By Ike Willie-Nwobu
The killing of the 16 people who were said to be hunters in Uromi, Edo State on March 25 has continued to highlight the massive challenges Nigeria faces in healing the many wounds it has as a country.
While there is a near consensus that the hunters who were traveling from Port Harcourt to Edo before vigilantes mistook them for vultures should never have met such a gruesome end, the conversation especially on social media has fetched out Nigeria’s historical fault lines, fastening them to the national fabric at a time when healing rather than ethnic histrionics should be the headlines.
In 1914, in a massive move, Lord Fredrick Lugard who headed the then colonial administration amalgamated the Northern and Southern protectorates to form one country which became Nigeria. It was a huge gamble, even if the colonialists who were more interested in administrative convenience than the ratifications of history and its predictions for posterity did not recognize it or rather conveniently chose to ignore it.
It has been more than 100 years since that feat of colonial calculation yielded a conundrum and Nigeria has survived multiple setbacks that would have broken less strong countries, many wounds have remained and festered.
Looking back, many Nigerians agree that the amalgamation of the two protectorates to constitute the country was a mistake. But even that realization, as rankling as it has been, has not been enough to occlude the sense of honesty that burns bright in many Nigerians. Many Nigerians have dearly worked, prayed and wished for the country to work. Things have not just turned out the way many Nigerians desired, with the country lurching from one dark phase to another.
After almost 65 years of independence and more than 25 years since democracy returned to the country, divisions remain.
The killing of the hunters once again fueled Nigeria’s polemics of prejudice. While the condemnation of the killings has been unanimous, attention has been diverted towards the context of where the murdered hunters hailed from, where they were traveling to, and where they were burnt to death. The pages of history have also been opened to recall another crime that whipped up a national trauma.
In 2022, in heart-rending circumstances, Deborah Samuel, a student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto State, was lynched for blasphemy, right in the school where she was a student.
As shock spread through the country, Nigerians were alarmed as some seeming justifications brought forward for her killing. In the same measure, many Nigerians were rattled by the silence of many people who should have spoken up against the murder but did not. Predictably, the culprits were never caught. Today, the fact that many of those people have spoken up against the Uromi incident has fueled accusations of hypocrisy and double standards.
It does not take much to see that the divisions in Nigeria run deep. These divisions which are defined by their toxicity usually find teeth in threats. Conversations quickly become angry and agitated, with the result being that ideas are hardly ever communicated in such a way as to create dialogue. This in turn creates distrust and even more disagreements.
Since independence, successive Nigerian governments have harped on the need to build a country that is tied into a single entity despite the challenges of different tribes and tongues. Nigeria is yet to win at that mammoth task.
What would it take to build the Nigeria envisioned in the dreams of the country’s founding fathers? What would it take to build a Nigeria devoid of the dangerous divisions bred by different tongues and tribes? Is it possible for Nigerians to shed their tribal and religious affiliations and consider the task of nation building as paramount?
To realize a country where people consider themselves as citizens and patriots before tribesmen, those who find themselves in government must lead the way. By policies and education, they must strive to foster the Nigerian spirit of unity in diversity as a door to common progress and greater aspiration.
If they sufficiently preach and practice these, those they lead will have no choice but to key in. No country that has developed through national cohesion ever stumbled its way to that state. Nigerians have to be intentional about national cohesion as a criterion for national development.
• Willie-Nwobu writes via email.