Heritage: A People’s Last Frontier

Experience has shown that passing the bulk is truly not the way to resolve conflicts. In truth, bulk-passing rather escalate the grievance and often reduces or leads to a complete break-down of any form of engagement opportunity.

It is on this premise that we must all strongly condemn the open accusation of any particular ethnic group as the reason behind the challenges faced by the country, as contained in an article published 16 years ago title: “Yorubas Are the Problem with Nigeria,” that is attributed to our revered majesty and respectable personality, Lamido Sanusi.

The present ethnic and cultural disposition portrayed by this article, had in the true sense of it, never being a Western Nigerian characteristics, but rather an emergence of a cultic tradition that has adulterated the humble native ideologies of a people clearly protecting their threatened heritage, which apparently is their last strong-hold, therefore, willingly doing so with all they have got.

These were people once known to be so warm, welcoming and endearing. The question is, what happened? There are many versions and Sanusi’s article is one. History is very clear about our past, therefore, I will not dwell on that subject, rather we should observe that the ethnic and cultural dichotomy that we are experiencing is not only a Western Nigerian thing, but a phenomenon that has its ugly tentacles in every region of the country.

We know the stories of the Hausas, and of course the altercations that led to the Biafra war has not stop rearing its ugly head. Alienation amongst different tribes will never produce an effective collaboration and understanding if we all do not drop the blame-ball and start looking at our constitution, rather than basking in the idealism of individual cultural absorbency as currently exhibited, and sometimes taking a cultic and in-human dimension.

The real problem of Nigeria is neither ethnic, religious nor political, but rather her weak constitution – a legal document that is wantonly manipulated, especially by government functionaries, politicians and influential individuals and companies. The federal constitution has a lot of gaps and requires urgent amendments. We do not require constitutional conference to amend the constitution. There are already existing legal frameworks and panel reports that have made recommendations which are yet to be implemented.

The PIB bill, Kidnaping, Rape and Female Molestation, Child Abuse, Jungle Justice Bill, Street Fighting and Political Thuggery, Car Jerking and Vandalism, Resource Control and Revenue Allocation, Labour Contract and Casualization, Corruption and many others needs to related legislations will go a long way to redress many of the ethno-religious crises that we experience in the country.

We still stand by one Nigeria and trust that our strength lies on our Constitution if the politicians will be sincere enough to do the needful.

One Nigeria!