The Nigerian Army this past week came up with the following Press Release in respect of some young Kaduna state indigenes who were recruited into the Army as if they are Lagos state indigenes at the ongoing recruitment exercise:
“The attention of the Nigerian Army has been drawn to a circulating video on social media depicting the arrest of some fraudulent candidates at the ongoing 86 Regular Recruits Intake, who were caught attempting to short-change indigenous candidates of Lagos State through dubious means.
The NA wishes to state that the arrest of the fraudulent candidates was a result of the commitment of the NA in upholding a transparent and credible recruitment process in line with its core values of integrity and fairness. The video is a pointer to one of the processes to which the candidates were subjected in order to ensure that only genuine indigenes of a particular State are recruited, using the slots of that state and not non indigenes.
The video itself clearly shows that the process is transparent, as the State Representative, who is a prominent member of the recruitment team, has been part and parcel of the process and was given unhindered access to do her job by scrutinizing the candidates’ state of origin, to ascertain the genuineness of their indigeneship claims”.
Please note the words SHORT – CHANGE.
The Nigerian Army deserves nothing but commendation for this very patriotic action, not just for demonstrating transparency and ensuring equity, but for pointing Nigeria forward to the way, and manner, it should handle matters in which fairness should, mandatorily, apply to ensure equity in matters involving Nigerians of diverse ethnic and cultural background, that is, citizens of a multi – ethnic Nigeria.
What readily comes to mind, therefore, are elections into the National Assembly as well as state House of Assembly and local government council Areas.
The extant position of the National Assembly is as follows:”The National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a bicameral legislature established under section 4 of the Nigerian Constitution. It consists of a Senate with 109 members and a 360-member House of Representatives.
The body, modeled after the federal Congress of the United States, is supposed to GUARANTEE EQUAL REPRESENTATION(of states and peoples) with 3 senators to each 36 state, irrespective of size in the Senate, and 1 senator representing the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja”.
For equity the above should, automatically, render illegal, instances of non – indigenes of a state, contesting election into any of the Local Government council Areas, the State House of Assembly and the National Assembly, with a view to representing a district where he/she is, at best, only a sojourner, as a Senator, member House of Representatives, the state House or even LGA.
This aberration, became prevalent within the rancorous Lagos state Peoples Democratic Party since 1999 because its leaders have not only always been quarrelling among themselves, fighting over funds sent from its Abuja headquarters rather than working in harmony to ensure victory at elections. Since what is paramount to them is to corner such funds, the party in the state, has failed, woefully since the return to civilian rule in 1999, a whole 25 years, to win any state wide election, perennially playing second fiddle in the state.
This was always the source of their quarrels, especially ahead of elections. In an effort to make up for their lack of both political strategy and electoral support in the state, they have always, cheaply, resorted to gifting non indigenes the chance to contest elections, especially in constituencies where the ethnic group of such persons are hugely concentrated hoping to have easy victories even without putting in the necessary hard work.
What is particularly nauseating is the fact that you find a preponderance of this lazy approach to electoral victory within the Lagos state PDP, except that their cousins, the Labour party, in the same state, also employed the same “working to the answer” tactics in the 2023 general elections, the reason they both met their Waterloo.
Unlike this laizerfaire Omo Eko political strategy, politicians in other parts of the country, always prefer to work their hearts out at achieving victory in elections, with considerable success.
The result has been that though these Lagos state PDP big wigs have controlled the party in the state since inception, they have had nothing to show as success, the reason many of the party’s erstwhile consequential leaders are now back in the progressive political camp, e g APC, where they originally cut their political teeth.
Galling and indeed, puke inducing, is the fact that the usual beneficiaries of this lazy man’s tactics, are those who cannot let go of even a mere councillorship seat back home, being ever so protective of whatever is theirs.
Broadly concerning Indigeneship, gamji.com posits that:”First, there are fundamental differences between indigeneship and citizenship, both theoretically and practically”. “Whereas indigeneship is a natural link between a person and a geographical location – his ancestral home – where he traces his roots through a blood lineage and genealogy that puts him in contact with his kin and kindred, citizenship is a man-made arrangement that seeks to confer on a person certain rights that are enjoyed by all persons in a certain geographical location”.
“Secondly, citizenship has limitations that militate against complete assimilation and participation in the activities of the people whose citizenship is bestowed on an individual while indigeneship, in most instances, does not contain such restrictions”. “Whereas non indigenes can participate in the political, social and religious activities of their areas of residence, (up to a point) the fact that legislative seats are allocated to states on basis of equality in Nigeria, and EVERY NIGERIAN BELONGS TO A PARTICULAR STATE, non indigenes should, under no circumstances, be eligible to stand election into a legislative body in any state, other than his or her own.
Rather, those keen on contesting elections into any legislative body should relocate back home to his /her state of origin to satisfy that yearning; the only difference being an election to the office of the President, or Vice – President, neither of which is constitutionally allocated to any state of the federation.
This is not a lacuna that payment of taxes in any state can cure because you cannot, on the basis of paying your tax, rob another state, and its peoples, of what legitimately belongs to them. It is also not an instance where we can begin to compare apples with oranges, citing what happens in the UK or the US, because Nigeria is neither.
The gamji.com article, in fact, makes this difference very explicit when it states as follows:”Let’s take a look at the US which represents, to many misinformed Nigerians, the ideal of assimilated citizenship. By nature, the US is an immigrant country which means that most residents not only perceive, but recognize and acknowledge, themselves as settler-lords. The Native Americans (which were initially known as American Indians) are recognized as the indigenes (in fact the term native is indicative of this status) and are accorded certain rights and privileges that are not universal in the country. Among the immigrant population (i. e non-native Americans), there are citizens by birth (those born in the US or whose parents are citizens of US ) and those that are bestowed (immigrants into the US who have been accorded citizenship status).
These are recognized officially as those that could contest for elections into political offices. However, no matter how long you have stayed in the US, and no matter the level of contribution to the development of the country, you are not eligible to contest elections to the office of the President of the United States of America unless you are a citizen of the US by birth”.
For whatever it is worth, the National Assembly should make laws to explicitly state this so that it would become a bounden duty of INEC to ensure that only indigenes of any Nigerian state qualify to contest any legislative election therein.
Back then to the instant case of the young Army recruits. I would wish to plead that for offering to serve Nigeria, they should be pardoned their offence, promptly released and redeployed to the recruitment centre in their geo- political zone.
However, should government insist on punishing them, then it should go a step further: arrest whoever it was who facilitated their crime by furnishing them with Lagos State indigeneship certificate, and punish him or her too.
It’s only then we can say that justice has been served.
Finally, Gamji.com left us, Nigerians, with the following posers to ponder. I plead we seriously do so:
Is an organizational structure based on indigeneship, as it is now, the best for Nigeria ? Do we need a change from this traditional arrangement that has, as its core, the culturally expedient and accepted concept of indigeneship?
Or
Are we ready to let go our individual and collective prejudices in favour of a new organizational structure for Nigeria?
