by George Kushi
Those sufficiently acquainted with the history of Nigeria cannot deny the existence of tribalism in a more dispassionate perspective in our society. Nigeria is tribal society and most people feel far more at home among members of their own tribe than in any other company.
Even today communities feel honoured such that when a member of their group is appointed to high office, a goodwill delegation goes to the governor/president to thank him for the singular honour done to their clan and pray him to keep the clan name in his good books.
The communal sharing of joy and sadness is very human under normal circumstances. But in a multi tribal society like Nigeria, it is a formidable stumbling block. Poverty and it’s concomitant low standard of living lend more to their herd instinct. People see the tribe as an island of survival in a seething, unstable socio-economic sea.
These attitudes are deeply ingrained in the minds of the people and will take several generations to erase. It is wrong to suppose that only the poorly educated have these notions. To get a job one has to belonged to the big tribe having of course learnt the language as thoroughly as one could.
It is important to note that until very recent years, no tribe made any concerted effort to dominate others or subject them to privations. People merely did their best for their tribes though in the process, the smaller tribes suffered. For the smaller tribes it is domination, for the bigger tribe it is progress.. Today when smaller tribes talk of domination people from the big tribes become honestly baffled, they are convinced that people get jobs by merit. It is not easy to imagine what it is like o belong to the a small tribe of less than a quarter of a million people given the fact that Nigerian population is over one hundred and eighty million people.
It is futile in this vein to blame this tribe or that. The herd instinct was powerful, is and still will be vital because it operates subconsciously and persistently.
But why do people support their own kind. Is it because they look forward to a reciprocal gesture of kindness and protection, or is it because of an unconscious desire for group immortality since individual immortality is impossible? The herd instinct is deeply rooted in life’s process itself.
Unitary government is supposed to be an ideal, which should go far beyond the moral capabilities of the leaders of our nation. May be our leaders are too parochial and uneducated after all. Parochial in that they are only conscious of the need of their immediate families, and uneducated in that their sense of value is grievously warped.
Money is everything! The kleptomaniac who spend his time in the office grabbing money always earn applauses and so the miserable faces he sees by the road side as he drives by in his air conditioned car have no message for him.
It is hoped that education and more education would improve matters, to everybody’s dismay, our youth abandon their idealism as soon as they leave the university and plunge into the search for more money, and yet more money. What is wrong?
I believe that explanation lies in the fact that example is more powerful, than precept. To be great in the eye of the nation, one has to be rich. No one has ever been acclaimed by the nation for naked honesty, hard work or sacrifice. Truly, Nigeria had never seen an Abraham Lincoln, Ghandi or Mandela!!!What can the youth do but to copy the prevailing standard of the day? There is nothing wrong with our education.
People simply lack the courage to break new moral grounds in the teeth of strong opposition. How can one be a minister without magnificent houses, a garage of fleet of cars, a fat oversea account? One would be jeered at for one’s stupidity. As an indigent public figure, one cannot look anyone in face, one cannot bear the resentment of one’s family. And so even politicians who came with a genuine desire to right the wrongs of the nation ravaged her instead, all for lack of courage.
This reluctance to break new grounds and not a lack of has kept us far beyond the developed nations in art of governance and, technology and even in art. Again there is the believe that we need not exercise initiatives in these things until we have caught up with the technologically advanced nations by copying every single achievement of theirs.
Well, we will never catch up that way. We too must contribute our original ideas to earn the respect and gratitude of the world. As it is, a lot of programmes are being fashioned on a positive premise, the economy seems to be lurching dangerously out of control setting off concerns about the new inflationary boost in the price of consumer goods and this is causing a souring relationship between government and the organised labour.
After over a hundred years of the amalgamation! One nagging question is, would vivid criticism right now retard reconciliation between organised labour and government? will it reconcile government and the poor child of the poor in these conflicting issues? I think not! In any case the part to full national maturity lies through he fearsome jungle of self criticism and the sooner we take this path the better.
What today is grim and agonizing may be amusing, even hilarious. Let us not deny posterity a good laugh!!