Monday, January 18, 1999.
PEACE among ethnic nationalities would only be possible
when we become willing to drop some of our inward-
looking tribal wisdom in favour of a broad nationalist
outlook. We cannot reap peace when we put so much
mental energy into sowing hatred for ethnic groups other
than ours. We can illustrate this point by attempting to
throw some light on the mythical basis of much of the
aversion we feel for other groups.
Many a Southern Nigerian child is brought up with the
complex of living in a country dominated by Northerners. But
the Southern child will also grow up to find that this myth
has no virtual reality. In the streets, in the markets, in the
universities, in land and housing matters, in fact, in his day-
to-day life, he will notice no signs of the mythical domination.
He would grow up to discover that even Federal ministerial
appointments are carefully made with our Federal character
in mind and that inability or refusal to produce the Head of
State does no make a people second-class citizens.
In order, therefore, for the myth to subsist, new vocabulary
like junior ministers have to be evolved for him. A key Ministry
would invariably be a Ministry headed by a Northerner. This
is called argumentum ad petito principii in Logic: the adoption
of your very premise as a conclusion. With this kind of
psychological disposition, head or tails, your suspicions
remain right. It is like Gen. Banbangida’s August 1993 hand-
over. If he had not handed over, it would have been proof
that he had never really wanted to hand-over, as we had
said all along. If he handed over, it was proof that we had
harassed him into handing over: if not, he would never have
handed over, as we had said all along. It is like calling
people to witness a thief steal money we have planted. If he
does, it proves that he is a thief, and if he does not steal it,
it shows that he is an exceptionally clever thief who can
smell a trap a mile off. Many cases of stigmatization result
from delusions so deep that even if the stigmatized person
gave out samples of good conduct, these have to be re-
interpreted in the light of our prejudice. The best we can
concede is that he has probably changed. It cannot occur to
us that we had probably been wrong all along. Prejudice is a
sub-conscious thing and the subconscious mind, it is said,
cannot tell the difference between real and imaginary events.
Offer certain Southerners the office of Head of State and you
would have given them a non-key, key position, validated
not by a people’s mandate but by a Northern army. With
such a situation, a tough-minded General like Obasanjo can
be dismissed as a mere stooge. The legitimate nursing of
ambition by a South-Easterner to become President can be
scoffed at as a huge joke, except, of course, there is a
Northern invitation. Those who dare come out feel
ambushed from within and without. Thus, the mythical
bogey, the ever-present Ojuju, continues its intimidation
from childhood right into adulthood. This way, people can
continue in their high-nuisance-value internalized inferiority
and froth out their established sense of reality. Mass
hypnotism is, after all, natural phenomenon. As John
Middleton Murray says, the dream we believe is more real
than the reality we ignore.
But all myths strive to bequeath a sense of reality, which is
ultimately societally beneficial. Of what value is it for the
Southerner to feel marginalized despite his dominance in the
vital oil industry, in Education, the Federal civil service, the
legal profession, journalism, national sports, national
commissions, commerce, industry and general business? It
might interest us to know that some 65% of all Presidency
staff, Central Bank staff and Police officers of the rank of
Assistant Superintendent upwards are Southerners; 75% of
all NITEL staff are Southerners; 85% of all NEPA staff,
Judiciary staff and civilians in Nigerian Army employment are
Southerners; while nearly 90% of all Federal Ministry staff
are Southerners. Of course, it is common knowledge that it is
rare to merely set eyes on a Northerner in the multi-national
oil companies where young chaps cart home an average of
N50, 000 to N100, 000 as monthly basic salaries in a country
where the minimum wage has been N250 for years.
Why then are the ordinary and natural maneuvers to
enhance her position by a Northern Nigeria slowly
awakening from a century-long marginalisation viewed with
alarm and relentlessly castigated? If the myth of Northern
domination has no virtual or statistical reality, what truth
does the myth point to or represent? The ugly truth is that
the South is not and cannot for now be united in the sense
in which the North appears to be united. While there are two
major ethnic groups in the South pursuing mutually exclusive
and often antagonistic goals, the North has a single majority
ethnic group that has an ageless tradition of extending a
hand of fellowship to minority neighbours. Northern minority
big guns like Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida,
Gen. Sanni Abacha and Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, have
commanded and still command vast regional and inter-ethnic
loyalty despite being non-Hausa. Can a Southern minority
man command such loyalty when he is not Yoruba or Ibo?
Can the South-West and South-East unite behind a South-
South leadership? It is doubtful. Instead, Southern majority
people are often the bedrock of structures that threaten to
ensure the eternal marginalisation and impoverishment of
Southern minority people.
Many Southerners therefore appear to have a pardonable
sub-conscious anxiety about the implications of a cohesive
North increasingly dictating the shape and pace of national
events while they remain in their self-hate trap. They have
therefore fled for refuge into myth. The myth protects them
from responsibility for the failure to provide national
leadership. The failure translates into a non-rational,
impotent feeling of being dominated in every aspect of
national life. The presence of one Northerner in say, NNPC,
among twenty-four Southerners is more than enough
evidence of Northern domination. The presence of one sector
like NDLEA dominated by Northerners, is evidence of their
take-over of all Nigeria. It is as if the Northerner’s marginal
presence is a handwriting on the wall that the days of
assumption that the British evacuated their colonial offices
for the super-educated Southerner to smartly step into are
over. Gone indeed are the days when the Nigerian Army was
heavily dominated (at independence) by Southern Officers
(25:6) especially those of Ibo extraction.
