July 14, 2010
In order to get to the real basis of religious and ethnic manipulation by the elite in our country, we have to start our analysis with the meaning of manipulation. If the meaning of manipulation is controlling the action of a person or group without that person or group knowing the goals, purpose and method of that control being exercised on them at all, then an essential precondition for it is ignorance on the part of those who are being manipulated. But ignorance of what?
In order to get to the real basis of religious and ethnic manipulation by the elite in our country, we have to start our analysis with the meaning of manipulation. If the meaning of manipulation is controlling the action of a person or group without that person or group knowing the goals, purpose and method of that control being exercised on them at all, then an essential precondition for it is ignorance on the part of those who are being manipulated. But ignorance of what?
It is impossible to keep a group of people, especially those belonging to the productive classes, ignorant of all aspects of social and political reality. So it has to be ignorance of some aspects of reality. But then what particular aspect? The particular aspect of social and political reality to be obscured and mystified depends on the purpose of the manipulation. It also depends on the structure of the economy and society within which this manipulation is taking place. In our case today, the purpose of this manipulation is to be found in the purposes and functions of the elite who do this manipulation. Nobody denies the fact that these elite are the link and intermediary between the powerless, poor Nigeria’s peasants and the abundant wealth of this country. What I want to get across to is that they are intermediary in the sense that whether a bureaucrat, big party stalwart, bank owner, land lord, transporter or owner of an oil block or assembly plants, self acclaimed statesman or society’s elder at times a social critic or commentator, in the present political equation of Nigeria, all lives by appropriating goods and values for consumption which they play no role in creating. They are brokers, pace setters, negotiators, middlemen, representatives, politically, socially, economically and even culturally. They embodied the domination of appropriation over creation, consumption over production.
Far from contributing to the creation of material goods, services, or even functioning social and political values and structures, they survive on political bargain and ‘reconciliation’ just as in communication and understanding. The quintessential gateman! Can this sort of person come out and frankly ask people to follow him for what he is? So that he can have unlimited access to the corridors of power and rip the dividends of the bargain in millions in major currencies of the world? What I mean is that these noise makers that are crying foul for their ‘region’ being marginalized and in some cases even threatening the corporate existence of Nigeria will cease to exist once people can see clearly what their true nature is.
You cannot stand and win elections or be recommended to be nominated to represent any region, religion or ethnic group, even if the Electoral College is only two dozen councilors on the platform that you want to amass wealth enough to let you send all your biological relatives and acolytes to Mecca and Jerusalem for pilgrimage, so that they would pray for your continuous ‘prosperity’. What I am getting at is that these people cannot appear as what they really are in the political economy of Nigeria. They have to find a cover. They cannot claim political leadership openly on the grounds that they want to benefit from the spoils of the’ imbroglio’. They have to take cover as ‘Muslims’, ‘Christians’, ‘Hausas’, ‘Igbos’, ‘Fulani’, ‘Yoruba’,’ Idoma’ or Efik. They have to posture as ‘majority’ or’ minorities. This manipulation in Nigeria today is essentially a means of creating the context for this fancy- dress ball, for this charade of disguises. This game of masks!
The real basis of this manipulation in Nigeria today is the need to obscure from the people of Nigeria a fundamental aspect of our reality; that is the domination of our political economy by the dislodged elite that are now steering our nation on the road to Golgotha. And that is being exposed daily. This is to enable them to cover themselves with religious and ethnic disguises in order to further entrench division among our people, slow down their awakening, at any cost; even the unity of our country, for which so much has been sacrificed.
It has all been done before, here in this country and its bankruptcy became so blatant. There were religious, ethnic and some political organizations that made the same assertions and posturing that these regional, ethnic and religious champions are making on religion and region, and they did not get anywhere, except into confusion. Far from engaging in anything unique they are doing what every cheap imperialist huckster has done and is still doing- using religion and ethnicity to confuse and destabilize.
As has been done in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Sudan and other countries around the world. For these champions that have sworn to set our nation on the road to perdition there is, I think there is no likelihood that they would ever appreciate that they are playing this role. But most of them may face up to the reality, the hard brutal facts of our social and economic reality. They may face up to these honestly and up to the consequences, as to where their responsibility lies. They may refuse and follow the parade and March- past of all parasitical and retrograde forces into the dust- hip of history. The choice is not going to be indefinitely open to them. But whatever they choose, our people are inevitably towards their total liberation. Ethnic and religious manipulation can only waste time, a little time.
However, Nigerian ethnic groups are not distributed over its territory as separate units, whose spaces can be marked out on a map, with a few boundary problems here and there. The linguistic and ethnic geography of Nigeria is a multi-dimensional mosaic, with origin, kinship, languages, territoriality, religion, cultures, habitation, occupation and identity, overlapping and over-arching and intermeshing, at so many levels and changing in response to so many factors. The intermixing, and intermeshing of dialects, and of languages, which has gone on for millennia in this country, has made it obvious that any attempt to use ethnicity as a basis for political representation will not only be economically retrogressive, but also a recipe for a complete political disaster. This is further confirmed by the pattern of settlements and of migration which do not conform to the picture of Nigeria as being constituted by separate blocks of monolithic ethnic groups , each with its own language, identity, separate territory and its own leaders and ‘spokespersons’. Contrary to those skewing our voting pattern on ethnic and religious basis, one of the most important lessons to learn from election results in Nigeria is that the conduct of the electorate has not been blinded, or influenced by ethnic, religious, or regional considerations, despite the massive media campaigns promoting such retrogressive politics. Analyses of the five Presidential election results from 1979-2003 also point out clearly that there has not been regional block voting in the country.
Even in the 1979 Presidential elections, the results were not decided by ethnicity even after 13 years of military rule. For, although some candidates like Awolowo, Zik and Aminu Kano got massive votes in their home areas, the votes of the candidate who actually won the presidential election and the one who got the next national spread after him, Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim came from different parts of Nigeria. For, the candidate who won the elections, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, did so with the votes of states, outside his own Hausa - Fulani home area. In fact, he obtained more percentage votes from some of these states than his home state. His highest percentage of votes from the states was in this order: Benue 76.38%, Niger 74.88%, Rivers 72.66%, Sokoto 66.58%, Cross River 64.40%, Bauchi 62.48% and Kwara 53.62%. These seven states which are, except Sokoto not Hausa, or, Fulani, gave him more than 58.9% of the votes he got in the election. Alhaji Shagari obtained, from these seven states, 3,336,600 out of the total of 5,688,857 votes he won in the whole federation, to clinch the presidency. So a crucial fact about the results for the 1979 presidential elections was that the candidate, who won did so largely, with votes from other ethnic groups, other than his own. Those who got most of their votes from their ethnic groups lost the election! In the case of the June 12th, 1993 presidential elections, while Chief Abiola of the SDP, defeated Alhaji Bashir Tofa, of the NRC, in the predominantly Yoruba areas, he also defeated him in almost all the states with predominantly Hausa , Fulani and Kanuri voters, and Alhaji Bashir Tofa, is said to be a Hausa-Fulani of Kanuri extraction. In fact, out of total registered voters of 7.76 million in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo states in 1993, only 3.0 million voted for Chief Abiola. That means that only 38.9% of the voters in these predominantly Yoruba states voted for him, while 61.1% either did not vote, or, voted for the NRC candidate, Alhaji Bashir Tofa.
Chief Abiola did not win that election because Yorubas voted for him; and in any case a clear majority of registered Yoruba voters did not vote for him. The case of the 27th February 1999, presidential election is even more glaring. In the six predominantly Yoruba states of Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Eketi, Osun and Oyo, Obasanjo got only 1.09 million votes, This is less than the 1.29 million he got in Kaduna State alone, and barely higher than the 0.96 million he got in Katsina State. He “lost his deposit” by scoring below 25% in five of these six states getting as low as 12% of the votes in Lagos and 16.6% in Ondo! One of the most important lessons to learn from election results in Nigeria is that the conduct of the electorate has not been blinded, or influenced by ethnic, religious, or regional considerations, despite the massive media campaigns that is now going on and threats should zoning formula be abolished, promoting such retrogressive politics. Analyses of the five Presidential election results from 1979-2003 also point out clearly that there has not been regional block voting in the country.
TO BE CONTINUED
[email protected]
Faculty of Architecture and Environmental Design
University International Antrabangsa Malaysia , Kuala Lumpur.
It is impossible to keep a group of people, especially those belonging to the productive classes, ignorant of all aspects of social and political reality. So it has to be ignorance of some aspects of reality. But then what particular aspect? The particular aspect of social and political reality to be obscured and mystified depends on the purpose of the manipulation. It also depends on the structure of the economy and society within which this manipulation is taking place. In our case today, the purpose of this manipulation is to be found in the purposes and functions of the elite who do this manipulation. Nobody denies the fact that these elite are the link and intermediary between the powerless, poor Nigeria’s peasants and the abundant wealth of this country. What I want to get across to is that they are intermediary in the sense that whether a bureaucrat, big party stalwart, bank owner, land lord, transporter or owner of an oil block or assembly plants, self acclaimed statesman or society’s elder at times a social critic or commentator, in the present political equation of Nigeria, all lives by appropriating goods and values for consumption which they play no role in creating. They are brokers, pace setters, negotiators, middlemen, representatives, politically, socially, economically and even culturally. They embodied the domination of appropriation over creation, consumption over production.
Far from contributing to the creation of material goods, services, or even functioning social and political values and structures, they survive on political bargain and ‘reconciliation’ just as in communication and understanding. The quintessential gateman! Can this sort of person come out and frankly ask people to follow him for what he is? So that he can have unlimited access to the corridors of power and rip the dividends of the bargain in millions in major currencies of the world? What I mean is that these noise makers that are crying foul for their ‘region’ being marginalized and in some cases even threatening the corporate existence of Nigeria will cease to exist once people can see clearly what their true nature is.
You cannot stand and win elections or be recommended to be nominated to represent any region, religion or ethnic group, even if the Electoral College is only two dozen councilors on the platform that you want to amass wealth enough to let you send all your biological relatives and acolytes to Mecca and Jerusalem for pilgrimage, so that they would pray for your continuous ‘prosperity’. What I am getting at is that these people cannot appear as what they really are in the political economy of Nigeria. They have to find a cover. They cannot claim political leadership openly on the grounds that they want to benefit from the spoils of the’ imbroglio’. They have to take cover as ‘Muslims’, ‘Christians’, ‘Hausas’, ‘Igbos’, ‘Fulani’, ‘Yoruba’,’ Idoma’ or Efik. They have to posture as ‘majority’ or’ minorities. This manipulation in Nigeria today is essentially a means of creating the context for this fancy- dress ball, for this charade of disguises. This game of masks!
The real basis of this manipulation in Nigeria today is the need to obscure from the people of Nigeria a fundamental aspect of our reality; that is the domination of our political economy by the dislodged elite that are now steering our nation on the road to Golgotha. And that is being exposed daily. This is to enable them to cover themselves with religious and ethnic disguises in order to further entrench division among our people, slow down their awakening, at any cost; even the unity of our country, for which so much has been sacrificed.
It has all been done before, here in this country and its bankruptcy became so blatant. There were religious, ethnic and some political organizations that made the same assertions and posturing that these regional, ethnic and religious champions are making on religion and region, and they did not get anywhere, except into confusion. Far from engaging in anything unique they are doing what every cheap imperialist huckster has done and is still doing- using religion and ethnicity to confuse and destabilize.
As has been done in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Sudan and other countries around the world. For these champions that have sworn to set our nation on the road to perdition there is, I think there is no likelihood that they would ever appreciate that they are playing this role. But most of them may face up to the reality, the hard brutal facts of our social and economic reality. They may face up to these honestly and up to the consequences, as to where their responsibility lies. They may refuse and follow the parade and March- past of all parasitical and retrograde forces into the dust- hip of history. The choice is not going to be indefinitely open to them. But whatever they choose, our people are inevitably towards their total liberation. Ethnic and religious manipulation can only waste time, a little time.
However, Nigerian ethnic groups are not distributed over its territory as separate units, whose spaces can be marked out on a map, with a few boundary problems here and there. The linguistic and ethnic geography of Nigeria is a multi-dimensional mosaic, with origin, kinship, languages, territoriality, religion, cultures, habitation, occupation and identity, overlapping and over-arching and intermeshing, at so many levels and changing in response to so many factors. The intermixing, and intermeshing of dialects, and of languages, which has gone on for millennia in this country, has made it obvious that any attempt to use ethnicity as a basis for political representation will not only be economically retrogressive, but also a recipe for a complete political disaster. This is further confirmed by the pattern of settlements and of migration which do not conform to the picture of Nigeria as being constituted by separate blocks of monolithic ethnic groups , each with its own language, identity, separate territory and its own leaders and ‘spokespersons’. Contrary to those skewing our voting pattern on ethnic and religious basis, one of the most important lessons to learn from election results in Nigeria is that the conduct of the electorate has not been blinded, or influenced by ethnic, religious, or regional considerations, despite the massive media campaigns promoting such retrogressive politics. Analyses of the five Presidential election results from 1979-2003 also point out clearly that there has not been regional block voting in the country.
Even in the 1979 Presidential elections, the results were not decided by ethnicity even after 13 years of military rule. For, although some candidates like Awolowo, Zik and Aminu Kano got massive votes in their home areas, the votes of the candidate who actually won the presidential election and the one who got the next national spread after him, Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim came from different parts of Nigeria. For, the candidate who won the elections, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, did so with the votes of states, outside his own Hausa - Fulani home area. In fact, he obtained more percentage votes from some of these states than his home state. His highest percentage of votes from the states was in this order: Benue 76.38%, Niger 74.88%, Rivers 72.66%, Sokoto 66.58%, Cross River 64.40%, Bauchi 62.48% and Kwara 53.62%. These seven states which are, except Sokoto not Hausa, or, Fulani, gave him more than 58.9% of the votes he got in the election. Alhaji Shagari obtained, from these seven states, 3,336,600 out of the total of 5,688,857 votes he won in the whole federation, to clinch the presidency. So a crucial fact about the results for the 1979 presidential elections was that the candidate, who won did so largely, with votes from other ethnic groups, other than his own. Those who got most of their votes from their ethnic groups lost the election! In the case of the June 12th, 1993 presidential elections, while Chief Abiola of the SDP, defeated Alhaji Bashir Tofa, of the NRC, in the predominantly Yoruba areas, he also defeated him in almost all the states with predominantly Hausa , Fulani and Kanuri voters, and Alhaji Bashir Tofa, is said to be a Hausa-Fulani of Kanuri extraction. In fact, out of total registered voters of 7.76 million in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo states in 1993, only 3.0 million voted for Chief Abiola. That means that only 38.9% of the voters in these predominantly Yoruba states voted for him, while 61.1% either did not vote, or, voted for the NRC candidate, Alhaji Bashir Tofa.
Chief Abiola did not win that election because Yorubas voted for him; and in any case a clear majority of registered Yoruba voters did not vote for him. The case of the 27th February 1999, presidential election is even more glaring. In the six predominantly Yoruba states of Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Eketi, Osun and Oyo, Obasanjo got only 1.09 million votes, This is less than the 1.29 million he got in Kaduna State alone, and barely higher than the 0.96 million he got in Katsina State. He “lost his deposit” by scoring below 25% in five of these six states getting as low as 12% of the votes in Lagos and 16.6% in Ondo! One of the most important lessons to learn from election results in Nigeria is that the conduct of the electorate has not been blinded, or influenced by ethnic, religious, or regional considerations, despite the massive media campaigns that is now going on and threats should zoning formula be abolished, promoting such retrogressive politics. Analyses of the five Presidential election results from 1979-2003 also point out clearly that there has not been regional block voting in the country.
TO BE CONTINUED
[email protected]
Faculty of Architecture and Environmental Design
University International Antrabangsa Malaysia , Kuala Lumpur.
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