Ethnicity – Nigeria’s ultimate hurdle (2)

Okay, I’ll admit, Lagos has improved vastly under the APC, but the story of Lagos did not start in 1999. It started long before, when British leadership (or should I say rulership) had much more to do with it. When I pointed out how ethnocentric his views were and how it was regressive to want a Lagos only for Yoruba people, he accused me of being naïve about ethnic interests in Nigerian politics; as far as he was concerned, every ethnic group was equally biased against the others and that justified his views. He was right about one thing: I was naïve.

Nigerians have been socialised into ethnocentric thinking. We all hold vague and baseless stereotypes about other ethnicities and we don’t even know why. I can understand these attitudes in the context of my parents’ generation given the ethnic undertones of the Nigerian Civil War and the associated military coups. I can understand when I hear a grandmother insist that her grandchildren marry within their ethnicity, but we are the 90s generation, what is all this to do with us? What is it to do with our children’s generation? The sad irony of it is that while we sit here and lament our ethnic differences, the future is being reaped from the political action and choices we make now.

These elections have made me very conscious of how ethnocentric we are as a nation. I used to think that the biggest obstacle to socio-political and economic prosperity in this country was corruption, but I realize now that I was wrong. Yes, corruption is bad, it’s endemic, and it hinders us from properly investing in and realizing a better future. However, even more harmful is the interethnic rivalry that keeps us divided and essentially prevents us from acting with the singularity of one nation. Of course this singularity does not preclude a plurality of beliefs and values, it simply means that when it boils down to it, our differences are more to do with how we can objectively construct a better nation, and not where in Nigeria one’s grandparents were born – Nigerian first, Yoruba, Hausa, or Igbo second.

In 2015 Nigeria is still economically crippled, and we are not ready for the future. By 2050 we are projected to have a population of 257 million people – that’s nearly a 100 million more souls than today. The UNESA estimates based on urbanisation rates that by 2030, 50 million people are expected to migrate into urban areas – meaning that cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Kaduna and Abuja are primed for a major influx of new inhabitants. In 15 to 30 years we are somehow supposed to have figured out a way of feeding these new mouths, creating employment for them, educating them with relevant (not to mention competitive) skills and, simultaneously, ensuring that we all stay reasonably healthy. This factual and inevitable scenario requires an economic grand plan, a masterpiece of social engineering that will take all the ingenuity we can afford. The scale of the infrastructural, educational, and healthcare investment required is monumental, and we have to plan and execute on this in spite of corruption. We have to… it is not optional, this isn’t a see-how-it-goes matter. GMB or not, corruption is not going anywhere soon. When poverty kills a Nigerian it does not discriminate based on ethnicity, the same goes for crime and preventable diseases.

We need to wake up to the reality that Nigeria is not a special place. The rest of the world is moving ahead and we ought to start thinking seriously of how we can catch up. I’m speaking specifically to my generation now because we will be the political ruling class from 2030 to 2050. We’re going to be in charge when shit hits the fan. To hell with the older generation – they are a lost cause! Their parents’ generation ruined this country, taught them to despise one another and externalise blame. Now they have systematically ruined this country for us and are teaching us the same, so to hell with them! Progress is never achieved within the boundaries of the status quo. It is important to push those boundaries, and that demands that people with capacity take it upon themselves to think and act differently within their sphere of influence, however small it may be. By so doing, bit-by-bit, we can push society further.