Increasing polarisation
I think this article by Akin Osuntokun is very important, it inadvertently asks the question, “Who is the leader of what ethnic group in Nigeria?”
Who speaks for any given ethnic group?
I will never forget. Just three short years ago, many Igbo people, including myself were under a lot of pressure to “talk to Igbo leaders to denounce Nnamdi Kanu.”
In Bar Enclave I had to do an impromptu lesson in history explaining the dynamics of Igbo leadership, to a crowd. After I finished speaking, one of the listeners said something very important: “If your leaders don’t speak up, everyone will hold all of you responsible.”
It was clear to me immediately, that I’d wasted my saliva talking to them.
And thus it was. The rest of you acted as all Igbo people acquiesced in Nnamdi Kanu’s talk, and inadvertently reinforced Nigeria’s culture of collective guilt.
Now that Miyetti Allah’s hate speech is being blamed on all Fulani, why are people surprised?
In the past I’ve talked about Nigeria’s penchant for assigning collective guilt. That penchant has become our culture in this country, and what we are seeing now is a classic case of the foot being on the other shoe.
More to the point, being that Raph Uwazuruike was invited by the DSS for saying pretty much the same thing that Saleh Alhassan has said, don’t you think the consistent refusal to question Alhassan reinforces what I was talking about here?
For me, all this nonsense is not about Fulanis or Igbos or whatever.
There’ll always be friction in a heterogeneous country like Nigeria. It’s about how you manage it.
All of this nonsense is about the failure of one man to manage that diversity. His name is Muhammadu Buhari.