history. Humanity is about giving and taking with a view to creating new identities embedded in freshness.
Most (if not all) countries are rooted in the domain of cultural multi-dimensionality and of course, fluidity. Thus, for example, geo-polities such as Spain, Canada, UK, US, China, Japan, and Malaysia are multi-cultural/multi-ethnic. Major ethnicities in Spain (with a population of over 43 million people) include the Castilians and Catalan. The heterogeneous character of most segments of the global village, is defined and ruled by unending human migrations. However, the scenarios did not stop these nations from moving forward.
It is on record, that peoples were migrating as far south as Nigeria following the desiccation of the Sahara about 5000 years ago or thereabouts. This was anchored to climate change with the attendant severe droughts.
It is a pity, that after over six decades of independence from Britain, most Nigerian political leaders are still unable to rise above ethnic/religious sentiments, as if their cognitive capacities have gone to sleep. Nigeria’s disunity is an advantage to the industrialised world. Consequently, this smarter segment of the global village continues to have a field day. Nigeria, a microcosm of Africa also needs to confront externalist political machinations with uncommon sophistication. Our huge natural resources have become a curse as opposed to a blessing. Nigeria has to demonstrate a much greater degree of political maturity in order not to get drowned in the turbulent ocean of modern globalisation. According to a popular Yoruba adage, “if there were no cracks on a wall, lizards would not be able to enter it (the wall)”.
Nigeria must engineer its own indigenous ideologies as a precondition for sustainable peace and progress. The current concept of federal character with respect to sharing of political positions is good. However, it should not be abused at all. Mediocrities must not be allowed to occupy sensitive positions just on the basis of ethnic/religious affiliation or cronyism. Ethnic/religious sentiments are often whipped up by our politicians only out of expediency, not principle. Thus, for example, after a round of elections, the parliamentarians sit together in the National Assembly to promote their self-interest. This includes lousy salaries/allowances, while the ordinary citizens continue to groan under the weight of unprecedented material poverty. None of these politicians remember the issue of religion or ethnicity. They only talk of religion or ethnicity during electioneering campaigns. Indeed, our unrepentant political class is Nigeria’s splitting headache. It was/is most worrying, that in the twilight of weeks of the Buhari administration, a humongous foreign loan was approved by the parliamentarians. This was an additional burden to posterity. Patriotism is almost stone dead in this country.
The presidential elections of 1993 showed that the ordinary Nigerians were not a bunch of morons. Nigerians did not vote along ethnic/religious lines. Bashir Tofa was defeated by M.K.O. Abiola (a Yoruba man) in Kano, the former’s homeland. That was robust democracy in action! If a man needed food, he would not bother about the religion or ethnicity of the bringer of rice or pounded yam to him. He would not worry about whether or not the food was coming from a Muslim or a Christian or even a Babalawo (spiritualist). This is a common sense matter. The Nigerian development crisis is due largely to a class struggle between the down-trodden masses and the hedonistic political rulership (with the desperation of the latter to maintain the status quo). Were Christians better off when Nigerians were under the sway of Christian leaders in the Aso Rock Complex? What exactly did Muslims gain while their fellow Muslims were in charge of the socio-economic engine complex of this country? Under the Buhari administration, arising from a Muslim-Christian arrangement, federal university lecturers began to earn much less than those in Polytechnics, Monotechnics, Colleges of Education, and State varsities. This is an unpardonable, unprecedented aberration in Nigeria’s history.
Nigerians need economic prosperity tied to the apron strings of safety, security, regular electric power supply, motorable roads, education, and good health facilities. Succinctly put, good governance is the panacea for progress, not primordial impulses enshrined in religion and/or ethnicity.
It is the country’s selfish, corrupt leadership that engenders ethnic tensions/struggles in the land. In other words, aggravated hegemonic struggles are a manifestation of missed opportunities by the political rulership. Every Nigerian ruler is eager to join those who are raping mother Nigeria, as if demons from all over the globe are now let loose upon this collective heritage. Nigeria is not the only country with ethnic/religious plurality. Indeed, if the 36 states in the geo-polity were turned into separate countries, the amount of fierce rivalry between the ethnicities/sub-ethnicities in each of these new countries would still make economic progress a wild goose chase. The ordinary people would continue to agonise. Nigeria needs a much more sophisticated political culture embedded in unalloyed patriotism in order to get out of the woods.