Oba Of Lagos Threat To Igbos! Chimamanda Adichie Wades In

A few days ago, the Oba of
Lagos threatened Igbo leaders. If they did not vote for his governorship
candidate in Lagos, he said, they would be thrown into the lagoon. His entire
speech was a flagrant performance of disregard. His words said, in effect: I
think so little of you that I don’t have to cajole you but will just threaten
you and, by the way, your safety in Lagos is not assured, it is negotiable.

There have been
condemnations of the Oba’s words. Sadly, many of the condemnations from
non-Igbo people have come with the ugly impatience of expressions like ‘move
on,’ and  ‘don’t be over-emotional’ and
‘calm down.’ These take away the power, even the sincerity, of the
condemnations. It is highhanded and offensive to tell an aggrieved person how
to feel, or how quickly to forgive, just as an apology becomes a non-apology
when it comes with ‘now get over it.’

Other condemnations of the
Oba’s words have been couched in dismissive or diminishing language such as
‘The Oba can’t really do anything, he isn’t actually going to kill anyone. He
was joking. He was just being a loudmouth.’

Or – the basest yet – ‘we
are all prejudiced.’ It is dishonest to respond to a specific act of prejudice
by ignoring that act and instead stressing the generic and the general.  It is similar to responding to a specific
crime by saying ‘we are all capable of crime.’ Indeed we are. But responses such
as these are diversionary tactics. They dismiss the specific act, diminish its
importance, and ultimately aim at silencing the legitimate fears of people.

We are indeed all
prejudiced, but that is not an appropriate response to an issue this serious.
The Oba is not an ordinary citizen. He is a traditional ruler in a part of a
country where traditional rulers command considerable influence – the
reluctance on the part of many to directly chastise the Oba speaks to his
power. The Oba’s words matter. He is not a singular voice; he represents traditional
authority. The Oba’s words matter because they are enough to incite violence in
a political setting already fraught with uncertainty. The Oba’s words matter
even more in the event that Ambode loses the governorship election, because it
would then be easy to scapegoat Igbo people and hold them punishable.

Nigerians who consider
themselves enlightened might dismiss the Oba’s words as illogical. But the
scapegoating of groups – which has a long history all over the world – has
never been about logic. The Oba’s words matter because they bring worrying
echoes of the early 1960s in Nigeria, when Igbo people were scapegoated for
political reasons. Chinua Achebe, when he finally accepted that Lagos, the city
he called home, was unsafe for him because he was Igbo, saw crowds at the motor
park taunting Igbo people as they boarded buses: ‘Go, Igbo, go so that garri
will be cheaper in Lagos!’

Of course Igbo people were
not responsible for the cost of garri. But they were perceived as people who
were responsible for a coup and who were ‘taking over’ and who, consequently,
could be held responsible for everything bad.

Any group of people would
understandably be troubled by a threat such as the Oba’s, but the Igbo, because
of their history in Nigeria, have been particularly troubled. And it is a
recent history. There are people alive today who were publicly attacked in
cosmopolitan Lagos in the 1960s because they were Igbo. Even people who were
merely light-skinned were at risk of violence in Lagos markets, because to be
light-skinned was to be mistaken for Igbo.

Almost every Nigerian ethnic
group has a grouse of some sort with the Nigerian state. The Nigerian state
has, by turns, been violent, unfair, neglectful, of different parts of the
country. Almost every ethnic group has derogatory stereotypes attached to it by
other ethnic groups.

But it is disingenuous to
suggest that the experience of every ethnic group has been the same. Anti-Igbo
violence began under the British colonial government, with complex roots and
manifestations. But the end result is a certain psychic difference in the
relationship of Igbo people to the Nigerian state. To be Igbo in Nigeria is
constantly to be suspect; your national patriotism is never taken as the norm,
you are continually expected to prove it.

All groups are conditioned
by their specific histories. Perhaps another ethnic group would have reacted
with less concern to the Oba’s threat, because that ethnic group would not be
conditioned by a history of being targets of violence, as the Igbo have been.

Many responses to the Oba’s
threat have mentioned the ‘welcoming’ nature of Lagos, and have made
comparisons between Lagos and southeastern towns like Onitsha. It is valid to
debate the ethnic diversity of different parts of Nigeria, to compare, for example,
Ibadan and Enugu, Ado-Ekiti and Aba, and to debate who moves where, and who
feels comfortable living where and why that is. But it is odd to pretend that
Lagos is like any other city in Nigeria. It is not. The political history of
Lagos and its development as the first national capital set it apart. Lagos is
Nigeria’s metropolis. There are ethnic Igbo people whose entire lives have been
spent in Lagos, who have little or no ties to the southeast, who speak Yoruba
better than Igbo. Should they, too, be reminded to be ‘grateful’ each time an
election draws near?

No law-abiding Nigerian
should be expected to show gratitude for living peacefully in any part of
Nigeria. Landlords in Lagos should not, as still happens too often, be able to
refuse to rent their property to Igbo people.

The Oba’s words were
disturbing, but its context is even more disturbing:

The anti-Igbo rhetoric that
has been part of the political discourse since the presidential election
results.  Accusatory and derogatory
language – using words like ‘brainwashed,’ ‘tribalistic voting’ – has been used
to describe President Jonathan’s overwhelming win in the southeast. All
democracies have regions that vote in large numbers for one side, and even
though parts of Northern Nigeria showed voting patterns similar to the
Southeast, the opprobrium has been reserved for the Southeast.

But the rhetoric is about
more than mere voting. It is really about citizenship. To be so entitled as to
question the legitimacy of a people’s choice in a democratic election is not
only a sign of disrespect but is also a questioning of the full citizenship of
those people.

What does it mean to be a
Nigerian citizen?

When Igbo people are urged
to be ‘grateful’ for being in Lagos, do they somehow have less of a right as
citizens to live where they live? Every Nigerian should be able to live in any
part of Nigeria. The only expectation for a Nigerian citizen living in any part
of Nigeria is to be law-abiding. Not to be ‘grateful.’ Not to be expected to
pay back some sort of unspoken favour by toeing a particular political line.
Nigerian citizens can vote for whomever they choose, and should never be
expected to justify or apologize for their choice.

Only by feeling a collective
sense of ownership of Nigeria can we start to forge a nation. A nation is an
idea. Nigeria is still in progress. To make this a nation, we must collectively
agree on what citizenship means: all Nigerians must matter equally.