A nation of laws

There’s a lot of attention, including in Nigeria, on America and the drama that they have been putting up for us. I won’t speak for other countries, but most of the Nigerians talking either miss the point or are willfully blind. America is an imperfect society. It was built on an idea, but history is replete with ideas that sound excellent on paper and become fraught with imperfections the moment they are put in human hands to run. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Enlightenment, Romanticism, the American Constitution, the French Revolution, Socialism, Communism…

America, warts and all, may have racism and maybe one of the most unequal countries in the world, but what I continue to admire about them is this — they continue to have a habit of airing out their disagreements, and changing, no matter how slowly, or imperfectly that change may be. And yes, the United States is one of the freest countries in the world and is one of the very few where an immigrant, not the child of an immigrant, but the immigrant himself, can aspire to high office. Think about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Think about Hjalmar Petersen. Think about Madeleine Albright. Think about Zbigniew Brzezinski. And if you think this applies only to people with pale skin, I present Ilhan Omar, Mazie Hirono, Mervyn Dymally, Philippe Derose and Elizabeth Furse. These are all people who were born elsewhere, as citizens of that elsewhere, came to the US, naturalised, and were deemed fit to hold high office.

For all its faults, and they are plenty, the US is a country that strives to protect you whatever your beliefs are, and your rights to profess those beliefs. Is it done perfectly? Hell no. It is human beings that run the country, not Martians, which is why when Donald Trump was elected, I spent time calling some American friends to remind them that they are, after all, human.

But here is the thing — Nigerians are not one to talk. In this country which I am no longer proud of, I was born in Benin in Edo state, I live, work and pay my taxes in Lagos state, but I am regularly tagged on social media by idiots about issues in Abia state, a state which I have no ancestral or work relationships with. I have never lived in Abia. I have only visited a number of times like I have visited every state in Nigeria with the exception of Taraba. Yet, because I happen to share ethnicity with the majority of the population of Abia, there are people in this country that strongly believe that I should ignore whatever I see in Edo or Lagos, and instead pay all my attention to Abia.

In this Nigeria, a man such as myself, born elsewhere away from the point where my ancestors came down from the trees, is reminded promptly, to go back to whence my ancestors originated, in order to have political aspirations. It is yet another example of how lawless Nigeria is, and you know why?

Because based on a Supreme Court judgement from 13 December 1985, a child born anywhere in Nigeria is an indigene of where he was born.

Permit me to tell the story…

Adeyinka Ayinde Olowu was an ethnic Yoruba by birth, from the Ijesha sub-group, having been born in Ilesha. However, Mr Olowu lived most of his life in Benin and married Bini women, who all bore him children. In 1942, Mr Olowu applied to Oba Akenzua, the Oba of Benin at the time, requesting that he be “naturalised” as a Bini man. Oba Akenzua granted his request, and as a result, he was able to acquire a lot of landed property in Benin, and elsewhere in what would become Edo state. Then in 1960, Mr Adeyinka Ayinde Olowu died.

As happens a lot in these parts, he died without a will, and this set his children one against the other, and as a result, two of them were granted Letters of Administration over his estate. The first child, Olabowale Olowu, wanted to distribute the estate in accordance with the traditions of the Edo. You see, according to Bini Customary Law, the first son of a dead Bini man is entitled to inherit the last house in which the father lived in before he died, and then share the father’s estate amongst his siblings as he sees fit. However, Olabowale’s brother, Babatunde, wanted to distribute the estate in accordance with Ijesha traditions, which specify an equal share to all the kids. As a result, this second child, Babatunde, and some of his siblings went to the High Court.

The High Court ruled in favour of Olabowale and his crew as the High Court was satisfied that their father, Adeyinka Olowu, had become a Bini man.

So Babatunde and his posse appealed the case, and it eventually landed on the table of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in a landmark judgement in 1985 dismissed the appeal and held that though Mr Adeyinka Ayinde Olowu was a man of Yoruba extraction, he was a ‘naturalised’ Bini. Justice Coker ruled that by virtue of this change, Bini traditions applied to Mr Olowu and his estate, and that the distribution of said estate would be governed by Bini traditions. Justice Coker also ruled that the late Adeyinka Ayinde Olowu and his descendants were entitled to the rights and privileges of Bini indigenes.

In the same case, Justice Obaseki viewed the assimilation issue from a historical and sociological point of view stating that “the history of population movement in Nigeria demonstrates that people moved from place to place before the advent of the Europeans. They settled and become assimilated into their new communities.”

Don’t take my word for it, the case notes can be found here.

A summary of the case is that even in Nigeria our own Supreme Court has told us that we ought to operate on the principle of jus soli, not of jus sanguinis. Our fathers in the 1940s understood this, and it is thus not surprising that in the same period that Adeyinka Olowu became a Bini man, Lagos had Ejike Mbonu, an Igbo man as its mayor, Enugu had Umaru Altine, a Fulani man, as its mayor. Nigeria went wrong in 1956 and worsened things in 1966, but the Supreme Court corrected it in 1985. In the 35 years since then, we have all but ignored that ruling.

And you wonder why Nigeria is not making progress?

Truth is, given a choice between the racism we know we’d face in the US, and the tribalism we face here, not just me, but most Nigerians would be on the first flight. Because deep down, we know that imperfect as it is, America is a nation of laws. Very much the opposite of Nigeria.