POLITICS-NIGERIA: Will the National Dialogue Preach to the Converted?

By Sam Olukoya Reprint | | Print |

Sam Olukoya

LAGOS, Feb 1 2005 (IPS) - From behind a curtain in her home in Kaduna city, northern Nigeria, Clementina Paul had an unwanted front seat to one of the worst bouts of violence to occur in her country during the past decade: the clashes between Christians and Muslims in 2000.

“I saw people killing their neighbours. Even those they ate with, those they talked with, those they played with, they killed them,” she says.

In one especially traumatic incident, two brothers were taken from their house by a mob, doused with petrol and set alight. More than 2,000 others were also killed in the violence, which followed the introduction of Islamic law – sharia – in Kaduna state.

A protest by Christians who feared the law might also be applied to them sparked riots in which both mosques and churches were destroyed. Similar clashes have taken place in other northern states which have introduced sharia, such as Kanu, Bauchi and Jigawa.

While the Kaduna outburst may have been remarkable for the number of lives it claimed, its underlying causes were depressingly familiar to many Nigerians.

A 120 million-strong population divided amongst 250 ethnic groups has left this West African country straining at the seams with religious and ethnic differences that often make a mockery of a national slogan, “unity in diversity”. These differences have been exacerbated by the poverty that grips Nigeria, the country’s considerable oil wealth notwithstanding.

“They call Nigeria a federation, but it is not a federation. Nigeria is a funny set up,” says Alhaji Mujahid Dokubu-Asari, leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force. This group took up arms last year to gain a bigger share of the southern Delta region’s oil revenues for local communities.

Following repeated calls for a national debate on how Nigeria can best deal with its complicated cultural patchwork, President Olusegun Obansanjo will this month convene a National Political Reforms Conference – popularly referred to as a National Dialogue.

The head of state had previously rejected demands for such a meeting, saying they were prompted by a desire for secession amongst certain groups.

In 1967, members of the Ibo (Nigeria’s third-largest ethnic group) who were living in three eastern states of Nigeria seceded to form the Republic of Biafra. While a civil war put an end to this bid for independence, the dream of sovereignty survives amongst Ibos, spearheaded by the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra. Communities in the oil-rich Delta also long for autonomy – and the freedom to control resources that they hope will come with it.

Over 200 delegates from Nigeria’s 36 states will reportedly attend the three month-long National Dialogue, which is scheduled to get underway in mid-February, along with 50 persons nominated by the president. A government spokesman has been quoted as saying that delegates will be able to submit proposals on how Nigeria’s constitution can be reformed to ease tensions.

However, the delicate topic of sovereignty for ethnic groups will not come under discussion. This has angered those Nigerians who believe that nothing less will address the underlying causes of the country’s malaise – and who have proposed holding a separate conference to raise this issue.

“The government is not interested in addressing the ethnic nationality issue which, if not addressed, could lead to a break up of the country,” says Wale Adeoye of the Odua Liberation Movement – a group that wants sovereignty for the Yoruba people, the second-largest ethnic group in Nigeria.

A coalition of groups which support the idea of an alternative meeting, the Pro-National Conference Organisations (PRONACO), said in a statement that since gaining independence in 1960, Nigerians “have never had the opportunity, and have never been given one, despite the common desires, to deliberate on their political and economic future.”

Instead, a “forceful merger of the indigenous peoples by foreign powers” has created a situation where “the people of Nigeria remain perpetually traumatized by socio-economic misrule, characterized by the misadventure of military rule, unbridled corruption, perpetual ethnic conflict, and extreme poverty.”

Claiming that the National Dialogue lacks legitimacy, transparency and popular support, the coalition says the alternative conference will provide a platform where ethnic, religious, social and economic issues can be discussed so as to achieve peaceful coexistence amongst Nigerians.

Reports indicate that activists also want conference delegates to be nominated by ethnic organisations and civil society groups, rather than by the states.

Government is having none of it, even suggesting that the parallel conference may be illegal.

Udoma Udo Udoma, a member of the planning committee for the National Dialogue, is somewhat more conciliatory, however: “Nigerians should take this opportunity to talk. They should go and talk things over…Changes will always come (and) even at the end of the dialogue, changes will still continue.”

Either way, the difficulty of putting Africa’s most populous country on a more even keel is underscored by Tamuno Briggs, a member of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force.

Even though the group has reached a truce with government, relations with Abuja remain volatile.

“We are ever ready to fight till the end of the struggle,” says Briggs. “We want to ensure that the federal government gives us what belongs to us."