CHIDI AMUTA: Invasion of Designer Tribesmen

Engagements By Chidi Amuta, Email: chidi.amuta@thisdaylive.com

Nigeria 2013. Just when you thought the next stage is the gathering of a possible Nigerian spring against bad governance and foolish politics, the outbreak of  an old disease threatens to overrun the country. A vile contagion of decadent tribalism has resurfaced among the elite. It is going viral, at a quite disturbing rate. Suddenly, people that one thought had been weaned of primal inanities are mouthing unprintable apostasy against fellow Nigerians on grounds of ethnic origins. All in the name of politics.

The immediate policy springboard is the controversy over a spate of repatriations and renditions of citizens from Lagos to the eastern banks of the River Niger. As it turns out, other less consequential states at both geographical poles of the country have embarked on this embarrassing and unconstitutional practice. The fact of its spread among state administrations, either as reciprocity or deliberate policy, may make it fashionable. But that makes it all the more strategically treacherous and dangerous.

Politicians of all hues, mostly in designer outfit, are cashing in on the Lagos aberration in particular. The most unfortunate axis of the confrontations is along the familiar east-west direction: Igbos versus Yorubas. Predictably, the loudest noises have come from political urchins and designer thugs intent on using the ethnic brickbat to divert attention from their own ignominious immediate past. Persons who should be either permanently in jail or on perennial narcotics rehabilitation should not be allowed to use the liberty of free expression to spread confusion among our people. Nor should pocket book politicians with no particular constituency divert attention from the insensitivity of misguided state governments to the situation of the poor and less fortunate in our midst.

The case of Lagos is special, which is why it has attracted the greatest attention and commentary. Therefore, it does not matter how many other less strategically consequential states embark on wrong-headed social welfare policies. What Lagos does is of utmost importance. It was for the better part of our national history the capital of the country, built with a privileged chunk of the resources of our commonwealth. Therefore the universal sense of entitlement to Lagos is understandable.

It has always been regarded as home to all Nigerians and in fact all its very cosmopolitan residents. The ugly chaos of Lagos is its beauty. That beauty is what I call the ‘sweetness’ of Lagos, a magnetic force that attracts and retains all those who have come to call this sweaty incoherence their home. Curiously somehow, this is also our ‘city upon the sea’, the American equivalent of ‘city upon a hill’, a place of hope in the midst of apparent hopelessness. People come to Lagos in the hope that they will ‘make it here’.  That hope keeps them alive. They may not make the money in tonnes but they do make ‘a life’, no matter how nasty their material conditions and physical surroundings. Those who doubt that there is a ‘Nigerian dream’ should take another more informed look at the symbolism of Lagos.

The most laughable and illiterate dimension of the ethnicisation of the Lagos renditions is the one that floats a dispute about Lagos being a ‘no man’s land’.  In today’s world, cosmopolitan cities like Lagos are located in a specific place but usually transcend primordial ownership criteria. These cities are someone’s land all right. But that ‘someone’ is a trinity without tribal marks. First there are those who ‘own’ the city on account of their birthright as indigenes. Second, there are others who ‘own’ the city on account of acquiring pieces of it as investors and sundry economic agents in a free market situation. Third, there are others who ‘own’ the city on account of being legally resident either as a constitutional right or on account of discharging the full civic obligations of residency (being law abiding, paying their taxes and respecting local customs). None of these categories of ownership of a cosmopolitan city is inherently superior to the others. Each merely defines the relationship of the individual to his location and must be respected in a diverse society and polity.

As the world has discovered, diversity is one of the great new engines of growth and prosperity among nations. America saw this before everyone else on account of its historical antecedents. Visa lottery is all about sustaining diversity for economic pre-eminence. Cities of the world are promoting diversity for the same reasons. It gives them economic strength, cultural beauty and demographic resilience. Literally, megacities lose themselves in order to find their destiny. New York, Chicago, Washington, London, Rio, Frankfurt… Nearer home, the relationship between diversity and prosperity is evident in three locations: Lagos, Port Harcourt and Kano. Ask the banks! Or check the Internally Generated Revenues (IGR) of the states in question.

In matters of public policy, we should desist from acting in a manner that makes us look very foolish. There are few stories that I know of either the United States or the United Kingdom repatriating legally resident Nigerians on account of their social situation. Once you are in any of those countries legally, your social situation-poverty, destitution, madness, homelessness- will not qualify you to be herded to the airport or sea airport and dumped indecently at Murtala Mohammed or Abuja airport or Apapa wharf for the crime of being originally Nigerian. Instead, you automatically become a beneficiary of their social welfare schemes. Governments everywhere accept as part of their sworn obligation a commitment to protect and do good to all manner of citizens and residents irrespective of race, class, social situation, economic condition. The responsibility of governance is more onerous in doing good to the less privileged: the unwashed, the homeless, the demented and the physically infirm.

Beyond the derogation and devaluation of state power which these repatriations and renditions imply, there is ultimately the matter of the morality of state power. The state exists, not as a mechanical accounting machine or sanitation janitor but as the ultimate resort of all who live within their purview irrespective of their station, situation, condition. Without compassion, the state dies. Therefore, all the state governments that have embarked on this latest policy of criminal evacuations, repatriations and renditions must face up to the fullest implications of their actions. They are destroying the pluralistic essence of this country. They are frittering away the gains of over five decades of integrative federalism. They are eroding the rights of citizenship of individuals. They are discriminating against citizens on grounds of social status, material condition, state of health and, tangentially, ethnic origin. As my friend and brother Kayode Komolafe would insist, this is the height of elite insensitivity and bourgeois arrogance!

But what we are witnessing in recent times, beginning with the Lagos renditions, is first, a flagrant violation of the Nigerian constitution. I am not aware that as Nigerians we are only fit to reside anywhere in our country when we are fit, rich, able and self-supporting. I thought that states that derive their revenue from open market economics and rapacious taxation would be enlightened enough to understand that the system that pays their bills also produces destitute, beggars, indecent people, homeless street urchins etc. I thought that the oaths of office which these governors swear to every four years includes the responsibility to be fair and to respect the rights of all Nigerians who reside in their domain irrespective of the familiar disabilities that living in a competitive society exposes people to.

To embark on clandestine rendition of citizens across state boundaries is first a violation of the constitution. It undermines the gains of mutual coexistence, free mobility of persons, skills, capital etc that ought to hold our federalism together. It amounts to a criminal dereliction of duty on the part of state governments. It is even a breach of the most elementary principle of sovereign power, the ideal of protecting the weak from the effects of the actions of the strong. There is also the overlooked angle of reckless endangerment of lives as anything could happen to persons being transported to their perceived states of origin against their will in these renditions. This is yet another aspect of the culture of criminal impunity that has invaded governance in the country.

At the level of national politics and society, the policy of repatriations and renditions has far reaching implications. State governors that should act as integrative agents are championing divisive social policies. There is a worse danger that few are seeing. The spread of hate and fear across the country cannot breed hope. If you go north to settle and work, Boko Haram bombs you. If you go south, you are trailed by kidnappers and armed robbers. If you are rich, you are a target. If you are poor and homeless, you are collected from the streets of a state you have come to call home and dumped by an uncaring authority in a place where no one knows you. In your own country? The illustrious Zik, the great Awo and the noble Ahmadu Bello are all turning uncomfortably in their graves!