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Recently, Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, decried the exploitation of sectional sentiments in contesting for power in the country. In a lecture he delivered at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru, Plateau State, Osinbajo frowned at leaders who deploy ethnic and religious prejudices to achieve political gains.
Osinbajo stated that ‘one of the unsavoury tendencies that was witnessed in this election cycle was the weaponisation of ethnic, religious and sectional prejudices in ways that are damaging to social cohesion.’ He also surmised that ‘any attempt to deny people the right to vote in any locality on the basis that they do not belong in that place is condemnable in the strongest possible terms.’ He advised leaders to conduct themselves with a high sense of responsibility when they prosecute the contest for power.
We condemn the use of ethnic and religious prejudices to further divide the people for political purposes. Before and during the last general election, certain characters, mostly highly-placed members and supporters of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), engaged in ethnic profiling for political gains. They warned that the Igbo must vote for the APC in Lagos or they should not bother coming out to vote at all. This, some of them said, was the only thing that would guarantee their continued stay in Lagos.
True to the threats, party thugs invaded areas considered to be dominated by the Igbo and prevented voters from exercising their franchise. Even after the elections, hoodlums attacked some markets populated mainly by the Igbo in Lagos. Despite clear evidence of these threats and attacks against some innocent electorate, the culprits have been walking free without being made to pay for their crime.
The most disappointing was the comment by the Director, Media and Communications of the Bola Tinubu Presidential Campaign Organisation, Bayo Onanuga. An enlightened journalist of note, Onanuga went overboard by casting ethnic slurs against the Igbo in Lagos. He warned them never to interfere in Lagos politics; that this year’s election would be the last they would do so.
Onanuga and others involved in the hate campaigns knew the dangers of ethnic profiling. They are aware of the genocide Hutu extremists precipitated against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. Over 800,000 lives, mainly the minority Tutsi, perished in that senseless conflict. The Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970, which claimed about three million lives, was also engendered by bitter ethnic profiling. Rwanda has learnt her lessons and has put measures in place to prevent a recurrence. In that country, citizens are forbidden from identifying themselves by their ethnic origins. Nigeria has remained a poor and crippled giant because it has refused to harness the country’s diversity for positive social and economic growth. Many of our nationals make waves in foreign countries where they are given opportunities to thrive. But in Nigeria, they may not get any chance to blossom due partly to their ethnic origin.
Most of the world’s successful democracies anchored their development on the shores of cohesive diversity. Countries like Singapore, United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) couldn’t have been where they are today if they had excluded some segments of their population from the scheme of things. Currently, the Prime Minister of Britain, Richi Sunak, is of Indian origin and a Hindu.
Even, Nigerians are in the corridors of power in the UK. Some of the successes recorded in the field of medicine, science and academia in these advanced countries were made possible because of the diversity of their people. Our nationals have continued to migrate to these countries because of better conditions of living. Why then have we refused to discard things that set us and our democracy backwards?
As Osinbajo rightly noted, Nigeria’s diversity was neither a liability nor a curse but a blessing and an asset. The onus is on our leaders, including civil society leaders and the media to change the narrative in our country. They should shun tendencies that further divide us and emphasise those things that unite us. We commend the Vice President for his candour and incontrovertible truth. Leaders like him are what Nigeria needs at this point in time.
Essentially, what we need is restructuring so that no group will be marginalised. We need a system where every citizen or group will grow according to their innate abilities. Our constitution guarantees freedom of movement and freedom to live in any part of the country without molestation. We must strive at all times to adhere to this constitutional provision.
