Citizenship and national identity challenges in Nigeria took the centre stage last week, at a national discourse organised by the National Peace Committee in collaboration with the European Union (EU) Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS.
The event which has “Discourse on Nigeria’s National Identity: Revisiting Indigene-Settler Question” as its theme, brought together diplomats, clerics, policymakers and civil society leaders.
Speaker after speaker took turns at the Abuja summit to warn on the daunting challenges facing citizenship and national identity due to the inability of our leaders to effectively manage diversity.
Convener of the National Peace Committee and Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah noted that national identity once occupied a central place in public discourse in 1980’s and 1990’s but regretted that unresolved tensions have turned nation-building into “syllabus of forced errors and crises”. The cleric stressed the “need to elevate the Nigerian identity to a higher pillar of common citizenship around which all other identities can stand”.
Kukah pointed out that failure to prioritise national identity over sub-national loyalties fuels mistrust, violence, and widening gaps between citizens’ expectations and state performance. “If we do not mend quickly, we shall break ultimately”, he warned.
Head of the EU Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Gautier Mignot wants Nigeria to resolve long-standing tensions around identity, citizenship and belonging to build a stable and prosperous future. He identified the imperative of dialogue especially amidst rising insecurity, communal tensions and social fractures.
“What is at stake is not merely social harmony but the essence of stability itself. Every citizen regardless of ancestry or length of settlement must enjoy the rights to reside, participate and prosper”, he stated, contending that constitutional guarantees must be realised in daily practice.
Mignot further argued that embedding residency rights and federal character principles into governance would help to dismantle discriminatory practices that weaken state legitimacy and impede development.
Director-General of National Orientation Agency (NOA), Lanre-Isa-Onilu highlighted the agency’s programmes to promote tolerance, peace, and inclusive citizenship while urging every Nigerian to recognise every citizen as a stakeholder beyond ethnicity or place of origin. Other speakers called for a new constitution to guarantee inclusiveness, participatory governance and residency-based rights.
The theme of the discourse and timing align with contemporary challenges of our time. Coming amidst rising insecurity and tensions which weaken citizens’ belief in the capacity of the government to protect them, such discussions reawaken our collective consciousness to all that needed to be done to stabilise the polity and accelerate national development.
At the centre of it are the inalienable rights of the people to live together with shared vision, common belonging and identity. It entails constructing a Nigerian personality out of the disparate groups that make up the country such that they see themselves first as Nigerians rather than members of their ethnic groups.
These issues are not necessarily new. But they have become more pronounced because of the inability of administration after administration to manage our diversities despite some measure of constitutional guarantees.
Even the federal character principle that is geared towards inclusivity has in many cases been applied in its breach. The assault on this pristine clause was so brazen during the last regime with the control of the commanding heights of the military, paramilitary and the highest echelon of bureaucracy in the hands of a section of the country. It fuelled feelings of exclusion, domination and alienation that incubate fission.
It is inconceivable how citizenship rights and national identity can grow and mature when the managers of our national affairs are neck-deep in promoting tendencies that nurture and promote recline to primordialism. Nigeria has become more divided and more fragmented than ever before since independence.
Policies meant to guarantee equity, fairness and inclusiveness are brazenly pushed to the back seat for political expediency. Nepotism and cronyism have become the major considerations for appointments into key government positions.
It is a verity of prebendalism, characterised by Richard Joseph as the capture of political power for the benefit of one’s family and that of his ethnic group that accounts for the bitter competition for political power among the dominant ethnic groups and the inability to evolve a rancour-free framework for power rotation.
Peter Eke’s theory of two publics has continued to find relevance in Nigeria, 65 years after independence. Competition between the primordial realm and the civic public for the loyalty of the citizens with the former having ascendancy, signposts the failure of a sense of national belonging and identity.
Ironically, such challenges are usually more pronounced during the foundation stages of modern states. At 65, Nigeria should have long left that stage. But its citizens are still engrossed in the crisis of national identity. And you cannot talk of citizenship when the average individual first regards himself as a member of his ethnic group.
That is the challenge. And matters are not remedied by cascading insecurity across the country that is pitching groups against others. Unmitigated violence associated with the activities of terrorists, killer herdsmen and bandits have also raised suspicions of domination and extermination.
These have had deleterious repercussions on the task of imbuing a culture of common identity in all citizens such that they begin to see themselves as Nigerians rather than members of their ethnic groups.
It is good a thing Kukah and Mignot took time to identify policy measures to promote citizenship rights and grow national belonging and identity. Sadly, the sentiments raised by the discussants as ennobling as they are, may not go beyond the four walls of the conference room. Why? Exclusion profits some people and those who benefit from it are unlikely to let go.
Exclusion has continued to define our politics as evident in the bitter competition by the ethnic groups to take a shot at the presidency. There is the increasing belief that the surest way an ethnic group can get the best from the national affairs is by having one of theirs ascend the presidency of the country. Even those that claim to be patriots or moderates have been found floundering on this issue.
They may pretend to be patriots, nationalists because of the positions they held in the past, but the reality is that they easily succumb to the ethnic card. The reality today is that ethnicity has become a major commodity packaged and marketed by the elite. But all hope is not lost.
It requires a leader with vision, one with uncommon political will to steer the ship of this country to the right direction; a leader with genuine committed to the progress and development of the country to put things right. Certainly, he will be cheered by a populace hungry for a break with the decadent past. Kukah’s warning that we either mend or break should be instructive enough.
