Opinion: Nigeria, tribal warfare and boundaries

Okenyi Kenechi

The ethnic brickbats between the Igbo and the Yoruba are because the African mind teaches boundary next to life.

“You are from here. You can’t marry there. They’re wicked. They don’t like us. You can’t go to school there” etc.

I have continued to say it; and loud it must be said too that in Nigeria, ethnicity and religion present our biggest problems as a nation. That is why certain people are elected into office simply on the basis that they fan the embers of ethnic superiority and not because they have the capacity to deliver. That is why a certain Muhammadu Buhari is the president; that is why despite his glaring cluelessness and incapacity, people were there to rig him back to office.

Saying that Buhari appoints only northerners is a product of boundary mentality. However, where Buhari’s is worse is because he chose those who could not wipe their own ass to oversee the wiping of the country’s ass.

Events leading up to the 2015 general election saw the Oba of Lagos threatening to drown Igbo people in the lagoon if they do not vote for Governor Ankinwumi Ambode. Few years after, the same warlords discovered that Ambode was a bad product worthy of being replaced; this time with a certain Babajide Sanwo-Olu and to sell Sanwo-Olu, these same warlords who are only trying to protect their loots estimated at over 18 trillion in the last two decades are triggering their followers, the ordinary Yoruba people who are now asking Igbo people to leave Lagos.

Some decades ago, these same Igbo were massacred all over Nigeria because of their Igboness and because of the crime of a very few. This led to a deadly war that lasted three years with over 3 million people perishing in its wake. We are back to the 60s, back to the civil war; a country with no laws.

Why what is happening in Lagos is loud and deafening is because those who are propagating these hates are proud of their assertions. However, the truth of the matter is that it happens everywhere, especially when it comes to the issue of selecting the person who leads. Nigeria is the way it is because we have not been able to view leadership using the ‘ability to lead or capacity’ lenses. Rather, it is based on sentimentalism and other whipped up irrelevance.

I am from Enugu state and my parents are from a town different from Nsukka where I was born and raised. Yet, being born in Nsukka has not in any way conferred citizenship of the town on me and as it stands, I cannot vie for any office in Nsukka even though I was born and raised there. I will be asked to go back to my village but Nsukka is in the same Enugu.

In the twilight of Senator Theodore Orji’s tenure as Governor of Abia State, he sacked civil servants who were termed ‘Non-indigenes’ from the state’s civil service. This generated a lot of commotion, especially from Imo State whose indigenes were mostly affected. And so, the competence of these civil servants did not matter, the years that they put into service in the state did not matter, neither did their experience. They were summarily dismissed because they were not indigenes.

The boundary mentality has created a siege on our mindsets, creating a form of utopian state in an ocean of abundant failure. This is nothing but the poverty of philosophy which has held the country down and which was also legalised in the constitution. If you want to understand the philosophical leanings of a country, look at the 1999 Constitution which we used to imprison ourselves.

That piece of worthless paper has enabled more violence and led to more deaths than plagues.

Niger Delta’s regional exclusion, pollution, militancy, black soot; boko haram, etc are the products of the 1999 Constitution. IPOB agitations and killings by the Nigerian Army and police are the products of the 1999 Constitution. Election rigging follows too.

The people who forced the Constitution on the country had boundaries in mind. Those who feel the Constitution favours them and mock those who challenge it also have boundaries in mind. That is why there was sharia law enshrined in the constitution. That is why the land use act of 1978 which was retained in the constitution ensures that if coal, oil or whatever resources are found in your land, they belong to the government and not you.

I have seen where professors helped rig a student union election because the other contender was popular but was not from the state where the university is located. I have also seen a professor here on Facebook second the Oba on his lagoon drowning threat but when challenged, went on a blocking spree.

The question, however, is, if it can happen in an institution of learning where minds are brushed, what of the larger society?

It is not a Yoruba peoples thing. We are just built like that.