he importance and import of this topic compel its repetition: “Does Nigeria really have ethic and religious intolerance?”
Many of our country men and women think or believe so.
Indeed those who say there is such a problem also worry that if it is not checked, it could lead to the break up of our country. On the other hand, quite a number of fellow compatriots do not share the notion that Nigeria is afflicted by the scourge of ethnic or religious intolerance.
This writer should be counted among them.
Wanton crimes of arson, robbery, vandalism and even raping that are committed by miscreants across the country tend to affect our ability to appreciate such matters dispassionately.
This is more so when some crimes tend to be reported more from specific parts of our large country.
Let’s take a few examples.
The rampaging louts that have made the North-Eastern zone of Nigeria a virtual incinerator for hundreds of innocent Nigerians, and who go by the sobriquet of Boko Haram, are breezily waved off as “religious fanatics,” instead of calling them criminals that they are.
Our country is both multi-religious and multi-ethnic in its demographic configuration.
As a result, our leaders are wary in handling crimes perpetrated by hoodlums who profess to belong to a particular religious group.
Boko Haram criminals are promoted “Islamic extremists” by both government, security people and our uncritical media and are therefore “handled with care,” lest it be interpreted as a religious persecution if the heavy weight of the law is placed on them.
Because they are treated with kid-gloves, they become bolder with their next attack on innocent defenceless citizens, often on a group of worshippers or dormitories where fatalities are bound to be high.
These are blood hounds who, in their very first unprovoked attack that leads to loss of lives, ought to be tackled with all the force and power at the disposal of a civilized state.
There is nothing Islamic or Christian in wasting human lives!
An act of brigandage committed by a scoundrel deserves an immediate and appropriate response by the authorities to deter others or forestall a repeat by the same deviant.
That was the error committed by the Federal Government right from the beginning when rascals and idlers started killing people recklessly.
They were tagged “Islamist fanatics” or “extremists” even when real Islamic clerics have denied them and renounced them as Moslems.
A President of Nigeria is normally expected to belong to one religious persuasion or the other. So it is inexcusable for, say a Christian President to hesitate to send in the troops to a section of Nigeria being serially decimated through acts of pure criminality by people who are in the main, adherents of, say, the Moslem religion.
Let’s take another example from the Southern end of the country.
Who still remembers the infamous era when street urchins, more commonly known as “area boys” in Lagos regularly raided traders at Idumota and other commercial areas, chasing away the owners of shops, mainly Igbo people, and stealing their goods.
It came to a ludicrous level of violence that the thieves routinely went round, at times accompanied by their pregnant wives, to collect whatever they wanted from the shops of Igbo traders who locked up their shops and kept away from the market.
In the garb of “area boys,” the thieves broke into the shops. In rare cases of resistance by some traders, they were thoroughly beaten up and often maimed or killed. Would you call that “ethnic intolerance” of the mainly Igbo traders by the Yorubas?
No. Not at all.
The thieves represented nobody but themselves. That was why, when concerned Igbo leaders decided to import “area boys” from Aguleri and Onitsha into Lagos, Yoruba youths led a delegation to the Oba of Lagos to complain that many corpses with tribal marks were being picked up from the Lagos waters since Ndi Igbo decided to fight back.
The contention here is that an immediate action should be taken against any group of criminals who decide to molest fellow citizens.
No excuses should be given by our ever present sociologists to justify an attack by Nigerians against Nigerians.
It is possible that crass poverty could occasionally be blamed for some criminal acts. But which ethnic or religious group does poverty belong to? Ignorance and illiteracy are also often fingered to explain the bovine predilection to criminality by some people from a specific section of the country. Again, whose fault is it that young men and women don’t go to school inspite of the facilities around them to do so?
How can we really claim that there is religious intolerance in a Nigeria where Christian technicians and artisans are in-charge of maintenance and repairs of household appliances in the palaces and bedrooms of Moslem Emirs?
Take a walk to any vibrant market in Kano, Onitsha, Sokoto, Lagos, Ibadan, Makurdi and elsewhere and watch our traders in real good mood. They gleefully yab themselves with such otherwise abusive nicknames as “omo Ibo”, “kobokobo”, “nyamiri”, “ofe mmanu” and lots more.
They live together, never mind the “Sabon Garis” and “Ama Awusas” that developed naturally in the past, not as a result of violence or deliberate policy to separate ethnic nationalities, but probably out of sheer magnetic pull of kith and kin as they slowly and steadily settled at their new abodes.
Finally, our leaders and other elite should perish the thought of Nigeria ever breaking up, now or in future.
As former President Olusegun Obasanjo would say in his days, “there is no way Nigeria can break up peacefully.”
There are countries in Africa with real and tangible tribal/ethnic challenges; ask Kenyans and Ugandans; and there are countries in the Far East and Indo-Pakistan sub-continent with palpable religious differences that predictably lead to intolerance. Our country, Nigeria, to the glory of God, does not fall into any of these models.
In any case, where are the geographical or political fault lines that will delineate such a break up?
History has amply reported about natural kingdoms and organized civilizations that existed in many parts of Africa, including Nigeria, before the Berlin Conference of 1880’s and the subsequent “Scramble for Africa” by the European colonialists.
The British and the French eventually welded their possessions into nation-states. Nigeria formally came into being in 1914 following the amalgamation of the otherwise disparate administrative enclaves of Northern Protectorates; Southern Protectorates and the Lagos Colony.
Those who glibly talk and threaten a break up of the country might as well tell us into how many particles we are going to do so.
We have an obligation to build Nigeria into a formidable, great nation. The irrelevant reference to the dismantled Federation of Yugoslavia and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics in the 20th century is at best cold comfort to the proponents of a split up Nigeria.
