Last Thursday, Canada could have celebrated its 153rd anniversary as a nation state. Instead, it went low-key on festivities; shunning parades and loud music and patriots decked in the red maple leaf embossed on a white background. The national anthem was not sung and only youths broke the solemn night with feisty fireworks; not the Canadian State.
The country now called Canada belonged to a cluster of indigenous people who spoke 70 languages before settlers arrived. The settlers scorned the indigenous way of life, and its first Prime Minister, John Macdonald, wrote a blueprint for residential schools to “save” indigenous children. They were snatched from their parents and taken to schools so far away they could not trace their bearings. Most were sexually abused, forbidden to speak their own languages or observe their cultures. The settlers embarked on various pogroms to wipe out the indigenous population. The new nation being built on native land hardly had scant space for their reintegration. For years, national politics carried on as if the indigenous did not exist.
Justin Trudeau, whose father, a former prime minister,, made statements to the effect that he would let them rot in their reserves, is now in his father’s shoes. He has apologised. Regret is not a position of weakness but the foundation for genuine reconstruction. True strength lies in accepting when you are wrong and making effort to correct your mistake.
This is not a position shared by all. There were those who felt an apology was a sign of weakness. They believed that what happened 153 years ago had nothing to do with them today. They love their privileges and want to carry on as if nothing had happened. They openly say that they carry no vicarious shame for the unspeakable acts of their forebears. The younger Trudeau believes otherwise.
Even with the apology, the statue of John MacDonald has been moved to his graveside. Angry protesters have removed that of Queen Victoria, and several Catholic churches have been torched as the pope has failed to apologise for the role the church and its priests played in the abuse of the indigenous people. The Canadian State has openly acknowledged that conditions in the “reserves” were worse than Third World situations.
Nigeria has a lot to learn from Canada on how it handles the volatility of its complex geopolitics. Before independence, leaders from the three regions had tea parties in England on how to proceed with building a nation state. Our Northern leaders voted against independence, but that did not stop Britain skewing the top leadership arrangement in Northern Nigeria’s favour.
Since then, politics has become the bread and butter of the average Northerner. Appointments are skewed in our favour and children have been brought up believing that they do not have to work as hard as their counterparts elsewhere to make it. Recruitment and promotions have followed the same pattern. The adoption of the quota system was not meant to become a permanent feature of building the Nigerian nation, but it has become a weapon for a quasi-apartheid state structure.
In our North, decrees and administrative orders were issued outlining principles to prevent domination by Southerners and the fringe tribes that sustained the erstwhile monolithic region. Our founding fathers openly declared that they favoured foreigners to integrating qualified Nigerians from outside the North.
The animus that this policy bred finally fuelled the hatred that snowballed into Northern riots in which scores of Ndigbo were killed, leading to an exodus of Igbo back home. Their arrival and angst spurred the agitation for a separate State of Biafra and the ultimate civil war. The narration that the inordinate ambition of Igbo leaders led to war needs to be fact checked and corrected.
When the war ended, Gen Yakubu Gowon whose last name was acrostically interpreted to mean “Go On With One Nigeria” declared “No Victor, No Vanquished”! Unfortunately, Nigeria has not actualised those words with the integration of the Ndigbo. In the years since the end of the civil war, the other two powerful members of the Nigerian concentric circle have satiated their thirst for the presidency. They have played the football of power by changing the goal post every time Ndigbo are about to score. They have tactically zoned out Ndigbo from the presidency with cunning.
Although integrated with every tribe and community, the Ndigbo have been victims of successive religious riots and unprovoked attacks, especially in Northern Nigeria. As they took the charred and mangled bodies of their kins home to bury, they have been urged not to retaliate. They have largely accepted the plea to keep faith with One Nigeria.
The Boko Haram insurgency has exposed the duplicity of our so-called Northern elders. They asked that commensurate force not be used to quell Boko Haram until it gained buoyancy and now foreign allies. How did we miss the capture of Abubakar Shekau with the same determination we have intercepted Nnamdi Kanu?
When kidnapping and brigandage swept over our North, our political leaders travelled as far as Niger Republic to pay protection money to the criminals rather than let federal might quell them. We are witnesses to our leaders pleading for brigands to be paid allowances like the Niger Delta militants protesting exploitation and environmental degradation.
From the theatre of war in the North Central, the criminality has extended to the West (Yoruba nation). Yoruba leaders became helpless, speaking grammar while their people died until the character by the name of Sunday Igboho emerged, “redeeming” pride by taking laws into his hands.
In times like this, leadership body language and action keep a nation together. In Nigeria, it is lacking. From a mere rabble-rouser, Nnamdi Kanu has keyed into the leadership lacuna to ride into notoriety. His vitriolic rhetoric has become the rallying point for those who are sick and tired of a warped system that sustains a feeling of superiority of one race or nation over others in a federation. Yoruba leaders were silenced by Igboho’s action, as promises could no longer comfort a restless people let down by the state.
Other Nigerians have watched Wadume’s case. They remember the character by the name of Kabiru Sokoto. They have read reports by field commanders forced to pull back troops just when they were close to capturing Abubakar Shekau. We are not unaware of the ease with which Sheikh Gumi has access to kidnappers and killers that the Nigerian state could not arrest.
Igboho’s Ibadan residence has been raided while Northern insurgents are on video boasting about their exploits in killing Nigerian soldiers and going scot-free. If our North and its leadership think that this is normal or sustainable, they need to wake up, smell the coffee and peep into the horizon. A nation is not sustained on tribal, religious or regional supremacy of one component over another. Canada realised this; will Nigeria?
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