allAfrica.com


People & Politics:- the Plateau And Other Crises (1)

Vanguard (Lagos)
OPINION
May 17, 2004
Posted to the web May 17, 2004

By Ochereome Nnanna

ON Tuesday last week, a presidential committee on the incessant crises in Plateau State submitted its report to President Olusegun Obasanjo at the Aso Villa. One remarkable point made while the report was being submitted was that ethnicity or the "indigene-settler" question and religion were usually at the bottom of most of the crises. This is true of Plateau as it is for the rest of northern Nigeria. In the south, religion and the indigene-settler issues are rarely the source of communal strife. Most bloody clashes are usually a result of boundary disputes or economic rights over pieces of land and water resources. The apparent exception are the Ife/Modakeke disputes and the Warri crises between the Ijaw, Itshekiri and Urhobo, where people have been fighting to assert their right of indigeneship.

But in the north, it is not so. Migration is a natural part of human life in every part of the world. In Nigeria, people of northern stock, particularly of the Muslim cultural background, have been familiar in many urban centres in the south, especially major railway towns like Lagos, Enugu, Onitsha, Ibadan, Port Harcourt or Umuahia. In fact, due to the liberal nature of southerners, the owners of these cities have permitted some of their districts to be called northern names. Examples include Yaba (a Nupe word) in Lagos, Alaba Rago (rago is ram in Hausa) in Ojo Lagos, Sango in Ota (meaning Zango or Hausa Quarters), and the various Garki (erroneously pronounced Garity by the locals) settlements in Enugu and Umuahia where cattle are quartered.

FUNNY enough, the same favour was not returned by northerners to settlers of southern origin in their midst, especially in cultural Muslim metropolises like Kano, Katsina, Zaria, Sokoto and others. The areas reserved for settlers were unabashedly tagged Sabon Gari, meaning "strangers quarters". Whether in their natural environments or as settler elements in other people's environments, Muslim northerners tend to keep away from those who do not share their religious and cultural backgrounds. But interestingly, they are eager to share their environment with those of their cultural persuasion (the Zango elements) even if they are total strangers from Sudan, Mali or northern Cameroun.

Cultural segregation is a major source of conflicts in the north between the Zango Muslim elements and others who are not of their setting. But in the south, it is not. The reason for this is that in their self-appointed segregated cocoon, the northern settlers have managed, for the most part, to avoid provoking their hosts either by making spurious claims to the territories they were permitted to settle on or taken intolerance of the culture of the locality to inciting levels. The one time such a trait was noticed in Shagamu and Ibadan a couple of years back it resulted in the type of mayhem that has been reported on the Plateau these couple of years and in Kafanchan, Kaduna, Zangon-Kataf and other parts of the non-Musilm cultural north before now.

AFTER years of cycles of communal conflicts followed by peace in diverse communities all over Nigeria, it should be pretty clear that certain conditions are inalienable for peace to reign between "settlers" and "hosts". Paramount among these is the recognition by both indigenes and settlers that they are bound by one common law - the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This law does not know settlers and indigenes. It only knows about citizens and non-citizens. Therefore, the question of any citizen giving "quit notice" to others on grounds of being indigenes and others settlers does not arise before the constitution.

Anybody engaged in this misguided act is a lawbreaker and is liable to be punished according to the law. Quit notices or attacks on settlers with a view to driving them away are unrealistic because they never work, anyway. They only inconvenience or dislocate both sides for a brief time. They did not lead to the quitting of Ibadan, Shagamu, Okigwe or Aba by Zango Muslims during the sharia-related riots of 2000/2001. They could not dislodge non-Hausas from Kano, Kaduna and other northern cities where there are economic opportunities. All that they did was to force the settlers to be more security conscious and ready to defend themselves.

The key to peaceful coexistence between indigenes and settlers is beyond the constitution, police, army and all the law an enforcement appurtenance of state. The key is to be located in the hearts of the people concerned. Unless the factors controlling the hearts of the people are properly addressed, the constitution and the law can always wake up to tackle the outcome of matters that have boiled over. By the time the police and army are mobilised to control riots, killing, looting and burning; by the time curfews and shoot-at-sight orders are imposed, the damage has been done. There is nothing the constitution, the law and its enforcement agencies can do to restore the lives that have already been wasted when the tinder of conflict is ignited. The losses are final when incurred, but they are not unavoidable. In the next installment of this two-part write-up, we hope to examine what indigenes and settlers must do to reduce the chances of their differences getting out of hand.

 
 

Copyright © 2004 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).