A few days ago, the Oba of Lagos threatened Igbo
leaders. If they did not vote for his governorship candidate in Lagos, he said,
they would be thrown into the lagoon. His entire speech was a flagrant
performance of disregard. His words said, in effect: I think so little of you
that I don’t have to cajole you but will just threaten you and, by the way,
your safety in Lagos is not assured, it is negotiable.
There have been condemnations of the Oba’s words.
Sadly, many of the condemnations from non-Igbo people have come with the ugly
impatience of expressions like ‘move on,’ and ‘don’t be over-emotional’ and
‘calm down.’ These take away the power, even the sincerity, of the
condemnations. It is highhanded and offensive to tell an aggrieved person how
to feel, or how quickly to forgive, just as an apology becomes a non-apology
when it comes with ‘now get over it.’
Other condemnations of the Oba’s words have been
couched in dismissive or diminishing language such as ‘The Oba can’t really do
anything, he isn’t actually going to kill anyone. He was joking. He was just
being a loudmouth.’ Or – the basest yet – ‘we are all prejudiced.’ It is
dishonest to respond to a specific act of prejudice by ignoring that act and
instead stressing the generic and the general.
It is similar to responding to a specific crime by saying ‘we are all
capable of crime.’ Indeed we are. But responses such as these are diversionary
tactics. They dismiss the specific act, diminish its importance, and ultimately
aim at silencing the legitimate fears of people.
We are indeed all prejudiced, but that is not an
appropriate response to an issue this serious. The Oba is not an ordinary
citizen. He is a traditional ruler in a part of a country where traditional
rulers command considerable influence – the reluctance on the part of many to
directly chastise the Oba speaks to his power. The Oba’s words matter. He is
not a singular voice; he represents traditional authority. The Oba’s words
matter because they are enough to incite violence in a political setting
already fraught with uncertainty. The Oba’s words matter even more in the event
that Ambode loses the governorship election, because it would then be easy to
scapegoat Igbo people and hold them punishable.
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Nigerians who consider themselves enlightened might
dismiss the Oba’s words as illogical. But the scapegoating of groups – which
has a long history all over the world – has never been about logic. The Oba’s
words matter because they bring worrying echoes of the early 1960s in Nigeria,
when Igbo people were scapegoated for political reasons. Chinua Achebe, when he
finally accepted that Lagos, the city he called home, was unsafe for him because
he was Igbo, saw crowds at the motor park taunting Igbo people as they boarded
buses: ‘Go, Igbo, go so that garri will be cheaper in Lagos!’
Of course Igbo people were not responsible for the
cost of garri. But they were perceived as people who were responsible for a
coup and who were ‘taking over’ and who, consequently, could be held responsible
for everything bad. Any group of people would understandably be troubled by a
threat such as the Oba’s, but the Igbo, because of their history in Nigeria,
have been particularly troubled. And it is a recent history. There are people
alive today who were publicly attacked in cosmopolitan Lagos in the 1960s
because they were Igbo. Even people who were merely light-skinned were at risk
of violence in Lagos markets, because to be light-skinned was to be mistaken
for Igbo.
Almost every Nigerian ethnic group has a grouse of
some sort with the Nigerian state. The Nigerian state has, by turns, been
violent, unfair, neglectful, of different parts of the country. Almost every
ethnic group has derogatory stereotypes attached to it by other ethnic groups. But
it is disingenuous to suggest that the experience of every ethnic group has
been the same. Anti-Igbo violence began under the British colonial government,
with complex roots and manifestations. But the end result is a certain psychic
difference in the relationship of Igbo people to the Nigerian state. To be Igbo
in Nigeria is constantly to be suspect; your national patriotism is never taken
as the norm, you are continually expected to prove it.
All groups are conditioned by their specific
histories. Perhaps another ethnic group would have reacted with less concern to
the Oba’s threat, because that ethnic group would not be conditioned by a
history of being targets of violence, as the Igbo have been. Many responses to the Oba’s threat have mentioned
the ‘welcoming’ nature of Lagos, and have made comparisons between Lagos and
southeastern towns like Onitsha. It is valid to debate the ethnic diversity of
different parts of Nigeria, to compare, for example, Ibadan and Enugu,
Ado-Ekiti and Aba, and to debate who moves where, and who feels comfortable
living where and why that is. But it is odd to pretend that Lagos is like any
other city in Nigeria. It is not.
The political history of Lagos and its
development as the first national capital set it apart. Lagos is Nigeria’s
metropolis. There are ethnic Igbo people whose entire lives have been spent in
Lagos, who have little or no ties to the southeast, who speak Yoruba better than
Igbo. Should they, too, be reminded to be ‘grateful’ each time an election
draws near?
No law-abiding Nigerian should be expected to show
gratitude for living peacefully in any part of Nigeria. Landlords in Lagos
should not, as still happens too often, be able to refuse to rent their
property to Igbo people. The Oba’s words were disturbing, but its context is
even more disturbing: The anti-Igbo rhetoric that has been part of the
political discourse since the presidential election results. Accusatory and derogatory language – using
words like ‘brainwashed,’ ‘tribalistic voting’ – has been used to describe
President Jonathan’s overwhelming win in the southeast. All democracies have
regions that vote in large numbers for one side, and even though parts of
Northern Nigeria showed voting patterns similar to the Southeast, the
opprobrium has been reserved for the Southeast.
But the rhetoric is about more than mere voting. It is really about citizenship. To be so entitled as to question the legitimacy of a people’s choice in a democratic election is not only a sign of disrespect but is also a questioning of the full citizenship of those people.
What does it mean to be a Nigerian citizen? When Igbo people are urged to be ‘grateful’ for being in Lagos, do they somehow have less of a right as citizens to live where they live? Every Nigerian should be able to live in any part of Nigeria. The only expectation for a Nigerian citizen living in any part of Nigeria is to be law-abiding. Not to be ‘grateful.’ Not to be expected to pay back some sort of unspoken favour by toeing a particular political line. Nigerian citizens can vote for whomever they choose, and should never be expected to justify or apologize for their choice.
Only by feeling a collective sense of ownership of Nigeria can we start to forge a nation. A nation is an idea. Nigeria is still in progress. To make this a nation, we must collectively agree on what citizenship means: all Nigerians must matter equally.
By
Chimamanda Adichie
Sorted by Andrea Achudume
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