By Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher –
Introduction
Let me start this lecture by thanking God almighty whose grace has permitted us to stand here on this podium on this soil to address the staff, students and faculty. Eight decades ago, a young man stood in this place to acquire education to teach as a VTA and VTB Teacher. The young man, Daniel Hagher Gbaaiko became a teacher and a Dutch Reformed Church Missionary. He was my father I was born at the eastern end of the Mkar mountain.
At Mbaamandev. My father and I benefited from the Christian education that the Dutch Reformed Church Mission offered, and I went to W.M. Bristow Secondary School, Gboko owned by the Sudan United Mission.
That school and this University are now owned by the same proprietor the NKST. I am therefore standing here in gratitude to the church for showing me the better way of life through Christian values and the ability to get a sound education.
I deliberately chose today’s topic because the things that are happening around us are life-threatening and thinking about them now is critical and necessary, and cannot wait. Furthermore, there is little conversation about race in politics and in the academy. The impression is that tribalism and racism is a swear word not to be used in decent society.
There is evidently much to think and say about the existential threat of ethnic racism and bad leadership that is affecting individual lives in Nigeria. Many lives have continued to crash into ruin because of ethnic racist policies and individual racist hostilities that we are all exposed to in our homes, offices on the high-ways and on our farms.
I was born 72 years ago on 25th June 1949 at the Mkar Christian Hospital. I was born with a status of a British Protected Child. That was before the independence in 1960, when all people living within the Nigerian space acquired the Nigerian citizenship. I wondered why the British did not give us British citizenship, and why were we being protected, and from whom? Why did they colonize us? These questions occupied my mind as I grew up through the various phases of Nigeria’s development.
The Colonial Experience
As I grew up, I realized that Europe colonized Africa because they could do so. They had the technological superiority in arms and weaponry to cross the seas and to colonize us. Life under the British colony was not bad from the eye of a child but I grew up expecting the best.
Independence held so much promise as I dreamed of living in a country, Nigerian, whose independence from Great Britain would lift it from primitivism, deviance and retrogression to betterment, loftiness, and a higher place of social life than had ever been reached before by any black society on earth. Haiti the first black nation on earth to be independent through a revolution that defeated the most powerful person (Napoleon Bonaparte) and his army, was not doing well despite proximity to the US. I was worried but confident that Nigeria’s story would
be different.
Today after over sixty years of independence Nigeria is in the vortex of rigorous reexamination of its leadership, and the psychological make-up of the citizens. Nigeria has become the validation of racist theories of black inferiority. Nigerians who have excelled in countless endeavors are questioning themselves and the racists are having fun laughing at our inability to prove the revolutionary ideas that fired the momentum for decolonizing.
These were ideas of Nigeria’s destiny in the context of world history to prove to the world that when black people are left alone to organize and govern themselves, they can live in peace, and build their democratic institutions and tolerate their diversity.
Contemporary Times
Nigeria since the advent of democratization in 1999 has fluctuated in fortunes. There is a fundamental disconnect between the bank profits being posted, the amount of money budgeted each year and the quality of life of ordinary Nigerians. The score card of the Buhari regime is extremely high in social interventions as well as the massive infrastructural projects scattered around Nigeria, from massive borrowings from China. But all this is negated and nullified by the inability of this government to secure the lives and property of Nigerians as contained in the Nigerian Constitution. The Constitution is unambiguous that the protection of lives and property is the cardinal responsibility of state.
This is not the case now and indeed, the reverse is happening. Not only are the lives of Nigerians at risk, the cement of unity has cracked and there is a threat of disintegration. The president himself is in a bind. How does he promote the welfare of his ethnicity, the Fulani, without being an ethnic racist? Should the president be a Fulani president and an ethnic racist autocrat to the rest of the country? What really is ethnic racism? The ethnic nationalities that advocate resource control or indeed a break-up of Nigeria into Biafra, Oduduwa, and Arewa Republics are these ethnic racist warriors or something else? Where exactly does tribalism and ethnocentrism end and ethnic racism begins? Can we separate white racism from ethnic racism as mutually exclusive or one is cause of the other.
Aims of the Lecture
This lecture hopes to discuss ethnic racism in the context of the intersection between white racism and its influence on ethnic racism, I hope to show you that the people promoting ethnic racism are merely replicating the racist models in America and Europe and if we explore this together we might consider the conclusion that Nigeria is a heavily racist society where the political ideology of neoliberalism is merely a veneer for entrapment of a racist economic mode which does not benefit Nigerians except those who have continued to use racist policies.
There is an ominous parallel between the racist policies of white racism in America, and the policies of the ethnic racists here that benefit certain ethnic groups which have formed a detribalized hegemony, a rampant upper class of privilege and contemptuous anti-black racists.
The paradox is they are also black.
The aim of my lecture is to instigate a change in the heart of the people so that our religious sentiments, our duties and obligations will yield to radical change in principles, opinions, and affections of the people to enable us upholster our hate and wars against one another and permit peace to exist in our society. It is my conviction that a critical probing of ethnic racism and bad leadership should be part of out effort to define, express and shape the reality of the type of country we desire to have, and the type of democracy that can accommodate our hopes and aspirations and indeed our differences.
I hope we can all join the movement to radically emancipate our students, lecturers, and our public from the trappings of a neocolonial mentality towards original thinking that proffers solutions that answer to our problems and needs.
The great Pan-Africanist, Franz Fanon, saw the Question of race as, but a superstructure, a mantle, an obscure ideological emanation” concealing an economic reality and defined racism as “the shameless exploitation of one group of men by another which has reached a higher stage of technical development.
To face racism and its twin brother ethnic racism we must be prepared to face evil. Racism is
bigotry and totally unscientific. It is a dangerous myth.
TRIBALISM AND ETHNIC RACISM
Tribalism is defined by Webster as tribal consciousness and loyalty especially: the exaltation of the tribe above other groups and strong-in-group loyalty. Ethnicism on the other hand is prejudice based on ethnic origin. Ethnic racism is the irrational prejudice and malevolence against others because of differences of ethnicity.
I hope that we can have a discussion about the rise of ethnic racism in Nigeria, and more importantly, how this racism has created toxicity in our elite and political leaders. Racism is defined as a belief in the doctrine that inherent differences in human beings, racial groups determine cultural or individual achievements, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is superior to the other.
This belief is a fallacy because it is an irrational myth without a scientific basis. Racism is a misnomer because the breaking of the human genome code on June 26, 2000, proved the existence of only one human race and not races. Racism is purely political; it has no genetic and scientific basis. It is proved that human beings irrespective of colour or geography are 99.9 percent the same.
Racism and Ethnic racism are socially constructed. The idea of race is an invented myth which the European invented to justify the nasty business of buying and selling other human beings and holding them as chattel slaves. It is a persistent false and poisonous idea. It is the vehicle by which power, money and hate mongers drive people apart. Racism and ethnic racism are nasty, nasty businesses that are evolving in their nastiness.
I have searched in vain to see if Nigerian intellectuals have engaged “ethnic racism” as racism in their discourses. There have been a lot of discussions about identity politics, which I believe is a politically correct way of avoiding to discuss this nasty business of racism and indeed to take a position that western racists have often taken by assuming that we are in a post racist world today. Sadly, I do not believe we are in a post racist world. Racism is here everywhere on earth and it has assumed hegemonies of power and determine what professor Alubo 2003, states that “identity politics is the basis for determining who is in and who is out.”
I hope the distinguished Professor will find common grounds with me if I paraphrase him to say that in Nigeria today “Ethnic racism determines who is in and who is out.” Racism sets apart in an irrational and arbitrary way those who have the right to command and those to obey. Nigeria needs to embrace nation-building in the face of the present challenges of xenophobia, and violence that has engulfed the nation, and critically undermines national security and wellbeing. Professor Nnnoli had scathing words for ethnicity as; Nnoli (1982;176) “An image of a struggle among the various ethnic groups for a division of national resources. It has become a tradition that an average Nigerian especially the poor believes that unless his or her ethnic brothers or sisters are in government offices the chances of them having access to the nation’s resources meant for development purposes are slim.”
Ethnic racism has morphed in contemporary Nigeria to become a piece of overwhelming machinery for national deprivation. It has exacerbated corruption in governance, undermined democracy, promoted inefficiency, and created false hierarchies in the way we regard and treat each other.
Ethnic racism is Nigeria’s biggest fault line that is pushing the country to the brink of civil wars and dissolution. We crush other tribes with hurtful anecdotes, we lack the backbone to endure and tolerate others.
When we call one a tribalist what do we really mean? Are we describing him or are we swearing at him; sort of saying, “This is a bad person.” When one claims to be detribalized, does it mean he will push his tribe under the bus so that another will be at advantage? I believe that when we claim to be detribalized, we are being ingeniously true racist bigots. People who claim to be detribalized are touting dangerous neutrality in the face of virulent ethnic racist clashes in the workplace, in the courtrooms, academia, the armed forces, politics, and even churches and mosques.
Detribalized people are passive racists who pretend neutrality but in reality, are enablers of bigotry in ethnic racism, sexism, youth, and elderly abusers.
I enjoin you on this Christian campus to rise to the responsibility of our callings as Christians. This responsibility, above all else, is to love the Lord our God with our all, and our neighbor as ourselves. This means that our struggle to be good Christians is by loving God in the spirit and truth and loving ourselves and our neighbors as human beings. This is the existential struggle we face living on earth and participating in human activities.
There should be no room for, class, racial, tribal, sexist, old men and women hatred.
Ethnic racism is institutionalized, systematized, and structural in Nigeria. It is the single most important and dangerous myth that enables haters to discriminate, hate, profile, threaten and kill. Tribalism is not necessarily bad. To be detribalized means being devoid of tribal affiliation.
This is inhuman and really not real. Tribalism is good, but tribal racism or ethnic racism takes place when there is a creation of a disadvantage, an inequality through the unfair assistance of an ethnic group to get wealth, land, power positions and attention to be heard at the expense of other non-dominant groups.
In his landmark ruling on racial discrimination in the U.S., Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978. “In order to get beyond racism, we must take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
History of Racism Worldwide
The United States has made tremendous efforts to end racism. It has equally been made to entrench racism. Government policies, the legislative houses, and the political parties have made progressive anti-racist policies and have also re-enforced racist policies. In one of the landmark cases of the US Supreme Court of March 6, 1857, in the Dred Scot vs Sanford, the Court ruled that “Black people could not be citizens”.
On January 31, 1865, The House of Representatives in the U.S., passed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. In the same year the Ku Klux Klan the white supremacist terror group in the US was founded as a social club in Tennessee.
February 27, 1869, The Republican Dominated Congress Passed the Fifteenth amendment to the United States Constitution forbidding the denial of voting rights on account of race color, or previous condition of servitude.
Ibram Kendi, in his book, “Stamped from The Beginning” stated that after a deep study of racism in America, he saw, “The anti-racist force of equality and the racist forces of inequality marching forward, progressing rhetoric, in tactic in policies.”
The world stood still when America elected her first black President it seemed then as if America and the world had reached the destination of post-racism. Typically, Obama’s election ignited the racist reaction that put Trump into power and these forces seek to roll back American’s progress on racial equality and whatever happens in America has ramifications for the rest of the world. Nigerians’ ethnic racism is co-joined with the unbridled capitalist ethos that has yielded a fertile ecology for corruption, poverty crime, and ethnic and religious wars.
When the Federal Character Commission was established by the Abacha Administration, the framers of the law (The Constitutional Conference, 1974-75) took account of ethnic disparities in the public service. Today, that disparity has been ignored and subverted by ethnic racists and the selling of Federal appointments to the highest bidder.
It is our shame that entrants into the Nigerian security services pay from fifty to hundreds of thousands of naira to secure recruitment slots.
In his groundbreaking book, “How to be an Anti-racist,” Ibrahim Kendi stated: “We have been programmed to respond to human differences between us with fear and oathing and to handle that difference in one of the three ways: ignore it, copy it, or destroy it.”
He concluded that human beings have no pattern for relating across our human differences as equals. Neither the US, Great Britain, China nor anybody has a permanent solution. The World Bank and IMF have emphasized good governance and the elimination of corruption but they have never advised the U.S nor their dependent countries like Nigeria, to enhance ethnic equality and eliminate ethnic racism as an indication of good governance. Nigerian politicians who are ethnic racists have generally pretended that ethnic racism does not exist. Yet its effects
are palpable, its disastrous consequences are deeply felt in the economy and in the dissolution of the national security architectures.
At this juncture, it is necessary to request all of you my listeners to ask yourself what side of history do you stand on? Are you an ethnic racist or you are anti-ethnic racist? If you are detribalized then you are a problem.
You are an advocate of white racism that has invidiously seeped through our subconscious and insidiously batters ethnic groups to the ground in your rapacious greed looking down on your ethnic group and country for gratification and accolades for a non-existent objective neutral ground.
Nobody is born a racist, an ethnic racist, or a bigot. These are all learned behaviors. Children in the nursery and primary schools do not discriminate on the basis of color, tribe, or race. It is our acculturation process that nurtures our fears, premonitions, our proclivities, and biases from parents to children and then from peer to peer from generation to generation. We have been taught to hate the other before, but we do not need to inhabit that space for long. Hate breeds hate and destroys. We must now un-educate ourselves, and unlearn those racist, and ethnic racist ideologies.
We practice ethnic racism when we express racist ideas about an ethnic group in support of a racist policy towards an ethnic group. Ethnic racism like racism itself points to group behavior instead of policies, as the cause for disparities between groups.
TO BE CONTINUED
Being a Distinguished Public Lecture by Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, President, African Leadership Institute, USA, Presented @ University of Mkar, Nigeria
