Sunday 4th December, 2022.h
BY: CHIEF MIKE OZEKHOME, SAN, CON, OFR, LL.M, Ph.D.
INTRODUCTION
ETHNIC CONFLICTS AND NIGERIA
Nigeria is befuddled with grave ethnic conflicts. This deprives her of the
much needed National Unity. No Nation can ever develop along those
fundamental fault lines of ethnic disharmony. National unity is thereby
endangered.
National unity is the most important factor that holds a country together. It
occurs when people live and work together in harmony and love. It allows
leaders to harvest citizens’ commitment and contribution to nation-building
and national development. It serves as one of the most effective weapons
of preventing internal conflicts which are capable of draining the internal
resources of a nation and derailing its progress. Most people do not care
about a country parting or breaking up. No country can develop
meaningfully without an idea of national unity. Nigeria, according to Prof
Onigu Otite, Nigeria has 374 ethnic groups, speaking over 500 languages.
This ought, ordinarily, to amplify her rich plurality and diversities in a
positive way. But the reverse appears to be the case.
These groups are broken down along religious, linguistic and tribal lines.
These divisions had always existed, but were further broken down at
independence into a multi-ethnic nation state.
With these centripetal and centrifugal divisions, the nation has been battling
with the problem of ethnicity on the one hand, and the problem of ethno-
religious conflicts on the other, as has been witnessed severally when
ethnic and religious intolerance led to ethno-religious conflicts.
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Even from the atavistic tone of the names of organizations championing the
Niger Delta struggles since independence, the mobilization efforts sketched
above present a challenge for analysts, many of whom have simply
interpreted the motivations and agendas of grassroots struggles in the
Niger Delta as primordial, exclusionist and particularistic; in other words, as
fundamentally ethnic and capable of undermining national renaissance. It is
important to mention here that, ‘ethnic group’ refers to the social identity
built on the mythopoetry of language, history, cultural practices, myths,
symbols and (in the case of Nigeria also) geographic location. This working
definition in no way endorses primordialism ideas of frozen or fossilized
identities, and does certainly take account of the constructivist notion of
changeability and manipulability. It does not accept extreme constructivist
ideas of ‘ethnic group’ as something entirely invented or fabricated.
A notable scholarly attempt to dissect the Niger Delta struggle and similar
tendencies in other parts of Nigeria, which contains case analyses of the
mobilization activities of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Odwua People’s
Congress (OPC), and Arewa People’s Congress (APC). Ikelegbe tries to
show how, contrary to popular notions of ‘civil society’ as “the beacon of
freedom, the fountain for the protection of civil rights and of
resistance against state repression, the objectives, methods and
roles” of ‘civil society’ organizations could undermine the democratic
project. The IYC, which as earlier indicated, has been involved in the Niger
Delta mobilization since the 1990s, is portrayed as only speaking the minds
of the Ijaws and at least parts of the Niger Delta’ – a prime example of what
the author terms ‘perverse’ civil society.
Accordingly, the author offers an insight into what the term ‘ethnic’ could
mean, by contrasting it with ‘civic’ or ‘ideal’. He argues that ‘ethnic’
mobilization tends to be ‘sectional’, ‘criminal’, ‘anarchic’, ‘parochial’ and
‘centrifugal’. The three organizations in his analysis are therefore ethnic
movements ‘masquerading as civil society’. This focus on the activities
of formal activist organizations, rather than on the narratives and lived
worlds of the ordinary people the organizations ‘represent’, presents
analytical difficulties of its own, as shown later. For one thing, it makes it
easy to cast local struggles as ‘sectional’ and ‘parochial’. The
organizations are also portrayed as ‘criminal’ and ‘anarchic’ on account
of their protest methodology. Their key protest strategy is believed to be
‘violence’. The ‘tendency for aggrieved groups to take up arms in their
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encounters with the state and other groups and the support the
groups enjoy from ‘civil groups of elders and political leaders’ are
deplored. This is despite sociological arguments that violence is
sometimes a ‘smoke from the fire’ of unjust public institutions, state
policies and the political process, or injustices in the corporate and
transnational spheres.
Cesarz et al also hinted that the Niger Delta mobilization could be
disguised ethnicity. For them interethnic violence is a longstanding feature
of the oil-rich Niger Delta, and Ijaw militancy in particular is viewed as a risk
to international oil interests and to Nigeria’s future as a united and stable
polity. Local groups, the authors suggest, are no longer to be seen as ‘a
loosely organized ethnic, sporadic movement, they are now an ‘armed
ethnic militia’ capable of derailing Nigeria’s new-found democracy.
Reacting to that line of analysis are Douglas et al, who challenge the use of
the term ‘ethnic militia’ to describe local activist groups. Such a depiction,
they argue, misrepresents the essence of the Niger Delta struggle.
However, whether the two groups of analysts are operating from different
epistemic platforms is another matter entirely. For one thing, Douglas et al
view the emerging coalition-building efforts among community groups in the
Niger Delta as constituting a ‘bulwark against the ethnic majorities’.
Now one will simply ask, what is the empirical basis for suggesting that
ordinary people in the Delta as mobilizing against the ‘ethnic majorities’,
and how is this view different from Cesarz et al’s suggestion that the local
activists are involved in a disguised ‘ethnic’ warfare?
There is also the argument that while local struggles might stem from
economic and political disparities in Nigeria, they might fundamentally be
attributable to “communal pressures that have characterized the Niger
Delta and many other parts of Nigeria”. Welch calls these ‘communal
pressures matters of ethnic self-determination, maintaining that economic
and political change in a multi-ethnic milieu like Nigeria invariably triggers
ethnic conflict.
Short of portraying Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities as fundamentally
incompatible social groupings, he posits that Nigeria as an entity ‘came into
being long before a substantial number of its residents felt themselves to
be “Nigerians”. While Welch uses this essentialist analysis to interrogate
the concept of individual rights and to make a contribution to the ‘group
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rights’ debate, concerns might be raised as to whether his argument does
not in fact distort the complexity of the Niger Delta crisis. A more nuanced
insight into the Niger Delta conflict might be gained from Bangura’s ‘three
crises’ of post-colonial African state – those of ‘capacity’, ‘governance’
and ‘security’. The works of Osadolor, Agbola and Alabi, Agiobenebo and
Aribaolanari and Uga, among others, are more explicit in ‘revealing’ what it
is that engenders disaffection between the oil-producing region and the
major ethnic nationalities. They argue that it is the ‘majority groups’ that
determine the framework for petroleum exploitation (as well as interethnic
relations and political governance) in Nigeria and unfairly profit from it. As
Agiobenebo and Aribaolanari put it: “the ethnic minorities of the Niger
Delta are treated as objects (property) owned by the majority groups
to be dealt with according to their whims and caprices”. There is even
an implicit (but erroneous) assumption by these analysts that it is on behalf
of their own people that the major ethnic groups ‘control’ political power in
Nigeria and suppress socio-economic development in the Niger Delta. It is
noteworthy that Obi places the protests and demands of Niger Delta groups
such as MOSOP within the rubric of grassroots struggles for broader
societal transformation. He suggests that the Niger Delta conflict must be
seen in terms of its connection to “broader popular social struggles for
empowerment and democracy”. This line of analysis, which forms part of
what Idemudia and Ite call an ‘integrated explanation’, and which speaks
directly to the conflict’s deeper social character, has been obscured in so
much of the literature.
The above review also shows that while some analysts have acknowledged
that the issues in the Niger Delta struggle transcend ‘local concerns’, and
that the struggle makes a strong statement on the pains that a ‘distant
state’ has inflicted on the Nigerian society as a whole, the failure of
governance at the national level is not given the explanatory status it
deserves. This begs the question as to why the search for empirical
information on grassroots struggles such as those in the Niger Delta almost
inevitably proceeds from an ethnic frame of reference. Could it be, as
Mamdani has conjectured concerning conflicts in Africa, that the bifurcated
nature of the state shaped under colonialism, and of the politics it shaped in
turn, had now appeared in the theory that tried to explain it?
However, the next section sheds some light on this question. Some of the
aforementioned analyses, especially the strand that suggests that the Niger
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Delta struggle is a way of ‘striking back’ at, or at least resisting, the major
ethnic nationalities, who appropriate the ‘lion’s share’ of Nigeria’s petroleum
revenues at the expense of the oil-producing region, have all the
ingredients of the ‘competition theses of ethnic mobilization. I will also
opine here that, where state policies appear to disproportionately benefit
some regions of a multi-ethnic society, heightened ethnic awareness and
collective ethnic action across the society become common tendencies in
the society in question. As Feagin puts it, ‘competition occurs when two
or more ethnic groups attempt to secure the same resources’;
besides, ‘ethnic competition destabilizes group relations.
Seen from such a perspective, the geologic fact of petroleum not being
evenly distributed across Nigeria can be a basis for ethnic competition.
However, the competition becomes exacerbated and produces invidious
socio-political outcomes for the entire polity where state policies driving the
utilization of resources seem to favor some geo-ethnic groups while
disadvantaging the others.
The works of Osadolor, Agbola and Alabi, Agiobenebo and Aribaolanari
and Uga generally make this point. Since groups in the Niger Delta could
not be mobilizing simply for the sake of doing so, the insight that these
analysts attempt to proffer is that the Niger Delta mobilisation must be for
the maximization of sectional interests, with the non-producing ethnic
groups a target of their grievance. Also, Akpan stated thus, It would of
course, not be correct to assume that the ‘unfair’ appropriation of national
resources by some leaders from the major ethnic groups has been
fundamentally for the ‘greater good’ of ordinary people in their geo-ethnic
regions.
NOW THIS
Flowing from all of these, in a bid to address these ethnic nationalities
challenges, the CIVIL SOCIETY LEGISLATIVE AND ADVOCACY
CENTRE (CISLAC) in collaboration with FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG
(FES) NIGERIA with support from the European Union recently held a
stakeholder’s consultative forum on Peace and Security Challenges in
Nigeria themed “Ethnicity, Ethnic Crises and National Security: Casual
Analysis and Management Strategies”. The stakeholders drawn from
both military, lawmakers, security and paramilitary organizations, as well as
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civil societies, tackled the causes of such ethnic crisis which is presently
breeding security challenges across the country and in essence threatening
the corporate existence of Nigeria. Essentially, the stakeholders advocated
for dialogue of all ethnic nationalities and inclusiveness if the issues are to
be addressed holistically.
Interestingly, the organizer’s objective for the forum was to cross fertilize
ideas, analyze gaps and the threats of separatists’ agitation across the
country and its implication on national security and develop a policy
recommendation; to also raise awareness on implication of ethnic
champions and its threats to national security; and enhance cooperation
and collaboration between state and non-state actor as a collective
response to unionism.
AND THIS
CRACK YOUR RIBS
“Relationship of 3 days, you don rush save the number as the pillar of
my heart, you no even allow cement to dry self”. –Anonymous
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
“True equality means holding everyone accountable in the same way,
regardless of race, gender, faith, ethnicity – or political ideology”. (Monica Crowley).
