By Joseph Erunke – Abuja

FOLLOWING the growing division among the various ethnic groups resulting in secessionist agitations in the country, an all-female group under the aegis of The Fairer Campaign,is to begin an advocacy for interethnic relationships.

The development came as the group identified interethnic conflicts as reasons for the current security challenges, unemployment, inadequacy of basic amenities, poor healthcare system, bribery and corruption in the country.

Addressing a press conference in Abuja on Monday,the group’s team lead, Zubaida Baba Ibrahim,regretted that unlike the Asians that have used their multiethnic diversity to their advantage by developing themselves,the reverse was the case in Nigeria.

“As knowledgeable members of the society, we cannot continue to ignore the fact that inter-ethnic differences in Nigeria is hindering the country’s development and wearing away the potential of its people.

“It is easy to put the blame on the colonial masters for joining these entities together. Even in African themed conferences our leaders have adopted this blame-game tactic but there are Asian countries with multi-ethnic diversity that have developed far from what they were when the same Europeans colonized them, this is because they have used the countries diversity to its advantage rather than to continue using the victim card,” she said.

Miss Ibrahim explained that given the current situation in the country,” the main goal of our campaign is to address some of these challenges through creating systems for inter-ethnic relationship, harmony and peaceful coexistence.”

“In view of the above therefore, we are glad to introduce our campaign initiative known as The FAIRER campaign, which is a female-led advocacy for inter-ethnic relationships aimed at harnessing the values that unites Nigerians more than what divides, through coordinated media narratives and media actions for fostering peaceful coexistence and national unity which will be targeted at the youth, women, religious leaders and the government,” she further explained.

According to her,” This campaign is not only aimed at national unity and security but to sustain it through bringing our targets attention to the positive aspects of the various ethnicities in Nigeria through opinion articles that we have already been writing and have been getting the needed attention.”

 She said:”The sustenance will be aided through long-term partnerships with relevant organizations and stakeholders with monthly evaluations.”

She said her group would embark on a “neighborliness campaign can be effective in building cooperation between people of different ethnic groups through relational communication.” 

“A strategic communication approach is essential in establishing and sustaining mutual relationship for nation building,” she said, adding that “the approach should focus on cooperative relationships and offers a communication-centered, participatory approach for improving ethnic relations in multicultural state like Nigeria.”

Ibrahim, who identified ethnocentrism as a “kind of psychological belief which revolves around the sentiment that one’s own ethnic group is much more superior than that of others”, said,”Ethnocentrism has always been one of the huge problems in Nigeria, and has continued to fuel oligarchy, greed, indiscipline and violence in its citizens.”

“This has led to poor government policies, injustice, economic inequality due to us making societal decisions on the basis of intra-ethnic relationships which is built on similarities in language, physical attributes and cultural value rather than through inter-ethnic relationships which should be built on similarities in skill, experience and knowledge.”