Ethnic Conflicts in Nigeria

God, in His infinite wisdom, made our dear country a rainbow collection of tribes and tongues. The rainbow in the sky is a thing of beauty. But we seem blind to the beauty in our rainbow collection of tribes and tongues. Instead, we find mutual suspicion, hate and fear in other tongues and tribes. Consequently, several parts of our country are today convulsed in inter and intra-ethnic conflicts leading to loss of lives as well as the destruction of private and public property. The gun is beginning to rule and ruin our country. This inexorable march to perdition must be halted. We must halt it.

We have taken the first step towards halting this unwanted march with our gathering at this forum. The solution to every human problem begins with a gathering of this nature provided the participants resist the temptation to turn it into an academic talk shop. We too must resist that temptation. The matter before us is too urgent and too serious to permit the luxury of academic hair-splitting. We can find the instrument to forge a binding bond of unity from our diversity in tribes and tongues in our heads and in our hearts. We must find that instrument. It is a self-evident truth that unless we forge this bond of unity and urgently too, we will continue to dissipate our energy and waste valuable resources in containing eruptions of mutual hate among our people. Our nation cannot progress with its feet firmly stuck in the molten lead of retrogression. Our collective challenge, as leaders of our people, is to set our nation free from its continued self-victimization.

The government and people of Nasarawa State, most sincerely welcome this effort. We fully identify ourselves with it because our poor, struggling state and its people are victims of ethnic conflicts. Perhaps, more than most people, we desire an urgent solution to them. We thank President Olusegun Obasanjo for initiating this forum. It is our sincere hope that our discussions will be free, fair, honest and constructive. Above all, we must seek to offer pragmatic solutions to the problems of ethnic conflicts in our country. We must address these problems in a spirit of mutual accommodation if we are to avert a greater calamity in our country. The history of human conflicts shows clearly that wars often begin from minor personal, sectional, economic, political, social and even religious disagreements. No one must pretend to be indifferent to what is happening in our country. Let those states which have not had these convulsions delude themselves into believing that they are immune to them. They are not. These crises cast a long shadow over the nation.

No part of Nigeria can consider itself safe when other parts are burning. The threat of anarchy in any part of our country is the threat of anarchy in the entire nation. Our nation can develop meaningfully and nurture its democracy only in a peaceful atmosphere in which respect for human lives and property is a fundamental article of our national faith. We believe we are all committed to the sustenance of democracy in our country. We believe we are all committed to moving Nigeria forward in peace and not in pieces.

We believe that working together we can turn the tide against the anarchists and rescue our nation from the brink of self-destruction. We make our contribution at this forum in the fervent hope that it will assist us in our obviously arduous and unenviable task of finding a meaningful and lasting solution to the frequent inter- and intra-ethnic conflicts not just in the North-Central zone but throughout the country.

We would wish to proceed with our discussion from what we have experienced in the North-Central geo-political zone to give you a feel of how far inter and intra-ethnic hatred and intolerance have convulsed our community and retarded its progress. We begin with a general introduction and proceed to the nature and the causes of these conflicts with a brief history of the zone. The second part of the presentation deals with the larger Nigerian society. We conclude by offering suggestions on how to contain this conflict, or in the current parlance, on the way forward.

Since the return of democracy to Nigeria on May 29, 1999, parts of the Middle Belt region now better known by its new geo-political identity as North-Central Zone, have witnessed a series of communal, religious, inter and intra-ethnic crises resulting into mindless destruction of lives and property. The most affected states in the zone are Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue and Taraba states. Although Kaduna and Bauchi states are not strictly within this zone, the crises in the two states have had some effect on the zone itself. Most of what we say here about our zone is more or less applicable to both Kaduna and Bauchi states.

Generally, these clashes have reduced towns (Kaduna and Jos) and villages to charred evidence of the new spirit of intolerance stalking parts of our dear nation. When the president himself visited Kaduna in the wake of the crisis, he could not find words either to express his revulsion at the degree of destruction or to condemn the perpetrators of the mayhem. For a president who is not known to be short of words, this must have been a great source of grief for him. These crises have turned thousands of people into pitiable refugees in their own homes and communities. Unfortunately, the state governments do not have the financial means to adequately respond to the resettlement and security needs of these helpless victims.

The bloody clashes in Benue and Taraba states were inter-state and inter-ethnic; those in Plateau (Jos), Nasarawa (southern senatorial zone of the state) and Kaduna states were/are intra-state and inter-ethnic. The crisis in Bauchi was both inter-ethnic and inter-state. There is thus a common characteristic of inter-ethnicity in all these clashes. There is a religious coloration to the clashes in Kaduna and Jos. The religious coloration seeks to mask the underlying fundamental cause or causes of these crises. However its interpretation by interested analysts gives the impression that it can stand on its own. We will so treat it but bear in mind that religion is quite often a ready weapon employed to gain advantage or obtain a victim status in the unending ethnic quest for social, political and economic advantages. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the fact that the religious coloration has become as dangerous and nearly as intractable as the fundamental cause or causes of these inter-ethnic clashes.

Various explanations, some bordering on applied sociology, have been offered for these crises. There are suggestions that they are a passing phase in a nation that has found its freedom after many years of dictatorship. It may well be that democracy has unleashed personal freedom that some of us find ourselves unequipped to properly manage, leading to a heady expression of same. It may well be that under democracy, our right to have our say has been turned into a licence to be right. It may even well may be that the latent fissiparous forces now find a discordant expression and violent release in the country. But these crises are not, repeat, not a passing phase in a country grappling with the dynamics of nationhood. There are various dimensions to them. Indeed, some of the underlying causes are probably as old as the nation itself, even if they only simmered beneath the surface. In our view, we can look at these problems from three historical perspectives.

But first, a brief political history of the North- Central Zone itself. The zone is home to nearly all the ethnic groups in the country. Indeed, the major tribes –Hausa/Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba are found here. Numerous minority ethnic groups, numbering about 50, the largest of whom being the Tiv are found in four states – Benue, Taraba, Plateau and Nasarawa – are also here. No other zone in the country can boast of this degree of ethnic diversity as the North-Central zone.

We will now briefly consider them:

1. Minority Politics and the Agitation for Middle Belt Region

Before and during independence, many political leaders of this region, such as the late Joseph Tarka, pressed for a Middle Belt region to be carved out from the then Northern Region. Their arguments were based almost entirely on two factors: ethnicity and religion. They felt that the people of this region, being largely Christians and traditional religious practitioners, had little in common with the dominant Hausa/Fulani who are mainly Moslems. They felt that a region of their own would afford them the opportunity to develop at their own pace and in accordance with their cultural and religious practices. There were similar agitations in the then Eastern and Western regions. The Western Region gave in and created the then Mid-West region was carved out of it. The powers that be in the northern and eastern region took a different political view of the agitations and refused to yield.

Before independence in 1960, the British colonial authorities responded to these minority fears with the setting up of the Wilkins Commission. The colonial administration accepted the recommendation of the commission that the problems of the minorities would best be solved through administrative actions rather than through the creation of more regions. They might have been right but contemporary developments soon showed that the British were too trusting in the capacity of their indigenous successors to be truly accommodating as far as this issue was concerned.

The struggle for a Middle Belt region introduced a thin religious divide among the people. Christians largely led the movement for the Middle Belt region. In the course of the struggle, the leaders felt that the Moslems in the region did not support them in their struggle. They also felt and indeed, claimed that the powers that be in the region punished the leaders and supporters of the movement but rewarded those who were opposed to it. Thus from the early years of the struggle, religion increasingly became a factor. The suspicion that particular ethnic groups such as the Hausa/Fulani and the Nupe were opposed to the struggle and that their alleged stand gained them favoured status in the Northern Region created a latent division and animosity among the other tribes. This suspicion was fuelled by the fiery political rhetoric of the leaders of the movement and took hold of the psyche of the people. In spite of the various political and administrative changes in the region, this mutual suspicion has refused to die.

There was one other dimension to the politics of minority in the period under consideration. Through the indirect rule system introduced by the colonial authorities, the emirs and chiefs wielded considerable power which they exercised, sometimes capriciously and alienated some of their subjects. This was the case in the southern part of what is now Kaduna State known then as Southern Zaria where the Emir of Zaria by virtue of the emirate system, appointed district and village heads for the communities as was the practice in most parts of the then northern region. But the Southern Zaria communities, who are largely Christians and animists, did not feel comfortable with this. They suspected that the appointment of Moslem district and village heads was part of an alleged grand plan to Islamize them. This suspicion simmered and finally boiled over into the Zangon-Kataf violent clash in the eighties. One is aware that the Kaduna State government has taken some measures to address this problem but mutual suspicion remains largely as a consequence of years of political shenanigans.

The creation of states between 1967 and 1996 sought to address the problem of domination and marginalisation. It was supposed to free the minority ethnic groups from the long shadows of the majority tribes. However, with each attempt to solve this problem through administrative fiat came new problems. Under the twelve state structure of the Yakubu Gowon administration from 1967 to 1975, Benue and Plateau provinces formed Benue-Plateau State; Kaduna State was part of the then North-Central State made up of Zaria and Katsina provinces; Niger State, which is not part of this piece, was part of the then North-Western State. In 1976, the Murtala administration created more states. The old Benue province minus Wukari, Nasarawa and Lafia divisions but plus the old Igala division, became Benue State. Nasarawa and Lafia divisions were merged with Plateau State to ensure national unity according to the government. Wukari division was merged with Gongola State. Thus for the first time since provincial administration was introduced by the colonial authorities in 1926, people who had lived together for so long under one provincial administration, were separated. Creation of more states in 1991 and 1996 pulled the tribes further apart. Tied in with this was the creation of more local government areas in all these states. The consequences of these administrative actions were the same, as will be shown hereunder.

The immediate consequences of what was thought to be the solution to a lingering political problem of domination were:

The creation of states and local government has thrown up new inter-ethnic problems and exacerbated lingering ones. This, however, is not an argument against the creation of states and local governments. We seek here to draw attention to the fact that these administrative changes in themselves failed to engender trust and unity either because of the way the struggle was waged or because of the absence of certain factors that make for communal and inter-ethnic harmony. We will now turn our attention to these briefly.

The North-Central geo-political zone with minimal economic opportunities is arguably the poorest zone in the country. There are no major industries in the zone. The textile industry in Kaduna once absorbed thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled labour from this zone. Unfortunately, most of these textiles companies have gone under, thus aggravating the unemployment situation in the North-Central zone. Benue Cement Company Plc is virtually the only major industry in the zone. This company has itself been in distress for sometime now.

Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Company, which would have been the biggest industrial establishment in the region with multiplier effects on the economy and social development of the North-Central zone in particular, has been frustrated and abandoned for several years now. No credible explanation has been given for the dismal failure of this project, which was expected to be the pillar of Nigeria's industrial development. One notes the current efforts by the Obasanjo administration to reactive this very important project. We must encourage this effort and ensure it is sustained until it bears the desired fruit in the interest of the North-Central zone in particular and the nation in general.

The North-Central zone is blessed with agricultural and mineral resources not available anywhere else in the country. How can a region so potentially rich be so actually poor? Rightly or wrongly, opinion leaders from this zone suspect that the non-exploitation of these solid mineral resources is a deliberate plan to keep their people permanently poor and deprived. They may have a point. Under the laws of the federation, all mineral resources are vested in the federal government. State governments have no legal rights to exploit them even if they have the means to do so. The full exploitation of our solid mineral resources would help to diversify the country's revenue base. We do not advocate resource control. BUT we do advocate resource exploitation by state governments where the federal authorities are found to be tardy. The economic empowerment of our people depends on the full and commercial exploitation of the mineral resources it has pleased nature to bury in their land.

Our national target must be the systematic empowerment of the people. The poor are vulnerable and are easy targets for cynical manipulation by rich and desperate politicians. Miscreants and political thugs are usually recruited from among the poor and the disenchanted class. If we close that avenue, we would make it impossible for political scoundrels to stir up ethnic conflicts and the fortunes derivable therefrom.

One more point. It was fashionable sometimes past to believe and argue that the neglect and the deprivation of the zone were a just measure for its people who dared to challenge the powers that be in the former northern region. We would like to suggest here that it is no longer reasonable to trumpet that belief. The creation of states put our fate and our progress in this zone squarely in the hands of our leaders, be they civil or military. It is our informed view that the officers and men in the armed forces from this zone who served in high political offices in the various military administrations had ample opportunities to right the politico-historical wrong of the past. We seek not to apportion blame but to draw attention to some salient and incontrovertible facts in the current political climate as it affects the people of this zone. The North-Central zone produced three military heads of state with a combined rule of about 18 years. Officers from this region also held important political appointments as governors/administrators, ministers and heads of government parastatals in the various military regimes. The zone has not fared badly either under civilian administrations.

Some of the wealthiest former military men and technocrats are indigenes of the North-Central zone. But none of them has a major industrial or economic investment in the zone. Ironically, some of these former top military men are among the most vocal defenders of the interests of the minorities in the zone. We assume that these professed lovers of the zone need to be reminded that they have in their hands or rather in their fat bank accounts, the power to change the fate and the face of this zone to the joy of all of us. We hereby remind them.

Most of our inter- and intra-ethnic problems have been blamed on the divisive politics in our dear country because politics is a game of comparative opportunities. Comparative advantages in political opportunities tend to give one group or tribe the opportunity to dominate other tribes or groups. It is not a crime for politicians to use what they have to gain what they desire. But there is a problem when comparative political opportunities are used to subjugate other tribes or groups. And then the struggle continues. As indeed, it is with the current agitation by some elements from the North-Central zone to forge their own distinct political identity. These agitators tell us that the Middle Belters, that is people from the North-Central zone, are not northerners, a fact, we dare say, is not supported by the political geography of Nigeria. This politic of identity is a virulent form of divisive politics. Recruitments into this new politics of identity show a very strong but very unfortunate religious bias. The new identity of the North-Central zone is being defined in religious rather than purely geographical terms, as it ought to be. Air Commodore Dan Suleiman from Adamawa State is chairman of the Middle Belt Forum. Variants of this forum also exist under various names. The multiplicity of these forums in the identity crisis shows that although the Tower of Babel was never built, the curse on those who attempted it remains sadly with us to this day.

The various groups struggling for a distinct identity for the North-Central zone are all headed and championed by Christians. If this is a coincidence, we must recognize it as an interesting one. Recruits come from states such as Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno and Kebbi states which are not by any stretch of our geographical imagination, in the North-Central zone. All the recruits from these far-flung states are of Christian religious persuasion. Coincidence? Maybe. This regrettable development tends to widen the crack in the wall of inter-religious harmony in the zone and makes it impossible for the zone to pursue a common political, social and economic cause and thus speak with one strong voice that cannot be ignored. By excluding people of other religious persuasion, the agitators debase themselves and do grievous injury to their cause. We must persuade them to pull back from the precipice.

The question may, indeed, be asked: Why does the North-Central need an identity? The simple answer is that it is a continuation of the agitation for a Middle Belt Region pre-and post-independence in 1960. We have already dealt with this earlier in the course of this discussion. What remains to be said at this point is that the mindset that infused that agitation has not dramatically changed since then despite contemporary socio-political changes that have largely responded to that agitation and more or less altered our political landscape.

We wish to caution that differences in religious persuasion alone do not quite explain some of the crises in the areas of our consideration. The Jukun and the Tiv are mostly Christians. If religious differences were the sources of inter-ethnic problems, these two tribes would live in total harmony with one another as Christian brothers and sisters. Crises in other communities where people are of the same religious persuasion show that the bond of religious affinity is not often strong enough to hold people together in the unending contest for social, economic and political advantages.

Is it possible to minimize the extent to which the haves can manipulate the have-nots? It is, provided the poor are empowered and freed from total dependence on their rich paymasters.

The long years of military rule in Nigeria witnessed attempts to rid the nation of tribal or ethnic champions. Rightly or wrongly, our military men reasoned that the problems of the first republic which they toppled on January 15, 1966, were traceable to the emergence of politicians who championed the interests of their tribes to the exclusion of others. We are all fairly familiar with some of the well-known instances of politicians who, faced with imminent political defeat, pulled out the ethnic card and instantly changed their political fortunes. The military men tried to discourage this brand of politics and politicians. In 1978, the then Obasanjo military administration prescribed that a political association seeking for registration as a political party must have offices in at least two-thirds of the then 19 states in the federation. Both the Abacha and the Abubakar administrations prescribed the same condition too. The Babangida administration simply decreed two political parties. This form of political engineering was an attempt to distance the new Nigeria each regime tried to build through the instrumentality of political association from the first republic during which the three main political parties, NPC, AG and the NCNC, were regionally-based. The military authorities felt that this undermined national unity and made it impossible for the nation to forge a common political purpose.

It can be argued that had the military not intervened in the political administration of the country, the three political parties might have become national parties by now through the formation of alliances across the regions. A natural evolutionary process would have thus transformed then into national parties bound by common political causes if not ideology.

The most charitable thing one can say about the efforts of the military to kill off ethnic politics and ethnic political champions is: they tried. We can thank them for trying. In our current post-military democracy, the plain fact is that ethnic political champions have re-emerged. Their re-emergence must be a source of despair to the gallant military men who took them on. It must be and it, indeed, is a source of frustration for the rest of us who expected that from the long winter of military rule there would emerge national champions on the stage of our national politics. Men and women who are Nigerians and Nigerian champions before anything else. The re-emergence of the ethnic political champions has undermined all the efforts all these years to re-orientate our psyche and promote national cohesion. It may well be that the instrument employed by the military to rid the nation of ethnic champions turned out, quite ironically, to make the process of their re-emergence possible. National unity and cohesion cannot be forced through laws that undermine the natural process. Human beings hate to be corralled and/or regimented into conformity. In a multi-ethnic nation like Nigeria with varying levels of development or more correctly of neglect, any instrument designed to force unity is immediately suspect.

What is our current experience? For answer, we invite you to look at the proliferation of militant youth groups whose avowed mission is to protect the interests of their tribes and those who unabashedly champion their ethnic political cause or causes. Odua Peoples Congress, OPC, offers no apology for its determination to protect the social, economic and political interest of the Yoruba. OPC is more or less the armed or youth wing of Afenifere that controls the Alliance for Democracy, AD, the party that controls the south-west geo-political zone.

Other tribes and zone took a cue from what is happening in the south-west and became persuaded that ethnic championship must be the current going political concern. The Igbo have Ohaneze which seeks to advance and protect the political and other interest of the Igbo. Its own militant wing, Bakassi Boys, which, unlike OPC, is mired in controversy among the Igbo themselves, was ostensibly founded to combat robbery and other violent crimes in the South-East geo-political zone.

In the former northern region, we have the Arewa Consultative Forum, which seeks to speak for the north. Its own militant wing, Arewa Peoples Congress, has failed so far to make any impact. But let us not dismiss its potential should the need arise.

The oil-producing areas have a good number of militant youth groups sworn to the defence and the protection of the peculiar social, economic and political rights of their people. The best known of them is MOSOP (for the Ogoni in Rivers State) which internationalized the plight and the neglect of the oil-producing areas. The Egbesu, a militant youth wing, is the scourge of the oil companies. These and other groups seek to determine employment by the oil companies. Perhaps, Egbesu and similar groups in the oil-producing areas are not exactly the same kettle of fish with the other groups. But we must remember that championing the political and other causes of the oil-producing areas has a long history that goes back to the middle sixties when the late Isaac Boro attempted secession. In our considered view any attempts by some Nigerians to deny other Nigerians their legitimate political and other rights in states other than their own is a manifestation of the politics of ethnicity.

Our national unity is systematically eroded by the fact that contest for political offices has been reduced to primitive struggles among tribes. Since most of us appear to have accepted this as a fact of our national life, it remains for us to point out the deleterious effect this has on our national unity.

By acts of omission or commission, ethnic conflicts have become major problems in our country today. As we pleaded at the beginning of this discussion, we cannot tackle them by mere pious declarations of intent or the failure to match words with actions necessary to free our dear country from the clutches of political and social retrogression. We face a complex situation that is becoming more complicated almost daily. We offer here what we consider to be a basic approach to finding a satisfactory solution to the problem of ethnic conflicts. They may look even simplistic but we feel that we can only defeat this menace by attacking it through its many roots.

We have tried to show in our contribution that ethnic conflicts have a fairly long history in the course of our political development as a people. The interplay of divisive forces has given mutual ethnic suspicion a new urgency. No one expects the years of cynical indoctrination of the people of this country to yield to a new climate of mutual trust in one day. It is going to be a long trek of a thousand miles through minds confused by deceit and a psyche benumbed by propaganda. Let us take the first step on that long trek today and have the courage to go on.

We thank you most sincerely for your patience.