POLITICS: Nigeria’s Ethnic Divide

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Sep 24 1998 (IPS) - A group of political leaders from the south of the country have threatened to boycott Nigeria’s local government elections unless the government of Gen. Abdulsalaam Abubakar reforms the army and scraps a set of draconian laws used to silence political opponents.

The decision to boycott the Dec 5 polls was taken at a one-day meeting, chaired by Abraham Adesanya, in the Nigerian city of Lagos this week.

Adesanya, who is the chairman of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and leader of the Pan-Yoruba group – Afenifere, said the structures that were used to annul the Jun 12, 1993 Presidential elections, widely believed to have been won by the late Moshood Abiola, were still in place.

A communique, issued by the group and made available to IPS, also demanded the restructuring of the army and the notorious secret service before holding the elections.

“The structure on the ground is still the same as that which denied Chief Moshood Abiola the service of his mandate on account of his being a southerner,” the communique said.

The leaders, who all hail from the Yoruba ethnic group, said even if a southerner was to win Nigeria’s May 1999 presidential elections, there was no guarantee that the polls would not be annulled.

“We, therefore, urge the immediate restructuring of the nation along the lines of true federalism into six federating units. We also urge as a matter of utmost patriotism, the restructuring of the army into zonal commands, each headed by an indigenous of the zone,” said the communique. “This is the only practical way to safeguard democracy and prevent military coups”.

Nigeria’s federal system — now consisting of 36 states — was designed in 1947 to balance power between the country’s leading ethnic groups: the mainly Muslim Hausa and Fulani in the north; the mainly Christian Yoruba in the south and west; and the mainly Christian Ibo in the east.

Hostility between north and south has remained an undercurrent — visible in public pronouncements directed against the military government.

Many of Nigeria’s military dictators have been either from the north or northern-backed — and in the nation’s southern economic power-house, Lagos, young Yoruba men frequently complain that northerners benefit from government patronage and get all the best federal jobs.

The southern leaders have suggested that the unequal distribution of wealth and influence can only be redressed by a renewed formalising of Nigeria’s regional identities.

Such calls, however, remind Nigerians of the bitter three-year Biafra war from 1967 to 1970, when the east announced its secession from the federal republic and hundreds of thousands died.

Since independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has been ruled by 13 leaders: nine of them northerners, and three southerners.

Some politicians from the north, though agreeing with the idea of power shift, maintain that the issue of the presidency is too important to be reduced to ethnicity.

“The office of President should be left open for those aspiring to face the electorate. Power shift has to be done through a universally accepted mode: by election,” said Rufai Ibrahim of the Movement for Democracy and Justice.

Arthur Nwankwo, leader of the ‘Eastern Mandate’, which draws its support from the east of the country, urged the government to restructure the federation so as to maintain peace among Nigeria’s more than 250 ethnic groups. “Internal colonisation is the worst form of colonialism. To move forward, we must get things right. We entered into the struggle…to ensure that our children will not be turned into slaves in their own country,” he said.