ABSTRACT Since the birth of the Fourth Republic on May 29 1999, Nigeria is experiencing increasing waves of
ethnic conflicts, while its leaders engage in a series of ‘dialogue of the deaf’. For now, a great deal of literature has
explored the causes of ethnic crisis and unsuitable solutions are being proposed for a wrongly diagnosed structural
social malaise. Thus, this article examines the fundamental causes of ethnic violence, being championed by the
various ethnic militia movements in post-military Nigeria, by emphasizing the impacts of institutional failure.
Hence, it contends that the extreme dissatisfactions of some ethnic nationalities with the Nigerian post-colonial state
are clear manifestations of the government failure to provide the necessary infrastructure and enabling environment
required to ease the inordinate human degradation, disillusionment, anger, rural decay and high crime wave prevailing
in the country. Thus, ethnic violence is created and maintained by militia movements in a vicious circle of frustration
and repression as the Nigerian leadership tries to consolidate itself in power while the marginalised categories (ethnic
minorities) of the population claim for their fair share in national resources. Finally, the study suggests that for the
interest of peace and stability, there is the urgent need for immediate redress to the inherent lapses in Nigeria’s
inherited federal structure, through a programmed professional participation that would be reflective of its peculiar
socio-historical experiences.
INTRODUCTION
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country,
entered a new era of democracy with the swearing
in of, as elected President, Chief Olusegun Aremu
Okikiola Obasanjo on May 29 1999. The frenzied
joy at that time was really understandable taking
into consideration the fact that the country was
coming out of 16 years of uninterrupted military
dictatorship. During the period under review
(December 31, 1983 to May 28, 1999), Nigeria as a
nation-state and as society witnessed untold
repression and gross violation of their basic
human rights (Onyegbula, 2000). Yet, it is
important to note that the immediate pre-1999
period saw the country in a situation of complete
breakdown and disintegration, especially, during
the zenith of General Sanni Abacha’s autocratic
rule.1 Sadly enough, the augean stable of
corruption, mismanagement in higher circles of
government, and acute impoverishment of the
generality of the citizenry became the order of
the day (Adekanye, 1999). The expanding
democratic space given by the country’s most
recent transition to civil rule has unleashed a host
of hitherto repressed and dormant political force
(Agbu, 2002). In Nigeria, one of the most
worrisome and critical of these new brands of unleashed political forces, which suggest that
each of the groups must struggle for what rightly
belongs to it, underlies the emergence of ethnic
nationality/identity movements, otherwise known
as the ethnic militia movements. Noteworthy
among these ethnic militia movements include the
Egbesu Boys of Africa (EBA), the Niger Delta
Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), the prominent
pan Yoruba political enclave, the Oodua People’s
Congress (OPC), the Movement for the
Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra
(MASSOB), and the Arewa People’s Congress
(APC). As already adumbrated, these movements
seeking to protect and advance different ethnic
interests are now, according to Agbu, “contesting
not just the political space and the democratic
dividends, but also resource control as part of
the liberalisation of the political environment”
(Agbu, Ibid). Since the activities of the ethnic
oriented groups began to attract public and
scholarly attentions, several questions have
come to mind. Among these questions are: to what
extent does the existence of these ethnic militia
movements threaten the country’s corporate
existence? Is the existence of militia movements
compatible with democracy or a negation of the
democratic political order? These and other related
questions constitute the plenitude of the concerns
expressed in this article. It is against the above background of extreme
dissatisfaction of some ethnic nationalities with
the Nigerian project, and resurgence of ethnic
identity politics that we seek to comprehend the
nature of growing challenges by ethnic militias
to the corporate existence of the Nigerian state.
How resurgence of ethnic militancy in the postmilitary
period can be explained and how these
challenges can be managed are vital to this study.
The basic tenet of this paper is that the agitations
by these groups are a clear manifestation of the
failure of the government to provide the necessary
infrastructural and enabling environment required
to ease the inordinate human degradation,
disillusionment, anger, rural decay and high crime
wave prevailing in the country. In this paper, I
attempt to delineate briefly some perspectives on
the notion of ethnicity, ethnic militia movements
as well as democracy and the context within which
they are applicable to the Nigerian polity and more
fundamentally attempts to evolve plausible
strategies for confronting the bane of ethnicity/
ethnic militia movements in Nigeria.
CONCEPTUALISING THE NOTIONS
OF ETHNICITY, ETHNIC MILITIAS
AND DEMOCRACY
Ethnicity and Ethnic Militias: What Do
They Mean?: It is germane from the outset to
situate ethnicity as a concept and social condition
in a particular context. The concept of ethnicity
refers to a social formation that rest upon
culturally specific practice and unique set of
symbols and cosmology (Ake, 2000: 93; Osaghae,
1995: 11). A belief in common historical evolution
provides an inheritance of symbols, heroes,
events, values, and hierarchies and confirms the
social identities for separating both insiders and
outsiders. Ethnic culture is one of the important
ways people conceive of themselves and culture
and identity are closely intertwined. Thus,
ethnicity, a social construct (Nnoli, 1978; Cohen,
1974: 4; IDEA International, 2000: 91), can also be
regarded as the employment of ethnic identity
and differences to gain advantage in situations
of competition, conflict and cooperation
(Osaghae, 1995: 11). It has also been understood
within its historical context how individuals are
called on to adopt ethnic identity as explanation
of who they are, what exists, what the world is,
etc. In this way, the subject integrates his or her
consciousness into conceptions of self-identity
or worldview. Ethnicity constitutes a way in which
people think of themselves and others, and makes
sense of the world around them. Simultaneously,
it also connotes set of social relations within
which social grouping such as men, women etc
relate to each other. It also refers to specific power
relations at the same time as it refers to cultural
relations.
Embracing an ethnic identity, and indeed
accepting its process of socialization, does not
have to conflict with that of other neighbouring
identities, nor does it have to be at the cost of
excluding the other. The manner in which a
particular ethnicity is given an organisation form,
whether ethnic identity advances specific political
or economic interest is at the heart of this article.
Indeed, it is the issue that exercises the mind of
Nigerians today. From the foregoing analysis, it
is logical to deduce from Nnoli’s argument that
the Nigerian politics have presented an image of
struggle among various ethnic groups for the
sharing of national resources. Thus, as observed
by Crawford (1993) social competition in the
country first for placement and preferment,
political competition in the Nigerian arena
subsequently, placed ethnicity in the center of
political cognition of political struggle.
Ethnic militia movement on the other hand is
the extreme form of ethnic agitation for selfdetermination
as various ethnic groups assume
militant posture and gradually metamorphosed
into militia groups each of which bear an ethnic
identity and purport to act as the machinery
through which the desires of its people are sought
to be realised. The common features of these
ethnically inspired movements are, the “resort to
violence, preponderance of youth membership,
ethnic identity affiliations, and that they are
mainly popular movements demanding change
over the status quo” (Agbu, 2002). One would
agree that the activities of the militia groups as
well as ethnic sectarianism are real threats, to the
territorial integrity of the country. And to lend
credence to the above, I quote the editorial of
Tell Magazine of November, 2000:
There are many flash points that have the
potentials to trigger big trouble for the country
and test the government resilience and resolve
to maintaining law and order…………….Top
among them is the Niger Delta where armed
bandits have turned legitimate struggle of the
people for reparation for their decimated land
and stolen wealth into a war of attrition against innocent people. They kill and main with
absolute impunity and demand huge ransom for
many of their victims who are lucky to be only
kidnapped…..The Ijaws appear determined to
prosecute their war on many fronts…..in
Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Ondo, and now Lagos; a
strategy that is diminishing the sympathy for
their legitimate claims of neglect and unjust
treatment by successive governments since
independence….. And compounding the
situation was the belligerent and
uncompromising stance of the Oodua People’s
Congress, OPC,, that readily resorts to violence
at slightest provocation. The OPC led by Dr.
Frederick Fasehun and Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti,
two human rights activists with impeccable
credentials as fighters against tyranny is fast
acquiring notoriety for operating beyond the
fringes of the law.
The above quotation aptly captures the
violent nature of these movements and this is
responsible for the wanton destruction of lives
and properties, inter-ethnic clashes and hostilities
where innocent people suffer.
Democracy: In contemporary world,
democracy has become a popular concept in
everyday discourse. Walter Lanqueur argued that
the term democracy originally referred to the right
of the citizens of the Greek City States to
participate directly in the act of governance, while
Webster is of the view that democracy is an
institution of governance which envisages a
popular government as practiced in ancient
Greece. Democracy or polycentric regime is a
system of governance that underscores the plural
nature of politics and hence gives recognition to
the diversity of social forces in any political
community. A democratic regime accommodates
the forces by providing for a polycentric political
order which not only recognized these forces
formally but enables them to interact with one
another in a diverse ways, in competition,
collaboration or cooperation (Olowu, 1995: 16).
The essence of a democratic regime is that it
serves the citizens rather than the other way
round. In the words of Sartori (1987: 34) democracy
exists when “relations between the governed and
government abides by the principle that the state
is at the services of the citizens and not the
citizens at the service of the state, that the
government exists for the people not vice-versa”.
This paper adopts definitions that take
empirical account of Nigeria’s peculiar socioeconomic cultural and political identity. On this
analytical plane, the enduring definition of
democracy by Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), the
former American president, as government of the
people by the people and for the people suffices.
Since then, scholars have been giving procedural
interpretation to this abiding definition of
democracy. On this note, one Nigerian scholar
contends that democracy is a system of
governance which allows people to freely elect
their leaders and hold them accountable, and
which provides opportunities for the greater
number of people to use their human potentials
to survive in dignity (Idowu, 1996), and according
to Joseph Schumpeter, democracy is the
“institutional arrangement for arriving at political
decisions in which individuals acquire the power
to decide by means of a competitive struggle for
the people’s vote” (Schumpeter, 1994: 26). Political
order is the existence of an enabling environment
for citizens of a country to pursue the normal
business of life that is consistent with their
fundamental human rights and privileges that are
enshrined in the constitution. This concept will
have relevance to democracy if it is able to
reinforce the process of political power acquisition
and appropriation of the dividend of
democracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment