Dialectic, dialectics, or dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned argumentation.
Political economist, Karl Marx, who wrote about dialectical materialism, drew attention to the resolution of contrasts in society, with his submission that first, there is a thesis, challenged by an antithesis, and both arrive at a synthesis or resolution.
The broad canvas of Nigeria’s political, social and economic landscape reveals three major divides, ethnicity, religious and class, that seem irreconcilable, and continue to compromise attempts to deliver happiness to the people of Nigeria.
In most of Muslim Northern Nigeria, many of the traditional ruling class are mainly of Fulani stock, while the commoners –an inelegant word– are of Hausa or other nationalities that are perpetually kept in check by an unpronounced caste system.
The political contest between the Fulani, on the one hand, and the Hausa and the others, on the other, though real, is largely unacknowledged, even unattended to, apart from tokenistic nods of political recognitions and appointments occasionally doled to non-Fulani compatriots.
Yet, this must be addressed. History records that the successors of the evangelical and military exploits of Shehu Uthman dan Fodio overwhelmed the descendants of Bayajidda and took their kingdoms.
An old friend once took pains to explain that though he was a native of Daura, as the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), he was Hausa and not Fulani. He added that he didn’t need to be Fulani.
If you add that to the sentiments of indigenous tribes or nations of the Middle Belt, you will understand the extent of ethnic division even in Northern Nigeria that everyone used to think was monolithic and indivisible.
The December 2012 edition of Africa Report, published by International Crisis Group, acknowledges that “The settler-indigene crisis in Plateau State can only be properly understood in light of the historically tense relations between the Middle Belt region (Nigeria’s north-central geopolitical corridor) and the Far North.
“The former is mainly Christian with pockets of animists and Muslims; the latter is largely Muslim but with a significant Christian population, including southern immigrants. Memories of deprivation, subordination and exploitation since the slave raids by the Far North between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries continue to run deep in the Middle Belt.”
It’s interesting to note that Aminu Kano, a Muslim, led the Northern Elements Progressives Union, a political movement that practically declared a class war that took on Northern Muslim oligarchs in the Northern People’s Congress.
That Islam is significant in the politics of Nigeria showed in the narrative of the Biafra leadership that somehow gave the impression that the Muslim North of Nigeria was the culprit in waging the 1967-1970 civil war against Christian Igbo of Biafra.
This notion still sells in the 21st Century. Even though Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan is a Christian, Americans invoked the Leahy Law to prevent their government from approving arms sale to end Boko Haram insurgency because they feared the government might turn the guns against Christians!
Leahy Laws or Leahy amendments, named after American Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, are the U.S. human rights laws that prohibit US Department of State and Department of Defence from providing military assistance to foreign security forces that they adjudge violate human rights with impunity.
A classic case of perception, rightly or wrongly, colouring policy decisions that affect the security and fortune of citizens of another country. Communication scholars sometimes argue that selective perception explains this shortcoming.
The Thomas sociology theorem, formulated by William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, which magisterially declares that, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” explains this absolutely.
Ethnic and religious cleavages in Nigeria are as evident as the proverbial elephant in the room. Language, accent, names, practices, culture, dressing, and sometimes looks, are ready identifiers of ethnic origin of a Nigerian.
Ethnicity may sometimes be ready indicators of an individual’s religion. That is why an Igbo, Ijaw or most ethnic groups of South-South Nigeria are assumed to be Christians, and many Nigerians from Northern Nigeria are assumed to be Muslims.
Those who classify everyone in Northern Nigeria as Muslims quite forget that there are significant number of Christians, in the Eastern flank of the Middle Belt and even Sokoto, the seat of the Dan Fodio Caliphate, heartland of North-West Nigeria.
What recently brought the differences of religion among peoples of the same region into relief are the largely Muslim herders who regularly clash with Christian farmers in the eastern corridor of the Middle Belt. But sometimes some of the victims are Muslim farmers.
The outburst of the Emir of Muri in Taraba State, Alhaji Abbas Tafida, against those he identified as Bororo, migrant or cattle herding, Fulani, who maim, kill, rape his people and destroy the crops on their farms, confirms the kind-on kind-violence. He promised death for any of the Bororo Fulani found within his domain after the expiration of the 30 days grace he had granted them.
In what may appear to be a contest between ethnicity and religious contention among Nigerians, ethnicity does not cause a higher level of divide among Nigerians than religion; both appear to be at par in significance.
Though former President Olusegun Obasanjo once accused the Northern Nigerian political establishment of attempting to Fulanise and Islamise Nigeria, a Muslim from Southwestern Nigeria may sooner side with a Muslim from Northern Nigeria than with a Christian from Southwestern Nigeria.
While a Muslim from Northern Nigeria may kidnap a fellow Northern Muslim or even attack the palace of a Muslim Emir, a Federal Government run by a Muslim chose to reintegrate “repentant” Muslim Boko Haram insurgents, even the Muslim governor of the state and the Shehu of Bornu are apprehensive.
This muddling of interests rears its head where money is considered. Nigerian legislators of any political, ethnic and religious divide will sooner close ranks and forgive all iniquities whenever they see the naira sign.
You often see Nigerians of different ethnic and religious persuasions end their bickering as they assemble in a boardroom -of a private or government-owned enterprise– to award resources to themselves.
The conspiracy of Nigeria’s bourgeoisie –the moneyed-political class– against the lumpen proletariat or the toiling masses– has no tribal marks or religious bias. Like Lady Justice, the Invisible Hand that allocates Nigeria’s wealth is blind (to ethnicity and religion).
It’s even colour blind, because it sometimes prefers to bless a Caucasian from any of the metropolitan countries with oil blocs, for instance, than an Ijaw Nigerian, from whose backyard the crude petroleum flows.
Many Nigerians, 83 million or 40 per cent of the population, whom the National Bureau of Statistics admitted lived below poverty line of N137,430 or $381.75 per annum in 2020, now live in an economically stratified society where the rich flaunt their wealth even if it was the gain of looting the commonwealth.
It may not be out of place to argue that just as apartheid was introduced to consolidate White dominance of South Africa’s economy, ethnicity and religion are employed to access and retain political and economic power in Nigeria.
The earlier poor Nigerians got up and tackled the cartel of economic oppressors, no matter their ethnic or religious inclination, the better for them.
