To me the promise and beauty of Nigeria is best illustrated by a simple point. The aforementioned Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah is the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, and an Ikulu from Southern Kaduna. Yet this man has done more for me and been a better friend to me than virtually every Yoruba alive. He is a mentor, an older brother and a friend and one I have done little to deserve. And I see him do the same to countless others from across the country. This is a gift Nigeria has given to me, personally, a gift enhanced by the promise that amongst more of its citizens lie the potential for relationships as enriching. And my gratitude to Nigeria in return is the decision that I have made to extend to all its citizens the ties that would seem to bind me only to other Yoruba. Not out of magnanimity but because I have learned that in times of need the man that comes and proves that he is your ‘brother’ has done little, but that the one who proves that he is your ‘friend’ has done a lot. Birth certificates proffered do not provide succour. But solidarity does.

Walt Rostow’s book, ‘Five Stages of Economic Growth’ contains an interesting idea having little to do with economics. He says that when a child is born, the cot is its entire universe but within months it ventures out of it and the room becomes its universe. And then the house, the street, and then the neigbourhood in steady progression. Gradually, with time and new experiences its idea of the world expands but that this process stops in different people at different times. In my view there is a psychological curb in many of us that stops the expansion of our world at those that speak our language and eat our food and know our taboos and our ways. It is a natural phenomenon but that a thing is natural does not mean it is right.

I believe that we can achieve a modern and prosperous society only when we participate in the economic and political affairs of our country as individuals and not as tribal blocs or Efiks, Junkun, Yoruba or Hausas. Citizens, not tribes, are the unit of Democracy. Apart from being a lie and unsustainable (no tribe in Nigeria is a monolithic) to assume we think, act and die as one, eliminating tribal activism removes the inbuilt inequities which members of the more populous tribes enjoy at the expense of members of smaller ones. And it would reduce drastically the noise and effectiveness of our ethnic merchants and entrepreneurs.

To be termed a ‘leader’ in Nigeria today, I need little qualification other than to be able to tell ‘my people’ that it is our ‘turn’ and that we have been ‘marginalised’. We see and hear voices such as these in the newspapers and on television every day and little wonder that they push no actual ideas outside of resenting some other tribe or community or strident ethnic chauvinism.

Enough is enough. There can be no more asinine pastime today than debate over members of which tribe were the first or are the most to go to school. Men and women achieve deeds of distinctions because of the application of their minds and determination, not because they are of this or that tribe. And claiming the efforts of individuals as ‘tribal glory’ is drawing a false solace. Soyinka’s Nobel Prize is his, and evidence of his talent, not that of ‘the Yoruba’s’ or mine, just as Dangote’s wealth is his, and evidence of his industry, not that of the Fulanis.

Other than a national conversation about who was the first to read medicine or about who owns what percentage of Lagos maybe we should discuss instead the fact that that we are the country in the world with the highest number of children out of school. According to UNESCO findings, we have 20 per cent of the world’s total of 57 million, and twice as many as Pakistan, the country with the second highest number. I also suggest we debate more innovative ways in which to manage diversity than by the rotation of positions and offices between zones and tribes as though playing a game of musical chairs. There are good and understandable reasons for the practice but maybe we ought to discuss whether these outweigh the benefits of a meritocracy.

It is not a coincidence that I have taken for this title the name of an organization/movement convened by young Nigerians, including Chude Jideonwo. He and his friends decided that they had enough of the practises and poison that have been fed us as national pap. The public space in the Nigeria they have been bequeathed is one marked and marred by rank suspicion and hostility. One in which national and inter-communal discourse is conducted largely through invective, vitriol and epithets. Even former Heads of State are not exempted, engaging in public spats or hurling abuse at one another. Headlines in the national newspapers scream daily with personal abuse for the government from opposition politicians. And in a dispiriting cycle, the President’s spokespersons reply with further personal insults and abuse. I do not need to cite names, simply read the headlines of tomorrow’s newspapers.

Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi and Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola

And then this war that just will not die: A certain aspect of our history as a nation is that decades ago a war between Nigerians ensued after matters had been decided by leaders at the time. In the lead-up to the war and in its aftermath, many of our leaders said despicable and incendiary things about other communities. It does not mean that they were right then or right forever. The purpose and evidence of progress is the extent to which we exchange former totems and assumptions and practices for more evolved and enduring ones.

Last month’s Ethiopian Airlines flight to Enugu was the first international flight to the South East region of Nigeria since the war ended. Reasonable minds can agree or disagree on whether this interlude was part of a continuing war of attrition against those held to be legatees of Biafra for waging a war that was lost, or whether another example of how we are sometimes slow to do the right things. What cannot be gainsaid is that Igbos are a necessary, valued and integral part of our country, as are all communities that constitute it. We are a society of human beings all with each possessing attendant human strengths and frailties and idiosyncrasies. And we are a collection of communities however we define them. Though these communities cannot leave without declaring secession, we are not together to be insulted or scapegoated, or to have our material and existential well- being threatened, either as citizens, families or communities or groups. That is not why we are together as a country.

Chief Fani Kayode, you owe the Igbo people an apology. If we persist in speaking to one another as you did in your essay no power on earth can keep us together as a country. You dragged more into the mud than had caused you offense. In doing that you were as wrong as those you recently wrote have threatened and abused members of your family members over this issue for words you authored, and not they.

At this point as a nation, we need substantive debate about the fundamental and existential issues to our collective well-being and prosperity, conducted with civility, and not words and actions that divide and reduce us. You do not have a measure to determine which has been the most hospitable tribe to whom. The idea and ideal of Nigeria has best been sustained not by the carrot of crude oil proceeds or the stick of Nigerian Army weaponry but by the countless acts of material and moral kindness extended and reciprocated across our great nation by neighbours, colleagues and strangers.

“The Igbos are the least close, the most distant and the least familiar with our customs and our ways”, you wrote. This was the unkindest cut of all. On behalf of all the Igbos who belie these words, Igbos I personally know and have worked with in my life, or that I have as great friends; or those that I know have entered into marriages and/or lifelong and great friendships with Yorubas; or simply the countless that I have heard chatting away comfortably or haltingly in Yoruba, cracking proverbs with ease or demolishing them, or that I have seen resplendent in ‘geles’, or tossing ‘agbada’ sleeves over shoulders, I ask that God forgive you for this cruel statement. It is for this alone that I wrote this overlong piece, Chief Fani Kayode. I could not remain silent at them, lest that be consent. There can be no ‘least close’ and ‘more distant’ and ‘least familiar’ communities in any country that deserves to remain as one.

Chief Fani Kayode, the tone and words of your essay were hateful. They constituted hate speech as is defined: hate speech (noun) “speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation”. Your words have spurred attacks not only on yourself and your family, but those you sought to defend. You cannot defend the Yoruba or Lagos. You have neither the equipment nor the authority to do so. And you cannot defend what is not under threat. An apology would not reduce you if even you deserve such, for reducing millions of human beings to epithets of scorn. You cannot know the ‘truth’ about the Igbo people, simply because it is not given to any one human being to know the ‘truth’ about millions of other human beings.

One last word: Along with the Yoruba and Nigerian tribes I seek membership of yet another tribe. A tribe of people that seek to see past the limit of concepts such as Yoruba, or Itsekiri and Nigeria or Muslim and Christian and recognize instead that we are all human beings and the children of the One that has no limit. A tribe of people who seek to be inspired and not to denigrated and want to believe that our lives and the society we have formed have a meaning and purpose beyond and far greater than the prerogatives of the wealthy and the grab for power by politicians and their god-children. But not to alienate, this tribe includes certain members of the elite, and politicians also.

It is not a political party or a movement. It does not have a name, or even yet a cause and still less a means. But it has a language, Nigeria’s 516th. It is the language and tolerance and temperance. The language that speaks with restraint and respect for all others. The language of ‘giving the benefit of the doubt’ and the mathematician’s ‘at least one’. A tribe of Nigerians who, as Jideonwo described in an essay earlier this year, evince ‘the courage to be reasonable’.

This tribe is probably more numerous than any other in Nigeria. The irony is that there are indications that Messrs Fashola and Obi are members. But I do not know either of them and it is not for me to select members. I seek to be a member, not a leader or spokesman. As the Gospel according to Mathew says, “By their fruits ye shall know them”

Chief Fani Kayode, more than being directed at you or to take you on, the thrust of this essay is to provide an alternate view-point to matters broached in yours. I do not know you and though you spoke as a bigot this may have been more the quick rush of anger than the slow burn of hatred. But this is not for me to judge. My views are my own and I have expressed them here not to make converts or enemies. It is your fulsome right to disagree with me. If you do I cannot help but find apt the Quran’s simple instruction to those that disagree with its message, “To you be your Way, and to me mine”.

Dipo Salimonu, an entrepreneur, wrote from Abuja.