Fashola to Igbos, vote APC or we will deport you; an implied reminder in the deportation to Onitsha

Fashola speaks on deportation saga

Sun Newspaper Aug 2, 2013

 

Fashola to Igbos, vote APC or we will deport you; an implied reminder in the deportation to Onitsha

Fashola said, “There is too much at stake for anyone to begin to insight the Igbo community against their host state."

Did anyone notice the phrase "[…] Igbo community and their host?" There are things fundamentally wrong with either Nigeria or the constitution or perhaps with we the people. Perhaps I am the one at lost here; I am the one that erroneously, blindly believes in the Nigeria republic and constitution that unfortunately appears inferior to tribe and ethnic divisions In Nigeria. 

Community, another name for strangers, sojourners, and host another name for natives, sons of the soil   used simultaneously reveals the mindset and belief that fans the amber of division of discord, amber of ethnic disharmony, rivalry, hate and conflicts. Here Fashola depicted Igbo community in the same manner an eastern would depict Yorubas or Hausas living in the east.  Just the same manner a northern would depict Igbos and Yorubas living in the north. And all these descriptions portend one thing and one thing only; and that is, though they are Nigerians yet they are strangers here. The question then becomes, is Nigeria a federation or confederation?   We all have heard repeatedly from the politicians saying Nigeria system a federal system modeled after American system.  Yet in U.S with many ethnic nationalities and races no one or authority in U.s uses community and host simultaneously when describing, distinguishing any two or more American citizens’ group.  There are Black, Hispanic, white America, communities but there exists no hosts to these communities because these communities are all American citizens; except the community is made up of none American citizens. The word community does not automatically invoke host neither is host intrinsically linked to community.  Yet in Nigeria citizens living on their own, not being anybody’s guests are described and treated as strangers, like foreigners merely because their parents and or ancestries were born in another region of the country. Depending on where one lives, Nigerians are perennial strangers, foreigners in their own country. Nigerians with American citizenships have full, unfettered citizenship rights in all regions, all states in American.  Same rights an Igbo either in Lagos or Kano would not even phantom.   

In no other federation in the world do citizens become guests, strangers, or foreigners perennially. What obtains in U.s and most countries in the world is that citizen acquires local or state citizenship and full state citizen’s rights after a period of residence in a state or in region.  But in Nigeria a person born of Igbo parents in Lagos or north, raised in Lagos or north, speaks Yoruba or Hausa fluently; never set foot on east soil is never a native Lagosian or ever a northerner for the mere reason of his or her Igbo parents.  

Today Nigerians are assigned citizenship or indigene-ship base on tribe, language, and or on the divisive indigenous laws in the states that says an Igbo man born in Lagos state is not an indigene of the state just because he has an Igbo blood even if he neither speaks Igbo nor ever set foot on south east soil. If Kaduna Nzeogwu was correctly seen and identified as a Nigerian first, a northerner second and may be, may be as an Igbo third, the July 1966 revenge coup, the pogrom that followed culminating to the fratricidal civil of 1967 to 1970 would have been completely averted.  QED

 

In Nigeria today nobody knows the indigene-ship or state citizenship of a Nigerian with Igbo father, Hausa mother and Hausa paternal grandfather and Yoruba paternal great grandfather.  The confusion in the citizenship of this individual is because unlike most country in the world where residency and individual volition are the bases for assigning state, regional, provincial citizenship, Nigeria uses tribe, language, and or paternity to assign citizenship. The oddity and absurdity of this Nigeria system is that it fosters divisiveness among the citizenry; it makes a Nigerian a stranger in his or her home country if he or she speaks, and or possesses a genome that is not local or indigenous to his or her place of residence.

This strict ethnic classification in Nigeria is principally responsible for persistent mistrust, disunity, rivalry, wars, tribal conflicts, and pogrom in the Nigeria society. If every Nigerian living in the north receives and possesses sense of citizen; sees self as a Nigerian first and a northerner second, the Boko Haram threat that ordered southerners to leave north would have been senseless and laughable. If every Nigerian living in the north receives and possesses sense of citizenship they would neither yield to tribally charged threats nor indulge in mass exodus to the south for safety. Our leaders have for long encourage these divisions among the citizenry because it is good politics of divide and conquer. I therefore call on the national assembly to seize the opportunity afforded by the ongoing constitutional amendment to address and redefine citizenship appropriately; citizenship that is base on residency and not on tribe, language, paternity or genome.

Lagos state cannot try to have it both ways, by on one hand receiving over 40 local government councils which translate to over 40 fold federal allocations while on the other hand  it is deporting the same people, the population it  used to obtain over 40 fold federal to local government allocations for the state.