By Dan Amor
Multiculturalism has been the subject of cover stories of most
international magazines including Time and Newsweek, as well as numerous
articles in newspapers and magazines across the world. It has sparked heated
jeremiads by leading American columnists such as George Will, Dinesh D'Sousa,
and Roger Kimball. It moved William F. Buckley to rail against Stanley Fish and
Catherine Stimpson on "Firing Line." It is arguably the most hotly
debated topic in the civilised world today- and justly so.
For whether one speaks of tensions between
Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown
Heights , or violent mass protests
against Moscow in ethnic republics such as Armenia , or outright war between Serbs and
Croats in Yugoslavia ,
it is clear that the clash of cultures is a worldwide problem, deeply felt,
passionately expressed, always on the verge of violent explosion. Problems of
this magnitude inevitably frame the discussion of multiculturalism and cultural
diversity even among leading intellectuals across the world. Yet, it is
unfortunate that, in Nigeria ,
the vexed issues of racism, nationalism and cultural identity are downplayed by
our commentators and analysts because some think that they and their tribes are
not directly affected.
Few commentators could have predicted that one of the issues that
dominated academic and popular discourse in the final decade of the twentieth
century and into the twenty-first century- concomitant with the fall of
apartheid in South Africa, communism in Russia, and the subsequent dissolution
of the Soviet Union- would be the matter of cultural pluralism in our secondary
school and university curricula and its relation to the "Nigerian"
national identity. Repeated experience and routine violations of the rights of
minorities and the Igbo nation in Nigeria attest to the urgency of
the scattered, and often confused, debates over what is variously known as
cultural diversity, cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism.
The greatest
threat to the string that binds us together as a nation of diverse ethnic and
religious backgrounds and its social intercourse is not nationalistic cultural
passions but our collective failure to discuss our differences and the arrogant
manifestation of messianic impudence by our rulers who think that they possess
the sole authority to dictate what should be talked about and what not to
discuss in our country. Increasing incidents of violence are associated with
ethnic differences in very many places in the world: Koreans and
African-Americans in Flatbush, Brooklyn; Zulus and Xhosas in South Africa;
Poles and Gypsies in Poland; the Tutsis and Hutu in Rwanda; the Hausa/Fulani
and Igbo in Nigeria; and, of course, the fate of the Jews in Ethiopia and in
the old Soviet Union.
The resurgence of agitation for self determination by a section of
Igbo youth and the abrasive reaction to it by the powers that be led by
President Muhammadu Buhari and its security forces is a pointer to the fact
that the matter of multiculturalism has become politically fraught. It shows
that actual cultural differences between social and ethnic groups are
deliberately being brought to bear to justify the subordination of one group by
another. Until these differences are understood in an era of emergent
nationalism, the challenge of mutual understanding among our country's
multifarious cultures will be the single greatest task that we face, after our
failure to feed ourselves. Anyone who thinks that the Igbo question is a
post-Civil War phenomenon is a mean-throated double-faced liar. In Nigeria , a
cockpit of ethnic animosity is consuming the different ethnic groups that make
up the country. Like an incurable addiction, hatred is consuming virtually all
the ethnic groups in the country. Every throat slit, every head sundered, makes
someone else thirst for blood. The barbarity that has enveloped the country is
gradually becoming overwhelming. Nigeria is gradually becoming the
story of a perdition where everybody is losing and nobody is gaining.
Peace in Nigeria
is trembling a multiple of balance while the Igbo remain the permanent victims.
The Igbo ethnic group has perpetually suffered what many conceive as a
multidimensional ethnic cleansing via marginalization, persecution and
victimization. Some South Eastern States of Abia, Anambra and Imo, are oil
producing states. A large expanse of oil producing communities in Rivers and Delta States
are occupied by Igbo-speaking people. After the war, you had no plans for the
rehabilitation of Eastern Nigeria which was the theatre of the war but rather
you used the oil wealth to turn Lagos and Abuja to model capital
cities comparable to some of the best capital cities in the world. You used the
oil wealth to turn sleepy northern villages such as Jigawa, Lafia, Gombe,
Dutse, Bauchi, Yola, Minna, Katsina, etcetera, into sprawling state capitals.
You set aside $6 billion to rebuild the North East destroyed by Boko Haram
which was sponsored by people from the North that government knows too well.
You set up a North East Development Commission but you opposed vehemently a
bill seeking the establishment of a South East Development Commission. You
forgot so easily that immediately after the Second World War, Europeans set up
the Marshall Plan that superintended the rebuilding of Eastern
Europe which was destroyed during the war. You promote deliberate
wickedness and hatred for the Igbo and yet you kill them if they agitate for
autonomy. You beat a child and stop him from crying. And you tell the world
that you are running country called Nigeria . What a fraud!
A popular story has it that if you go to any community, however
remote in Nigeria
and you do not find an Igbo, you better shake off the dust from your feet and
run for your dear life. Death may be lurking around the corner. This story
captures the itinerant life of the Igbo, their enterprise, penchant for
adventure, as well as, of course, the hospitality of their hosts. Like
explorers of old, the search for greener pastures knows no bounds. Strangers
help to develop a town, and this is precisely what the Igbo have been doing here,
there and everywhere in Nigeria
over the years. Unfortunately, however, the Igbo have been victims of almost
every ugly circumstance. Like the Jews, Igbo remain the subjects of hate in
many parts of the country. Like the Jews, they are adventurous, mercantilist,
aggressive and are found all over Nigeria and even beyond. Also, like
the Jews, the Igbo have been visited with persecution and virtual
extermination. The Igbo are either primary targets of attack once a communal or
religious strife erupts or they are caught in the crossfire of feuding groups.
There are, indeed, countless instances of persecution of the Igbo in Nigeria to
warrant critical consideration. What is considered the first ethnic conflict in
Nigeria
happened in 1932 in
Jos which smouldered into a two day attack on the Igbo. Initially the Berom
natives thought that the Igbo who had attracted to the town by the mining
activities there as traders and petty miners were taking over their land from
them. Now they know who their real enemies are with the adroitness of the
Hausa/Fulani in the area.
In 1960, the year Nigeria
gained independence from the whiteman, riots in the North led to a pogrom
against the Igbo. Thousands of lives were lost which resulted to mass exodus of
Igbo back to the eastern part of the country. Their brothers who are now called
South-South, were not spared as they are all called Igbo in the North. In 1966,
shortly after the Nzeogu coup, war was declared on the Igbo and their
South-South brothers before even the actual declaration of war between 1967 and
1970. At the end of the civil war, the Igbo put such terrifying memories behind
them and returned to the North to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
With hard work and perseverance, they revived their business dreams and have
continued to shore up successes. This pattern of killings, displacements,
flight to ancestral homes and back to land remains to this day. Even since the
end of the civil war, riots in Kano , Kaduna , Kafanchan, Jos, Bauchi, Yola and even occasionally
on Lagos Island , have wreaked varying degrees of
havoc on the Igbo. Thousands of lives have been lost, and goods and properties
worth millions of Naira either looted or torched. For instance, in the
aftermath of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election,
miscreants known as "Area Boys" chose to express their disapprobation
against the military government by attacking Igbo traders at Idumota in Lagos .
Consequent upon the thick cloud of dissension in the country,
coupled with the contempt held by the contending forces, the Igbo took flight
to their ancestral homes and awaited tempers to cool. When normalcy was
restored, they returned to their trading posts and it was business as usual.
Even under the watch of this civilian dispensation, the Igbo are still subjects
of attack in Kano , Jos, Kaduna ,
Bauchi, Kafanchan and Maiduguri .
The current Boko Haram insurgency in the North in which Igbo are targeted in
churches, markets and other places for virulent attacks, has however raised the
recurring vexed question: why are the Igbo the ready targets of attacks
whenever there is any breakdown of law and order in any part of the country? If
you are keen on a research work on why people condemn the Igbo the way they do,
you would be stunned by your findings and how spurious the reasons are. While a
set of people posits that the Igbo are too aggressive and adventurous, others
will say that they are proud and domineering. Yet, another set argues that they
are too materialistic and individualistic. The friends of the Igbo who are as
diverse as their detractors, admire them for their guts, and tenacity, in spite
of all odds.
Yet the Igbo is the quintessential entrepreneur . Uninhibited by a
system that places premium on unnecessary deference to potentates and possessing
a system that stresses the achievements of the individual, he comes across as
perhaps the only Nigerian ethnic group bestowed with a natural capitalist
ethos. Give an Igbo a forest and he will in no time turn it to an estate. But
the almost giddy success of the Igbo appears to be his own Achilles' heel and
undoing. Why are the Igbo victims of orchestrated pogroms even in the country
they have come to accept as theirs? The recent mass murder of defenseless Igbo
youth who call themselves Indigenous People of Biafra in Aba, Abia State by the
Nigerian security forces, is one provocation too many. Perhaps, it should seem
anomalous that I, a young man from a minority ethnic group in the South South
region of the country could be so burdened by this unceasing national tragedy.
In fact, I have lived all my childhood and adult life amongst the Igbo and I
have seen nothing strange in them that should scare anybody. What is called "Igbophobia" is the complex
some lazy Nigerians manifest when they see the enterprising Igbo enjoying their
wealth. It is this complex which degenerates into hatred for the Igbo. Our
society simply cannot survive without the values of tolerance, and cultural
tolerance comes to nothing without cultural understanding. You can kill the South
East Development Commission Bill; you can order the Igbo out of the North
within three months or burn down their assets scattered all over the North. But
you cannot kill the Igbo spirit. It's not possible!
*Dan
Amor, a public affairs analyst, resides in Abuja
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