To flee your fate is to rush to find it, so observes a famous Arab proverb. It is just as well. Ethnic termites are crawling out of the woodwork in Nigeria.
In the hostile psychological jungle of multi-ethnic nations, ethnic chauvinism is a psychic weapon against adversity. But since it stifles the inter-ethnic cooperation and collaboration necessary for envisioning a new order, it is also the surest formula for continuing underdevelopment.
After the elections comes the demon of ethnic chauvinism and its implications for the national project. The euphoria of a record breaking election and its record breaking aftermath had hardly subsided when a nasty ghost stole in to jolt us out of our reverie, reminding us of unfinished business. These old ghosts can be very remorseless and implacable indeed.
An apparently off the cuff remark by Oba Rilwan Akiolu, the influential and irrepressible Eleko himself, to a visiting group of Igbo notables has sparked off an ethnic firefight the like of which has not been seen in recent times.
In a manner reminiscent of Lagos circa 1948 when the deadly duel for political ascendancy between the Yoruba coastal aristocracy and the emergent Igbo elite first reared its ugly head, the current elites of the two remarkable Nigerian ethnic nationalities both at home and in the Diaspora simply lined up behind tribal ensigns presaging the eruption of ancestral animosities.
It was not a pretty sight. General Buhari has just been shown a sneak preview of the nation he has inherited. He has his work cut out for him.
Yet by the end of the week, it has apparently turned out to be a storm in a tea cup, or a repression of the returning. Common sense and political sagacity intervened on both sides.
The problem with ethnic chauvinism is that it is such a deep-seated and entrenched group feel that it cannot be resolved by political fiat but by social engineering and the working out of implacable national contradictions.
Anybody of Yoruba extraction familiar with royal rhetorical flights of fancy, its metaphorical flourishes should be able to contextualize Oba Akiolu’s fire and brimstone fulminations in all their grim, terroristic hectoring as nothing but instances of royal yabis. How many military divisions does Kabiyesi have? When was the last time an Oba of Lagos herded human beings into the Lagos lagoon?
All of this, of course, would amount to cold comfort to an Igbo native who is culturally alien to Oba Akiolu’s flamboyant signifiers and who is bound to grasp the import of the message in its hair raising, horror-dripping literalness. You cannot blame such folks. The Igbo community is right to express a legitimate outrage.
But it would seem that some Igbo sectors in spite of their legitimate outrage crossed the boundary into churlishness and tribal contumely by demanding an apology from the Oba of Lagos.
This is an illegitimate affront on the Yoruba race. A Yoruba Oba does not apologise to anybody. This is the whole meaning of Kabiyesi. (He who cannot be queried or questioned)
It is, admittedly, a dialogue of the deaf. To a non-Yoruba person, this might sound like some meaningless cultural gobbledygook; a dogged mystification of a profoundly secular matter. It seems we are back to the very constitution and contradictions of the post-colonial subject in a modern nation-state.
The secular and rational plank on which an apology is demanded from the Oba of Lagos is that Nigerian is a republican state and not a monarchy.
Yoruba nationalists might retort that Nigeria may be a republican state but there are monarchical enclaves within the nation-space and there is nothing anybody can do about that.
In pre-colonial society, the Oba had a fatherly responsibility to all subjects under his domain. Everybody was free to ply his trade, religion and creed but with the signal proviso that there must be substantial compliance with the cultural ethos and ethics of the host community in order to maintain societal harmony and cohesion.
Whosoever steps out of line is immediately whipped back either by physical force or by metaphysical agencies and enforcers acting as ideological apparatchiks of the native state.
Some traditional cultures take this to another level by summarily banishing prospective settlers to the outer margins beyond the city walls.
In their culturally circumscribed imaginary, these are nothing but citadels of sin and permissiveness where they can indulge in what looks to the indigenes as cultural shenanigans as long as they do not disturb the walled sanity of their host community. If they do, the infraction is met with swift and severe reprisal that did not exclude mass expulsion.
The advent of colonialism and the modern nation-state has whittled down the power, influence and authority of traditional institutions. In truth, no one who has tasted the liberating tonic of modernity would wish to return to the dark days of traditional despotism.
Yet that notwithstanding, the Yoruba people and most Nigerian nationalities retain a great respect and reverence for their traditional rulers.
The unintended consequence of the sacrilegious insult to the Lagos throne is to rouse a dormant Lagosian Yoruba ultra-nationalism in a way it has not been roused since the late forties. It has led to a sense of a great siege among a normally tolerant and accommodating people.
Apart from the long term possibilities of ethnic tension leading to an unimaginably apocalyptic tribal conflagration, snooper will eat his tongue if this does not increase the size of Akin Ambode’s winning margin this Saturday.
In a multi-ethnic nation, tribal narcissism often provokes tribal narcissism as a countervailing, self-protecting measure. As it was the case in Georgian Lagos which directly led to the ascendancy of Obafemi Awolowo as an avatar of his people and in 1966 when it led to pogrom and a civil war, so it may well be in the emergent conjuncture. The past is a dark mirror for remembering the future.
Yet all of this would have been unnecessary had the enlightened Igbo community put on their thinking cap, and if their political leadership can be more politically discerning and be less consumed by irrational hatred of the Other. The history of human migration and shifting demographic complexion of an improbable megalopolis favour them in the long run.
In about a hundred years to come, the dynamics of a tumultuous mega-city would have altered the current demographic balance of power and the kind of meeting which took place last week at the Lagos palace would be virtually impossible.
If the dynamic, resourceful, adventurous and relentlessly advancing Igbo people continue along the same pattern and the Yoruba populace, as a result of empire hangover, remain lethargic, incurious, insular and unadventurous, the pattern of ownership and land distribution would have changed forever and it will be a new ball game.
But that is only if Nigeria remains a single country retaining its current format; that is only if unscrupulous greed and the penchant for political short-termism among the current dominant faction of the Igbo leadership do not topple the country into the abyss of chaos and disintegration. To whom much will be given, much is also expected. Otherwise by that time, we would be talking of stiff immigration control and tighter internal regulation of prospective emigrants.
From time immemorial and particularly since the advent of the post-Wesphalian modern nation-state, ethno-nationalism and ethnic chauvinism have been the bane of the human society. The British often dismiss the French as frog-eaters while Napoleon famous put down of England as a nation of shopkeepers still rings a bell. The French contempt for what they consider as America’s lack of culture and finesse finds epic summation in the short pithy putdown: “Les Americaines!”
The good thing about this European tribal fencing is that they take place within the confines of respected borders. The world would have ended a long time ago were the British, the Germans, the French and the Americans to be packed into the asphyxiating cage of the same nation. Even then beginning from 1870 when the Germans memorably drubbed the sophisticated French to 1914 when the First World War erupted with the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, western nations chalked up among themselves about thirty one wars of ethno-national supremacy.
African , Middle East and Asian nationalities are not so lucky having been boxed into convenient colonial cages of apocalyptic contraries against their will and wish. This is not even a question of strong states and weak states. As we have seen in the tragedy of Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, strong states which try to liquidate the national question by forcible suppression merely postpone the apocalyptic meltdown.
It has been said that mankind is principally a political animal. But humankind is primarily a homo economicus with economic warfare often disguised as political hostilities. Nigerians should ask themselves why it is so that the most vicious and virulent strains of ethnic nationalism rear their head whenever there is an ongoing brutal contention about who controls what economy.
This is precisely what happened around 1948 with the advent of Yoruba nationalism in the nascent nation, in 1962 with the attempted take over of the buoyant economy of the old west and the summary liquidation of Awolowo’s ambition, in 1993 with the dramatic annulment of Abiola’s victory because it was an economic threat to northern plutocratic generals, in 1999 with the rise of Obasanjo and Sharia as mere decoy and now in 2015 and the dramatic dethronement of the ruling party which has led the Igbo political elite holding the wrong end of the stick. It can now be seen in immediate retrospect that Oba Akiolu’s fatwa and the hysterical reaction to it is all part of a complex struggle for economic control of Lagos.
Yet as we have noted, without inter-ethnic cooperation and collaboration, without the consent and consensus of a fractious political elite, Nigeria cannot be envisioned anew or be made amenable to radical surgery and major re-engineering necessary for the greater wellbeing of the greatest majority of Nigerians.
As we have said last week, General Buhari has his work cut out for him. The task ahead requires not just a strong political will but exemplary political skills and great dexterity. He can no longer rule by military fiat and therefore a creative and proactive presidency is mandatory. As a first step, the general must take a look at the current structural configuration of the country which has made it impossible to liberate the complementary genius of our various people or for power to be wielded for productive purposes.
