“Moreover, the psychology of individuals, even in the most extreme instances, reflects the general effect of the fears and hopes of its time.” – Joseph Conrad
The May 1, 2025, editorial of the publication “Business Day” titled “Nigeria’s self-destruction: Ethnic politics cripples progress”, made a sober assessment of politics and governance in the country, and provided the context for further examination of the state of affairs in Nigeria, particularly from the ever-expanding horizon of ethnic and regional political contests and rivalries that have characterised the country’s governance since independence. This unhealthy and worrying state of affairs rightly merited the attention of the Editorial Board of the “Business Day” for which it should be amply commended.
Such patriotic disposition should be the hallmark and trait of public-spirited media establishments that put country first before anything else. It is in recognition of this sentiment that this series of articles is issued with a view to correcting certain perceptions about the Northern region of Nigeria especially in the unfolding narrative about its place in the scheme of things in the country’s politics, governance, economic advancement and security configuration, all of which have become rather contentious and emblematic of the discontents that are afflicting Nigerians psychologically as well as sociologically in almost every dimension.
Sir Richard F. Burton wrote, “Where honour and honesty are complete strangers to the people, anything can happen by way of degeneracy and ill conduct”. This altruism should necessarily guide our approaches to all national affairs especially in regards to the pursuit of harmonious inter-communal existence within a defined and approved system of government that holds the structures of the country together. Where falsehood and dishonesty are cultivated and fostered as the defining spirits or guides to politics and governance ethos, degeneration and ill conduct inevitably become the bitter fruits of the harvests of our collective dissonance and disunity.
The fears and hopes of our time more often than not, as noted by Joseph Conrad, are expressed in terms that evoke some latent tendencies that have defied logic or any corrective measures, such as governance remedies and policy declarations. By and large, we have reduced the issue of national construction to national deconstruction, whereby we have tended to focus more on sub-national empowerment over and above the larger goals of creating a viable and united national structure.
In this sense, we have become an enclave driven people with receding focus on the larger national question, thereby reducing our compass and vision to smaller objectives of tribes or “ethnic nationalities” and what have you. I think this is the main thrust of the “Business Day” editorial referred to above.
This is all apparently done in the actualisation of a crude reductionist sentiment that is created by an irredentist vision of group empowerment as opposed to national greatness. In effect, we have become iconoclasts bent on wrecking the larger structures of the state and reducing them into the rubble of micro-national and ethnic clusters. It is this tendency that seems mainly to drive the discussions around the “National Question” in Nigeria today, within which the issues pertaining to the country’s Northern region are usually contextualised and analysed, which presents more dilemmas than solutions to our problems and challenges as a nation.
Beyond mere speculative generalisations, it is necessary that the condition of the Northern region and the effects of its situation on the rest of the country are subjected to a rigorous psychological and sociological inquiry, to produce a coherent and rational construct for conversation especially in the unfolding national question debate and other discourses.
In this regard, it is important that we should focus largely on the way this country should be correctly governed and moved forward on the basis of a collective vision around inclusivity, equality, equity and decentralised governance, based on sound federal political principles.
The regionalisation of convictions and conversations around national issues like politics, governance, development, security and others, merely takes us back to the days of the much-maligned 1st Republic, when consensus was hard to arrive at, and divisive regional interests always took the center stage in politics. This is more so in our present situation in instances like the agitation for state creation, where distancing of identities from one another becomes the basis for such demands and complaints of marginalisation the justification for separation.
No other arguments are needed other than the negative aspects of cohabitation that are always deftly conjured up and brought out to support the arguments around state creation and other processes.
This focusing on the negative and their accentuation in the national discourse, becomes even more pronounced when dealing with the Northern region, especially over the questions of minorities, religion, social and political contests, communal relationships and conflicts, elections, rotation of power, etc. Invariably, latent tendencies of rivalry and antagonism around religious beliefs and ethnic contests are thrust to the fore to take the place of reasoned and empirical discourse.
The intrusion of personal or group idiosyncrasies undermines a collective national outlook and makes it difficult or even impossible to arrive at a consensus on how best to discuss and agree on fundamental matters of governance and politics in our country.
This, in turn, has prevented us from moving forward collectively to realise the dream of a united and prosperous nation built on the foundations of a strong federal system of government and universally approved cognition of democracy and constitutional framework. The very essence of the state, which is the constitution itself, has been assailed from the perspectives of parties and factions, always tending towards questioning its validity and legitimacy, thereby provoking antagonism towards its continued relevance and application as the basic law of our country. In the process also, antagonism towards one region or enclave has been nurtured and turned against the continued existence of Nigeria as a united and indivisible country.
Driven by such negative sentiments, purely administrative issues like the mention of the justice system of a particular religious group becomes an issue of contention because accommodation was made in the constitution for that particular dispensation of justice to be exercised. The fact that the inclusion of other faiths and beliefs in that document can be possible when and where the necessary application of their outlooks is justified or required, is conveniently forgotten or overlooked. The “Northern Question” rather than the national question seems to loom large and palpable today in virtually every issue of importance or conversely insignificance, that is thrown up for discussion.
