There are some Nigerians who think that the way to build a “Nigerian nation” is to destroy our various distinct nationalities and their cultures. Since independence in 1960, this has been the dominant direction of the policies of those who control our federal government. They have engaged in all sorts of manipulations aimed at depressing and gradually eliminating our various nationalities.
Their master strategy has been to build the federal government into the controller-in-chief of every minutest detail of public policy, resource control, and administration in our country. In that, they have succeeded considerably. And from that intoxicating mountain top, they have gradually eliminated the teaching of our indigenous languages, history and cultures from the curricula of our schools, subdued our state governments to implement the federal educational policies, and generally tried to raise a new generation of Nigerians with no roots in any of our indigenous nationalities or cultures – a new generation of culturally (and ethically) mangled, confused and opaque “Nigerians”.
Those who have allowed themselves to fall into this kind of thinking about the future of our country need to look more carefully at what they are doing and promoting. Any kind of folly can be romanticized and made to look attractive, but, in the final analysis, folly is folly. This aggressive integrationist approach to the building of Nigeria (or of any country) is folly unlimited. It will not only fail to “unite Nigeria”. Some influential Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Kanuri, Ijaw, etc of today may, for various reasons of their own, accept and promote the federal integrationist agenda for their nationalities. But if they succeed, they cannot thereby create a united Nigeria; what they are very likely to create would be something like a repellently monstrous Nigerian society – a Nigerian society in which Nigeria’s currently evolving character of the amoral, the greedy, the corrupt, the comprehensively disloyal, etc, will be ruthlessly dominant. From the vortex of this kind of society, there will almost certainly emerge someday a new generation of Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Kanuri, Ijaw, etc, that will embark upon reviving and recreating their authentic indigenous cultures and nationalities.
In short, the experience in our world is that indigenous nationalities and their cultures are near impossible to destroy. Men and women who find themselves in the position of leading and guiding a young country like Nigeria ought to look around them in the world – need to try and understand how certain things have evolved in older countries that are similar to our country. In the world, there are very many countries that are, like Nigeria, multi-ethnic – countries in which different nationalities live in their ancestral homelands. Many of these countries have existed for hundreds of years, and yet in none of them have the nationalities died out or fused into one integrated mixture. It doesn’t happen.
Let’s take the example of Spain. Spain has existed since the mid-15th century (that is about 600 years) as a country consisting of Spaniards, Catalans and Basques. The Spaniards have been the overwhelming majority since the beginning, and that, coupled with general mixing of the various peoples over time, has helped Spanish culture, especially the Spanish language, to spread quite strongly among the smaller nationalities. In fact, Spain came under a dictatorial regime in the first half of the last century, and the regime tried ruthlessly to suppress the identities, especially the languages, of the small nationalities – and declared their languages illegal. It didn’t work. In recent decades, the Catalans and Basques have revived their cultures and their languages very successfully. Both now want separate countries of their own out of Spain.
Britain (or the United Kingdom) has been a country consisting of the English, Scotts, Irish and Welsh for about 500 years. Because the English have been the largest nationality from the beginning, the English language has spread in the homelands of the other nationalities. Each of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales has large numbers of citizens from other homelands. Even so, each homeland belongs to its nation. In fact, every one of the Scotts, Irish and Welsh have been strongly reviving their cultures in recent times. Most of Ireland broke away in 1921 and created a separate Republic of Ireland, and the Scotts are now about to do the same. The smallest nationality, the Welsh, are now doing everything to revive their language, in order to make it the language of their own separate country which they hope to have soon.
Like Nigeria, India is a British-created, third-world, country, consisting of hundreds of nationalities. Fortunately for India, after the northern provinces broke away soon after independence, India’s political leaders agreed that the best policy was to respect each nationality and encourage each culture. It has worked wonderfully. An eminent Indian scholar and statesmen, S.D. Muni, sums up its effect as follows: “The elaborate structure of power devolution has combined with the linguistic basis of federal unity (the use of the linguistic nations as the basis for the states of the federation) to facilitate the management of cultural diversity in India and to help mitigate pulls towards separatism and disintegration”. Muni adds that both at the federal and state levels, Indians are dedicated to “a consciously followed approach to preserve and promote the cultural specificities of diverse groups” – that is, the federal government respects and encourages every culture, and each state that consists of two or more nationalities carefully respects and encourages the culture of each nationality. He concludes that these approaches have helped every nationality to identify happily with India.
Unfortunately, to worsen the Nigerian situation, some people are said to intend to propose that the National Conference should include in the constitution a provision granting any Nigerian the rights of an indigene anywhere he chooses to go and live in Nigeria. In one of Shakespeare’s plays, two ministers of a king are worried about something that their king is proposing to do. One shakes his head sadly and says, “This will drink deep”; the other answers, “No, it will drink cup and all”. A provision like this in the Nigerian constitution can become a major wrecker. All over Nigeria, our nationalities are most likely to begin to protect their homelands from take-over by new artificial indigenes. Whoever imagines that any people will easily let themselves be robbed of the emotional and mystical ownership of their homeland is thinking dangerous thoughts.This law will result in greatly increased difficulties for those who already live outside their own ethnic homelands and those who intend to.
Such a provision is unnecessary any way. Already, any Nigerian can go and live and do business anywhere in Nigeria. And the electoral laws include residency qualifications. We should just leave things at that, and let the passage of time do whatever with the rest. What Nigeria needs is manifest dedication to the protection of each nationality and its culture, and the promotion of a consciousness whereby those who go to live in other people’s land respect their host nation, and desist from misinterpreting their land ownership rights for ethnic territorial ownership rights. The homeland of each of our nationalities is theirs. Nothing can change that.
