By Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
Nigeria is swimming in a broth of palava. That is not rocket science; it is the commonest of common senses. Just this week alone, Boko Haram killed 23 Nigerians in bomb attacks in Maiduguri, a team of soldiers and vigilantes operating in Plateau State were ambushed and massacred by bandits in Kanam, and in Sokoto, hundreds of Nigerians were recorded cramped onto trucks, carrying headloads of their possessions in what we have only seen in war zones as they flee bandit raids on their communities. Officially, Nigeria is not at war, but those images look exactly like those we have seen of people fleeing wars.
These are just the tips of the iceberg facing the country. What was not mentioned is greater than what was. They are so enormous that the US, in its global policing, decided to help bomb some bushes in Nigeria and designated the country to be of particular concern. Yet, the greatest threat to Nigeria as a country is not the terrorists sweeping in from the North East, or the bandits from the North West, or the IPOB from the South East. The greatest problem of this country is ethnopolitics.
What Nigerians casually call tribalism and deploy when referring to casual ethnic constructs is a more sophisticated and deliberate system that has been decimating the country and mothered, enabled, and sustained all these criminalities we are witnessing today. It has made insecurity, social injustice, and corruption not only possible but has continued to sustain them. I can explain in the following paragraphs.
This week, it became public knowledge that the Kano State Governor, who apparently is Fulani, has a Senior Special Adviser on Fulfulde Affairs, a woman by the name of Rukayya Gadon Kaya. Even though her name is suspiciously very Hausa, the adviser, while addressing her Fulani kinsmen, passionately implored them not to vote for any leader who does not favour her tribesmen. Swept by the fervour of her own words, she went a step further to unleash an ethnic slur on the Hausa people, calling them unfortunates and implying they are ugly. It wasn’t a playful banter that could be interpreted as an ill-advised attempt at humour; it was fullsteamed ideation of a deeper resentment—one that is shocking coming from a public official.
The reaction to her comments has been strong and created an increased chasm between the Fulani and their Hausa hosts and further damaged the ideation of a Hausa-Fulani unity. The feeble attempts by other officials to defend her statements are testament to how deep the problem is.
Why does a Fulani Governor need a Special Adviser on Fulani affairs in a Hausa-dominated State when an adviser on public welfare would suffice? It makes little sense in the same way it would for Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State, a Mwaghavul man, to have a Special Adviser on Mwaghavul affairs in a State with a Berom majority, or for the Kogi Governor, Ahmed Ododo, an Ebira man, to have an SSA on Ebira affairs in an Igala-majority State. While acknowledging the uniqueness of each cultural identity, we must recognise that all identities share the same concerns and need for better living conditions that could be served by universal social welfare provisions.
The concept of ethnopolitics is as old as Nigeria itself. While we can blame our favourite scapegoat, colonialism, for institutionalising it, Nigerian politicians made it possible and have continued to sustain it. The first political parties in the country were designed to reflect ethnic interests rather than a collective one. Awo’s Action Group was established to advance Yoruba interests and held sway in the Yoruba-dominated Western Region, Zik’s NCNC advanced Igbo interests and held sway in the Igbo-dominated Southeastern region, while Sardauna’s NPC was designed to advance Hausa-Fulani, or Northern interests, as was clearly stated in the party’s name—the Northern People’s Congress.
On paper—and only on paper—the January 1966 coup was meant to stir that water and mix things up properly, through a series of equal opportunity violence and assassinations. However, the execution of that plan was undermined by ethnic sentiments among the coup plotters, who incidentally relied on ethnic loyalties for the plan to work. The consequence was the entrenchment of a deeper, retributive ethnopolitical sentiment which manifested in the even bloodier July ‘66 coup and the civil war that followed.
Ancient history, I know—if one considers the events of the last 60 years ancient. The question is, has Nigeria truly evolved past those early political and social architectures shaped by ethnic sentiments?
That architecture has never been dismantled. It has merely been disguised by military decrees, by unity rhetoric, by the rotational presidency principle, and by “Federal Character”, which was intended to ensure ethnic balance in government but, in practice, institutionalised the very logic it was meant to overcome, or even the concept of “state of origin.” When your constitution codifies ethnicity as a basis for distributing appointments, you cannot be surprised when politicians treat ethnicity as their primary currency.
How does that influence the insecurity in the country today, for example? In every way possible. In June 2001, the Obasanjo government appointed one Alhaji Muktar Usman Mohammed to preside over the Local Government Monitoring Committee of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) for Jos North Local Government. The appointment stirred protests amongst a section of the residents of Jos who did not want him appointed. Not because he wasn’t competent, or had a criminal record or is known to be a person of disrepute, but because he was deemed a “settler” in his own country. This was the trigger for the Jos crisis that broke out on September 7, 2001. Every person that has been killed in Plateau State since that day, including the 20 soldiers killed this week, can be traced to that appointment and the opposition to it because ethnopolitics implied that position should be the exclusive preserve of an “indigene.”
While Plateau continues to burn, Governor Caleb Mutfwang’s decision to donate 61 vehicles to 61 traditional rulers to commemorate his 61st birthday is another attempt to reinforce this ethnopolitical architecture. He could have equipped more schools or furnished Primary Health Care facilities in the communities of these leaders. But the gift serves a strategic political purpose.
The political elites have continued to leverage ethnic affiliations to create artificial divisions. It is so pervasive that people from President Tinubu or his challengers like Peter Obi have used this mechanism. Often political appointments are not made or judged on competence but on ethnic representation, resulting often in some of the least qualified persons occupying offices. When public criticism mounts over unmet promises, they shift blame to other ethnic groups rather than accounting for their own governance failures. Ethnocorruption has become so pervasive that corrupt public officials deflect accusations by playing the ethnic card. Ethnopolitics is not just a social problem but a politically manufactured one and keeps elites from accountability.
We have seen it manifest in the Fulani elites providing justification for the banditry in the North West, in the same way Igbo elites have defended Kanu and his violent IPOB mob, and the Niger Delta elites have argued that Niger Delta militants are social justice warriors while crimes committed by OPC members have been dismissed as ethnic nationalism and their perpetrators shielded by Yoruba intellectuals. It trickles down to the average Nigerian who brings ethnic lenses to the interpretation of local and international events, from local elections to Trump’s election to the US and Israeli actions in the Middle East.
It is often shocking when those who clearly articulate why Fulani bandits should face the full force of the law argue in defence of a bloodthirsty agitator and instigators like IPOB, or how those who would demand Kanu’s head for murder argue for leniency for the murderous bandits in the Northwest, even if all these people have taken up arms against the state and caused the deaths of innocent Nigerians.
The reality today is that most of Nigeria’s chronic problems, ranging from corruption, economic stagnation, insecurity, and infrastructural decay, are tied to leadership failure. The real question I will leave you with is: what causes these failures? Is it tribalism or ethnopolitics that causes bad leadership, or is it leadership that manufactures ethnopolitics to survive?
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, a columnist with Daily Trust, can be reached through abubakaradam@dailytrust.com
Twitter: @Abbakar_himself
WhatsApp: 08020621270