I have friends who urge that Nigeria is irredeemable and the solution is to dissolve it and let everyone go his way. The question that I ask is, where do we go to from Nigeria? The broad, so called tribal identities of Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, etc are not the primary identities of Nigerians. The family grouping or kindred is. That is the real tribe. That is the way that it is in Igbo land and other parts of the country that are not strong chiefdoms.
The chiefdoms, may find common tribal identity in their king or other traditional ruler. However, with the powers of the traditional rulers now much watered down, even this cohesion is under threat. Igbo nationalism, Yoruba nationalism, Hausa-Fulani nationalism and every other sub national sentiments based upon the broad identities that the White Man created for us, are all false masks.
If it were not so, tell me why in the East only indegenes of a State are employed in the State civil service. Igbos from other States are not welcome even to apply. Tell me why some parts of Igbo land would not marry outside of their clan. I begin to wonder that if we begin to divide this country as a solution to our narrow mindedness, which we call tribalism, into how many fragments are we going to divide the country?
It was colonization that ended the fratricidal war in Yoruba land. If you give them a Yoruba country today, they will return to it in a few years. It is only in Lagos that Yorubas from other States come to dominate political offices and the public service. It does not happen in other Yoruba States. At the core of the posturing of “Lagos for the Yorubas” is the desire of these Upland Yorubas to sustain their grip over the indegenes of Lagos State by creating an imaginary enemy for them out of the Igbo people who, in search of their daily bread, spend their money and energy to spread development throughout the nooks and crannies of the State. No indegene of Lagos State can hope to contest for a House of Assembly seat in any other State in the South West. Lagos State has a peculiar evolution, the pride of which these Upland Yorubas wish to continue to grab, snatch and run away with from the indegenes of the State.
Instead of talking about breaking up the country, let us talk about reining in our individual greed and then about tackling the few amongst us that have cornered the resources of the country using the ladder of ethnic cleavages that we have provided for them. We have to understand that we do no good to ourselves as a collective, if we allow a few amongst us to corner government positions, offices and authority in our name without regard to their competence. The truth is that the opportunities and power that Government offices confer are the benefit of those who occupy them, their family members and friends, personally. The benefit that comes to us is the competence, professionalism, dedication, honesty and faithfulness with which they perform their duties and wield the authority and power conferred on them.
We cheat ourselves when we overlook our own benefit when electing or appointing people into Government and our public institutions. Our individual and collective welfare demands that we give ethnocentrism, patronage and other cleavages and primordial sentiments a secondary position and give primary consideration to competence, commitment and character. We can build this country into a place we all can be happy for in the aggregate if we dedicate ourselves to that task and create high standards for those who occupy public office.
Published by Chuks Nwachuku
