Peter Offem Ubi|10 August 2017
The state of Nigeria riot grapples with a harsh reality and a legacy of Religious Bigotry hardly spoken about but buried in the troubling and divisive words hidden in the heart of many is the "we vs them". Though perfectly neutral in themselves, they separate us as Nigerians, and take on an insidious and implicitly bigotry connotations when Nigeria is viewed from the North vs South dogma. And it is at the core of failures experienced in our national life with regards to effect of governance.
The "we vs them" mentality has depressed the uprightness of leaders to take seriously their decisions to do what is right for Nigeria and Nigerians -thus this factor has kept growth and development within the country insidiously at almost none existence, and to some levels usher the leadership of the country into mediocrity. We are honestly paralyzed today -the change agenda of 2015 is seriously in doubt.
Many Nigerians suffer unknowingly hidden slurs of bigotry, ethnic discrimination, tribalism, and a whole host of other negatives in a fast and furious manner …It is for this reason you find troubling conditions that characterize the institutional biases in almost all governmental circles with no exceptions -our Armed Forces inclusive.
We have in our religious bigotry muddled picture of a chaotic and contested Nigeria reality we want to forget as not been alive. The understanding is there, we only push it away, and the dramatization we don't want occupying us because it tells us something of our bad personal attitude -the truth about our equal mistrust and opposite prejudices which is a structural fact of the Nigerian daily life in a nation close to 200million people.
Question: Did you see former President's OBJ, GEJ, and now PMB take up military ADCs who are not within their circle of religiosity or regions? How many of our legislators at the National Assembly can bost of spending weekends in home districts of their counterparts with different religious beliefs or ideological differences?
You see -to even place Nigeria within the current contextual reality of President Buhari's absence and the argumentative calls for his resignation, and the aftermath of the tear gasification of protesters in Abuja -what you see is truly the dividing lines, and the apparatus of power, exclusion and appendage of religious bigotry which in principle lies coldly in the fine grain of our collective experiences and the larger sweepstakes of our historical past continuing into the present day Nigeria.
What we've today in Nigeria is a specific close-up act of cruelty to each other -comprehensible in its manifestation, is a systematic pattern of playing down the injustices associated with this cruelty.
Don't buy the argument on how the rich divide us -within the said rich is an interplay of religious bigotry itself. All factors in our society concerning the rich.
We must answer the overriding 'Change' question in Nigeria, and if we must move ahead in a manner that bring us great virtues, then we must do it transparently. The solutions to this overriding question cannot be answered with our diligent objectivity to inventively promise and insist on a comfortable consensus of agreements in good faith -openly and transperently without biases. Our mutual mistrust must take a back seat to a new national identity irrespective of our recognized differences and difficulties.
Bluntly speaking -the 'We vs Them' doesn't quite make Nigeria progressive. We've had a hard time in our division, the results are very clear before us, and our politics so far has been driven by the unwillingness to accept religious bigotry in play -though recognizable in all its difficult attachments. The failures thus far to overcome it is regrettably a sorry history.
Peter Offem Ubi
Is a political contributor who Writes from New York city
