National Integration: Is There The Need?

We have papered over the issue of National Integration for so long that it is now staring us in the face. It is either that we discover the essence of nationhood and drive Nigeria to greatness or we will keep stuttering and never making the desired progress, with a possibility that our nation could disintegrate.

By Tony Abolo

The issue of National Integration is a National Question. Perhaps, why the NAS leadership in Benin would think of it, I guess is that it seems desirable. At its face value and desirability, the question seems not controversial. May be it is not. But then, it is a hard question we need to put to ourselves every day.

Every ethnic nation, every geographical group, every religious group, the North and the South of Nigeria should be asking, after 56 years, do we want to be together in one nation? What really binds us? Do we need each other? We have never asked this question at the levels and intensity that it deserves and hence it is not being asked and addressed with the seriousness it deserves.

Asking is different from it being addressed. If we ask, then we define it as an issue that has to be addressed. We have not asked seriously as peoples of a land called Nigeria.

And that is not impossibility. We seem more stuck on Obafemi Awolowo’s logic – that Nigeria, is no more than a geographical expression or on Azikiwe’s admonition – let us sink our differences instead of heeding Ahmadu Bello’s narrative, – let us first understand our differences.

Our early nationhood journey which started on tribalism and regionalism – North for North, West for Westerners and East for Easterners has set us on a dangerous trajectory and thought processes. Such that, 56 years later, we are NOT yet a nation, we are NOT yet a country and we are NOT a state. For convenience sake, we have a name-NIGERIA.

In fact, we have no way or a single word of describing our state – it is that of ‘suspended nationhood’, ‘a state of anomie!!’ And instead of addressing it, we have through the logic of the long years of military rule, dominated by a northern hegemony, been afraid to discuss such issues in the open as,- secession, self-determination, or re-negotiating our ethnic nation states relationship in a union and the requisite structures and will to build up into a place, fondly called, ‘Nigeria’.

At any time we go into a National Constituent Assembly to review our military induced Constitution, the leadership always prescribes – NO GO AREAS and falsely proclaim that Nigeria’s unity is Non – Negotiable.

It is to my mind, such dishonest pro-active steps that are making Nigeria not as yet, a nation. Let us be honest – what binds an ordinary Potiskum native or a Birnin Kebbi indigene with a Sagamu , Ikot Ekpene or Ologbo native? Very little if at all other than that they are of the Negroid race and they are all black!!.

But then is our experience any different from other countries that have become Nations? To prove that building contrasting peoples into one is not easy, the United Kingdom after centuries of being together since Mary, Queen of the Scots, as far back as the 16th century, held a referendum in 2014 to seek to break up with the Scots wanting to walk out of the union. China, a country of 1.3billion people and having over 60 ethnic languages is forging on and is still building the framework from the Chang dynasty of over 6000 years.

America gives us a pleasant theory of nation building called the’ Melting Pot Theory’. You come in as hyphenation and become an American once you are in. You arrive as a Hungarian or Chinese or Nigerian into America but once you nationalize, you become – a Hungarian – American, Chinese – American or a Nigerian – America. You came in with your cultural identity but you drop that on landing and next become an American in a deliberate national integration melting pot system.

America takes pride in its diversity – all are welcome and hence on their coat of arms, you find the old Latin statement and on the dollar Eagle – E pluribus unum – translated it means – Out of Many, We are one!!

At the fulcrum of our troubles is the Native/settler or Indigene/Settler debate and lately, with flood disasters and Boko-Haram, migration issues. To compound our woes, we are still very primitive, tribal and fiercely ethnic in our loyalties. Worse still, we worship different Gods and our belief systems and values contradict and create conflicting behaviors and hence, national cohesion is near impossible.

Our politics appeals to our raw ethnic emotions, and not about state or nation. We readily identify in politics with only our tribesmen, our townspeople and not with ideals of knowledge and capacity.

We are stuck in the middle. And these observations on behavior are not about just poor people, but middle class and the educated and elite and even traditional leadership; it cuts across all strata of societies.

We have over the years actively sought to enthrone processes and policies that entrench ethnicity and further cleavages. We fill forms even in the bank, that ask for your tribe, your local government of origin, your religion, your State of origin. What do those information classify? Redundant statistics that only exacerbate our divisions.

An enlightened nation like America, asks for your fingerprint, photo, security number and your domicile state? We request for such almost valueless information that we make a vital exercise like census, a national war between the North and the South. Today out of the battle of the tribes and religion, we are not sure how many so called Nigerians are on this planet earth.

Look at our concept of National integration. Instead of movements and gatherings that promote unity, integration, investments and growth, we hold tribal caucuses that speak for a tribe or organize groups in diametrically incongruent ways that neither promote harmony, inter-cultural understanding and unity. In the North, there is Arewa that is rabidly Northern and sees the South and others as opposition.

There is Ohaneze that is unabashedly Igbo. Then there is the South-South that has no focus but gathers to mimic the North. There is the strong OPC, Afenifere and Egbe Oduduwa that speak for the Yoruba ethnic nation. Pray in all of these, who speaks for Nigeria? None. So are we integrating or actively seeking disintegration?

As late as yesterday 15th January, the News on page 11 of This Day Newspaper on 11th January 2016 is captioned:
“Buhari, Northern Leaders to attend 50th Remembrance of Ahmadu Bello’s Assassination.”

Our travails and our missteps began with the sad event of 15th January 1966 coup. And therefore, it is and should be a national event. So how come on a day that is devoted as a National Remembrance Day, the Head of State and a bunch of Northern Leaders gather in a “forum for participants to review how far the region had fared in the last fifty years….. participants are also expected to reflect on the challenges of sustaining the Sarduana’s legacies with a view to overcoming them to move the region forward”

This is an example of how in 56 years in our nationhood journey, the mindset is still parochial, regional, sectional and not nationalistic. A nation that seeks the future, sees the big picture and moves everyone to see the greater glory that lies ahead. But no, not the Nigerian leadership and peoples. The North is even more guilty of this myopic and sectional attitude.

Their governors after 56 years still gather to hold Northern Governors forum. How does the region grow without integrating into the whole? Mathematical theorem taught us that, a part is never greater than the whole. So what on earth is being achieved with this ostrich in the sand behavior? Painfully we are also stuck in that mindset.

No State in the South for example, is linked with the contiguous states for inter-state trade and economic linkages. So how can we grow state economies? How better to integrate than at business levels of integration? In the early seventies, Ogbemudia as a military Governor was “exporting” timber to Kano in the days of Governor Audu Bako, while we brought in meat and some extra items. That is an example of national integration.
While we look out, let us also critically look into the Benin Kingdom where the principle of “Obayantor” rules.

It is as anachronistic and negative as other behaviors elsewhere in Nigeria. While the constitution has declared the “domicile” right of Nigerians, the Obayantor is using a historical argument to perpetuate the dichotomy of the native/settler issue.

A place is said to never develop with the natives only. So what do we make of the principle? Are the Binis saying they want to be in their villages and still want the benefits of oil money from Ijaw land and cocoa money from the west and palm oil money from the east and the yam, cattle and onion money from the north and exclude settlers from participating? For crying out loud, Benin City is cosmopolitan and Binis alone cannot make the difference to their locale.

Excepting if the Binis do not want to succeed and seek to go back into their 18th century shells, the Obayantor principle is a classic example of what is anti-national integration and against the domicile right in the constitution.

The Obayantor explanation is also a metaphor for the behavior in Jos, in Lagos, and in Port Harcourt. We must stop and quantify the contributions of settlers to any local economy. It is a win-win situation; in monies gained from land purchases, rents, investments, employments, marriages, new skills, urban expansion and inter-ethnic trades.

In an accommodating place, everybody has something to contribute and everybody is a winner. Why is America the land of opportunity and the greatest world economy? It is a land of diversity; of peoples, a land of diverse multi skills, technology, inventions, immigrants and refugees.

It is a land of accommodation and opportunities? How else could a Kenyan-American, Barrack Obama, become the American President, which in our ethnic-bigoted Nigeria would be an impossibility?

Our restrictive ethnic attitudes is so much damaging of the national economy. With no social mobility, our unemployment crisis is wider and deepening.

Today, a youth whose skills are needed in other parts of the country cannot move, because, in the area where his skills are needed, he/she does not belong to the other religion, the other language, the other ethnic nation. Our youth are getting stuck and equally their minds are getting smaller and dimmed because a great expanded country is not within their reach. Sadly, the State where the un-engaged youth is domiciled has no absorptive capacity.

And because there is no social mobility, we are perpetuating the cycle of distrust, suspicion, lack of expanded opportunities and stalling national integration. You may be born in Edo State or Yobe State, but you are a global citizen. Can we think bigger? The buzz word in marketing today is “glocal”, that is, be local but be global in thinking and practices.

The advanced nations who are leaving us fast and far behind are hooked on to globalization. Technology is global. Product development is global. Money is global. So why are we thinking tribal, local and acting shrinkingly and restrictively.

The world is out there. But then to conquer, we must bind together and cohere. There is a spiritual law of UNITY we are not seemingly conversant with. Read Mathew 18:19 and 20.

“Again I say unto you. That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything, that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father, which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them”.

We are dissipating the energy with which we can forge to become great. As long as we are atomized, we are going nowhere. That is the power of unity; the power of one. Nigeria of our dreams is NOT going to come about, if we do not bind, synergize and integrate.

For now our vital energies are frittered in fractious, unnecessary bickering, suspicions and ethnic thinking; read ethnic thinking as thinking small. What we need is GROUP THINK!!!! A NATIONAL GROUP THINK TANK.
What then must we do? We must activate integrative behaviors.

A settler must begin to take an active and lively interest in the culture of the indigenes- their language, dances, religion, food, ceremonies, indeed their world view. While on the other hand, the indigenes should not create barriers of entry by a total and open acceptance of a settler who has begun active steps in inculturation and integration.

I would share some experiences with you, from Benin City. If you go to the Hausa Quarters, off 1ST East Circular road, the Seriki is a third generation Nupe man who speaks impeccable Bini language without accent and you would never know where he originally came from. Sadly, he remains outside the pale of Benin City integration because of his considered “language and State of Origin”.

Again an EKHAVBONORE Chief complained bitterly to me when Chief Sam Igbe was to be conferred with the Iyase of Benin title. The reason, because he is a third generation Bini man whose ancestors are of Urhobo extraction, he told me. That is how we raise the barrier of entry into other cultures and prevent National Integration. And then, me. I first came to Benin in 1956 as an eleven year old boy.

60 years after, despite my rise in life in Benin, nurturing up to my grandchildren in Benin, I dare not even think to contest as a Ward Councilor under any political party, because I would be considered only a voter and a friend at best, but of a different ethnic stock extraction and an outsider. So much for National Integration and how we go about it.

And so, We must begin to act against an organized and crude elite. We must organize around large scale strategic groups, around nationwide strategic goals and national dreams which will be sold as national movements. This would help to generate a new crop of leadership who are not bound by ethnicity and religion, which have been our albatross.

We need to imitate the Kwame Nkrumah Ghana example of nurturing the “Young Pioneers” and the “Youth Uprising” during the China Cultural Revolution. Web could experiment further with the National Youth Corps programme by making it near mandatory to have Corpers to be employed in the states where they have served and to become the new citizens of such states.

Desirable? May be. Far fetched? May be not but from these, would emerge the ideologies of a national orientation which would be the ideologies to be taught in schools.

We have no national ideology painfully and so the youth leave schools at whatever levels without being imbued with national ideals, dreams and goals. We need a crop of publicly agreed national values to drive our rebirth. And hence people are calling for a National Conference on National Values.

Hopefully in the fullness of the societal shake up, would emerge a National father figure – who can be a true National Leader who does not pander to an ethnic tribe but to the “Nigerian Tribe”. We must begin to study history once again in our schools and begin to institutionalize a pantheon of National heroes and heroines who we collectively celebrate. Hopefully then, our politics would be for growth and development and not for private accumulation.

This would engender and drive patriotism. We must return Nigeria to the 60s when it was the Big Black Hope and the Giant of Africa. Nigeria for now has since shrunk to a Lilliput and is boxing underweight.

In conclusion, is ethnicity bad? No and Yes. Ethnicity is a bonding of language, symbols, and corporate and cultural identity. It creates a world of “US” versus “THEM”; a world of “US” and “OTHERS”. You would be born into a tribe, into a culture. That is accidental, and there is nothing wrong with that. The world is tribal ,yes, but then it is played best at the level of competitiveness.

Our tribalism in the 60s produced what is described as competitive communalism; when each region wanted to excel the other. It was healthy. We have since degenerated into a pernicious tribalism, bitter ethnic feuding and bitter rivalry. The ethnicity we should be talking about and that is beneficial is the Macro-Tribalism – where Nigeria is THE ONLY TRIBE we know and seek and extol. That is the one that would fire our national pride.

That is when we would have achieved a national integration – such that it does not matter where the Governor or the President comes from. Is it a forlon hope? I believe, if we work at it, in the sometimes of tomorrow, I will not need to fill anymore religion or state of origin or ethnic tribe on any paper in Nigeria, but “state of domicile” and my “professional tribe”.

A public lecture delivered by renowned veteran Journalist and Media Consultant, Mr. Tony Abolo at the annual public lecture of the National Association of Seadogs (NAS) in Benin City last Saturday.