On Sunday, November 6, 2022, 1:32 AM, Samuel Zalanga <szalanga@gmail.com> wrote:
I have not responded to a posting on this forum for quite a very long time, but I found it irresistible to share my reflection on this piece written by Professor Wariboko. I appreciate the fact that notwithstanding his status, he cares for Nigeria and is also courageous to engage on such a difficult topic that often people do not know what to engage with. In one way, I found the concluding paragraph in the reflection to be a summary of the fundamental and key issue of concern that his article has raised. The part in the last paragraph that I found deeply thought-provoking is where he noted that "my effort in this essay to name an ethical problem in Nigeria as a majority-tribe privilege is not to give a license to minority tribes to claim the divine status of victimhood or to portray themselves as saints."
One of the major issues of concern if not the fundamental issue of concern in postcolonial African history and development is the question of the moral and ethical compass that the African people and especially leaders use to guide the structure and process of development broadly conceptualized. We all agree that the Europeans or White people did a terrible thing by not only colonizing Africa but treating Africans as subhuman during the process of colonization and colonial rule. In a lot of ways, the ways and manner Africans criticized Europeans seem to strongly condemn Europe's lack of moral and ethical maturity or brazen expression of selfishness in how they justified and rationalized the colonization, oppression and "thingification" of Africans by treating them as things or means to an end instead of the Africans as beings having their own ends.
But on numerous occasions when I sit down to reflect on the history of my life, Nigeria, and many African countries, I feel terribly embarrassed within myself. I feel embarrassed because in spite of all the moral high ground that many of us Africans take against European colonialism and injustice, we have not demonstrated having the moral courage and discipline to create a system of governance to run our countries in a manner that will show beyond any doubt to the most skeptical observer that Black Africans have higher moral and ethical compass that guides the ways and manner they conduct their public affairs compare to Europeans who were willing to dehumanize other people in pursuit of filthy lucre. If as Africans, we have made sincere effort to create such a system, even if we have not argued much in books about who we are as Black people and our heritage, no one will deny us the respect we deserve as human beings that have the capacity to pursue our own social imaginary that is oriented to creating a more just, fair, and inclusive society for all. In such a situation, the system we would have created will prove to any skeptical person that we are different and better than Europeans in terms of our moral and ethical choices in public affairs.
Unfortunately, we did not. We by and large willfully continued the legacy of colonialism and in some cases even entrenched it more. Even when we have accurately documented the terrible things committed to dehumanize us by Westerners, we did not have the courage to transcend it by creating a new and better system that will honor our people and anyone with us. Creating a more just, fair, and inclusive society for everyone is not a simple question of knowing the truth and articulating the right thing to do in an elegant manner. Far more than that, it is a question of cultivating inner liberation where we free ourselves of the domesticating and colonizing power of appetitive / crude human desires, and from there proceeding to have the courage to habituate ourselves to do the right thing, knowing fully that institutionalizing and cultivating justice and fairness will cost us something.
But even more than that, I feel embarrassed by the fact that, after condemning the inhumane way Europeans treated us as Africans and in many respects denying our full humanity, many of us ended up packing our things and leaving our homelands to follow our oppressors back to their countries in search of a greener pasture because we realized in uncertain terms that in spite of all the ways and manner they inhumanely treated us, we cannot develop on our own system that can enable us pursue our "utopia" in our own continent, and so we rushed to follow our oppressors. And now even when it comes to retirement, many of us are afraid of returning to the continent. The problems we have which were highlighted by Professor Wariboko are at the deeper level moral and ethical ones because Nigeria is where she is today not because of lack of people with ability, education, or resources. But the main reason for the current social and political imbroglio is the tragedy of the commons as every group pursues its "utopia" and in the process, capitalize on the legacy of colonial rule, where possible, as a platform to pursue its goals – a point that was highlighted long ago by Peter Ekeh in "Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement."
One way to approach this issue is to engage it from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge. Long ago, Jeremy Bentham worked hard to develop the utilitarian theory of justice which was later extended by John Stuart Mill. Essentially, the theory argues that the goal of justice is to create the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people i.e., the majority. But in such a situation, what about the minority, the issue that is a central concern in Professor Wariboko's article? The result of such a situation sometimes is a belief in "trickle down" economics, which means when the majority succeed, the benefit will trickle down to the minority. Other than this, even though John Stuart Mill used ideal utilitarianism to smoothen some of the excesses of mainstream utilitarianism, the reality on the ground is that the minority are treated as disposable or expendable. It is in reaction to this situation that John Rawls will develop a theory or approach to justice that will try as much as possible to guarantee the rights of minorities, which unfortunately, the Nigerian public square ignored in spite of all the erudite intellectuals in the country and ministers and imam that claim to speak directly with God in heaven. John Stuart Mill thought that if people have cultivated certain ideals, they will not be focused just in pursuing hedonistic goals / desires and so that will rectify the danger of the majority just trampling upon the poor like a pair of sandals. The interesting thing is that this is happening by virtue of the normal functioning of the institutions which in many cases as Wariboko highlighted, does not require one being deliberately malevolent. Indeed, the whole thing is taken for granted, something similar to what Arendt called the banality of evil.
What is interesting about this from the point of view of sociology of knowledge is that postcolonial Africans, many of whom are exuberantly condemning ideas from the West as Eurocentric, in this case have swallowed utilitarian ideas that grew in the inner sanctum of European civilization. They have adopted, utilized, and perpetuated it because it serves the social and material interests of some people, just like the Europeans they condemn. So, the language of the majority became just normal and mundane. Thus, Africans can be Afrocentric and still exuberantly adopt European ideas as in the case of utilitarianism (consciously or subconsciously) even when some of us are educated. Meanwhile, people like John Rawls warned seriously about the dangers of ways of conducting public affairs that are rooted in utilitarian vision of society, but unfortunately, such ideas have not been very popular in Africa because there are people who feel adopting them will affect the pursuits of their social and material interests, just as in the US. Human oh human!
John Rawls affirms the role of justice in creating a well-ordered society by stressing the nature of the basic structure of society which in the case of Nigeria is represented in terms of majority-minority group relations as it has shaped the public sphere and discourses. Here is a quote from John Rawls that should have served as caution against some of the realities that Professor Wariboko documented:
The justice of the basic structure is, then, of predominant importance. The first problem of justice is to determine the principles to regulate and to adjust the profound and long-lasting effects of social, natural, and historical contingencies, particularly since these contingencies combined with inequalities generate tendencies that, when left to themselves, are sharply at odds with the freedom and equality appropriate for a well-ordered society.
All societies left alone will have a great number of irregularities. Some people are naturally disadvantaged because of their social circumstances, population size, natural disaster, or geographical location. There are also many other contingencies in life that can make otherwise good people suffer and be disadvantaged. Rawls is asserting that if a society or community decides to ignore all these contingencies that put some people at a disadvantage and become socially marginalized, this will create chaos if not anarchy in the long run because such a society cannot be said to be well-ordered. Nigeria as a country is not exempted from such a reality.
Justice is the process through which a society or community decides to regulate and level things off, otherwise, even if the society thinks it is justified in refusing to use justice to regulate such contingencies, the society will suffer the consequences of such action through violence, instability, and crime i.e., a disordered society. Unfortunately, justice is the least discussed issue or discourse in Nigerian political institutions. If the reader sometimes feels like Nigeria is rowdy and always dealing with one form of social disruption or another, maybe Nigeria as a society and various communities have never taken seriously the need to use justice to smoothen the rougher ages of social life owing to various contingencies that render the live of some people hopeless.
I feel greatly disappointed that Nigeria's postcolonial history has been infused with a lot of hypocrisy, which has led me to the conclusion that humans, whatever their race or ethnicity, depending on their degree of moral and ethical cultivation and the kind of institutional arrangement in place to check the tendency of human excesses, are the same. I cannot at this moment in my life, given postcolonial African history, say that, if Africans had the power that Europeans have had, there is assurance that they will automatically and definitely do something different. All this is not to lessen the gravity of European inhumanity to Africans, but a call for us Africans to be genuinely and sincerely concerned about the humanity of each other.
I have reflected on this for a very long time as a minority person in Nigeria not only in terms of tribe/ ethnicity but also socially marginalized in terms of socioeconomic status as the son of peasants in rural northeastern Nigeria. At one point, I started asking students in most of the courses that I teach that relate to human society, culture, institutions etc., to bring the answers to these two questions on the first day of class. The first question is: what does it mean to be human? The second question is: what do we owe each other for being human? I tell the students that I do not want to know the race, tribe, ethnicity, religion, national origin, social class, gender etc., of the person. I just want to know what it means to be human because without a deep and thorough attempt to reflect on this as the foundation of our discussion and vision, we cannot build a fair, just and inclusive society for all. Amazingly, the students often begin to raise these questions in their final presentations.
Thinking this way has helped me to decenter myself. If as a person, I cultivate in my heart and soul what it means to be human and what I owe my fellow humans, when I meet with anyone from any part of the world, not just another ethnic group in Nigeria, my mind will not start going helter-skelter on how to relate or treat the person because the moral and ethical philosophy I have cultivated is not to use myself as the model human being but a vision of shared humanity. Many of the people in Nigeria envision their group as the center of the universe and others revolve around them. Sometimes when I hear the recordings in Hausa about identity, I tell people that some Nigerians have a worldview that is quasi-medieval because they see others as just people that should revolve around them. Frankly, if I wake up everyday and think this way, I will die very soon because I will find it boring. Even though I belong to a faith tradition and yes, because of my parents, I have ethnic / tribal origin in Nigeria (both minority), I have learned to cultivate the vision of a shared humanity. I cannot feel more entitled just because I come from a particular group. Cultivating such a vision of the world requires not just holding one's consciousness accountable but interrogating one's subconscious mind and reasoning.
I do not want to make this too long or it is already too long. But as Professor Wariboko highlighted, there is so much hypocrisy in Nigeria that sometimes it is difficult for me to just reflect on it and feel comfortable. I am from Bauchi State in the sense that that is where my parents raised me, but my father is from a small town in Yobe and I still maintain contact with my extended family relatives there. It is a minority ethnic group known as "Bade" in Jakusko Local Government of Yobe State. But it is important to deconstruct the hypocrisy behind the majority-minority division in Nigeria. To do this, we need to draw some insights from the principle of analysis of variance in statistics, which says there is "Between Group Variance" and there is "Within Group Variance." In the US for instance, the measure of inequality within the African American community is higher than the measure of inequality within the US as a whole. So, the majority ideology in Nigeria is never about catering for what John Rawls called "the least advantaged people" within the majority group, nor is it about caring for those that Fanon called "The Wretched of the Earth." It is just a labor market or competitive strategy which is used as a sacred canopy to cover the selfish desires of the elites i.e., patrons and their clients. Among each of the majority ethnic / tribal groups in Nigeria, there are people who are indeed members of the "Wretched of the Earth" or the "least advantaged people." The ideology that is used to psychologically persuade them to condone such oppression in the name of ethnic / tribal identity is the sentiment of "Group Worth" according to Donald Horowitz in his book titled "Ethnic Groups in Conflict." Thus, the least advantaged Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, is persuaded on grounds of group worth, to feel satisfied that even though he or she is terribly poor and struggling, it is okay because a member of his her ethnic/ tribal group is in power.
Apart from the fact that this indicates a high degree of gullibility, it also suggests, that we claim to have a modern nation state, but we have not been successful in creating the appropriate social-psychological and rational attitudes appropriate for such a complex political system where people will see beyond ethnicity / tribalism as primordial identity and sentiment or as an instrumentalized strategy for pursuing social and material interests of a small class of people but covered with a kind of sacred canopy or cultural myths. Similarly, we also know that within each of these majority ethnic groups, when we study them anthropologically or in the present, we realize that there are so many divisions. Anyone who thinks all the Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani, and Igbo are thickly united is mistaken because a careful study will show divisions. When you hear the way some Hausa people are now commenting on Fulani in Hausa language, you easily realize that there was never any thick unity between them. It was just opportunism and sentiment. Just as social and material interests of people can unite them, it can also divide them. Ethnicity / tribalism have become instruments for the pursuit of private social and material interests. Nigerians in one sense will criticize the West for so many things, but on the other hand, in this case they adopted the utilitarian philosophy and use it, failing to develop a vibrant and solid Nigerian moral and ethical philosophy that respects and honors the dignity of all human beings irrespective of their ethnic origin, religion etc. I wonder whether I will see this new dispensation in my lifetime.
Beyond that, the elites among minority ethnic / tribal groups have often decided to serve as clients to the elites of majority ethnic groups whose ideology is predatory and so we now have a coalition of predatory ruling elites. Even within the minority ethnic / tribal groups, the elites in pursuit of their social and material interests ignore those that are "Wretched of the Earth" among them or those that are "the least advantaged" people. I feel overwhelmed by all this because no matter how much we intellectually analyze what is happening with Western racism, bias, etc., unless we can prove that we Africans have not just the knowledge, but the courage to do the right thing in spite of the cost, through habituating ourselves do stand up for creating a more just, fair, and inclusive society for all, Africa will remain the same for as long as this will remains as it is. Do not expect any miracle. Decolonization in this case should first and foremost begin by eradicating internal colonialism within our countries. Furthermore, if there is inequality in any society, including Nigeria and Africa, the knowledge produced in such a society will be shaped by the structure of inequality. This is a social fact. We cannot, however, eradicate internal colonialism, until we experience inner liberation for the takeover of our social imaginary by crude human instinctual and appetitive desires.
I will end with some concluding thoughts from John Rawls which have implications for how people who privileged themselves over others whether within a group or between groups should think twice about human existence from a deep moral and ethical compass. For John Rawls, A Well-Functioning System of Social Justice Must Minimize the Role of Arbitrary Natural Differences and Attributes that are Products of Genetic Lottery or Historical Contingencies. He observed that:
We do not deserve our place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than we deserve our initial starting place in society. That we deserve the superior character that enables us to make the effort to cultivate our abilities is also problematic; for such character depends in good part upon fortunate family and social circumstances in early life for which we can claim no credit. The notion of desert does not apply here.
In the preceding quote, John Rawls is addressing a fundamental argument that is used to oppose any effort to create a more just and fair society by focusing on equal opportunity to everyone. Well in Nigeria, there is even no discussion of equal opportunity at all whether between majority-minority ethnic / tribal groups, or within majority / minority ethnic tribal groups. In any case, equal opportunity simply means giving people the opportunity to compete to become unequal under presumably fair rules. But the rules are not fair. The argument is that some people naturally have better ability and superior qualities that automatically qualify them to deserve privileges that should be denied others, i.e., they are masters of the universe. Nigerians use this same line of reasoning as it is done by some White people.
While in countries like the United States, this kind of argument has been used to justify racial superiority of Whites over other races, the issue is not just a problem of White people in America, as many of us minorities from Africa tend to think sometimes. In Nigeria, there are certain ethnic groups or religious groups and organizations that claim to be just naturally superior to others and therefore should be granted more privileges than other groups in the country. But Rawls is arguing that even the ability to develop good character or the ability to succeed is highly correlated with family background. Unfortunately, no one has ever been granted a survey questionnaire before he or she was born to decide which family and which ethnic / tribal group they want to be born into. Where we were born and who our parents are, are all products of genetic lottery and therefore one has no right to claim inherent superiority.
I conclude with a feeling that is frankly intellectually pessimistic while maintaining exuberant optimism of the heart and soul. We can do more in Nigeria and Africa. We have the capacity to do so if we are willing to submit ourselves to inner liberation where we do not allow how crude human instinctual / appetitive desires to take over our conscience to the point where we double down to develop scholarly arguments that become a sacred canopy for what Saint Augustine called "libido dominandi" i.e., the lust to conquer and dominate others. Thank you very much to Professor Wariboko for the inspiration.
Samuel
--On Sat, Nov 5, 2022 at 8:57 AM Nimi Wariboko <nimiwari@msn.com> wrote:--Dear Colleagues:
This is an article I published in Punch Newspapers Nigeria yesterday, Friday, November 4, 2022. It is about majority-tribe privilege in Nigeria.
Wazobia Republic: The majority-tribe privilege in Nigeria
Majority-tribe privilege is the advantage the Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba enjoy as members of the three big ethnic groups in the country. The mighty advantage of belonging to one of the Big Three, the Wa-Zo-Bia groups, is both unconscious and conscious. For those who enjoy being part of the big tribes, the advantage is unseen to (majority of) them, but it is highly visible to the rest of us that belong to the minority tribes. When national public officials and the media list ethnicities in Nigeria and routinely name Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba, without bothering to mention even one minority tribe, you are reminded that Nigeria is wazobia and the country does not regard your existence. Minority-tribe persons grate under their skin when they hear Wazobia, a portfolio word that reminds them of their exclusion, marginalisation, and irrelevance in the general description of what Nigerian citizenship means. With the way the 2023 elections have become a three-tribe affair, you would be forgiven for thinking they are the only ones in the country.
For more, please click the link below:
https://punchng.com/wazobia-republic-the-majority-tribe-privilege-in-nigeria/
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
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