USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Fw: ETHNICITY AS A PERMANENT PHENOMENON

 Sent: Mon, 1 November, 2010 13:43:18
Subject: ETHNICITY AS A PERMANENT PHENOMENON

ETHNICITY AS A PERMANENT PHENOMENON

by

Anthony Akinola

 

            Ethnicity is one phenomenon we are not going to be able to wish away, no matter how much we try.  Accepting ethnicity as a reality to be confronted is the way forward to achieving a stable, democratic nation.  The magnitude of the problem posed by ethnicity in our society emanates from its centralised nature.  While it is perhaps inconceivable that a nation like the United States of America would disintegrate because of its ethnic components, the same can hardly be said about Nigeria.  The ethnic population in America is dispersed, and that explains the major difference between that nation and ours.

            There is a lot to learn from the history of nations like Great Britain and Belgium, for instance, that could help in despatching our naivety about ethnicity as one phenomenon.  Many naively assume it is a matter of time for ethnicity to be a thing of the past.  The danger with such an assumption is that a problem that deserves a pragmatic solution is abandoned to wishful thinking.

            Great Britain, just like the Nigerian nation it created, emerged as a "merger" of nationalities.  The merger began with the unification of England and Wales through the Act of Union in 1536 and concluded with that between England and Scotland in 1707.  Both England and Scotland had shared the same monarch since the "Union of the Crown" in 1603 "when King James inherited the throne from his double first cousin Queen Elizabeth I".  Great Britain was governed as a unitary state until recently, 1997 to be precise, when parliaments were created for Scotland and Wales with substantial devolution of power from Westminster, making Great Britain a quasi-federal nation.  If ethnicity has been a temporary phenomenon, one would have assumed that more than three hundred years of union would have seen it disappear!

            Belgium is another historic nation - historic in the sense that it was one of the European powers that colonised Africa - that has transformed from being a unitary state to a federal union.  Belgium itself became independent in 1830, and had been a unitary state until 1970 when a series of reforms which continued until 2001, brought about new changes.  Political power is shared between communities, regions (The Flemish, the French and the German-speaking groups) and the Federal State.  "Š the power to make decisions is no longer the exclusive preserve of the federal government and the federal parliament.  The leadership of the country is now in the hands of various partners, who independently exercise their authority within their domains."

            We had, in the past, said quite a few things about Switzerland, a country whose political system is acknowledged today as "the world's most stable democratic system, offering a maximum of participation to citizens".  The political history of Switzerland was turbulent indeed, significantly noted for revolts, a revolution in 1798 and a civil war in 1847.  The word "putsch" for a violent overthrow of government is one vocabulary Switzerland gave to the world.  This rather small country, as one once highlighted in an article, has the second oldest written constitution in the world.  Its political arrangement, especially the collegiate executive with a rotating presidency every year, is the adaptation of the American presidential system to Switzerland's own peculiarities.

            The United States of America, a nation with the first ever written constitution in the world, had to resolve a series of contentious issues in transforming from a confederacy of 13 independent states into a federal union in 1787.  The founding fathers were confronted with the task of reassuring smaller states that they would benefit in a union consisting of larger ones, and they achieved this by instituting a bi-camera legislature.  Today, if one must indulge in repetitive insistence on a position, the state of California with well over 30 million people, is represented in the Senate by two Senators, just as is the State of Wyoming or that of Alaska which have a little over a million inhabitants.  The other major controversy concerned disputes over the status of slaves between the industrial North and the mainly agricultural South - the latter had a large population of slaves.  The controversy was resolved by a decision to count each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation.  The resolution of the then contentious issues was hailed as "The Great Compromise" or "The Connecticut Compromise".

            Americans may now tout that nation as the land of free peoples, but was this always the case?  There is a journey every great nation must travel; Nigeria cannot be an exemption, no matter how hard we pretend to be what we are not.  We must, however, not despair because ours is one great nation in the making.  Those who have enthusiastically predicted the disintegration of our nation insult our collective wisdom and ability to rise to the challenges of history.  Their prediction of doom is not borne out of superior intellectual reasoning, but guesswork informed by a recurring history of leadership controversy known to every Tom, Dick and Harry.  However, they dare us to prove their prediction wrong.  They do this by actually putting a date on when it would manifest, and it is not as if there are not Nigerians enthusiastically wishing for a doomsday!  Even those who should be protecting a heritage are behaving madly!

            Maybe there is a time in the life of a nation when "a voice from the wilderness" deserves to be headed!  One has been arguing rather furiously as if one's life depends on it, that a rotational presidency is the appropriate leadership arrangement for our type of society.  One has also been arguing that no nation of the world has a magic solution, otherwise there would have been one model of democracy for all to embrace.  Just as Switzerland has done to great advantage, it is hereby restated that the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria would need to be adapted to the realities of our nation.  The sentiments of our people, not least the disturbing disputes within the ranks of the ruling People's Democratic Party endorse this proposal.

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Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222  (fax)
http://www.toyinfalola.com/
www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa
http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue