By Chidi Odinkalu
In 1989, academics, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, published to great acclaim their study of the evolution of the diverse dialects of English language from different empires. Their title was The Empire Writes Back. The book shows how various outposts of the empire took ownership of the language and adapted its grammar and usage.
*OdinkaluFew
outposts from Empire have been as prolific in this enterprise as Nigeria.
Conceived as somewhat of an illegitimate offspring in the ménage à
trois between Sir George Taubman Goldie; his mistress, Flora
Shaw; and his successor in propinquity to her, Frederick Lugard, Nigeria became
a colonial experiment in the Tower of Babel.
A national anthem composed in 1959, one year before independence which occurred in 1960, acknowledged this reality in the third line of its first stanza, reminding the world of the aspiration to create a country even “though tribe and tongue may differ.” The anthem itself invited citizens to “hail” the country in antiquarian, biblical third person, symbolising a relationship with the country that was fractured from origin. Never mind that the hailing was to be done in the borrowed language of a foreign country.
Without
compulsory access to basic education which could have created a shared
vocabulary in the imported language, Nigerian imagination invented its own
grammar of mutual intelligibility. This language is called ‘Pidgin English’,
which does not entirely do it justice. It is characterised by an open-ended
grammar in which meaning is always available to reveal itself to anyone
interested in exercising imagination.
But this is not the only function
of Nigerian English. French colonial policy of assimilation offered their way
of life also as the height of civilisation, promising natives (as the colonists
called Africans everywhere) the opportunity to “evolve” to the highest level of
civilisation, which they claimed was French citizenship. For those of us from
Nigeria, access to Nigerian English is our license to civilisation.
Over
here, we describe those who have attained this level of civilisation as
‘detribalised’. It is arguably the greatest compliment that one Nigerian can
pay to another. By contrast, to the owners of the language, to detribalise
someone is to render them rootless.
When
his former minister, Jubril Martins-Kuye, died last year, President
Olusegun Obasanjo described him as “detribalised.”
Sokoto State Governor, Aminu
Tambuwal, says only a “detribalised” Nigerian is fit to
rule the country.
So,
the supporters of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party,
Atiku Abubakar, are quick to claim the mantle, describing him as the only “detribalised” one in the race to succeed
Muhammadu Buhari, who is mostly accused of being the opposite.
The
supporters of the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, retort that he is “detribalised” too.
Not
to be outdone, even tribesmen of the presidential candidate of the All
Progressives Congress in the Yoruba Council of Elders claim he is
detribalised, which begs the question why they exist in the first place.
To
demonstrate how meaningless the expression has become, former chairman of Kano
State Primary Education Board, Malam Yakubu Adamu, even described the late Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero,
as detribalised. But if the Emir, by definition is the embodiment of
a tribe, how can he be described as “detribalised” at the same time?
Columnist, Tayo Oke, complains that the word is
“widely embraced as a mark of respect by the political elite….yet, so devoid of
substance,” adding that “people should find it infuriating that someone is
pointing them out as a ‘detribalised’ Nigerian; it is an insult to the
intelligence.”
Academic, Jideofor Adibe explains that “when we talk
of being ‘detribalised’ in the Nigerian context, there is an assumption that
there is a specific Nigerian culture to which those who have either voluntarily
abandoned any form of relationship with the cultures and customs of their
forefathers are socialised into.”
Under colonial occupation, the
tribe was (as a matter of law) beneath civilisation. Those who were defined by
it naturally wanted to be unshackled from it.
For
the native, the tribe was simultaneously a sanctuary from the colonial
predations and prison from which he sought emancipation.
So,
it was the mission of colonialism, they claimed, to bring such people into
civilisation.
Built
into this were mechanisms to ensure that the tribalisation of the native was
resilient.
The Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council in London determined in 1918 as
the First World War ended that African tribes were “so low in the scale of
social organisation that their usages and conceptions of rights and duties are
not to be reconciled with the institutions or the legal ideas of civilised
society.” Tribespeople, they held, were incapable of legitimate leadership,
property, or identity, and were beneath dignity.
Tribalisation
of the native was central to the methods of colonial administration. Ugandan
academic, Mahmood Mamdani, described the tribe as
“the unit of indirect rule administration.” As a result, the colonists made it
such that “each tribe must be considered a distinct unit…. Each tribe must be
under a chief.”
One
year after the privy council’s decision, Frederick Lugard could assert in his amalgamation report delivered in 1919,
that the policy was that these “chiefs should govern their people not as
independent but as dependent rulers.”
First, the chiefs who were given
powers of life and death in this way (like Emirs) had every incentive to
sustain it.
Second,
the tribe was the way by which colonists calibrated the benefits and burdens
of government. It thus ensured competition among different populations and
peoples for the attentions and affections of political power.
This
meant, thirdly, that the tribe as an identity did not merely depend on the
subjective views of those who identified with it; it also defined how those who
do not belong to your tribe see you.
It
is, therefore, no accident that Nigeria’s elite who seek to rule the country
would think that their highest form of evolution is to describe themselves as
“detribalised.”
In
reality, the expression ‘detribalised’ is worse than a patronising piece of colonial
nonsense. It begins from a conceptual error that “tribal” identity is
expendable like a piece of traditional accoutrement. It is not.
When
they use this expression, Nigeria’s elite create the impression that the tribe
is like a pigment that you can cure with ejaculations from a tube of
anthropological bleaching cream.
Ayodele,
Ekaette, Kyari, Nkeiruka, Owoicho, are all markers of both belonging and of
exclusion. No matter how evolved the bearer may wish to feel they are, these
identities are reminders to others as to what boxes they must fit into.
Nativisation in this way is the
mechanism by which Nigerians prepare to take on one another in the existential
warfare over tribalisation. It is also the way in which we remind one another
that ‘detribalised” is a con-job by the elite on the peasantry. While they
claim to be “detribalised” these elite also ensure that their followers are
fully tribalised exponents of inter-tribal warfare. It is the only way in which
they can preserve their turf in the battle to carve up the country.
The
implications are very far reaching. In Nigeria, at least, it means that you can
take the tribe out of the man but it is impossible to take the man out of the
tribe. It is no accident that the first question nearly every Nigerian asks the
next is “where are you from?”
So
many decades after the colonists left, this situation has hardly changed. Put
differently, no matter how civilised you think you are, as long as you are in
the country, Nigeria will happen to you and remind you where you come from
without necessarily telling you it is going anywhere.
*A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu
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