It is very pertinent that we start to consciously take steps to keep this country together and prevent a second civil war. The first thing we need to do is to immediately stop sowing the seeds of hatred of the other tribes in the mind of the members of our tribes. Our parents should stop perpetuating their culture of hate for the other tribes in their children. They should stop being a major tool of divisiveness in Nigeria.
My girlfriend says Yoruba women don’t stay in one marriage; they are prone to moving from one husband to the other. My parents on the other hand assert convincingly that Ibo women are very wayward, while their men are the greediest lot, capable of going to any extreme to make money. And of course, both my parents and girlfriend are unified in their belief that all Northerners are Islamic fanatical zealots, meaning they are all potential Haramites of Boko (Boko Haram) exemplified by General Muhammadu Buhari.
On a continental scale, South Africans see Nigerians as a country of scamming fraudsters and hard drug peddlers/traffickers. Our West African neighbors of Benin and Togo simply see us as a country of arrogant criminals. Meanwhile Nigerians see South Africans as a country of rapists and compulsive polygamists, in this case exemplified by their president, Jacob Zuma. This tendency of generally labeling a group of people is rife everywhere but is particularly strong in Nigeria. In fact a lot of Nigerians take such labels as ‘gospel’ truth, and invariably see everyone from a particular tribe with the lens of their ‘label’.
Ethnocentrism, or put more simply, tribalism is a situation whereby a particular group of people, usually homogenous in their ancestry, see another group of people, usually of different ancestry as being beneath them. Tribalism isn’t just about believing that you are better than the other tribe, no, it is more than that. It is a situation where you even see the other group of people as being kind of sub-humans. You believe you are better than them, and also they do not measure up to people you can have social interactions with. Most tribalists cannot imagine themselves or any of their relatives marrying from the other tribe; they don’t even want to have business dealings with the other tribe, if they can help it.
Tribalism in Nigeria had its root in the pre-independence era, when Nigeria was still under British rule. The three major tribes of the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba were jostling to ensure the prominence of their tribe in the country being looked forward to (Nigeria). It was a period of competition between these tribes, which was heightened during the elections before independence. This competitiveness led to the Western state of the Yorubas being ahead of the others in the area of education, because of its provision of free primary education for all Yorubas. This pushed the other states to strive to achieve this same enviable standard. The consequence of this particular rivalry was that the masses had a better life due to their leaders trying to outdo the other tribes.
On the other hand, this competition also made the different regions of the West, North and East see only the bad things or attributes of the other regions. Each region painted the other regions as bad as possible, especially during the elections, so as to garner total support of their people. This politics of division was made all the more possible by the fact that the three major parties practically had total presence in three different major tribes, i.e. the Action Group (West), the NDP (North,) and the NCNC (East). The attendant politics induced animosity, which eventually culminated into the greatest tragedy that has befallen Nigeria so far, the 1967-1970 civil war.
Right now, another tragedy is in the offing, due to the menace of Boko Haram, and a President who is determined to be re-elected by all means.
It is very pertinent that we start to consciously take steps to keep this country together and prevent a second civil war. The first thing we need to do is to immediately stop sowing the seeds of hatred of the other tribes in the mind of the members of our tribes. The political class especially has to take the lead, and stop playing the tribal card in order to get the support of their tribes.
We should all realize that because we have one or two examples of extreme greed amongst Ibos or a group of religious extremists by the name of Boko Haram in the North, doesn’t make everybody in those areas the same. We should know for a fact that there is no law of absolute, and that if we look closer, the exceptions are even far more in number than what we have wrongly seen as the norm.
Also, our parents should stop perpetuating their culture of hate for the other tribes in their children. They should stop being a major tool of divisiveness in Nigeria.
Finally, the mandatory one year National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) for graduates, which in my opinion is one of the best things to ever happen to Nigeria, should be further strengthened. The rule that you shouldn’t serve amongst your tribe should be further enforced. Exceptions should only be granted on marital and health grounds, and this should also be accompanied by penalties. The penalties should include paying graduates who serve within their tribe only half the allowance due to them no matter the reason for them serving within their tribe. It should also be a rule that they can only serve in government agencies. These penalties would make it unattractive to unduly influence the service year postings as it is rife presently. The NYSC should also include the compulsory learning of the major language of the area of posting of the corps member. The NYSC certificate should be given only to corps members that pass the language test which should be administered at the end of every service year. All this I believe would go a long way in ensuring that young graduates appreciate the good things in the other tribe(s) since they would have interacted well enough.
In conclusion, my quick retort to my girlfriend is that my mum who is fully Yoruba has stayed with one husband for over three decades, and I also impressed it upon my parents that examples abound of Ibo men that are not greedy, and Ibo women that are not wayward even in our neighborhood in Abeokuta. I am also quick to inform them that I have countless friends from the North, who are not even Muslims not to talk of being Muslim fanatics, the same way I have Muslim friends from the North who are extremely tolerant of other tribes and religions.
The black man needs to learn that the law of absolute does not exist, and it is high time we put an end to the endemic fallacy of overgeneralization that is entrenched in us. The way we have excellent and good natured Igbo people, that is the same way we have sinister and extremely wicked Yorubas that one should flee from. Ironically, the Northerners that we all seem to vilify and cast aspersions at, are probably the most accommodating and loving people in Nigeria. Their ‘Achilles heel’ is the propensity of a large crowd of illiterate ‘almajiris’ to be misguided into religious violence.
If we intend to keep this nation unified, we must encourage intertribal marriage, we must judge each other not on the basis of our tribe, but from the content of each individual’s character, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jnr. The above are part of what we need to do to preserve the unity of this country; failure or refusal can only spell doom for the country Nigeria.
And to anyone still wondering, yes, my girlfriend is Ibo.
You can interact with the writer at @tdbobsy on Twitter.