OPINION
THE RISE OF ETHNIC RACISM AND BAD LEADERSHIP IN NIGERIA
By Prof Iyorwuese Hagher
Introduction
Let me start this lecture by thanking God almighty whose grace has permitted us to stand here
on this podium on this soil to address the staff, students and faculty. Eight decades ago, a young
man stood in this place to acquire education to teach as a VTA and VTB Teacher.
man, Daniel Hagher Gbaaiko became a teacher and a Dutch Reformed Church Missionary. He
was my father I was born at the eastern end of the Mkar mountain. At Mbaamandev. My father
and I benefited from the Christian education that the Dutch Reformed Church Mission offered,
and I went to W.M. Bristow Secondary School, Gboko owned by the Sudan United Mission.
That school and this University are now owned by the same proprietor the NKST. I am
therefore standing here in gratitude to the church for showing me the better way of life through
Christian values and the ability to get a sound education.
I deliberately chose today’s topic because the things that are happening around us are life-
threatening and thinking about them now is critical and necessary, and cannot wait.
Furthermore, there is little conversation about race in politics and in the academy. The
impression is that tribalism and racism is a swear word not to be used in decent society.
There is evidently much to think and say about the existential threat of ethnic racism and bad
leadership that is affecting individual lives in Nigeria. Many lives have continued to crash into
ruin because of ethnic racist policies and individual racist hostilities that we are all exposed to
in our homes, offices on the high-ways and on our farms.
I was born 72 years ago on 25th June 1949 at the Mkar Christian Hospital. I was born with a
status of a British Protected Child. That was before the independence in 1960, when all people
living within the Nigerian space acquired the Nigerian citizenship. I wondered why the British
did not give us British citizenship, and why were we being protected, and from whom? Why
did they colonize us? These questions occupied my mind as I grew up through the various
phases of Nigeria’s development.
The Colonial Experience
As I grew up, I realized that Europe colonized Africa because they could do so. They had the
technological superiority in arms and weaponry to cross the seas and to colonize us. Life under
the British colony was not bad from the eye of a child but I grew up expecting the best.
Independence held so much promise as I dreamed of living in a country, Nigerian, whose
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independence from Great Britain would lift it from primitivism, deviance and retrogression to
betterment, loftiness, and a higher place of social life than had ever been reached before by any
black society on earth. Haiti the first black nation on earth to be independent through a
revolution that defeated the most powerful person (Napoleon Bonaparte) and his army, was not
doing well despite proximity to the US. I was worried but confident that Nigeria’s story would
be different.
Today after over sixty years of independence Nigeria is in the vortex of rigorous re-
examination of its leadership, and the psychological make-up of the citizens. Nigeria has
become the validation of racist theories of black inferiority. Nigerians who have excelled in
countless endeavors are questioning themselves and the racists are having fun laughing at our
inability to prove the revolutionary ideas that fired the momentum for decolonizing. These were
ideas of Nigeria’s destiny in the context of world history to prove to the world that when black
people are left alone to organize and govern themselves, they can live in peace, and build their
democratic institutions and tolerate their diversity.
Contemporary Times
Nigeria since the advent of democratization in 1999 has fluctuated in fortunes. There is a
fundamental disconnect between the bank profits being posted, the amount of money budgeted
each year and the quality of life of ordinary Nigerians. The score card of the Buhari regime is
extremely high in social interventions as well as the massive infrastructural projects scattered
around Nigeria, from massive borrowings from China. But all this is negated and nullified by
the inability of this government to secure the lives and property of Nigerians as contained in
the Nigerian Constitution. The Constitution is unambiguous that the protection of lives and
property is the cardinal responsibility of state.
This is not the case now and indeed, the reverse is happening. Not only are the lives of
Nigerians at risk, the cement of unity has cracked and there is a threat of disintegration. The
president himself is in a bind. How does he promote the welfare of his ethnicity, the Fulani,
without being an ethnic racist? Should the president be a Fulani president and an ethnic racist
autocrat to the rest of the country? What really is ethnic racism? The ethnic nationalities that
advocate resource control or indeed a break-up of Nigeria into Biafra, Oduduwa, and Arewa
Republics are these ethnic racist warriors or something else? Where exactly does tribalism and
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ethnocentrism end and ethnic racism begins? Can we separate white racism from ethnic racism
as mutually exclusive or one is cause of the other?
Aims of the Lecture
This lecture hopes to discuss ethnic racism in the context of the intersection between white
racism and its influence on ethnic racism, I hope to show you that the people promoting ethnic
racism are merely replicating the racist models in America and Europe and if we explore this
together we might consider the conclusion that Nigeria is a heavily racist society where the
political ideology of neoliberalism is merely a veneer for entrapment of a racist economic mode
which does not benefit Nigerians except those who have continued to use racist policies.
There is an ominous parallel between the racist policies of white racism in America, and the
policies of the ethnic racists here that benefit certain ethnic groups which have formed a
detribalized hegemony, a rampant upper class of privilege and contemptuous anti-black racists.
The paradox is they are also black.
The aim of my lecture is to instigate a change in the heart of the people so that our religious
sentiments, our duties and obligations will yield to radical change in principles, opinions, and
affections of the people to enable us upholster our hate and wars against one another and permit
peace to exist in our society. It is my conviction that a critical probing of ethnic racism and bad
leadership should be part of out effort to define, express and shape the reality of the type of
country we desire to have, and the type of democracy that can accommodate our hopes and
aspirations and indeed our differences.
I hope we can all join the movement to radically emancipate our students, lecturers, and our
public from the trappings of a neocolonial mentality towards original thinking that proffers
solutions that answer to our problems and needs.
The great Pan-Africanist, Franz Fanon, saw the Question of race as, but a superstructure, a
mantle, an obscure ideological emanation” concealing an economic reality and defined racism
as “the shameless exploitation of one group of men by another which has reached a higher
stage of technical development.1
1 Franz Fanon. Towards the African Revolution. 18.
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To face racism and its twin brother ethnic racism we must be prepared to face evil. Racism is
bigotry and totally unscientific. It is a dangerous myth.
TRIBALISM AND ETHNIC RACISM
Tribalism is defined by Webster as tribal consciousness and loyalty especially: the exaltation
of the tribe above other groups and strong-in-group loyalty. Ethnicism on the other hand is
prejudice based on ethnic origin. Ethnic racism is the irrational prejudice and malevolence
against others because of differences of ethnicity.
I hope that we can have a discussion about the rise of ethnic racism in Nigeria, and more
importantly, how this racism has created toxicity in our elite and political leaders.
Racism is defined as a belief in the doctrine that inherent differences in human beings, racial
groups determine cultural or individual achievements, usually involving the idea that one’s
own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is
superior to the other.
This belief is a fallacy because it is an irrational myth without a scientific basis. Racism is a
misnomer because the breaking of the human genome code on June 26, 2000, proved the
existence of only one human race and not races. Racism is purely political; it has no genetic
and scientific basis. It is proved that human beings irrespective of colour or geography are 99.9
percent the same.
Racism and Ethnic racism are socially constructed. The idea of race is an invented myth which
the European invented to justify the nasty business of buying and selling other human beings
and holding them as chattel slaves. It is a persistent false and poisonous idea. It is the vehicle
by which power, money and hate mongers drive people apart. Racism and ethnic racism are
nasty, nasty businesses that are evolving in their nastiness.
I have searched in vain to see if Nigerian intellectuals have engaged “ethnic racism” as racism
in their discourses. There have been a lot of discussions about identity politics, which I believe
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is a politically correct way of avoiding to discuss this nasty business of racism and indeed to
take a position that western racists have often taken by assuming that we are in a post racist
world today. Sadly, I do not believe we are in a post racist world. Racism is here everywhere
on earth and it has assumed hegemonies of power and determine what professor Alubo 2003,
states that “identity politics is the basis for determining who is in and who is out.” 2
I hope the
distinguished Professor will find common grounds with me if I paraphrase him to say that in
Nigeria today “Ethnic racism determines who is in and who is out.” Racism sets apart in an
irrational and arbitrary way those who have the right to command and those to obey.
Nigeria needs to embrace nation-building in the face of the present challenges of xenophobia,
and violence that has engulfed the nation, and critically undermines national security and well-
being. Professor Nnnoli had scathing words for ethnicity as;
Nnoli (1982;176) “An image of a struggle among the various ethnic groups for a division of
national resources. It has become a tradition that an average Nigerian especially the poor
believes that unless his or her ethnic brothers or sisters are in government offices the chances
of them having access to the nation’s resources meant for development purposes are slim.”3
Ethnic racism has morphed in contemporary Nigeria to become a piece of overwhelming
machinery for national deprivation. It has exacerbated corruption in governance, undermined
democracy, promoted inefficiency, and created false hierarchies in the way we regard and treat
each other. Ethnic racism is Nigeria’s biggest fault line that is pushing the country to the brink
of civil wars and dissolution. We crush other tribes with hurtful anecdotes, we lack the
backbone to endure and tolerate others.
When we call one a tribalist what do we really mean? Are we describing him or are we swearing
at him; sort of saying, “This is a bad person.” When one claims to be detribalized, does it mean
he will push his tribe under the bus so that another will be at advantage? I believe that when
we claim to be detribalized, we are being ingeniously true racist bigots. People who claim to
be detribalized are touting dangerous neutrality in the face of virulent ethnic racist clashes in
the workplace, in the courtrooms, academia, the armed forces, politics, and even churches and
mosques. Detribalized people are passive racists who pretend neutrality but in reality, are
enablers of bigotry in ethnic racism, sexism, youth, and elderly abusers.
2 Alubo, O. (2004) “Citizenship Crisis and National Integration in Nigeria” Nigerian Journal of Policy and
Strategy, vol. 14 No. 1.
3 Nnoli, O. Ethnic Politics in Nigeria, Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers. 176.
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I enjoin you on this Christian campus to rise to the responsibility of our callings as Christians.
This responsibility, above all else, is to love the Lord our God with our all, and our neighbor
as ourselves. This means that our struggle to be good Christians is by loving God in the spirit
and truth and loving ourselves and our neighbors as human beings. This is the existential
struggle we face living on earth and participating in human activities. There should be no room
for, class, racial, tribal, sexist, old men and women hatred.
Ethnic racism is institutionalized, systematized, and structural in Nigeria. It is the single most
important and dangerous myth that enables haters to discriminate, hate, profile, threaten and
kill. Tribalism is not necessarily bad. To be detribalized means being devoid of tribal affiliation.
This is inhuman and really not real. Tribalism is good, but tribal racism or ethnic racism takes
place when there is a creation of a disadvantage, an inequality through the unfair assistance of
an ethnic group to get wealth, land, power positions and attention to be heard at the expense of
other non-dominant groups.
In his landmark ruling on racial discrimination in the U.S., Supreme Court Justice Harry
Blackmun wrote in 1978. “In order to get beyond racism, we must take account of race. There
is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
History of Racism Worldwide
The United States has made tremendous efforts to end racism. It has equally been made to
entrench racism. Government policies, the legislative houses, and the political parties have
made progressive anti-racist policies and have also re-enforced racist policies. In one of the
landmark cases of the US Supreme Court of March 6, 1857, in the Dred Scot vs Sanford, the
Court ruled that “Black people could not be citizens”.
On January 31, 1865, The House of Representatives in the U.S., passed the Thirteenth
Amendment abolishing slavery. In the same year the Ku Klux Klan the white supremacist terror
group in the US was founded as a social club in Tennessee.
February 27, 1869, The Republican Dominated Congress Passed the Fifteenth amendment to
the United States Constitution forbidding the denial of voting rights on account of race color,
or previous condition of servitude.
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Ibram Kendi, in his book, “Stamped from The Beginning” stated that after a deep study of
racism in America, he saw, “The anti-racist force of equality and the racist forces of inequality
marching forward, progressing rhetoric, in tactic in policies.” 4
The world stood still when America elected her first black President it seemed then as if
America and the world had reached the destination of post-racism. Typically, Obama’s election
ignited the racist reaction that put Trump into power and these forces seek to roll back
American’s progress on racial equality and whatever happens in America has ramifications for
the rest of the world. Nigerians’ ethnic racism is co-joined with the unbridled capitalist ethos
that has yielded a fertile ecology for corruption, poverty crime, and ethnic and religious wars.
When the Federal Character Commission was established by the Abacha Administration, the
framers of the law (The Constitutional Conference, 1974-75) took account of ethnic disparities
in the public service. Today, that disparity has been ignored and subverted by ethnic racists and
the selling of Federal appointments to the highest bidder. It is our shame that entrants into the
Nigerian security services pay from fifty to hundreds of thousands of naira to secure
recruitment slots.
In his groundbreaking book, “How to be an Anti-racist,” Ibrahim Kendi stated:
“We have been programmed to respond to human differences between us with fear and
loathing and to handle that difference in one of the three ways: ignore it, copy it, or destroy
it.” 5
He concluded that human beings have no pattern for relating across our human differences as
equals. Neither the US, Great Britain, China nor anybody has a permanent solution. The World
Bank and IMF have emphasized good governance and the elimination of corruption but they
have never advised the U.S nor their dependent countries like Nigeria, to enhance ethnic
equality and eliminate ethnic racism as an indication of good governance. Nigerian politicians
who are ethnic racists have generally pretended that ethnic racism does not exist. Yet its effects
are palpable, its disastrous consequences are deeply felt in the economy and in the dissolution
of the national security architectures.
4
Ibram X. Kendi. Stamped from the Beginning. Bold Type Books New York, 2016. x.
5
Ibrahim Kendi, How to be An Anti-Racist. One world, New York. 2019. 23.
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At this juncture, it is necessary to request all of you my listeners to ask yourself what side of
history do you stand on? Are you an ethnic racist or you are anti-ethnic racist? If you are
detribalized then you are a problem. You are an advocate of white racism that has invidiously
seeped through our subconscious and insidiously batters ethnic groups to the ground in your
rapacious greed looking down on your ethnic group and country for gratification and accolades
for a non-existent objective neutral ground.
Nobody is born a racist, an ethnic racist, or a bigot. These are all learned behaviors. Children
in the nursery and primary schools do not discriminate on the basis of color, tribe, or race. It is
our acculturation process that nurtures our fears, premonitions, our proclivities, and biases from
parents to children and then from peer to peer from generation to generation. We have been
taught to hate the other before, but we do not need to inhabit that space for long. Hate breeds
hate and destroys. We must now un-educate ourselves, and unlearn those racist, and ethnic
racist ideologies.
We practice ethnic racism when we express racist ideas about an ethnic group in support of a
racist policy towards an ethnic group. Ethnic racism like racism itself points to group behavior
instead of policies, as the cause for disparities between groups.
Personal Journey as Ethnic Racist
I was born here at Mkar, I was born a human being for all I cared. It was later I learned to be
Tiv and was happy to be Tiv. To be Tiv feels so good. It is so good. I became a Tiv ethnic
racist, knowing the Tiv creation story of the Tiv God who created Takuruku the father of Tiv
and Uke the non-Tiv, and that, Tiv were the original inhabitants of the Tiv nation, while the
others the sons of Uke were the others scattered across the farmlands of Tiv nation. This
creation story and folklore emphasized Tiv excellence and exceptionalism as against the picture
of ignorant others whose yams, dances, and even appearance, was sub-standard. I did not
realize then that I was being molded in consciousness to be an ethnic racist.
As I entered primary school and came in contact with Christianity, I came across white racism
forcefully in the theology of the Anglo-Saxon creation story in the “Bible” where the Blacks
were the cursed race. I believed this and assimilated my inferiority complex before the white
pastors and followed my parents to genuflect before white missionaries. Soon enough I was
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removed from my parents into the indulgent hands of my uncle, then into the primary school
boarding school, situated twenty miles away from Gbagir my father’s missionary outpost. The
boarding school at Zaki-Biam was a detribalization process to turn us away from the folktales
and witchcraft and traditional world-views and to instill in us the dominance of Christianity
and white supremacy. My father was supplied with American comics, cartoons, and literature
for the young. I read voraciously. My reading list comprised “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry
Finn,” “She” and “Alan Quatermain” by Rider Haggard, and “Tarzan of the Apes” series by
Edgar Rice Burrough. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” stunned me. I was reading about slavery for the
first time and it was so humiliating. I had never heard about slavery but I read about shameful
things done to the slaves. Yet I didn’t want to die like Uncle Tom. I wondered why he didn’t
escape and die fighting?
Reading through these books became a detribalization machine and at the same time, an ethnic
racist consciousness crept over me. I was white. I identified with the white hero and looked
down on the black. I systematically became detribalized but became a white racist through the
power of literature. It is the same racist device employed in the Cowboy films where the lone
white hero takes the world of Indians and Mexicans and these identify with the white hero than
their people who were always being defeated by the gringo. Literature and media are powerful
weapons for subjugating consciousness and at the same time the ultimate weapons for
liberation.
In Nigeria today, ethnic racism encroaches on us relentlessly like the harmattan dust from the
north. Ethnic racism, creates new forms of power. The power to categorize, judge, elevate,
downgrade, include, and exclude. We face this on a daily basis when we go to complain to the
police or are facing a case in court, there is a small space on that complainants or defendants
form where we are asked to fill what tribe we belong to? Once this form is filled, you have
been branded for good or ill. You have permanently made or spoilt your case. Ethnic racist
officers and the judiciary can prejudge you and determine your guilt even before you open your
mouth to speak.
I faced a similar situation in January 2021 recently, at the time I registered to take the COVID
vaccine in the United States. The form asked me if I was White, African American, Caucasian,
Black, Asian or other. I did not waste time to fill I was “other”. I then realized I had categorized
myself as alien, of whom Nobel laureate Toni Morrison questions: “Why should we want to
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know a stranger when it’s easier to estrange another? Why should we want to close the distance
when we can close the gate.?” 6
We are told that the term race was first used in 1481 by a French Poet, Jacques De Beze. In
human history, this is a significant fact to show that race is a mythical invention, a fallacy but
insidiously dangerous myth. In 1735, Carl Linnaeus in his book, “The Racial Hierarchy of
Human Kind”, named the races as white, yellow Red, and Black and created a hierarchy where
white was on top and black was in the bottom ring. This set the tone for unscientific
hierarchization and categorization. Racist ideas are necessary to perpetuate racism. White
intellectuals in order to justify racism advanced the monogenesis or curse theory. This theory
states that we are all descended from Adam but the black race was the cursed one. Others
advanced another atrocious theory of polygenesis which stated that while the white man
originated from Adam the black people originated elsewhere and indeed may be a species of
non-humans. This gave the license to enslave the black people. Even western enlightenment
arose as the slave trade flourished.
In Nigeria, very often the ethnic racist in the south glibly cast all northerners as inferior by
European cultural standards, values, and traits. All northerners are often cast as uneducated
illiterates and beggars, not minding high literacy in the Arabic script of some Fulani and Hausa
intellectuals. When I first attended my African literature class at the Ahmadu Bello University
in 1971, I was shocked to discover that writers in Nigeria made little effort to develop national
literature. Writers are ethnic champions and Nigerian literature is full of ethnic racism. The
existential challenges faced by the nation are bypassed for mythical forms and consciousness
or couched in unrealistic de-cosmopolitanized settings. The reality is vastly different because
the various ethnic groups of Nigeria have migrated from different regions to others and from
rural to urban settings. Ethnic plays or novels are still engaged in ethnic racist mongering.
The Lugardian agenda in Nigeria was to force feed ethnic racism to the colonized in his racist
indirect rule, which spawned apartheid in South Africa. In Nigeria, the colonial government
set out to partner with the Sokoto Caliphate, and in order to do this, had to invent racist ideas,
historiographers, ethnographers, and anthropologists were recruited to write the history of the
indigenous Nigerian people. They immediately categorized the ethnicities into those who must
6 Toni Morrisson, The Origin of others, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2017, 38.
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rule and those who must obey. Ever since then these racist ideas have dominated the history
department of Universities as ethnic racism is on the rise.
Post-Colonial Ethnic Racism
1966 coup where the majors claimed they were waging a revolution but in reality, the results
of the killings were ethnic racist and consequently countered by anti-racist middle belt officers
who were neither Igbo nor Hausa-Fulani.
Even though Nigeria’s independence was won through concerted nationalist groups from 1861-
1960 by pan-Nigeria and Pan Africanists, Ethnic racism took over soon after independence.
The issue of “indigenes” “settlers” and “native” become constructs of ethno-racism, by the
power elite to dominate, exclude, define and otherize.
Nigeria is becoming more complex with the rapid urbanization of rural to urban areas and a
great majority of Nigerians do not live in places where their ancestors were born. Surprisingly
many Nigerians are denied citizenship of the Nigerian state through subterfuge, in the growth
of the traditional chiefs and local governments where the traditional rulers continue to refer to
the citizens as their subjects. Citizenship is defined as a special status granted by the state to its
members and expresses the equality of all before the state. But ethnic racism has invented
indigene/setter dichotomy as an exclusion device. Indigeneity is exclusive to members of a
particular local ethnic community.
Nigeria has over 470 ethnic groups. This complicates the ethnic racist issues to the dominant
groups that give orders in their hegemonic enclaves and the subordinated ethnicities that obey
them. The Hausa-Fulani, Zango-Kataf crises between the Hausa and the Bujju and Katab, the
Banjo and Kamba in Mambilla Plateau, the Kuteb and Chamba, the Jukun and Chamba, the
Tiv and the Jukun, the Ebirra, Bass and Gbagiji the Ife/Modakeke the Aguleri Umuleri conflict
in Igbo land over the ownership of Otucha land, where the colonial policy favored the Umuleri
against the Aguleri. The Mango-Bokkos feud in Plateau between the Mwangavul and the Ron
people.
The Nigeria constitution is ambiguous on the issue of citizenship and indigeneship. There is a
fierce contest among the Nigeria political elite to acquire political power, acquire property and
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accumulate capital. This has blurred the ruling class from transcending ethnicity and building
a united Nigeria as a pan-ethnic entity.
One thing is clear, any idea that suggests one ethnic group is in any way inferior or superior to
another is an ethnic racist idea. The present ethnic racist policies of our governments are first
preceded by theoretical assumptions embedded in these ideas that some ethnicities are superior
and ought to command while the others are to obey.
Today’s cyber space is inundated by ethnic racists whose constant verbal and non-verbal rants
send degrading messages to people of other ethnicities. This micro-aggression leads to
insurgency, kidnapping, and ultimately to genocide.
We must consider national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all differences. White
racism has affected Nigeria in diverse ways, one of the ways has been through “colorism” a
terminology invented by Alice walker, an American Novelist. Colorism has become a pathetic
racial form in Nigeria, where light-skinned people are promoted by the policy of colorism in
the business sector in Nigerian banks and other commercial institutions through a collection of
policies causing inequalities between light-skinned people and dark-skinned people. A multi-
billion naira industry has emerged to promote this policy through the aggressive marketing of
skin-lightening creams in every corner of the country according to Kendi. “Today skin
lighteners are used by 70% of women in Nigeria, 35% in south Africa: 59% in Togo and 40%
in China, Malaysia, the Philippines and south Korea.”
Skin bleaching is a racial death wish, akin to making whitening a destination or dying in the
attempt to become white. Just like skin lightening creams have blossomed so also have
dermatological clinics to repair the damage of abused black skin in which cancer of the skin is
often the prognosis. I remember during the Benue Cement heydays skin lightening Ambi
creams were used literally to enhance colorism by the fashionable women of Gboko, despite
the unfortunate name of the cream “ambi” which is translated as human excreta in Tiv.
The land-grabbing policies of the present administration are ethnic racist policies. They
promote the singular interest of a particular ethnicity the Fulani herders at the expense of the
inconsequential others who must be expropriated or killed by the herdsmen while the
presidency blatantly looks the other way or expresses a pathetic public bias goading the pillage,
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plunder, and incremental genocide, that has left many homeless. Of all the ethnic racist policies
of this administration, the absolutely worst is the abandoning of displaced persons whose lands
have been taken over by militias of a favored ethnic group.
The administration has unwittingly provoked reverse ethnic racism against the Fulani. This is
unfortunate because many Fulani opposes the ethnic racist land grabbing policies. The country
must not however abandon the real Nigerian cattle herders the “Bororo”Fulani, who have
continued to suffer an outcast status that has made them pathological people. We must face and
counter their pathology through inclusive policies. The Fulani Bororo like the Osu of the Igbo
must be equal to all of us as citizens. They have suffered far too much from ethnic racism, that
profiling them merely adds insult to injury.
The Benue Fulani are indigenous Fulani who have lived in Benue for decades. They speak
Benue Languages and have inter married with venue clans. This is the category that should be
helped to ranch their cattle in accordance with the Benue anti-open grazing law which
disproportionally affected them. This category of Benue Fulani is torn between the support of
the Benue Government or the militancy of the Miyetti Allah a Fulani ethnic racist group that
parodies the white supremacist KKK of the US. In modern civilized society, any group that
wants or needs something should negotiate instead of taking up arms against the large swath
of other ethnic nationalities. All the Fulani who are from other countries seeking to forcefully
enter and occupy space in Nigeria should be shown the way out as illegal immigrants. To do
less is to instigate a racial war the end of which is best left imagined. The president should
disavow and condemn Fulani terrorism as such; without equivocation, and give all Nigerians
the confidence that he is not a Fulani supremacist ethnic racist, but the president of all
Nigerians.
Contemporary ethnic racism is on the rise due to the policies of successive governments since
- We have watched the worsening crash of the naira which has collapsed totally in value
against the dollar. This collapse is certainly anticipated because those who sit at the apex of the
national economy have no sympathy for the nation. These ethnic racists and class racists are
acting true to type they are destroying the only nation with the largest number of blacks to
appease the racist policies of white supremacists who control the UN with veto power and sit
on the boards of IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Center. Even if such occupants
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are black skins, they wear the white racist masquerades; western capitalism and its most
dangerous evolution – neoliberalism.
The economic chaos in Nigeria is a neoliberal paradise. Through this chaos, we will birth new
dollar billionaires but send the ninety-nine precent into economic pain and ruin. Capitalism is
racist. It produces inequality and subservient and dominant classes. No wonder Karl Max
observed that The turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins,
signalized the rosy era of capitalist production. Ask those advising the president against the
re-valuing of the naira and be told of capitalist market forces, young whites and Asians with
sleek laptops in suits, meet with our government officials and the central bank and talk
endlessly of removing a non-existent subsidy, and ask for the pump price of petrol and demand
for more tariffs for electricity. They are practicing neoliberal capitalism, which they define as
the freedom to exploit the people to economic bankruptcy, to extract taxes on the poor, and
grant tariff exemption to the rich who are “sold” government assets for next to nothing.
Capitalism is designed to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. To invoke the culture of
neoliberal capitalism in Nigeria is to stifle the breath out of the poor and wretched. Capitalism
has produced wars, slave trade, colonies, and depressing wages. Neoliberalism has become a
funnel where highly skilled manpower in Nigeria like Doctors and Nurses is taken away and
relocated in the western nation because our neoliberalism pays depressing wages that do not
support a decent lifestyle for these professionals.
Capitalism in Nigeria is the capitalist’s gold standard. Ethnic racists have sat at the apex of
power and brought out policies that enable the Western nations to benefit at the expense of
Nigeria when I talk about Western nations, I do not direct my gaze at white faces rather to the
percent that own half of the World’s wealth around 42.5 precent while the 70% the 3.5 billion
poorest adults (most of who live in Africa) own 2.7 percent. Martin Luther King Jr. understood
that capitalism is co-joined with racism, exploitation, and wars. He concluded that these are
the three evils that are interrelated.
Nigeria’s unprecedented capitalist growth and the richness of its hydro carbons have enriched
Western Nations and China, and a handful of Nigerians who have killed the national economy
through the taking of loans from Banks that they had no intention of paying. These unpayable
bad debts are passed on to depositors.
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My views about capitalism and neo-liberalism should not label me as a socialist or
communist. I am neither. My playwright colleague from East Africa, Ngugi Wa Thongo writes
committed good plays. He is listed among the socialist or communists. So also are many of our
intellectual colleagues in Nigeria. I am merely a humanist resisting the twin devils of ethnic
racism and neo-liberalism that have made Nigeria the heaven for the rich, and hell for the poor,
the weak, down trodden workers, peasants, and students.
Ethnic racists seek out easy ways of categorizing their tribes as good while other tribes are bad.
They long to push arguments to become wars. Wars give ethnic racists some meaning in life.
Ethnic racism is based on mutual hatred. This racism negates and rejects the community of
common humanity. It erects boundaries between friends and creates enemies on the basis of
tribe. The ethnic racist mentality is a warrior mentality, which sees life as a battle for scarce
resources which must not be shared. The Ethnic racist upholds competition and dispossession
rather than sharing.
Nigerian politicians are all mostly made of detached individuals. They are de-rooted
individuals who see their constituents not as persons but as votes to be subdued and cajoled for
support. This is why the legislators and other elected politicians instead of visiting their
constituencies invade them with the aid of a military campaign with a full complement of
military officers who are battle-ready for the big man. Our politicians are big detached people
who have been turned by capitalism into monsters. They have turned politics into wars, fighting
for existential survival where every evil is permitted and where if you do not belong to his
party, then you are a stranger and enemy. Our democracy has turned many friends into
implacable enemies.
Some of the present Nigerian leaders come into ethnic racism through the detribalization
process of colonial education which created the imbruted black skins with various white masks
which entitle them to pillage, exclude, categorize, denigrate, the citizens “under” whom they
“serve” as elected officials but instead play God and lord over them.
While studying English at Ahmadu Bello University, I made some great friends; Isa, Umar,
Nasidi, Abdul, Alfa, Mohammed, Abdullahi, Umaru, Lantana, Yelwaji and got to know many
Yorubas and Igbos as well as minorities. We did not think in ethnic racist terms then. We were
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young post-civil war Nigerians. I had been taught to be an Ethnic racist against the Hausa
Fulani in my primary school days. The UMBC rhetoric for rejecting the NPC was that they
were going to make us all Muslims and then we would have to wash our behinds five or more
times a day. This washing part was the grossest thing and people would scream “no we don’t
want to wash” Our image of Muslims was the dirty kola nut sellers and butchers and their
henna-covered women. At ABU, my roommate at Akenzua hall in the first year was a Muslim,
Abdul Usman from Bauchi state. He was neat, polite, studious, courteous, humorous, and
pious. We shared the same space without offending each other with our religion nor tribal ways.
I knew he washed. I didn’t take offense. It was rather cute. I realized that I also washed.
Everybody washes when we bathe. I was an English major and he was in political science. We
always sat together in our political science and sociology classes. (my minor subjects). Then
we did not think about religion nor tribe. My life-long friends Isa Ahmed and his sister Lantana,
have been friends for decades. They were and are Muslims and I a Christian protestant. Our
children are friends to this day. We imbibed all we could from our lecturers who taught us
critical thinking. Unknown to us we were being programmed by the U.S. and the West to be
the haters of our people and lovers of the Western culture and systems and taste. My own
indoctrination in the department of English to wear white masks through language and
literature was quite exerting in this regard. But we were also now suffused with Marxism and
Socialism. Yakubu Nasidi describes it, as “In the department of English, where intellectual
colonialism was most concentrated as the place where we shifted paradigms due to the arrival
of Marxism (noisily).
7
For most of us who studied in the Nigerian universities or abroad, we were taught to be lovers
of western traditions and assimilated anti-black racism that undergirded their educational and
acculturation systems. Some of us were lucky to escape from both anti-black racism and the
thinking that somehow, we belonged to the white race. I am an antiracist in all forms. I am
Tiv. I love being Tiv and I know that I am not in any way inferior or superior to any other
person whether white, yellow or blue. I believe we are all equals before God and if Nigeria is
a republic, then we are all equal citizens.
7 Yakubu Abdullahi Nasidi, Being Review of Professor Iyorwuese Hagher’s Comrade and Voltage.
https//:www. researchgate.net/publication/353150107.
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Toxic Leadership
Nigerian leaders are products of nurturing from different backgrounds. Some come from
bloodlines of slave traders whose parents bequeathed to them an unhealthy contempt of other
ethnic groups and an exaggerated and bloated image of their identities. Many have found cruel
grounds to inflict on others fearful trepidation in the pretext of leading them. It is my belief that
leadership can be learned and we could all become better leaders for everyone wins and is
happier when the leadership gets better. There is more knowledge today about what makes
leadership more effective, responsive, responsible, and better.
Nigeria is presently, unfortunately, trapped with toxic leadership in politics, in business, in
government, in the universities, and in the village communities. This month, Nigerians were
made painfully aware of the horrendous kidnap and murder of Pa Dariye, the father of Joshua
Dariye, the former governor of Plateau State. The leaders of the gang and the gang members
who killed him were paraded by the Nigeria police in a self-congratulatory fashion as one of
the very few cases of assassinations and kidnappings when the police have arrested the
perpetrators.
The scene paraded on the television and on social media exemplifies, the emergence, bloom,
and escalation of the toxic leader in our mist. In this macabre scene, the kidnappers confessed
to the kidnapping of the nonagenarian because they claimed they were jobless and poor and
were neighbors of the Dariyes’ whose son Joshua had been governor and senator for many
years, without improving their social conditions. When it was the turn of the leader of the gang,
Mr. Jethro, to speak, as a good leader, he took responsibility for the kidnapping and affirmed
the reasons for the kidnap. He regretted the killing of Pa Dariye which he said was done by his
boys, but he said he was responsible as the leader, then he said “they should not have killed
him after they received the ransom money of eight million naira.” Really? I asked myself here
is a good leader who takes responsibility for the action of these followers but who is totally
toxic because he is leading his followers to commit crimes. Kidnapping for ransom is the new
lucrative business in Nigeria. On the one hand, it is perceived as a legitimate business and an
act of revenge against the rapacious elite; on the other hand, it is the pathway for the
capitalization of criminal gangs across the country. It is a new form of the slave trade where
the slavers re-sell their slaves to his or her family. It has gone beyond the revenge of the
oppressed. It is a palpable dystopia and the ultimate chaos and breakdown of national security,
law, and order due to leadership collapse and leadership toxicity.
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As to the millions of definitions of leadership, there seems to be an agreement that the leader
chooses a particular course of action and then gets others to go along as followers. Leaders
motivate followers to do what followers need to do to meet their needs, wants, and expectations.
Good leadership is relational, collective, and purposeful towards the achievement of the
common good within ethical standards. Good leaders exercise power in an objective manner
and for positive objectives in satisfying the needs of the followers.
Bad leaders are toxic leaders. They are consumed with the control of things. They lead their
followers like animals to slaughter. The leaders of criminal gangs are leaders too. So also are
religious leaders of extremists who lead their followers to death and then flee to safety. Bad or
toxic leaders exercise power by coercion and in disregard of followers’ needs and motives. Bad
leadership is power-mongering and control of people for personal brute power; to do things
because they can be done and not because they are right. Bad leaders are imbruted, selfish, and
controlling. Bad leaders fall into two categories: they may be ineffective or they may be
unethical. Bad leadership is toxic to the followers.
Mr. Jethro who kidnapped Pa Dariye is effective in leading his group to desired evil goals,
kidnapping for ransom. This is toxic leadership. The goals of his leadership are; unethical,
cruel, brutal, lawless, and savage. Nigerians have suffered from toxic leadership among our
political leaders too. These leaders have weak skills, bad strategies, and bad tactics. The toxic
leader generally falls short of his/her dreams and intentions. Toxic leadership is unethical,
corrupt, evil, lawless, and autocratic. These leaders use their position to do things because they
believe they have the power to do these. Might is right. They are unable to differentiate right
from wrong. It is this type of leadership power that Lord Acton felt “corrupts absolutely.”
Nigeria’s leadership toxicity can best be summarized by Barbara Kellerman who puts bad
leadership as “incompetent, rigid, intemperate, callous, corrupt, insular and evil,”8
and this
view is similarly shared by Joanne Ciulla in her collection of essays, Ethics: The Heart of
Leadership, that “leaders who do not look after the interest of their followers are not only
unethical but ineffective.”9
How can a majority of our presidents, governors, and legislators since the advent of democracy
in 1999, be anything other than toxic leaders when they have made themselves richer and the
8 Barbara Kellerman, Bad leadership: What it is. How it Happen. Why it matters, Harvard Business School
Publishing Boston, Massachusetts. 2004.
9
Joanne B. Ciulla, “Carving leaders from the warped wood of Humanity, “Review Canadienne des Sciences de
l’Administration, Montreal 18, no 4 (December 2001) 313.
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people poorer? They have secured themselves in bulletproof wagons and opened the people to
be slaughtered in a lawless political ecology. They have destroyed our institutions like the
police, military, judiciary and corrupted the universities, and refused to provide health services
and to pay our highly skilled doctors living wages. Nigerian-trained doctors and nurses are
running away. The Minister of Health Dr. Chukwu has announced that there are at least 5000
Nigerian trained doctors in the U.S. Similarly, there are 5400 Nigerian doctors in the United
Kingdom, and in many other places like Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Asia. Don’t ask me what
the toxic leaders are saying about this. Nothing positive.
Toxic leaders do not love the people they claim to lead. They do not try to uplift them, people,
through education, health, social welfare, and lifting out of critical needs. They love only
themselves and their spouses and close family members and their coterie of friends. The rest
of the followers are mere irritated until the next election circles when they become objects to
be manipulated for more power. These toxic leaders unleash unlimited sadness, terror, and
pain.
Adam Kahane correctly looks at power as generative and degenerative;
“Power has two sides, one generative and the other degenerative. Our power is generative and
amplifying when we realize ourselves while loving and uniting with others. It is degenerative
and constraining when we recklessly abuse, deny or cut off others.” 10
The toxic leaders of Nigeria have unleashed their bad leadership through evil and ineffective
policies which have made Nigeria a fast under-developing state rather than a developing one.
Politicians at all levels have heightened tensions and quarrels instead of resolving them. Power
has been used in a degenerative manner and has led to massive corruption, unprecedented
poverty, and ignorance, and the collapse of safe spaces for citizens to pursue their livelihoods.
One of the most horrifying scenes of toxic leadership I witnessed recently took place on
Thursday 4th September 2019 at the Yar’Adua Centre Abuja. I was invited to attend a peace
meeting under the joint security council meeting of Benue and Taraba states. The drama that
unfolded was one of raw power when the governor of Taraba State rose up to speak. He
condemned the Nigerian Constitution as being beneath the tradition of his ethnic group and
their revered Aku Uka. He and the Aku Uka demanded the expulsion of the Tiv people from
10 Adam Kahane, Power and love, A Theory of Social Change. Barrett Koehler Publishers Inc. San Francisco
2010, 27.
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Taraba state, where he claimed the Tiv, a powerless farming group that had been “enslaved”
by the governor’s ethnic group had outlived their “visitor” status.
The governor’s vituperation was the most bizarre show of raw power over a powerless group
that was nothing more than vassal slaves to do the bidding of their oppressors. Today, world
attention is needed to focus on the killing fields of Taraba State whose ethnic racism is at its
highest ascent, where the Jukun-Fulani and Tiv are at war, and the government is overtly
waging the Ethnic racist war against the Tiv.
Without love those in power do not try to lift everyone they are given power over to rule. The
people they rule become disposable and victims of raw power as the rulers engage in self-
promotion for themselves but the followers have unlimited sadness, terror, and pain.
As I continued to listen to His Excellency the governor, and His His majesty, whose authority
was above the Nigerian Constitution on which they swore to govern, my eyes caught, seated in
the audience, five retired generals from the middle-belt region. I wondered if they were on the
side of the victims of the ethnic racist champions or on the side of the victims who were not
represented at the “peace” conference. The generals did not say a word. This is where most of
us are situated in the midst of egregious wrongs. We become invisible. We are mute. We say
nothing with words or action, and believe we are neutral. Paulo Freire condemns this action
because washing one’s hands off the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to
side with the powerful and not neutral.11 A close look at a good leader should discover that
love and power must walk together to be effective. Without love, the leader’s power is
ineffective and unethical, but love without power is nothing but chaotic surrender.
The Rapacious Elite
There are 3 million Nigerians consuming more than 95% of our annual revenue and thus
leaving more than 19 million Nigerians in poverty. These three million comprise the entire
presidency and the national and state assemblies, the state and local government systems with
their bureaucracy of advisers, special and personal assistants. We are further informed that 350
Nigerians or their businesses owe over 4.3 trillion naira in banks across the nation. Nigerian
banking is a massive crime scene. Inside the Bank, vaults are proceeds of crime and terrorists.
the recent sponsors of terrorism in Nigeria launder these proceeds daily to enable them to wage
11 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. www.noiton&company, inc. New
York. 2006. xviii.
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an endless war. These loans are un-payable, due to the expectations of the borrowers that such
monies would not be paid anyway. and the borrowers are running freely and running their
businesses and demanding more from the neoliberal system that favors them. This is the extent
of the impunity the less than one percent inflicts on the rest.
Colonial Education created in the leaders of today certain types of individuals framed in
ignorance of the harmful ideology of a universal humanism that has relegated the black African
in status This is why despite flag independence, nothing has changed. The whole of Africa does
not deserve a seat at the United Nations and the Central Bank of France controls the economy
of former French colonies, while Nigeria’s existence is tethered to the global markets whose
face is not only white, it is racist, cruel, and unyielding.
The Nigerian toxic leaders are like the prodigal who left home and went into a far country,
where he wasted his substance and character. He is like the famine situation where the village
gave their remaining food to their son to go to a far country, and bring food to save the rest
from starving to death. But the favored son is still in the far country, Abuja, Lagos, and
Overseas. He has not yet summoned the will to take succor and relief to his starving kinsmen
and women in the villages.
As long as there is so much poverty around, those that loot and plunder public wealth to be rich
are surrounded by their poverty. Martin Luther Jr. in his book” The Measure of a Man”
wrote: “We are all interdependent, that we are all in values in a single process, that we are all
somehow caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Therefore, whatever affects one
directly affects all indirectly.” 12
Capitalism commodifies power. It creates and distributes its political power as currency. The
situation of Nigeria today is the neoliberal haven, where there is militarization to manage the
social consequences of neoliberal fascism. The Nigerian government is ever ready to pull out
the military to sites of demonstrations against anti-people policies of the government. This is
precisely the way power and liberal democracy works.
The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson is quoted to have argued as Tory MP in
2008 that: “The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge
anymore.” There are many world leaders like him who look at Africa with disdain and wish to
recolonize us. Boris Johnson is consoled, there are many black skins with white masks here
12 Martin Luther King Jr. The Measure of a Man. Fortress Press, 1988.
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who hate the country and plunder it and carry the proceeds to London. Prime rear estates and
deposits in banks of currencies and gold in Great Britain in Europe and America where the
ethnic racists Nigerian elite have hidden their loot should be a consolation to the prime
minister.
When one is wired to getting, getting, getting the love of getting increases by getting. Toxic
leaders with a strong tendency to acquire, to steal, and loot tend to be inconsistent and lacking
in character. Integrity is not a word they cherish.
Every Nigerian President claims to be fighting corruption, but corruption fights always back
with vehemence wearing ethnic racism as armor. It starts with an inner circle of family and
friends who must be exempted from restrictive laws. Soon enough the enablers and
participating rings get wider and wider till corruption becomes endemic. Ethnic looters
compete on who will loot the most, better than the competing ethnicities. They steal from
federal institutions and are canonized in their states. They loot treasuries to be at par with other
looters in other states. After all, their needs are the market forces and these needs are created
by endless ethnic competitions and microaggressions. Corruption will only end when ethnic
racism ends.
Ethnic racists in Nigeria operate by unleashing their domineering temperaments and the
outgrowth of that temperament to enslave others physically or through racist policies that
diminish others. Powerful men consume ethnic racist ideas and then strive by word and deed
to gain absolute political, economic and cultural control over the other.
There are within each dominated ethnic group the contented captives who are content to accept
an inferior status in order to be rewarded by appointments into offices so that they live idly
gloating at those who see everything wrong with race profiling, expropriation, internal
colonization, and enslavement. Ethnic wars are waged by children of hate of warring groups.78
There is a tendency, for ethnic racist journalists, and racist owners of media outlets, to depict
the victims of their racism as criminals and the violent racists as victims. We need to resolve
the ethnic racism question as a moral problem needing morally based persuasive solutions.
The Decomposition of Democracy from 1999-2004
Since we returned to democracy in 1999, we have witnessed a steady decline in our standard
of living. Our economy is woefully down. There was a time during the second republic after
President Shehu Shagari refused to take more loans for the country, and the economy was
down. Shagari’s troubleshooting minister for Transport, Alhaji Umaru Dikko countered critics
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of the economic failure by saying things could be so bad because Nigerians were not eating out
of garbage cans. I was puzzled then; I had never seen that phenomenon of adults ransacking
dustbins for food. Today, this reality is staggering. Nigerians are eating from dustbins and
dumpsites. They are dying in droves from preventable diseases and from a failed democracy
that is slowly decomposing to a full-blown civilian autocracy.
Democracy that keeps harping on electoral victory and majority rule, risks ignoring the more
salient parts of our republic which are equality, national discourse, freedom of participation,
and self-determination in an atmosphere of non-repression and non-discrimination.
So far, we have got it so bad. Instead of democracy, we have autocrats who cheat, swindle, and
steal their way into offices, where they refuse to be accountable – there is really nobody to hold
them accountable since the masses have been captured. The voting public that expects nothing
tangible from their elected officials in terms of projects. They demand school fees, medical
bills to be paid, contributions to weddings and burials and to be selected to go far annual
pilgrimage to Mecca or Jerusalem. They ask for cash to marry more wives and demand
motorcycles and if they are close enough to power and brave enough could even expect a car
gift.
The poor helpless masses have been swindled to expect sheer tokens of sensual gratification
rather than have concrete policies that change their lives to become more meaningful and
purposeful. They are the living dead, so what do they care? There is little consciousness left in
our prostrate and supine citizens to rise up and demand their rights and dignity as human beings
from their elected officials.
It is a fact that changes in Nigeria against injustice, hatred, and ethnic racism in our country
cannot come as a gift package. They must come from brave and dedicated struggles. The
current attempts by ethnic racists to roll Nigeria back to pre-colonialism and even the slave
trade will never stop. After all, there are still Obas, Emirates, and Kingdoms whose children
proudly look back to the shameful histories as periods to be celebrated and consider themselves
special people. There are ethnic groups in Nigeria today who proudly refer to others as the
abode of their slaves and look at others among them as children of slaves. These pathetic
hubristic children of formers slave traders are still potent and abundantly alive. These big
people, the enslavers, are enemies of the new Nigeria we advocate, a Nigeria united in our
ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, and standing for each other in brotherhood and
sisterhood.
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According to Franz Fanon, when a man or woman “takes a stand against a society that is
rigidified, unprogressive, reactionary, without a taste of decency and wallows in corruption, a
dead society, he is a revolutionary.” This country makes us all radicals and revolutionaries out
of our desire and love for the country to march forward instead of marking time and looking
back at the past injustices with nostalgia. We are revolutionary because we dream, we yearn,
and cry out for revolutionary change to make Nigeria great and to lift its institutions of
greatness.
We must not allow the children of slave traders, those who sold us out and denied us nation-
builders, artisans, medicine men, statesmen, warriors, and spiritual leaders who were sold as
property to white racists. The children of ethnic racists must not build us in servitude as
prisoners of history, because we do not seek a destiny on the historical injustices of the past.
The people of a Republic are people of equality, equity and are not subjects to the Sultan, the
Emirates systems, Chiefs, Obas, and Obis. People in a Republic are not subjects of the president
or governors neither are the subjects of any chairman or any other authority. We are citizens
and citizenship is the new monarchy. All else are hired by us through the vote we cast. This is
the truth that has been hidden by those who usurped the power of the citizens.
Nigeria that was born out of colonialism promised “Unity in Diversity”. It promised tolerance
and understanding as we sang “though tribe and tongue may differ in brotherhood we stand”
Islamic top clergy like Sheikh Gumi sent their children to study in Catholic convents in Kaduna
without diminishing their religious standing. Christian youth like Benjamin Kwashi, the
Anglican Archbishop of Jos, studied the Koran in Arabic and could recite Muslim prayers
without diminishing their Christianity. The ethnic racists have infiltrated consciousness and
polluted our minds setting us at each other’s throats in the name of an intolerant Islam, the
Taliban version of Islam. Why can’t we live in harmony and love and give each citizen the gift
of choice of faith?
In Nigeria today, especially in Kaduna, and Jos religion and ethnicity have torn the citizens
apart. Hatred and fear have congealed to make ethnic and religious identities, rigidified, blatant,
and insidious. They live in their apartheid seclusions afraid of each other. I do not want to live
in a part of a city in my country which is not safe for other human beings who were born into
other faiths they had no control over and if I must fight and kill human beings for my God who
is able to do all things by his power and might then my God has become a mini-god.
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Barriers to Nigerian indigene ship are set up by ethnic-racism in form of indigene ship
certificates which are qualification and hierarchicalization devices indiscriminately wielded by
regional, state, and local government officials, “these indigene ship laws give political leaders
the power to “determine whether citizens can participate in politics, own land, obtain a job or
attend schools. The system is abused widely to garner political support.
Ethnic racism is often tied to the economy and perception of marginalization against ethnic
groups. It led to the Nigerian civil war and the earlier uprising of Isaac Adaka Boro and his
separatist group the Niger Delta Frontiers Force. Boro declared the Niger Delta Republic of
February 23, 1966, but by the beginning of March the secessionists were defeated, routed and
Boro jailed for treason.
In 2013 my Institute the leadership institute in Jos conducted a youth workshop to which we
invited Christians and Muslim youth in secondary schools around Jos. They all joyfully
participated, and moaned and groaned that we the adults have infected them with our religious
bigotry and ethnic racism. They were now to go to schools in safe havens and with new people.
They missed their friends who were now available at the workshop. Pre-colonial ethnic wars
and conquest s real and imagined have been resurrected and hurled through time and space
from the conquests of Usman Dan Fodio to President Buhari. This ethnic racism is fueled by
these foundational ideas and practices that hinder Nigeria’s growth, prosperity, and greatness.
Christians and Muslims are both derived from Judaism and their origin is monogenetically
rooted in their father Abraham their ancient patriarch. Why can’t Nigerian Christians and
Muslima wear the spirit of tolerance?
By situating this lecture at this University is deliberate. I am here to seek for kindred spirits to
embrace the sacred duty to heal Nigeria’s wounds of terror and banditry to which our politicians
have given consent and accent.
I am not addressing a political rally but educated people, who are being thought critical thinking
and have hopefully developed a social conscience to become kind, gentle, and community-
oriented leaders. This is my revolutionary message to you. Our current contemporary
leadership has failed us. You were fooled that you will be the leaders of tomorrow. But where
is that tomorrow which has been stolen from you. I call on you to seize the moment and to lead
now. Tomorrow has arrived now. Start by living right and ethically. As educated people do the
right thing no matter how difficult they may be. When you wake up every morning, after
praying to your God, make your bed and tidy your living space before you go out. Leaders of
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today who have been fooled all the time to be boys now and wait to be leaders of tomorrow are
still waiting for tomorrow and tomorrow that ebbs away. They are still boys, and slaves of the
system begging for handouts when they can be the bosses controlling what they give. In my
life, I hated dependency because nobody can ever know how to satisfy my needs better than
myself.
Getting a university education means having a good character and knowledge. A graduate
should have the proper conduct of knowing what is right and having the mindset and doing the
right thing over and over, easier and perhaps more rewarding wrong things that could be done.
Educated people prefer conversation to confrontation, consensus over aggression, and civility
over thuggish behavior. Your education should make you anti-ethnic racist politicians, who
would build a better Nigerian society.
There is a need to realize that our Nigerian universities should challenge the neoliberal
capitalism we have here today, that is spreading poverty and death. Remember that capitalism
arose because the slave trade also gave birth to European enlightenment that created a body of
knowledge, to promote white supremacy. They justified and promoted racism. Philosophers
like Hegel justified colonialism, he influenced Soren Kierkegaard, Engels and Karl Marx.
African socialist and Marxist scholars seldom quote Karl Marx who said that African people
were a nation of children in the first stage of human development. The negro is an example of
animal in all his savagery and lawlessness.
The United States celebrates one of its founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, as the patron saint
of blacks’ liberation from slavery. But Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite who fathered many
children with his black house slave Sarah Hennings and promoted the idea of sending away
freed blacks in the U.S back to Africa.
The educated Africans today must transcend the ethnic-racists philosophers among us. We
must heed Franz Fanon that:
“Africa will not be free through the mechanical development of material forces, but it is the
hand of the African and his brain that will set in motion and implement the dialectics of the
continent.” 13
Conclusion
13 Franz Fanon. Towards the African Revolution. Grove Press, New York, 1967. 176.
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Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher | A LECTURE Page | 28
Our country’s constitution does not yield protection for the weak in our society. The federal
system is too strong and presidents and governors tend to degenerate to autocracy. Nigeria has
never been so divided, since the advent of democratic rule in 1999. There is a spread of poverty
and growth of inequality. Ethnic racism has risen to unprecedented heights. The Nigerian dollar
elite, class ethnic racists, continue to enjoy their wealth stashed in bank vaults in dollars which
are not affected by the slide of the naira. There is rejoicing in the homes of the dollar elite,
whenever the dollar crashes. It is then when their bank vaults release dollars to be changed at
the (Aboki) alternative markets. Ethnic racism has exacerbated religious and ethnic intolerance.
Hausa-Fulani Muslims consider Yoruba Muslims as less than pure while the ethnic religions
Boko Haram consider the rest as impure Muslims. Leaders of Christian groups specially the
Pentecostals limit their radius of succession at the demise of their leaders to their wives and
family members or tribesmen.
Whole communities have been wiped out in the middle-Belt by terrorist herdsmen who have
rampaged killing non-Fulani Christians around the country. The Nigerian government is unable
to or unwilling to contain them as earlier Muslim-uprisings like Maitasine in Kano and in
Burumkutu were repelled and contained.
Nigeria’s dignity as a nation cannot be restored unless justice and prosecution of criminals are
achieved. Party platforms have made people enemies of one another. The politicians and the
power and business elite feel so entitled. The elite take everything. They are insatiable and
relentless. They take everything, but they are not satisfied. They live in unbelievable luxury
amidst the sea of the squalor of their constituents. But they are not satisfied, they chase the
poor from their dingy hovels to develop shopping malls, service flats, and condominiums.
The only ideology the elite have developed is that of “Everybody fighting everybody to assuage
their mutual greed.” “Share the money” is their slogan. A political semantics of corruption has
evolved around some National Cake that must be shared. How the cake was baked is not a
pleasant question in decent company. Most politicians stand for nothing except to hawk for
positions and plots of land and cash to be shared. It is never about service, but it is their turn to
chop. Human life has become very cheap in Nigeria. The loss of human lives in their dozens
does not evoke sympathetic response from the people nor their leaders. Conversely, money,
positions, lands, and titles are worth killing and dying for.
We have made all Nigerians nomadic. I am not referring to nomadic Fulani’s or nomadic Tiv
farmers. Nomadism is found among the politicians who easily migrate from one party to the
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Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher | A LECTURE Page | 29
other without suffering ideological remorse. All Nigerian political platforms are flat, and more
of the same ideology; everybody for himself in the service of mutual greed. Nigerians are
running round in circles from the past to the present, and back to the past. The Nigerian elite
may look black but the blackness is only skin deep. Inside their bodies under the skin, they are
silk white bodies of de-tribalized comprador white racists who wear the masks of ethnic racism
to be more blatant ethnic racists. The elite are sub-colonizers for the post-colonialists. They are
colonizing out national economies and having suffered from culturecide, are deliberately
spreading the virus of their ethnic racism and stoking ethnic and religious wars that enable
them to sell arms to the terrorists on the one hand and blame the poor helpless victims for
daring to cry that the government is not doing enough to combat insecurity.
In his address to the youth protest on 22nd October, 2010 at Lekki toll gate plaza against police
brutality, reminiscent of Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, President Buhari
menacingly told the youth: “your voice has been heard loud and clear and we are responding.”
In blame avoidance mode the president went on to exonerate his administration “Both our
words and deeds have shown how committed this administration has been to the well -being
and welfare of citizens.” He touted his administration’s record on poverty alleviation citing,
farmer moni, Trader Moni, Market moni, N-Power, N-Tech, and N-Agro among other
incentives. The protesting victims of police-brutality were blamed for sexual violence,
vandalization and destruction of private properties and invasion of palaces and spreading of
deliberate falsehood. How very neoliberal almost like the Black Lives Matter protests in the
US and the high-handed response by the US police. But this is happening in the black country
Nigeria. Ethnic racists use the police to profile the youth as a criminal clan.
In a remarkable show of force Nigeria military descended on the protesters with awesome
brutality, scattering, mauling and killing. In no time the protesters were scattered. The Nigerian
youth are cast in the mind of the ethnic-racist elite as black youth victim protesters they watch
on television who are always portrayed on fox news and other white supremacist television as
nearly always violent, criminal, when all they are requesting is for their humanity to be
respected in their quest for the most basic desire to pursue their lives in liberty and peace.
But in using apartheid-era style, Tianamen square brutality, and the misuse of the military
against Nigerian citizens peacefully protesting ethnic racist policies of the Nigerian state, the
government of Nigeria is hastening the inexorable arms of the revolutionary clock. This
revolution has already started in the minds and hearts of Nigerian patriots. The change they
want is to be Nigerians, to speak English, the universal lingua franca in public places and its
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Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher | A LECTURE Page | 30
Nigerian variant derisively called pidgin. None of the Wazobia languages have demonstrated
sufficient neutrality from ethnic racism to be adopted as national lingua franca. The youth
desire to intermarry, to be free to marry across tribal and religious lines, to be free to worship
any god of their choice or even no god.
This mind revolution was dispersed from the Lekki Toll Gate with massive brutality. The
Government in self-preservation had stuffed wax in its ears and did not hear the pleadings of
the new patriotic youth whose radical shift in principles, opinions, sentiments and affections
were real. While the revolutionary clock is ticking the ethnic racist elite have sunk Nigeria in
debauchery, venality, and infernal quarrels that are fueled by capitalism. The dam is full and
due to burst sooner than later.
As we progress into 2023, the Anti-ethnic racists among us must not just sit and spectate. We
must act fast and put the future of Nigeria in the hands of people committed to building a united
Nigeria where ethnic racism and racist policies will become a relic of the past. The best
examples of countries in Africa, that have transcended tribal and ethnic racism are Ghana and
Rwanda. In these countries, the citizens don’t identify themselves as tribesmen. They are
Ghanaians and Rwandans. Their template ought to be our template for a greater Nigeria.
Voters across the length and breadth of Nigeria need to be educated and persuaded to defend
their right to vote. The toxic leaders who have left our poor and downtrodden to live lives that
are no better than wild animals will stop at nothing to retain power. The people must also stop
at nothing to defend their votes. People seeking recruitment to public offices should be
recruited on track record. If a person has not demonstrated skills nor ability in organizational
efficiency, and ethical character, he/she should be denied the vote. There are others who are
best known for evil. They should be shunned and not elected.
Our choices are very limited to ousting the ethnic racists from power. As long as ethnic racism
benefits those in power in Nigeria, they will never be persuaded or educated to eliminate it.
They will never self-sacrifice, from their self-interests, nor be persuaded by reason. We the
people must oust them out. We need leaders to pursue a single Nigerianness consciousness,
and not those who heedlessly march to the absurd drumbeats of ethnic racist violence.
We need a massive Pan-Nigerian, Peace, Truth, and Reconciliation program set up by the
Federal Government in all the Local governments in the country. Democracy is fast eluding
cash strapped Local Governments across the nation. In most Local governments there is state
collapse, and traditional rulers, bandits and ethnic racists fill in the vacuum created by the
The Rise of Ethnic Racism and Bad Leadership in Nigeria
Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher | A LECTURE Page | 31
absence of state presence by providing a security and legal structure. There have been systemic
injustices at the Local government levels that need to be discussed and put behind, as we move
on to a united Nigeria.
What is to be done: Recommendations
- All Nigerians living in IDP camps be resettled and each family be paid a lump sum of
15 million Naira towards their resettlement. No Nigerian should suffer displacement
due to ethnic racism or religious bigotry. - The nation should apologize to the Igbo for the civil war. General Yakubu Gowon
should lead thirty-one elders drawn from each of the non-Igbo States of the Federation
for this exercise, to end all misgivings about the civil war. And the Igbo likewise should
be willing to accept the apology without conditions. - Nigeria should lead ECOWAS and African Union to apologize to the Blacks in the
diaspora for the slave trade. Nigeria should demand for an apology from the children
of white ancestor owners of slaves for their roles in the shameful acts of denigrating
and dehumanizing fellow human beings as property. Financial resettlement and
reparation should be made as well as debt forgiveness of African nations struggling
with treadmill debts. - Nigeria should formally remove all non-Nigerian Fulani or any other groups that have
illegally entered Nigeria and set up a Judiciary investigation of those who were
clandestinely registered to vote in our elections and those who received our national
Identification documents and passports. All those who committed crimes should be
prosecuted. - The National Assembly should enact a law, to expunge the provision in all our official
documents of the “Tribe” categorization. - A law should be enacted making it illegal for anyone to be discriminated against on
grounds of ethnic origin; in appointments, promotions, recruitment, or in the denial of
goods and services. There should be legal remedies for infringement. - All caste systems in Nigeria be abrogated. All Nigerians are citizens and are equal to
everybody else. These include the Fulani Bororo and the Igbo Usu castes. Human rights
abuses of these categories be prosecuted in courts of law. - Two-term presidents and two-term governorship positions in the constitution should be
abrogated. In its place is recommended a one 5-year term. Governance is continuous
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Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher | A LECTURE Page | 32
and if an elected president or governor is unable to achieve distinction in five years, he
shouldn’t be expected to do anything better in ten years. The present two terms
provision is a very long time to endure poor governance and corrupt, evil, and inept
leadership.
- Zoning has failed us. In its practice, we have been saddled with sectional presidents and
governors who represented their ethnic groups and heightened ethnic racism, and it-is-
our-turn-to-chop syndrome. It should be abrogated by all the political parties and
instead all Nigerians should compete at the Federal and the State levels. All the citizens
of the state should contest for the governor’s position. Only the best should emerge on
the basis of sound intellect, experience, and character.
Hagher, President, African Leadership Institute, USA presented this Distinguished Persons Lecture at University of Mkar, Benue State, Nigeria.
By Femi Fani-Kayode
In an article titled “Is Nigeria fuelling Israel’s genocide against Palestinians?”, which was published in Businessday on 30th October, one Suraya Dadoo, who wrote in from South Africa, opened his contribution by quoting our Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs, my friend and brother, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar, who he attributed the following words to.
“There is no justification for the carnage that is going on in Gaza… the complete disregard for the proportionality of force that is being meted out on innocent civilians.
This carnage is completely out of hand and totally unacceptable. There is no way to explain the double standards; it has to stop.”He went further by quoting our nation’s number two citizen, Vice President Kashim Shettima’s words at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September, where he said the following:
Both the Minister and the Vice President have done us proud with their courageous words and bold stand and it is a reflection of the fact that the Tinubu administration represents the thinking and has expressed the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians and have opted to tread the right path when it comes to the tragic events in Gaza and the pitiful plight of the Palestinian people.
Dadoo went further by writing the following, “The Nigerian government has consistently condemned Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and has been particularly outspoken against Israel since October 7. Historically, Nigeria has been a strong supporter of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and Nigeria was central in efforts to ensure that Israel was not granted observer status at the African Union (AU). According to sources who were at the October 2021 meeting of the AU executive council attended by Africa’s foreign ministers in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Nigeria’s then Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama took the lead in objecting to Israel’s accreditation and urged other member states to do the same.”
Again, this is comforting but he follows it by getting to the crux of his essay and the heart of the matter by dropping the following clanger: “While the Nigerian government has strongly condemned Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza it also stands accused of fuelling the Israeli war machine that had already killed, at the time of writing, more than 40,000 Palestinians through direct violence and bombing.”
To substantiate his point he wrote, “According to a recently released report titled “Behind the Barrel: New Insights into the Countries and Companies Behind Israel’s Fuel Supply,” Nigeria accounts for 9 percent of the total crude oil supplied to Israel between October 21, 2023, and July 12, 2024. Researchers analysed satellite imagery, ship positions, shipping logs, commodity trade flows, information from port authorities, and financial and media reports to track 65 oil and fuel shipments to Israel in that period.”
He concludes by alleging that,”Over 133 kilotons of Nigerian crude were delivered to Israel from Chevron, Eni, Exxon, Shell, and TotalEnergies. Gabonese crude accounted for 22 percent, and the Republic of the Congo supplied 6 percent, but it is Nigeria’s contribution that has raised eyebrows given the country’s vocal criticism of Israel.”
Dodoo’s allegation, if proven to be true, is deeply troubling and needs to be taken very seriously indeed lest we leave ourselves open to his grave charge of complicity in the genocide that is being unleashed on Gaza by the Zionists.
The matter can be resolved by simply banning all crude oil shipments from Nigeria to Israel.
I hereby call on our President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to do precisely that and take an even stronger stance against the Zionists by banning all arms purchases from them and terminating any military and/or intelligence advice or services that the Israelis are offering or providing us with.
If he could find the courage to implement a number of bold and much needed fiscal, economic and constitutional reforms and policies such as the removal of the oil subsidy, the floating of the naira, the establishment of autonomy for the local government areas, the implementation of the students loan fund, the numerous tax reforms and most important of all the refusal to go to war against Niger Republic despite the enormous pressure that the Western powers, led by France and the United States of America, put on him to do so earlier this year, he can certainly muster the same will to kick the Zionists out of Nigeria, nullify their pervasive influence in our country and sub-region and sever all trade, economic and diplomatic ties and relations with them.
General Yakubu Gowon, our revered former Head of State, did this in 1973 when he was in power and as Chairman of the then OAU (AU) in order to punish the Jewish State for its attack on the Palestinians during the Yom Kippur War.
For a number of years before then and specifically during our three year civil war, Gowon had viewed Israel with much distrust and suspicion given the covert support it gave to the Biafran secessionists and its complicity in the attempt to dismember and break up our beloved country.
However the straw did not break the camel’s back until 1973 after which the final break took place and diplomatic relations between our two countries were not restored until September 1992 by the then Head of State, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
I am constrained to say that now is the time to break diplomatic ties with Israel again.
This is the right and proper thing to do in the light of its insatiable compulsion and appetite for mass murder, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide and given its insane and psychotic disposition for murdering helpless and defenceless women and children and for killing babies.
Again, this is the right and proper thing to do given the fact that it has not only illegally occupied the land of the Palestinian people for over 76 years and slaughtered and incarcerated millions of the people but has also unleashed what can best be described as the second holocaust against it over the last one year, killing over 60,000 in Gaza alone and thousands more in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria!
If the world could go to war with Nazi Germany in 1936 as a consequence of the first holocaust, every civilised nation ought to, at the very least, be able to break diplomatic ties with Zionist Israel as a consequence of the second.
Morality, decency and justice demands no less and those nations that insist on applauding the atrocities of the Jewish State and selling weapons of mass destruction to it are not only complicit in its war crimes but are also from the pit of hell and in the service of shaitan.
The Holy Bible says there can be no fellowship between light and darkness. It says we must either choose God or Belial.
It also compels us to resist evil and to fight for the weak, the poor, the vulnerable and the oppressed.
The Holy Quran does the same and is emphatic on the importance of justice for all and support for the less privileged and the vulnerable.
Nigeria can and must NEVER be seen to be complicit in the bestial barbarity that is going on in Gaza or to have relations with the beasts that have relentlessly unleashed it.
Though we have many challenges, ours is a nation of decent, God-fearing, just and right-thinking people who have a long history of standing for the oppressed all over Africa and contributing to the efforts of numerous liberation struggles.
Let us prove to the world once again that that is who and what we are by openly and loudly challenging the barbarity, lunacy and thuggery of the State of Israel at the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, the African Union and all other relevant fora and calling it out for its continuous violations of international law, its disdain for an international rules-based system and its racist, fascist and ethnocentric disposition.
Let us expose its contempt for humanity and human life, its total and complete adoption, espousal and implementation of apartheid as a fundamental principle and cardinal policy in its system of government and its religious fanaticism and proselytising bigotry.
Let us vigorously and aggressively resist its hatred for Arabs and Africans, appalling treatment of Christians and Muslims, rejection of the two-state solution, desire to ethnically cleanse, wipe out and totally eradicate and eliminate the Palestinian race, its intention to establish a ‘Greater Israel’ whose borders would stretch from Egypt to Iran and its heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
These are concrete and cogent steps that we as a people and nation can take to contribute our quota to the collective fight against the tyranny and oppression of the Zionists and I believe that we are still big and strong enough to take them.
May God guide and protect us in this noble endeavour and may history and posterity be kind to us.
By Ehichioya Ezomon
Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s made the world to believe that his predecessor and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Chief Nyesom Wike, is the architect and purveyor of the political crisis in the state. He’s used every opportune moment to drum this narrative for the consumption of a sympathetic public.
Fubara struck a similar cord lately, at the heat of the contentious and bloody October 5, 2024, local government council election that’s resisted and boycotted by the Wike faction of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state.
Appearing on a Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ on Monday, October 7, Fubara advised Wike to let go of his grip on the Rivers polity, “for the sake of the good people of Rivers State, and the love that you (Wike) have always professed for the state.
”On the alleged breach of a “gentleman’s agreement” he’d entered into with Wike to secure his “anointing and endorsement” as the PDP candidate for the March 18, 2023, governorship, Fubara said he’d kept all “understanding” with Wike, and lounged into his talking point of how he’d repeatedly knelt down for Wike for peace to reign in Rivers.
“There is nothing I have not done on this earth for peace to reign. I can tell you the number of times I have knelt to beg (Wike) that, let’s allow this issue to go. I have done everything,” Fubara said, even as continuously states, “I will not worship any human being but God” – indicating alleged Wike’s demand he (Fubara) should worship him, a charge Wike’s denied.
Fubara says he appreciates the fact that Wike played a pivotal role in his governorship, but that it’s God that used Wike as a vessel to fulfil His purpose, and so, only God deserves his (Fubara’s) worship, and not any human. He echoed this sentiment on May 16, 2024, during the inauguration of Egbeda internal roads, in Emohua local government area of Rivers.
Fubara said: “God can do anything He wants to do when He wants to do it. It is only for us to realise that God will not come down from Heaven but will pass through one man or woman to achieve His purpose. So, for that reason, when we act, we act as humans; human vessels that God has used, and not seeing yourself as God.
“I want to say this clearly, that we appreciate the role our leaders, most especially the immediate past governor (Wike) played. But that is not enough for me to worship a human being. I can’t do that.”
However, on May 11, 2024, in Ogu-Bolo, Rivers State, at a grand reception in honour of Chief George Thompson Sekibo for his 20 years of public service, Wike said he isn’t God, and as such, had never demanded that anybody should worship him. “Nobody can worship man. All of us believe that it is only God we will worship. (But) as politicians, we appreciate people who have helped us,” Wike said.
Asked on the Channels TV’s programme what his message to Wike would be if they met, Fubara said: “I’ll tell him that it has gotten to a point where he needs to let go. We need peace in this state. You don’t necessarily need to win all the fights; at times, you just let go for the sake of the good people of Rivers State and the love that you have always professed for the state.”
Noting that “election periods are over and it’s time for governance,” Fubara urged Wike to give peace a chance. “What I am appealing is: Everyone should sheathe their swords. Even to the Minister, my oga (my boss), there is no need to destroy this state. When it comes to the election period, you can fight and do whatever but now is the time for governance. We need all the support,” Fubara said.
“He (Wike) once ruled this state and the state was an envy of every other state. Another person (Fubara) is there now, (and) what we need is the support. After four years or eight years, who knows? I will also leave and someone else will take over. That should be the spirit. Fubara will leave tomorrow. Who knows who is going to come? It might be through him or another person but we need to secure the state.”
But does Fubara really desire peace in Rivers State? It doesn’t seem so! Otherwise, he should quit the baiting, the insulting, the denigrating, the rhetoric, and the labelling of Wike as “the enemy of Rivers State” – all done by Fubara to curry sympathy and secure the approval of the gaming public. You can’t be talking peace and at the same time be fanning the embers of war!
Fubara can stoop to conquer by embracing genuine reconciliation with Wike. For instance, what stops the governor from telling those beating the drums of war for him that, “Enough is enough, I’m going to make peace with Wike for the sake of Rivers State and its people?”
This may not work due to the personal and partisan differences among the former governors and the incumbent. For example, Odili aligns with Fubara and alienates Amaechi and Wike; Amaechi’s sours on Odili, Wike and Fubara; Wike’s beef with Odili, Amaechi and Fubara; and Fubara and Wike are on a war path.
In such a scenario, who’ll call for the “sit-at-table” peace meeting? President Bola Tinubu would’ve fitted the bill, but he literally burnt his fingers the last time he attempted a truce between Fubara and Wike. The agreement, witnessed and signed by Odili, Fubara and Wike, among others, collapsed almost immediately it’s hashed out, with Fubara, who initially said the agreement “wasn’t a death sentence,” turning round to lebel it as political and not constitutional.
So, here’s a simple approach that’ll not only put Wike on his back foot, and induce him to return to the basic, but also push him to his wit’s end! Fubara should select some of the elders and leaders of the divide in Rivers, including the former governors, and inform Wike that he’s coming with a delegation on an agreed date, to fully reconcile with him. The ball will then be centrally placed in Wike’s court to either accept or refuse Fubara’s expressed desire for armistice between them.
Fubara’s offer of peace should be widely publicised in the media – different from his claimed behind-the-scences kneeling down to beg Wike – for maximum pressure and effect on Wike, and it’ll be well and good if the overture comes through! If doesn’t – in the event that Wike declines the invitation to reconcile, his current and intended political antics will be exposed as being the real masquerade behind the political turmoil in Rivers State, and Fubara will be vindicated at last.
All told, the “feat” Fubara achieved with the conduct of the local government council election hasn’t guaranteed a win over the war with Wike. Instead, he’s merely won the battle – a pyrrhic victory of some sorts – while the war remains. It’s still a dicey situation in which “a child doesn’t know when sleep takes food from their mouth” – depicting the futility of the “clever person” attempting to hold on to something that’s slipping away from them.
Fubara strives strenuously to exonerate himself from the crisis he’s helped engineer and sustain for a year now. That Rivers is going through the grinding mill is because of the governor’s failure to use tact and diplomacy in handling and dealing with Wike’s alleged overbearing influence on his government.
Agreed that Wike – amid strong opposition and resistance from even political leaders from Fubara’s homestead – worked on the recommendation of some Rivers leaders, and took Fubara from the civil service to the Government House, for which Fubara should be grateful, and accord Wike the respect he deserves within the ambit of personal relationship and official conduct.
Reciprocally, Wike should give Fubara the space to freely run his government, and not breath down his neck, as doing so portrays him as a “godfather” that exerts maximum loyalty from and punishment on their surrogates. That’s what Wike’s become, and as especially sold by Fubara to the public, which views the governor as the underdog, and backs his duel with Wike in the supremacy contest to control the political structure, power and resources of Rivers State.
But in his quest to crush and humiliate Wike over his appetite for “godfatherism,” Fubara’s committed numerous unforced errors, as he listens and tries to satisfy his supporters, who pressure him to man up and “show Wike that you’re the Governor of Rivers State.” It’s time Fubara ditched their selfish advice, and chart a different course that’ll genuinely ensure peace and security in Rivers!
Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
By Taiwo Adisa
One of the major actors in the June 12, 1993 election debacle, Professor Humphrey Nwosu, breathed his last on Thursday, October 24, in the United States of America, at the age of 83. He had served as the Chairman of the National Election Commission (NEC), now the Independent National Electoral Commission, between 1989 and 1993, his tenure terminated by the fiendish exchanges occasioned by the savage annulment of the election.
Professor Nwosu was a Professor of Political Science who was named the Chairman of the electoral body by former military leader General Ibrahim Babangida in circumstances similar to how former President Goodluck Jonathan named Professor Attahiru Jega into that same position on June 8, 2020.
Both IBB and Jonathan had previously not met with the men they named as the nation’s chief electoral officers. Nwosu served creditably, even though the military denied the nation the fruits of his service as NEC Chairman.
While in office, he was the executor of Babangida’s transition as it galloped from one bumpy end to another. The man was, however, determined to get something out of the assignment. He showed he was in office and in power in his determination to improvise a model into practical life mechanically.
He left no one in doubt that he was out to give back to the country of his birth from the pool of the political theories he had read and taught in the university. Working in the shadows of Babangida’s Political Bureau Report, which was the foundation of the regime’s unwinding transition programme, Nwosu applied his theoretical craft and modelled the Option A4 (Open Ballot System) and the Modified Open Ballot System.
With IBB’s regime having adopted a two-party system, it seemed a perfect fit for the elections and the results turned in at different intervals to the satisfaction of Nigerians. There was the local government election, state elections and then the National Assembly elections. At a stage, the nation was treated to a Diarchy, with a full-fledged National Assembly making laws for a military ruler. Everything looked set for the June 12, 1993, presidential poll, which was to crown a tedious transition programme that started in 1986.
Nwosu was upbeat that the law was on his side, despite the serpentine spirit donned by the infamous Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) of Senator Arthur Nzeribe and Abimbola Davies, lurking. Nwosu was prevented from announcing the presidential election in full, as the regime cited a midnight judgment secured by the ABN. Even at that, the whole nation was merely awaiting the official confirmation of what they already knew, Chief MKO Abiola, candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) had defeated Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC).
It was an election globally confirmed as the freest and fairest in the nation’s history but the Babangida junta denied Nwosu the accolades, it denied Chief Abiola the chance to savour his victory and drew back the hands of Nigeria’s democratic clock.
For years, Nwosu kept mute on the circumstances that surrounded the testy period of the annulled election but in June 2008, he spoke to TheNEWS magazine, just ahead of the public presentation of the book that chronicled his public service experience. He first told the magazine that he had a sense of history when the appointment fell on his lap and that he believed there was a need to produce a practical situation from the theories.
He said: “I felt I had to do my best to this nation to also convince the person who appointed me that I could do my best for Nigeria and satisfy my conscience and my constituency-the university community. You know, when members of the academic community are given a public assignment; people say they’re just talking theory and that you have to blend theory with practice.”
He described the June 12, 1993 election as a special moment in the nation’s history and said: “So you’ll find that June 12 as a movement was indeed the day Nigerians opted for a democratic political order. They didn’t care, and the parties cut across ethnic, state, and regional boundaries. And Nigerians were highly mobilized and they expressed their choices freely without interference. There was no stuffing of ballot boxes, and there was no manipulation, intimidation, or harassment. Nigerians came out as a body, just like people in the United States and Britain, and voted freely. No intimidation, no one lost his life anywhere, it was God-ordained.”
Indeed, the annulment of the election, which was announced by Babangida on June 23, 1993, was like a prison sentence for Nigeria’s democratic process. Alarm bells rang across the nation. There were threats of war. Many died. Many got maimed and countless went missing as protests engulfed the nation. The nation was on tenterhooks for years. With Nigeria on the brink of disintegration, power changed hands quickly.
General Sani Abacha replaced the Ernest Shonekan contraption left by a “stepping aside” General Babangida. He initially dangled the carrot before the political class but later unleashed his iron-fisted fangs. He battled the pro-democracy agitators with crude despotism. MKO Abiola, who had declared himself president, was arrested, and his wife Kudirat was killed, just as many top pro-democracy campaigners.
No doubt, the aftermath of the annulled June 12 was a broken regime and a fractured nation, culminating in the birth of a wobbling democracy. Democracy in its true form, having been dented with hefty blows in the series of leadership change from Babangida to Shonekan to Sani Abacha, whose death in 1998 paved the way for General Abdulsalami Abubakar to midwife the current Republic within eleven months.
As stated by Nwosu above, most of the kudos for the turnout of the June 12 election were largely due to his modelling efforts. He fashioned out Option A4, which ushered in the freest poll in the annals of Nigeria’s elections. In the interview published by The NEWS, Nwosu justified the decision by the Babangida administration to adopt a two-party structure and declared that a multi-party system would not yield the desired democratic objectives. He said that mushroom political parties cannot defend democracy as they would not be able to muster the structure across the country.
With what we have seen in recent years, Nwosu was right. Though the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, had fought for the democratisation of the political party registration process, the fact remains that the multiplicity of parties may not necessarily serve the democratic cause. These days, many political parties are there for political jobs. They either withdraw in favour of the highest bidder a few days before the election, or they are the first to address the media to endorse the outcome of elections, all for a fee.
Incidentally, Prof Nwosu had recognised such shenanigans long before his demise and had equally recommended a revisit of his electoral models. He told TheNEWS: “I feel we should revisit the electoral reforms, modified open ballot system and option A4. We should go back to the two-party structure. We may even allow a third party for those who feel they cannot be accommodated in the two.
You could see in the days of SDP and NRC that you can have integrated parties that look to value consensus, parties that raise national consciousness, parties that have spread all over the country, and parties that cut across ethnic, and religious groupings. I am seriously addressing this issue because I believe in it, and I think that some Nigerians believe in it.”
In this era of troubled elections, I believe that Nwosu’s models should be revisited. His Option A4 should serve as our electoral compass going forward. The modified system and all that Nwosu brought to the table needed to be re-examined by the National Assembly, such that they could give the nation an electoral law that would work for all.
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