By Obi Nwakanma

A great and impenetrable pall has fallen of Nigeria. It is the pall of violence and division. Nigerians have known for a long time that its soul is broken into many disparate fragments; as many in fact as the number of ethnicities in this country.

Anthropologists have counted as many as two hundred and fifty such different ethnicities; and so within the nation are two hundred and fifty live and beating souls; not one organic principle; not one coherent idea of nation; many nations straining within the pulsating and febrile tumult called “Nigeria.”

Within that tumult, and complicating these divisions and multiple identities are two fiercely angry, conquering and proselytizing religions – the Christian and the Islamic faiths – whose disparate interests formulate cultural ideologies that challenge the coherence of the Nigerian state.

Religious politics have always featured profoundly in the basic framework of the Nigerian state. Convenient politics has allowed those who categorize Nigeria to create the fiction of “a predominantly Christian South” and a “predominantly Muslim North.” Nothing could be more false.

These descriptions of Nigeria overlook the nature of national mobility and border-crossing that has taken place since 1914 at least, when Nigeria was founded and formalized as a modern nation, straight out of the magic bag of colonialism and colonization. They discount the intermixing; the uprooting; the conversions; the accessing of the commerce of national life through forms of self-erasure. For instance, there are many Igbo who are Muslims today,
who were not Muslim thirty years ago.

There are many Hausawa and Fulani who have converted, through contact with new Christian neighbours to the Christian faith or way of life. Many who were once adherents of the various traditional systems of worship have either become Christian, Muslim or possibly agnostic; and there are many who were once Christian who no longer find Christianity consoling. Nigeria’s identity formation has also been profoundly impacted upon by the new movements of people up and down what we often love to call a “North-South” divide.

However, the most powerful force of identity today in Nigeria is rooted within a convenient ethno-religious binary that continues to create the paradox that continues to destabilize Nigeria. It is also fuelled by history and economics. The early history of Nigeria’s once rigid regionalism, which was anchored on the anti-nationalist, “The north for the north and the West for the West” purview of Awoist and Sarduanist political philosophy that sought to create geographical political quarantines, that limited the meaning of “nation” “citizenship” and “national belonging” within a new nation that was, in Awoist terms, no more than “a mere geographic expression.”

The contradictions eventually led to war and to Biafra. Following the end of Biafra was a hardline, triumphalist claim to national political power that eventually saw the so-called “north” outmaneuvering the convenient partnership of the “federalist” alliance that defeated Biafra, thus dominating the calculus of Nigeria’s national political power for two generations.

The result is a deep antipathy for the “North” – and those closely associated with Islam and all its complexities of radical violent intolerance and Jihadism – by a “South,” whose sensibilities are more shaped by a “liberal” secular enlightenment.

This polarities have so far been milked and exploited by the entrenched power interests in that divide who play politics with Nigerian national interest, because indeed, there is no such thing as a “Nigerian national interest.” Zakari Biu is a product of that polarity and the powerful affiliations that shaped him. I associate him with Bagauda Kaltho, and the Abacha torture chambers.

But more immediately, with the more subterranean elements within the Nigerian national intelligence services, because, make no mistakes about it, he is very well-trained in his business. More recent news about him suggests that he may have gone rogue. The affair with Kabir Sokoto, the suspected bomber of the St. Theresa’s Catholic Church, Madalla, who escaped under his care has possibly led to the first early clues of the operational lynchpins of the Boko Haram within the Nigerian security systems as was claimed by the president.

There is urgent need, again, we say, for a professional auditing and rebuilding of the Nigerian National Security infrastructure. It is right that the police has suspended Biu and placed him under investigation. It is also necessary that the Head of the Nigerian Police give some accounting.

It’s all good that the president is finally showing some spine. But quite aside from this is a note of warning: the president himself is very likely to alienate the mass of Nigerians by creating a “North-South;” we-versus-them, narrative. This past week of agitation against the fuel subsidy was not nation-wide. Reports came that the attempts to mobilize the protests in the South East was suppressed by the use of force and threats.

In Enugu, governor Chime not only threatened the workers, but used extra-legal force to stop people. This is an actionable offence against the governor who has no rights under the law to ban people, including workers from gathering, and protesting.

It is also an indication of the level of political and civic organization in the South-East and South-South or perhaps an indication of the level of cynicisms and withdrawal from the “idea of Nigeria” by people in the East that they failed to join the rest of the country in protesting the removal of the fuel subsidies.

In the end, the ordinary citizens in the South-East will be the greatest victims of these withdrawals for people who are incapable of defending their rights become the perpetual victims of power and greed. Meanwhile, President Jonathan also steps very close to illegality by suppressing public protests with his orders deploying the military to the streets of Lagos to stop further protests, and authorizing the police to use force including killing protesters and using teargas on protesters, among them 83 year old constitutional lawyer Ben Nwabueze.

The danger of the president turning “rogue” on democracy is present in his adopting unconstitutional and extreme dictatorial means to quell dissent. This is a democracy. Those people on the streets made it possible for Jonathan to be president. The president is obliged to listen to the Nigerian people, and must do all in his power to protect those who exercise their legitimate rights to protest bad government policies. The president cannot defy Nigerians.