By Amos Tauna
A Non-Governmental Organisation, Movement for Cognitive Justice, MCJ, has lamented that Nigeria a creation of British Empire, has never formally recognized or realized the full potential of its diverse peoples.
Its spokesman, Dr. Kajit John Bagu, while speaking with newsmen in Kaduna, northwest Nigeria, said, the country has been a bastion of injustices of various shades from the first moments of British presence to yesterday.
He believes, “Nigeria was never created to respect diversity but to wipe diversity off the face of earth through policies, and ogten through structural, social, economic and physical violence and brutality.
“This has made peace to be a stranger in this country from inception, because the foundations of Nigeria required violence, and thus, the expulsion of peace.
“The country has always been, and still remains as a consequence, unsustainable, because humanity is, by nature, incompatible with a state of perpetual dehumanization.
“From one profound problem, issue or violent conflict to another, Nigeria has never moved away from its dehumanizing, diversity-repressing and violent colonial character. Today in the 21st century, this country faces a number of burning issues and problems on the heels of past ones which have remained unsolved because the defective foundations are intact.”
He noted that a colossal crises of identity defines Nigeria today, “A crises triggered from the foundations of the country in 1900 to the present. When Europeans drew an arbitrary line around hundreds of identities in this country, they imposed an order over about 706 nations or ethnic groups. That artificial line cut through over 70 ethnic groups displaced between Nigeria and Cameroon, Niger, Benin Republic or Chad, and British called the area Nigeria.
“The name Nigeria in itself like a curse. It comes from the word ‘Niger’ for ‘black’, ‘backward’ and ‘lowest’ among other derogatory senses in which the word ‘Nigger’ was used alongside words derived from the same root such as ‘Nigro’, ‘Nigeria’, ‘Niger’ and ‘Nigirita’.
“The very idea of ‘Nigeria’ as a ‘Nation-State’ is tightly bound-up with the project of eliminating the diverse indigenous nations or the ‘Ethnic Landscape’, and replacing them with a European-created identy. Britain tried to create a ‘Nation’ derogatorily called ‘Nigeria’, by eliminating nearly 800 nations, and taking away their right to exist,” he explained.
The Nigerian state, he noted, was designed and currently governed, lacks the will, conceptual framework and structural/institutional capacity to protect diversity and the indigenous landscape, adding, “Hence its remarkable antagonism, resentment and utter incohesiveness on the subject of identity. The identity crises witnessed contemporarily is as a result of this trend.”
On the recurrent conflict and genocide attacks in some parts of the country, the spokesman noted that conflicts of various kinds have been ferocious and recurrent, stressing that the notion that it is a recent development in the last 20 years in the country must be discarded as delusional deception.
“It must be acknowledged that Nigeria has been a hotbed of violent conflict and needless bloodshed from its very inception, ” he observed.
Speaking on the Fulani question, he explained that the British used the Fulani in racist policies, pointing out that the Fulani and Arabs were crucial to Britain’s colonial racism as official state policy.
“They were made victims of a kind that Movement for Cognitive Justice categorises specially, by virtue of having been singled-out to replace the British. In his 1902 Annual Reports of Northern Nigeria, Lugard stated that he obtained approval from London to use Fulani as rulers over the Negroes. He believes that the Fulani were a superior partly-white race suited to rule over inferior Negroes in a country appropriately named Nigeria.
“In British thought, the inferior blacks need a superior partly white race to rule and dominate them as argued by Flora Shaw, later wife to Lord Lugard in her earlier named book.
“This policy has gone a long and deadly way in shaping Nigerians turbulent political history, placing Fulani as rulers over different indigenous nations under various arrangements from Provinces to Regions and States today. This has made the Nigerian State officially acquire a deep hatred for indigenous nations which derives their dehumanisation. This partly explains why Nigeria could not vote in support of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a curious legacy indeed,” he added.
He called on different actors and sections of society to take action aimed at bringing an end to an unjust order and replacing same with a more equal, just, pluralistic, peaceful and sustainable order as nation not tribe.
https://www.africaprimenews.com/2018/02/05/development/dont-take-democracy-for-granted-in-africa-nigerias-speaker-dogara-warns/
