Fani-Kayode: The bitter truth about the Igbos
Toyin Falola
The bitter truth about the Igbos
Vanguard on August 10, 2013
By Femi Fani-Kayode
Permit me to make my second and final contribution to the raging debate about Lagos, who owns it and the seemingly endless tensions that exist between the Igbo and the Yoruba. It is amazing how one or two of the numerous nationalities that make up Nigeria secretly
wish that they were Yoruba and consistently lay claim to Lagos as being partly theirs. Have they forgotten where they came from?
I have never heard of a Yoruba wanting to give the impression to the world that he is an Igbo, an Ijaw, an Efik or a Hausa-Fulani or claiming that he is a co-owner of Port Harcourt, Enugu, Calabar, Kano or Kaduna. Yet more often than not, some of those that are not of Yoruba extraction but that have lived in Lagos for some part of their lives have tried to claim that they are bonafide Lagosians and honorary members of the Yoruba race. Clearly it is time for us to answer the nationality question.
Dr Alex Ekwueme, Chief Achike Udenwa, Dr Samuel Egwu, Senator Ben Obi and Others during an Igbo Summit
These matters have to be settled once and for all. Lagos and the South-west are the land and the patrimony of the Yoruba and we will not allow anyone, no matter how fond of them we may be, to take it away from us or share it with us in the name of ’’being nice’’, ’’patriotism’’, ’’one Nigeria’’ or anything else.
The day that the Yoruba are allowed to lay claim to exactly the same rights and privileges that the indigenous people in non-Yoruba states and zones enjoy and the day they can operate freely and become commissioners and governors in the Niger Delta states, the North, the Middle-Belt and the South-east, we may reconsider our position. But, until then, we shall not do so. Lagos is not a ’’no-man’s land’’ but the land and heritage of the Yoruba people. Others should not try to claim what is not theirs.
I am not involved in this debate for fun or for political gain and I am not participating in it to play politics but rather to speak the truth, to present the relevant historical facts to those that wish to learn and to educate the uninformed. That is why I write without fear or favour and that is why I intend to be thoroughly candid and brutally frank in this essay.
And I am not too concerned or worried about what anyone may think or how they may feel about what I am about to say because I am a servant of truth and the truth must be told no matter how bitter it is and no matter whose ox is gored. That truth is as follows.
The Yoruba, more than any other nationality in this country in the last 100 years, have been far too accommodating and tolerant when it comes to their relationship with other nationalities in this country and this is often done to their own detriment.
That is why some of our Igbo brothers can make some of the sort of asinine remarks and contributions that a few of them have been making in this debate both in the print media and in numerous social media portals and networks ever since Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola ‘’deported’’ 19 Igbo destitute to Anambra State a while ago. In the last 80 years, the Igbo have been shown more generosity, accommodation, warmth and kindness and given more opportunities and leverage by the Yoruba than they have been offered by ANY other ethnic group in Nigeria. This is a historical fact.
The Yoruba do not have any resentment for the Igbo and we have allowed them to do in our land and our territory what they have never allowed us to do in theirs. This has been so for 80 long years and it is something that we are very proud of. As I said elsewhere recently, to be accommodating and generous is a mark of civilisation and it comes easily to people like the Yoruba who once ruled empires.
It does not come so easily to those who never had any history at all and who never even had monarchs or structured,
properly-organised hierachial societies that placed value on tradition and culture. The reason why many of our people take strong exception to the apparent outrage of the Igbo over this ‘’deportation’’ issue and the provocative comments of my friend and brother Chief Orji Uzor Kalu when
he described Lagos as being a ‘’no man’s land’’ is because the Igbo have not only taken us for granted but they have also taken liberty for licence.
Trouble in the North
We cannot be expected to tolerate or accept that sort of irreverant and unintelligent rubbish simply because we still happen to believe in ‘’one Nigeria’’ and we will not sacrifice our rights or prostitute our principles on the altar of that ‘’one Nigeria’’. Whether Nigeria is one or not, what is ours is ours and no-one should test our resolve or make any mistake about that.
‘’One Nigeria’’ yes, but no-one should spit in our faces or covet our land, our treasure, our success, our history, our virtues, our being and our heritage and attempt to claim those for themselves simply because we took them in on a rainy day.
It is that same attitude of ‘’we own everything’’, ‘’we must have everything’’ and ‘’we must control everything’’ that the Igbo settlers manifested in the northern region in the late 50s and early and mid-60s that got them into so much trouble up there with the Hausa-Fulani and that eventually led to the pogrom in which almost one hundred thousand of them were killed in just a few days.
Again it is that same attitude that they manifested in Lagos and the Western Region in the late ’30s and the early and mid-40s that alienated the Yoruba from them, that led to the establishment of the Action Group in April, 1951 and that resulted in the narrow defeat of Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe in the Western Regional elections of December, 1951. As a matter of fact, they were the ones that FIRST introduced tribalism into southern politics in 1945 with the unsavoury comments of Mr. Charles Dadi Onyeama who was a member of the Central Legislative Council representing Enugu and who said at the Igbo State Union address that ‘’the domination of Nigeria and Africa by the Igbo is only a matter of time’’.
This comment made in that explosive and historic speech did more damage to southern Nigerian unity than any other in the entire history of our country and everything changed from that moment. To make matters worse, in July 1948, Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe made his own openly tribal and incendiary speech, again at the Igbo State Union, in which he spoke about the ‘’god of the Igbo’’ eventually giving them the leadership of Nigeria and Africa.
These careless and provocative words cost him dearly and put a nail in the coffin of the NCNC in the Western Region. This was despite the fact that that same NCNC, which was easily the largest and most powerful political party in Nigeria at the time, had been founded and established by a great and illustrious son of the Yoruba by the name of Mr. Herbert Macaulay.
Macaulay, like most of the Yoruba in his day, saw no tribe and he happily handed the leadership of the party over to Azikiwe, an Igbo man, in 1945 when he was on his dying bed. How much more can the Yoruba do than that when it comes to being blind to tribe? Can there be any greater evidence of our total lack of racial prejudice and tribal sentiments than that? If the NCNC had been founded and established by an Igbo man, would he have handed the whole thing over to a Yoruba on his death bed? I doubt it very much.
Not mere traders
Again when northern military officers mutineed, effected their ‘’revenge coup’’ and went to kill the Igbo military Head of State, General Aguiyi-Ironsi, on July 29, 1966 in the old Western Region, his host, the Yoruba, Col. Fajuyi (who was military Governor of the Western Region at the time), insisted that they would have to kill him first before taking Aguiyi-Ironsi’s life and the northern officers (led by Major T.Y. Danjuma as he then was) promptly obliged him by slaughtering him before killing Aguiyi-Ironsi. How many Igbos know about that and how many times in our history have they made such sacrifices for the Yoruba? Would Aguiyi-Ironsi, or any other Igbo officer, have stood for Fajuyi, or any other Yoruba officer, and sacrificed his life for him in the same way that Fajuyi did had the roles been reversed?
I doubt it very much. Yet instead of being grateful, the Igbo continuously run us down, blame us for all their woes, envy our educational advantages and resent us deeply for our ability to excel in the professions and commerce. Unlike them, we are not mere traders but we were (and still are) major industrialists and investors and when it comes to the professions, we were producing lawyers, doctors, accountants and university graduates at least three generations before they ever did.
That is the bitter truth and they have been trying to catch up with us ever since. For example, the first Yoruba lawyer Christopher Alexander Sapara Williams was called to the English Bar in 1879 whilst the first Igbo lawyer, Sir Louis Mbanefo, was called to the English bar in 1937. Again the first Yoruba medical practitioner, Dr. Nathaniel King, graduated in 1875 from the University of Edinburgh whilst the first Igbo medical practitioner, Dr. Akannu Ibiam, graduated from another Scottish University in 1935.
Suspicion
Despite all these
and all that they have been through over the years and despite their terrible experiences in the civil war, we are witnessing that same attitude
of ‘’we must control all’’, ‘’we must own all’’ and ‘’we must have all’’ rearing its ugly head again today when it comes to their attitude to the issue of the deportation from Lagos State and when you consider the comments of the Orji Kalus of this world about
the Igbo supposedly ’’owning Lagos’’ with the Yoruba and supposedly ’’generating 55 per cent of the state’s revenue’’. It is most insulting.
And I must say that it is wrong and unfair for anyone to lay the blame for the perenniel suspicion and underlying tensions that lie between the two nationalities on the Yoruba because there is simply no evidence to substantiate such an allegation. We are not the problem, they are.
Pray, tell me, in the whole of Nigeria, who treated the Igbo better than the Yoruba after the civil war and who gave them somewhere to run to where they could regain all their ‘’abandoned property’’ and feel at home again? Who encouraged them to return to Lagos and the west and who saved the jobs that they held before the civil war for them to come back to when the war ended? No other tribe or nationality did all that for them in the country- only the Yoruba did so.
And the people of the old Mid-West and the Eastern minorities (who make up the zone that is collectively known as the ‘’South-south’ today) have always viewed them with suspicion, have always feared them and have always resented them deeply.
From the foregoing, any objective observer can tell that we the Yoruba have always played our part when it comes to accommodating others. This is particularly so when it comes to the Igbo who we have always had a soft spot for and who we have always regarded as brothers and sisters. It is time that those ‘’others’’ also play their part by acquiring a little more humility, by knowing and accepting their place in the scheme of things and by desisting from giving the impression that they own our territory or that they made us what we are.
Igbo firsts
Now let us look at a few historical facts and one or two more Igbo ‘’firsts’ that many may not be familiar
with to butress the point. The Igbo people were the FIRST to carry out a failed coup on the night of Jan 15, 1966 under the leadership of Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Major Chukuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Christian Anuforo, Capt. Ben Gbulie, Major Timothy Onwatuegwu,
Major Donatus Okafor, Capt. Ude, Capt. Emmanuel Nwobosi, Captain Udeaja, Lt. Okafor, Lt. Okocha, Lt. Anyafulu, Lt. Okaka, Lt. Ezedigbo, Lt. Amunchenwa, Lt. Nwokedi, 2nd Lt. J.C. Ojukwu, 2nd Lt. Ngwuluka, 2nd Lt. Ejiofor, 2nd Lt. Egbikor, 2nd Lt. Igweze, 2nd
Lt. Onyefuru, 2nd Lt. Nwokocha, 2nd Lt. Azubuogu and 2nd Lt. Nweke in which they drew FIRST blood and openly slaughtered and butchered leading politicians and army officers from EVERY single zone in the country except their own.
I should also mention that even though this was clearly an Igbo coup, there was one Yoruba officer who was amongst the ringleaders by the name of Major Adewale Ademoyega. It was a very bloody night indeed. Amongst those killed were the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, the Premier of the Western Region, Chief S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Federal Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, Brigadier Zakari Maimalari, Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, Colonel Ralph Shodeinde, Lt . Colonel James Yakubu Pam, Lt. Colonel Abogo Largema and numerous others. They did not just kill these reverred and respected leaders but in some cases they mocked, tortured and maimed them before doing so, took pictures of their dead and mutilated bodies and killed their wives and children as well.
For weeks after these horrific acts were carried out, the Igbo people rejoiced and celebrated them in the streets and markets of the North, openly displaying pictures and posters of the Sardauna’s mutilated body with Nzeogwu’s boot on his neck, loudly playing a famous and deeply offensive anti-northern song in which northerners were compared to goats and listening to it on their radios, jubilating that they had brought an end to what they described as ‘’northern rule and Islamic domination’’ and openly boasting that they themselves would now ‘’rule Nigeria forever’’. Though the first coup failed, the matter did not end there.
At gun point
The very next day after the Jan.15 mutiny and butchery had failed and did not result in Ifeajuna taking power in Lagos, The Igbo people set their ‘’Plan B’’ in motion and they were the FIRST to carry out a successful coup in Nigeria just one day later on Jan. 17 1966.
This was when the Igbo Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi (who was Supreme Commander of the Nigerian Army and who had inexplicably and suspiciously not been murdered by the young Igbo officers in their violent mutiny and killing spree the night before), in collusion with the Igbo Acting President Nwafor Orizu and the entire Igbo political leadership of that day, invited the remnants of Sir Tafawa Balewa’s cabinet to a closed-door meeting, threatened their lives and took power from them at the point of gun.
Aguiyi-Ironsi did not just ask them to give him power but he took it from them by force by telling them that he could not guarantee their safety if they refused to do so. Meanwhile Orizu point blank refused to do his duty as Acting President and swear in Zana Bukar Dipcharimma as the Acting Prime Minster when the members of the cabinet and the British Ambassador (who was also at the meeting) implored him to do so since by that time there was a power vacuum because the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, had gone missing and had probably been murdered.
It was in these very suspicious circumstances and as a consequence of this murky and deep-seated Igbo conspiracy that General Aguiyi-Ironsi came to power. Amongst those that were present at that famous ‘’meeting’’ that are still alive today are Alhaji Maitama Sule, Chief Richard Akinjide and President Shehu Shagari who were all Ministers in Balewa’s cabinet. Those that doubt the veracity of my account of this meeting would do well to ask any of them exactly what transpired during that encounter.
Yet the seeming success of the conspiracy was short-lived. Only six months later, on July 29 1966, General Aguiyi-Ironsi and no less than 300 Igbo army officers reaped the consequences of their actions and plot when they were all slaughtered in just one night during the northern officers revenge coup which was led by Lt. Colonel Murtala Mohammed, Major Abba Kyari, Captain Martins Adamu, Major T.Y. Danjuma, Major Musa Usman, Captain Joseph Garba, Captain Shittu Alao, Captain Baba Usman, Captain Gibson S.Jalo and Captain Shehu Musa Yar’Adua as they then were.
Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon was put in power by this group after that and a few weeks later between September 29th 1966 and the middle of October of that same year, approximately 50,000 Igbo civilians were attacked and slaughtered in a series of horrendous pogroms in the north by violent northern mobs as a reprisal for the killing of the northern leaders, including Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sarduana of Sokoto, by Major Nzeogwu, Major Ifejuna and other junior Igbo officers on the night of Jan. 15, 1966.
Please note that despite the fact that a number of Yoruba leaders were killed on that night as well, no Igbo civilians were massacred anywhere in the west by mobs in reprisal killings throughout that period.
The Igbos understandably left the North in droves after those terrible pogroms and fled back to the East from whence they came. And perhaps that would have been the end of the story but for the fact that they also declared secession and sought to dismember Nigeria.
They then made their biggest mistake of all by provoking a full scale military conflict with Nigeria when they launched a vicious and unprovoked attack against the rest of the South by conscripting the eastern minorities , overwhelming the Mid-West and attacking Yorubaland in an attempt to capture and enslave it.
Thankfully they were stopped in their tracks by the gallant efforts and courageous fighting skills of Colonel Benjamin Adekunle’s Third Marine Commando (which was primarily a Yoruba force) and who repulsed them, stopped them from entering the Western Region, drove them out of the Mid-West, forced them back into the East, defeated them in battle after battle and eventually brought them down to their knees and forced them to surrender to the Federal forces in Enugu in 1969.
The Igbo and their Biafra fought Nigeria and killed Nigerians for three hard and long years in that brutal civil war in which over one million courageous, loyal and faithful sons and daughters of the Federal Republic lost their lives at the war front trying to stop the Biafrans from succeeding from the federation, from taking our land.
*Fani-Kayode is a former aviation minister
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/08/the-bitter-truth-about-the-igbos/#sthash.iGNjtdEZ.dpuf
John Mbaku
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Only an unruly diversity held together in mechanical unity.
Adeshina Afolayan
olugbenga Ojo
Bola Aina
This is not his final, he has stirred the hornet nest already. Saw a more recent (5hrs ago) FACEBOOK post of his:
"A WORD FOR THOSE THAT CALL ME AN IGBO-HATER"
While Femi Fani-Kayode has his points, he has over-personalized the issue thereby bringing in extraneous factors. What about those gentle ladies he is dragging in? Someone ought to tell him to bury his hatchet. He threw caution to wind and spoke off guard (our elders say "f'oro s'iku bi agba"). His unbridled comments left much to be desired, as he didn't exhibit the sagacity expected of a statesman. He shouldn't have allowed the issue to degenerate to the point of name calling. Our elders say "eyin l'ohun t'oba ti ja bo kose ko mo" (our words are like eggs once dropped they can never be retrieved again), and "Ija a'atan oro l'aku" (the fight will finish but our statements will remain evergreen). Though I still admire his courage.
Bola.
❦ When you give somebody responsibility beyond his capabilities you rendered him incapacitated❦
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Fani-Kayode said nothing that justifies the notion that the Nigerian nation is a myth.
Fani-Kayode is arguing that Igbos are known for claiming more rights than is their due.
He gives examples beginning with the coup that led to the civil war, Ironsi's management of the ensuing coup fallout, and the bold but disastrous push by Biafra to take the Midwest and attack Ibadan and Lagos, thereby demonstrating territorial ambitions beyond the scope of the beleaguered nation it portrayed itself as being, a initiative that united the South-West with the North against Biafra.
Is Fani-Kayode in accurate in his history or false in his analysis of that history?
He is responding to Orji Kalu claiming that Lagos is no man's land.
He argues that the claim that Lagos is a no man's man's land is false.
He argues that until a Yoruba person can enjoy the same rights in Anambra state, for example, as he enjoys in the South-West, Igbos cannot claim that they are equal in rights to the aboriginal inhabitants of the land.
Do you disagree? If so, why?
Fani-Kayode's measured outburst comes in the wake of the effort by Igbo spokespeople in Lagos to assert rights to greater say in the running of Lagos on account of their contributions to the state, a move made in a decorous manner, but sadly soiled by poor politics on the part of some self appointed Igbo spokespeople, as in the recent claim attributed to Orji Kalu.
It also comes in the wake of the Achebe cry that Ndigbo have not been integrated into Nigeria, meaning, from one view, that more should be given to Ndigbo than they have access to at the moment.
What Fani-Kayode has stated is that to a degree, rights in Nigeria are defined in terms of your state of primary genetic ancestry.
That implies a kind of nation but not certainly a non-nation.
In England, which no one will argue is not a nation, rights to some social services are defined in terms of what the government calls a local connection, an intimate relationship to a particular community.
While that practice in England is quite distant in implications from the Nigerian example, it suggests the question of degrees of government recognition of rights of citizens in relation to geography.
I add my own conclusions to those of Fani-Kayode.
When discussing issues of Igbos place in Nigeria, some Igbo on this group, and Ikhide in defense of their corner, inevitably degenerate into insults. They prove unable to consistently argue the subject in a reasoned and civil manner.
Some of those who try to reason are so overwhelmed by emotion that they treat anyone who does not agree with them as an enemy.
This is the weak spot of vocal Igbos on this and other groups.
On the Edo groups, some of the self appointed spokespeople of Binis degenerate into insults if one consistently challenges the view of the vocal majority.
On the Northern Nigerian group such abuses emerge if one challenges Islam in ways they dont like or stands in the way of their displeasure with the current Nigerian govt whose head is not from the North.
Nigeria will be more a nation when its citizens decide that they want a more inclusive nation.
Part of that resolve is being able to examine differences of opinion passionately but without treating those who disagree with you as your enemy.
I get the impression that Igbo leaders are too often not good politicians.
A good politician weights the possibilities of response to what they say and do before speaking or acting.
From the unfortunately unbridled, unanalysed and unself justified Achebe outburst about anti-Igbo genocide during the Civil War, a move he made at a very bad time in the nation's politics, to the incendiary comment attributed to Orji Kalu in the midst of the controversy over the deportations from Lagos, to the sad memories of what I understand as the ridiculous Nzeugwu coup and the practically self destructive management of the build up to the civil war and its desperate, almost blind continuation in the face of deaths of Biafrans in massive numbers, makes me wonder if Ndigbo do not need to enter into a collective self assessment and resolve to define who speaks for Ndigbo and how to defuse the negative utterances and actions of poor Igbo politicians and reinforce those of good ones.
thanks
toyin
alem...@yahoo.com
Etannibi
John Mbaku
blargeo...@gmail.com
For Femi and his write up; let's remember even a damaged clock still tells the right time twice in a day. For the response of the Igbos to the resettlement scandal, well an Igbo adage says you cannot tell a child you slapped how loud he should cry. They are the victims. Always the victim.
Blargeo
(@picaxso)
shina7...@yahoo.com
Ojo
Gbenga,
What kind of statement is this? Either there is a Nigerian nation or there isn't. From your post, I'm sure you meant the latter and future part of the statement. And you will be correct if that's your assessment.
Nigeria hasn't moved farther beyond the amalgamation tragedy. All the nations and ethnic groups were lumped together into a political contraption that we are still trying, till today-some fifty something years later, to unravel. And yet the leadership believe that Nigeria's 'unity' is not negotiable while assiduously blocking the path that makes real unity a real possibility in a renegotiation of the colonial spirit of amalgamation.
How then can we forge a nation out of the existing unruly diversity? What we see on the listserv in terms of ethnic emotion is just a microcosm. There isn't unity anywhere.
Adeshina Afolayan
shina7...@yahoo.com
Toyin
Welcome back. Been a while. I waited in vain for your response to my Soyinka-as-philosopher-as-existentialist suggestion. Well, busyness I guess.
Could you explain this statement: "That implies a kind of nation but not certainly a non-nation." Tantalising but vague to me.
If, as you surmised from Fani-Kayode's article, 'rights in Nigeria are defined in terms of your state of primary genetic ancestry', does that not signal something fundamentally wrong with the foundation of the Nigerian state and its quest for nationhood? To create a civic nation, there must first be the diversion, or rather the integration (our famous concept), of ethnic and sub-national loyalty to the larger civic society. People must have something-an ideal, ideology, national metaphor-around which to surrender their ethnic soul. Is there such an ideal in Nigeria worth dying for? Is there an integration that is the first condition of nationhood? That, I repeat, hasn't happened in Nigeria. That, I again repeat, was Achebe's contention about his quarrel with Nigeria. That, I insist, is manifested in the ethnic emotion that is often demonstrated anytime a Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Bini issue surfaces on listservs.
What more evidence do we need of Nigeria as a non-nation? If there is a nation, my rights ought to transcend my local government area or 'primary genetic ancestry'. Even if I live for 30 years in Lagos as an igbo person, I can't claim any political privilege i.e. Of being voted for.
Magana yakare
Adeshina Afolayan
Chika Onyeani
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Okechukwu Ukaga
"The Igbos understandably left the North in droves after those terrible pogroms and fled back to the East from whence they came. And perhaps that would have been the end of the story but for the fact that they also declared secession and sought to dismember Nigeria." -Femi Fani-Kayode
For this hate monger, it is a case of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”. Femi does not want the Igbos to secede and --as he puts it – “dismember Nigeria”. But he also does not want the Igbos to fully exercise their rights --as Nigerian citizens --beyond Igbo Land. Go figure!
No need to get into all the childish nonsense like which group has history and which has not; which has accomplished more than the other (as if he personally- despite his privileged family background -has achieved more than his Igbo counterparts in education or industry or anything else); or the dangerous and relentless use of the intentionally divisive “we”, “they” “others” (think Rwanda); or the justification of all that happened to the Igbos before, during and after the civil war with the same kind of explanation we get from those who try to blame the Jews for the atrocities committed by Hitler et al (i.e. somehow the victims brought all that on themselves); and the thinly veiled threat /incitement against Igbos–or as he calls them ‘’others’’ – for according to Femi, they have not learned enough from the past (and apparently therefore need more) horrendous experiences to acquire a little more humility, and know and accept their place in the scheme of things, etc, etc. In other words, unless/until that lesson is learned, more human-manufactured problems for the Igbos is inevitable and justified. Na wa-ooo!
For those of us who do not see anyone as Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, Ibibio, Kalabari, Tiv, and so on, or even as Nigerian, Ghanaian, South African, American, Haitian, etc,etc, but simply as a brother or sister and a human being, it is disturbing to know that there are many folks like Femi with such a warped perspective.
Unfortunately, there are many others who are swayed or influenced by what (seemingly articulate and highly-placed) hate mongers say and write. Thus, these hate mongers are largely responsible for generating and sustaining “the perenniel suspicion and underlying tensions that lie between the two nationalities". And I should note that hate mongers are present within every nationality. I believe however that they are clearly in the minority, although they tend to be very vocal. All people of good will should ignore the hate mongers among us no matter how much they try to tap into or build upon any prejudice or primordial sentiment about the “others”. If no one buys what the merchants of hate are peddling, they will find a more positive trade or go out of business.
-OU
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Executive Director and Extension Professor,
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Richard Buckminster Fuller
shina7...@yahoo.com
Sir,
First, what evidence do we have of Nigeria as an 'evolving nation'? Second, is that first statement not contradicted by the second that the character of Nigeria has been defined by those who have captured her?
I prefer the second statement. The word 'capture' is powerful and apt. The Nigeria state is an arrested political category. We haven't seriously moved forward in national terms. We just keep patching things up. We just keep managing to muddle through. Yet, our bubble nationalism always burst in the face of postcolonial, post-independence realities that we have repeatedly fail to address.
For instance, I left a state university for the University of Ibadan about seven years ago because the management of that university began a subtle promotion policy which favours indigene over non-indigene. In a university! That kind of policy is in silent operation in most state government establishment. Deportation is just a recent dimension. More will happen.
You need more evidence?
Adeshina Afolayan
