11211792
Michael Onyebuchi Eze (Supervisor) Paul Raekstad (2nd Reader)
Political Theory Track
sean.miles.rajman@gmail.com 30.7.2017
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Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences Graduate School of Social Science
Master of Science Political Science Political Theory Track
African Renaissance and the Politics of Development University of Amsterdam
Exposure for Nationalism
A Case for Expanding the National Youth Service Corps of Nigeria Master’s Thesis
Sean Rajman
Supervisor:
Dr. Michael Onyebuchi Eze Second Reader: Dr. Paul Raekstad
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Acknowledgments To my mother and father,
thank you for your undying care in times of chaos. To Michael Onyebuchi Eze,
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction ... 6
2. Methodology ... 8
3. Conceptual Framework ... 9
4. Chapter 1: A Playground for the Greedy ... 12
4.1 Introduction ... 12
4.2 The Two Publics ... 13
4.3 Corruption ... 16
4.3.1 Dealing with Lawlessness ... 19
4.3.2 Crime and Vigilantes ... 21
4.4 Primordial Affiliation... 22
4.4.1 Religion ... 22
4.4.1.1 Extremist Violence... 24
4.4.1.2 Social Movements for Hope ... 25
4.4.2. Ethnicity and Regionalism ... 26
4.5 Conclusion ... 28
5. Chapter 2: Nations, Nationalism, and Collective Consciousness ... 31
5.1 Civic Nationalism ... 31
5.2 Indonesia and Nigeria ... 33
5.3 Nations ... 35
5.4 Nigerian Nationalism ... 36
6. Chapter 3: Humanity, Dehumanization, and the Value of Relation ... 39
6.1 ‘Thou’ as God and ‘Thou’ as the Human Species ... 39
6.2 Objectification / Dehumanization ... 40
6.3 Relating: The Value of Information and Dialogue ... 42
7. Chapter 4: Expanding the National Youth Service Corps ... 44
7.1 The Current NYSC ... 44
7.2 Lacking Inclusion... 46
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8. Conclusion ... 51 9. References ... 53 10. Further Reading ... 57
6 1. Introduction Research question:
Can an expansion of the National Youth Service Corps rehabilitate the Nigerian secular legitimacy?
Given that it is one of the most religious nations in the world, one cannot help but notice the irony in the fact that Nigeria is a secular state. The corruption at every level of the Nigerian government and the absence of any rule of law, even allowing for laws to be passed that are explicitly unconstitutional, have left the extremely religious people of Nigeria with a sense that the secular is not to be trusted. Nigerian leaders are exemplary kleptocrats and have misappropriated or stolen over $400 billion since independence (Ayittey 2006). Because of the endemic corruption secularism has become synonymous with moral decay to many Nigerians. It would seem that a self-determined theocratic government might be the solution to the crisis of legitimacy the Nigerian state faces. However, the violent tensions between the Muslim and Christian sections of the country are such that the choosing of a single faith for a theocratic state would be likely to cause more problems.
The legitimacy issue is in large part due to the origins of Nigerian state power and is only amplified by the rampant corruption which is associated with the secular (Smith 2007, 14). The Nigerian borders were set in 1885 at the Berlin Conference and were drawn with absolute disregard for ethnic, linguistic and cultural cohesion (Maier 2000, 10). Thus, the Nigerian nationality is imposed and based on nothing more than geographic proximity and compromise between colonial exploiters. It is no wonder that the Nigerians who led the struggle for independence grounded in European philosophy would be rejected by the people. The lack of connection and thus stake in the state’s actions is the base for the massive corruption which the world has witnessed over the past sixty some years. Some would contend that the Nigerian state was destined to fail from the start because of the disconnect between those who came to rule and the people of Nigeria. I find that a nation state is nothing more than a community hoping for a prosperous shared future.
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To solve the corruption, mistrust among peoples, and the secular nation state legitimacy problem, I am proposing an expansion of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to include all Nigerians. That is the focus of this thesis. Currently, serving the Nigerian nation state is only required if one graduates from an institution of higher education. This does not suffice to bring about widespread increase in national consciousness. However, an expanded mandatory service will force civic participation and forge the missing connection between the people and the government. Furthermore, a benefit of a compulsory national service is that it will bring people from all over the country together and force them into a relational dialogue, which I describe in Chapter 3. The hope is that over time this will diffuse the tensions between different groups who are hostile to each other. Seeing the humanity in each other will result in a nationalist feeling and combat the mobilization of ethnoreligious groups against each other. Ultimately, I am trying to conceive a vehicle that would peacefully and organically rehabilitate the secular Nigerian nation state. I believe that it is a long-term solution because it creates a basis for solving most of Nigeria’s issues and can bring about the strength required to guarantee Nigeria’s ascension to the status of a power broker on the international stage.
Relevance:
Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and it is extremely pluralistic. This makes Nigeria a frame of reference from which many things can be learnt about issues facing nation states on the continent. The problems of ethnoreligious diversity and lacking secular legitimacy are widespread in Africa. Thus, this thesis fits into the greater scientific debate over ways to approach nation state development. It presents a way to organically recover from the societal trauma left in the wake of colonial occupation.
Furthermore, the main argument of the thesis fits into the theoretical debate surrounding the following questions: What makes a state legitimate? How does power influence collective consciousness? Should the nation state use power to manipulate collective consciousness?
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2. Methodology
I am making a theoretical argument for a policy suggestion, and therefore, I used a mixed method of qualitative, cultural, and textual analysis. I did this because I am making an argument based on Nigeria’s history and the current political climate. I have drawn assistance from various philosophers and political theorists to argue for an expansion of the National Youth Service Corps to include all Nigerians in a mandatory civic service. The philosophies emphasizing relation and national cohesion help me make the case for the need of a massive project to rehabilitate Nigerian secular legitimacy. Because of the massive amount of information necessary to justify my policy recommendation, I have found that the amount of research done in other methods traditionally used in Political Science would require an unrealistic amount of work, given the temporal parameters given to write the thesis.
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3. Conceptual Framework
To justify the expansion of the National Youth Service Corps to include all Nigerians, there are four topics that must be discussed. They are split into chapters accordingly:
(i) Is there a disconnect between the Nigerian secular government and the people of Nigeria? How has this disconnect allowed society in Nigeria to deteriorate to conditions resembling a ‘state of war’ and thus, given doubt to the legitimacy of the Nigerian state? (ii) Why does it matter whether Nigerians are unified in their demand for prosperity? What
is nationalism and is Nigeria a nation?
(iii) How is the exposure of Nigeria to its own diversity helpful in achieving peace and prosperity in Nigeria?
(iv) Why would an expansion of the National Youth Service Corps to include all Nigerians be helpful in achieving unity and prosperity?
In my discussion of these topics, I have made use of the following concepts:
In Chapter 1, I discuss Peter Ekeh’s essay Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A
Theoretical Statement to illustrate the disconnect between the African common people and the
African bourgeoisie (1975). He argues that there are two publics: primordial and civic. The primordial public is where people engage each other on a level that demands morality, while the civic public constitutes the relationship that the people have with the state. Because the state was founded by the disconnected ruling class, which is still extremely corrupt, the state has become synonymous with corruption. Furthermore, the elites championed independence based on European principles and kept the borders established in 1885 by the imperialists (Maier 2000, 10). This further contributes to the perceived lack of legitimacy, because the nation state is perceived by the primordial public to be a purely artificial and imposed extractive structure. This disconnect has allowed for a massive neglect of the people, who do not trust the state to fix the economic decay, the endemic corruption, or the ethnoreligious violence. I show that there is a disconnect between the people and the Nigerian state which has resulted in a such a decay of public safety that the secular government cannot be considered legitimate. It does not meet the most basic
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requirements for realist legitimacy, namely the keeping of the peace. The keeping of the peace is the basic requirement for the right to rule in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1998). The emphasis on the failure to meet this minimal standard serves to demonstrate that there is in fact a crisis in Nigeria from a value-neutral perspective. I aim to show that the failure of the Nigerian secular state is perpetuated by the people’s disinterest in it. By Hobbes’ standards, Nigeria is definitely a state that needs an upgrade in the provision of basic security of its people– at the very least - and Peter Ekeh’s illustration of the divide clearly shows the lack of national cohesions, and there by consensus, which is shown to be crucial to prosperity in Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 discusses the value of national cohesion in spirit. First, I briefly discuss the Indonesian resistance to the Dutch and the consequential collective demand for change since independence. It emphasizes the value of congruent national and political units to bring about changes beneficial to the entirety of the population as collective moral outrage is stronger than divided competition for resources. The Indonesian example shows that it is not the artificiality of nation states which makes them divided. I then use insights from Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, and Ernest Renan to demonstrate that civic nationalism is the concept which demands that the political and national unit be congruent. The strength of nationalism is that it demands sacrifice from the nation, and in the same breath demands a future of greatness. To show that Nigeria is a nation despite its divisions, I use Anderson’s concept of a nation as an ‘imagined community’ (2006). Furthermore, Renan’s concept of the daily plebiscite highlights that a nation-state’s legitimacy is only contingent on the affirmation of it. The dedication of its people is that affirmation (1882). Renan states that “A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future” (Ibid.). The question that remains at the end of this chapter is how is it possible to make Nigerians feel like their destinies are linked as one and the same, and that their future will be better if they pursue prosperity in cooperation.
The key to forging a connection between the people of Nigeria is exposure to each other, as Chapter 3 shows. I use insights from Martin Buber’s I and Thou (Ich und Du), specifically his discussion of the two-fold attitude of man, to show that relating to people exposes their humanity and sameness to us (2010). Because I am writing a value-neutral thesis, I do not use Buber’s emphasis
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on humanity’s connection through God. I use Aristotle’s recognition that humanity is connected by virtue of the dependency on each other to continue the existence of the species (Aristotle 1959, 5). I find that the key to curbing violence is to humanize each other. The objectification of human beings allows for terrible violence and neglect, whereas the exposure to one another highlights one’s belonging to the greater collective of humanity. In this sense, it is hoped that Nigerians recognize that they are the same in their diversity. The dialogue that comes from relation, the creating of one’s self through each other, shapes collective consciousness. Thus, the exposure of Nigerians to each other should create a Nigerian national identity and a sense of nationalism that demands safety and prosperity. To achieve this exposure, I suggest the expansion of the National Youth Service Corps in Chapter 4.
Chapter 4 is the culmination of the argument. The National Youth Service Corps has served an aim to bring about a similar mindset, discussed in my second chapter, by means of exposure to Nigerian diversity, as I describe in my third chapter. The Service Corps’ official objectives are largely aligned with the thinking of my thesis; however, the Corps fails to bring about the conditions it is supposed to because it is not inclusive enough. Thus, Chapter 4 mainly serves to highlight the elitism. This elitism comes from the Corps requirement that only graduates of higher education take part in the daily plebiscite. It does not have a grand enough scope to bring about significant change in Nigeria and furthermore, it simply continues the gap that was created by the early Nigerian nationalists and the British when they set out to build the ‘Nigeria Project’ (Campbell 2013, 5). I argue that the NYSC has the potential to be an effective means to expose Nigerians to each other, to foster nationalism, to provide a massive expansion of public goods, and in doing all of this to rehabilitate Nigerian secular nation state legitimacy. Elitism and its limited size is holding the Corps back. What the NYSC needs and what Nigeria needs is, as Chinua Achebe correctly observed, committed leadership (Achebe 1983).
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4. Chapter 1: A Playground for the Greedy
4.1 Introduction
To justify the need for a vehicle to revitalize Nigerian national consciousness, this chapter illustrates the decay of the Nigerian nation state from a value-neutral standpoint. I discuss the history of the Nigerian government and the current disregard of the law by the government and public. This chapter focuses specifically on the degeneration of the people’s relationship with the government and the law. It shows that the historical lack of recognition of state legitimacy let the government disregard its own laws and fail to provide for the basic needs and safety of the Nigerian people. The chapter also shows that the lack of national unity and investment in the state has allowed for Nigerian society to devolve into criminality, religious division and ethnocentric contestation for resources. It has allowed this disorganization to such a degree that the Nigeria’s secular nation state legitimacy is not met by the minimalist standards of realist legitimacy. The criteria for whether the current status-quo in Nigeria is a desirable condition or not is judged based on the assumption that people come together in political communities to avoid early deaths - to escape the ‘state of war’ (Hobbes 1998) - whether they be the result of violence, some kind of medical ailment, or starvation.
First, I discuss the history of the Nigerian state to show that the state was an alien extractive creation based on European ideas that are meaningless to the Nigerian people. This led to a disinterest in the success of the federal government and a normalization of ethnocentric bias. Thus, corruption has become normalized because it is an accepted way of getting ahead in an ethnocentric political sphere. It is thought of as a way to garner a win for one’s kin in a system that is fundamentally hostile to the general population. Insights from Peter Ekeh’s work on the subject aids me in this exposition (1975). Furthermore, I show that the law is not an ethically binding force to many Nigerians because the financial capability to provide public goods is consumed by the corrupt leadership in government. Ultimately, the accepted practice leaves the public to look for extralegal means of survival.
Second, I show that the disconnect has left people to fend for themselves outside the law. People have incorporated corruption and criminality into their daily lives. Criminality might be considered
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immoral, but the law is disregarded in favor of survival. Furthermore, I show that the attempt at extrajudicial justice contributes further to a violently chaotic public life.
Third, I cover the abandonment of a potential Nigerian nationalism for the various stronger primordial nations of religion and ethnicity. I conclude by emphasizing that the divided struggles to survive and the escape from perceived immorality of the state yield conflict and poverty. Thus, this chapter bares that the problems in Nigeria are of such magnitude that the Nigerian state does not meet the most minimal theoretical requirements for state legitimacy of keeping the peace, as presented in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1998).
4.2 The Two Publics
In Peter Ekeh’s essay Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement (1975) it is argued that there is a disconnect between state and the people. He argues that there are two publics within Africa and, more specifically, in Nigeria: the primordial and the civic one. The people of Nigeria interact with both publics, but only recognize the primordial public as a sphere of moral authority.
The primordial public is one that is perceived to be authentic and moral. The primordial public holds powerful sources of belonging and identity. Those sources are religion and ethnicity. The primordial public is a sphere seen as important. People in Nigeria see their primordial associations as moral authorities. The groups in the primordial public are the ones that must be preserved and benefitted because they are considered refuges from the alien state (Ibid, 100). The primordial public is considered to be pre-colonial and traditional. Thus, most actions in the civic public are dictated by the supposed interests of one’s primordial association (Osaghae 2003). The result is an ethnocentric contestation of political power and resources which has the contestants disregard the law.
The civic public is an amoral sphere in which one interacts with the post-colonial state, the sphere that is ridden with corruption and immorality. It is perceived as a source of resources just as the Nigerian colony was seen by the British. It is to be engaged only when necessary or beneficial.
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The early leaders of the Nigerian state and their successors use principles that are hostile to Nigerians and the people of Nigeria recognize this (Cunliffe-Jones 2010). Thus, Nigerians recognize state power, but they do not recognize its ethical authority.
The disconnect between the two publics comes from the origins of the state. The Nigerians put in charge upon departure of the colonists were simply replacing the British colonial state (Campbell 2013, 6). The following quote shows the fundamental hostility of the colonial state and the severance it caused between the civic state and the primordial public.
“Above all else, the colonial doctrine of indirect rule led to the anti-democratic principle that the public domain is the sole property of rulers and that it is theirs to control as they please – perhaps the most damning consequence of colonialism and the bane of
democracy in modern Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.”
(Ekeh 2011)
Thus, the Nigerian state is seen as an ultimately authoritarian extractive body. It is seen as a vehicle to expand one’s own interest at the expense of others. Everyday corruption is a way to make sure one gets what one needs. The lack of belonging in the civic sphere is a consequence of the rejection of a state that claims democratic values but operates in an extractive manner, just as the colonists did. The amoral civic public is the consequence of colonialism and those leaders who lacked the resolve, or perhaps even the desire, to reject the colonists on terms which considered the welfare of the population. The inability to create an inclusive Nigerian nation state derives from this: The rulers of Nigeria did not reject the authoritarian modus operandi of the colonial administration (Campbell 2013, 6). This is the origin of incongruence between the political and national unit, the existence of the two publics, and the incarnation of a lack of nationalist principle (Gellner 2006, 1). The nationalist principle is essential for the proper function of the nation state.1
The perception of an amoral state has not changed since independence. Not only is the state foreign, it fails to provide basic public goods, and thus, the primordial public (National Human
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Development Report 2016), which was already considered to be morally superior, also provides for the safety and survival of people. The corrupt behavior of the powerful has thus failed to legitimize the secular nation state, further damaging the public’s relationship to the already perceptively illegitimate state. In this sense, the people of Nigeria cope with the amorality of the state by not attributing any kind of moral authority to it. As the law is disregarded by the leaders, the public imitates this behavior. The public does this because the standard is set by the leadership. More importantly, however, they imitate it because they live in poor conditions which require them to emulate the corruption and to rely on their kin for survival (Smith 2007, 38).
The corruption and bad public policy have forced those who need morality to look elsewhere for support in times of need, allowing for further fracturing of the primordial public. There is not only a dissociative perception of the state by the people, but a fracturing of public cohesion by differentiation between ethnoreligious groups. The people of Nigeria gravitate towards the primordial to escape reliance on the state. However, since the primordial public has turned to religion and the civic public has beckoned the call of ethnocentrism (Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 30), the corrupt government operate as they wish, only furthering the state of decay within the Nigerian economy and public security (Ibid, 143).
In the following section, I explain why corruption and criminality is a means to survive and how it is largely responsible for the further perpetuation of distrust among fellow citizens, leading to divisions in the primordial public along religious and ethnic lines. I also show how the turn to religion further detracts from a Nigerian national feeling and provides for a platform conducive to discriminatory violence. Finally, I discuss the origins of ethnocentrism and how the contestation of resources is affected by ethnic division. This presentation of a divided primordial public explains the need for an overarching nationalism, which will be the subject of Chapter 2.
16 4.3 Corruption
“When Nigerians talk about corruption, they refer not only to the abuse of state offices for some kind of private gain but also to a whole range of social behaviors in which various forms of morally questionable deception enable the achievements of wealth, power, or prestige as well as much more ambitions. Nigerian notions of corruption encompass everything from government bribery and graft, rigged elections, and fraudulent business deals, to the diabolical abuse of occult powers, medical quackery, cheating in school, and even deceiving a lover”
(Smith 2007, 5)
In this section I argue that corruption permeates every facet of public life in Nigeria. The disconnect between the people and the state allows for an environment without any rule of law as anything can be bought and must be bought in many cases (Ibid.). This is the amoral nature of the civic public as described by Peter Ekeh (1975). The reason I emphasize corruption as integral to Nigeria’s sociopolitical landscape is because it illustrates that the Nigerian public engages in criminality and corruption as a means to cope with the state’s failure to provide basic order for safety. The law does not provide a morally binding framework in the mind of the people. This is fundamental to the turn to alternative sources of belonging and welfare, which manifest itself in criminality, religiosity, and ethnocentrism. Therefore, I first discuss the corruption of the state and its police. Then I show that the public has turned to illegal means of surviving the state’s failure to provide goods.
Corruption is important to the elusiveness of a Nigerian national identity. It is the primary perpetuator of the disconnect between the people and its government. If citizens cannot even trust the police to help in emergency situations, they will turn away from the government to aid their survival and justice (Smith 2007, 167; Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 24). Every time a government official acts corruptly, it chips away at Nigerian nationalism and makes it more difficult to revamp a sense of being Nigerian. It is a cycle: The more corrupt people are, the less people care. This in turn opens the door for further corruption. In addition, the misappropriation of wealth by elites leaves the poor to fend for themselves in an illegal fashion (Smith 2007, 38).
First, I show that corruption has been practiced in Nigeria since the very first election after independence, though it has become the norm since the Biafra war (Campbell 2013). As discussed
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previously, the legitimacy of the state was never recognized by the people. The contestation of state resources by different ethnic groups became extremely apparent in the numerous coups that preceded the war and during the war itself (Maier 2000, 50-53). Then, I discuss the existence of the ‘Ogas’ – essentially the African oligarchs – who maintain political influence to extract as much wealth as they can from Nigeria while still holding the country together (Ibid, 32). Third, I discuss the relationship of the Nigerian people with the police. Following the display of governmental corruption, I present various ways the Nigerian population deals with the absence of reliable government, which is outside any consideration of the law.
The leaders of Nigeria set the precedent for corruption as a normal way of operating in the early years of independence. Election rigging – in the form of voter intimidation, ballot forgery and political assassinations among other things – is the most internationally obvious. Further federal corruption includes the theft and mismanagement of over $400 billion dollars by Nigerian leaders between 1960 and 2006 (Ayittey 2006). With such a disappearance of money for public goods, it is no surprise poverty has been widespread in Nigeria since independence and has increased since the beginning of the Fourth Republic (Campbell 2013, 11).
There have been superficial attempts to combat corruption on the part of the state. As it turns out, the corrupt power brokers in Nigeria very much enjoy the status their kleptocracy brings, and this is evident in the prevalence of military coups which were supposed to restore righteousness to the Nigerian government of their corrupt leaders, only to replace them by equally corrupt military leaders (Campbell 2013; Smith, 2007; Maier 2000; Cunliffe-Jones 2010).
There appeared to be a change, however, when former president Obasanjo turned to Nuhu Ribadu to head the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after the last military ruler had been replaced by another superficially democratic government in 1999 (Adebanwi and Obadare 2011, 192). The difference between Ribadu’s anti-corruption campaign and the ones in the past was the grand scope of his investigation and the targets of it. Previous campaigns were simply instruments to remove political opposition. While many of the people investigated in the campaign were opponents of Obasanjo, Ribadu did not shy away from investigating his associates as well (Ibid, 200). Ribadu was initially quite successful, only to run into James Onanefe Ibori, an ‘Oga’
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responsible for installing Obasanjo as the president. As so often happens, the law is unimportant to the political exchange and goodwill of others, in this case of an ‘Oga’.
“With Ibori’s arrest and trial, Ribadu seemed to have ‘overstepped his boundaries’, and a decision on his exit from office seems to have been taken at that point. The actual process of his removal was messy and riddled with many official gaffes and contradictions. Even so, it brought home how dangerously close Ribadu had been to, quite literally, ‘taking the food from the mouth’ of the ruling elite.”
(Adebanwi and Obadare 2011, 192)
The reason Ribadu ultimately failed to rid the country of corruption is because of the existence of the Ogas (Campbell 2013, 26). People’s reliance on each other to survive and become rich is evident in the way the Ogas operate and survive. They compete and compromise (Ibid, 31), profiting immensely from the oil that the state exports (Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 135). While they do care about public opinion, they do not care enough to truly make a change because divided public opinion does not affect their livelihood.
Corruption does not restrict itself to top tier leaders, however, as it is accepted practice in most spheres of Nigerian life (Smith 2007). Whether it is the head of the federal police stealing 10 billion Naira of government funds (Adebanwi and Obadare 2011, 198), or the police officer taking a bribe to look the other way from a crime or permitting people to pass checkpoints (Smith 2007, 61), everyone contributes to the culture of corruption.
An obvious cause of low-level corruption is poverty. As people struggle to make enough money to survive, they turn to illegal means to do so (Smith 2007, 38). Corrupt behavior among government officials is no different. In the Nigerian case, however, the terrible relationship between the public and the police has a more fundamental background. The current police force has its origins in the colonial administration when 30 former Sierra Leonean slaves were used to enforce colonial mandates and forcefully take resources (Tamuno 1970). Independence from the British crown has not changed the perception of police to be foreign robbers, as the interactions between police and the population are now ridden with corruption. This underscores the extractive nature of the state; the colonial legacy is felt.
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The perception of the police as something fundamentally foreign and corrupt gives legitimacy to non-state actors when they take matters into their own hands, outside the law. The perception of police immorality thus legitimizes criminality, or vigilantism, and this in turn takes away the monopoly on violence from the state. If we consider Thomas Hobbes’, this observation alone means the state is not meeting the basic requirement for legitimacy (1998).
Furthermore, there are instances of paying the police to murder. Some involve the oil companies extracting oil in the Nigerian delta. In one famous instance of requested protection from Ogoni protesters by the oil giant Shell, the Mobile Police shot eighty people and destroyed or damaged just under 500 homes. The Mobile Police has an especially lethal reputation, having earned the name ‘Kill and Go’ for its tendency to shoot everything in sight and figure out what happened later (Maier 2000, 91).
The people’s perception of the police is so negative that one cannot believably argue that the problem is restricted to a few corrupt officers, as the problem has been described as a “systematic and collective group failure” (Akinlabi 2016, 4). I argue that it is not simply a failure since the collective criminality of the police supersedes relatively harmless things like accepting bribes. The police in Nigeria do not only fail to protect the people, they contribute to a ‘state of war’ (Hobbes 1998) as they allegedly regularly commit crimes such as “[…] extrajudicial killings, undertaking arbitrary arrests and detention, beating detainees and colluding with criminals” (Akinlabi 2016, 5).
4.3.1 Dealing with Lawlessness
As I have now established governments’ disregard for the law in Nigeria and the perpetuation of the alienation of the people by the state, I now offer information on ways that people cope to survive the unreliability of the government in Nigeria. First, I present a case study of NGO workers who are using their influence to get ahead in ways that are not strictly legal. Then, I discuss the popularity criminal fraud as an enterprise. I conclude the corruption section with a discussion of vigilante violence as a reaction to the widespread violent crime.
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Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are in Nigeria to help people in the fight against things like AIDS, Malaria and general underdevelopment. While there are many issues with NGOs, I only discuss the prevalence of corruption amongst NGOs in Nigeria to show that corruption extends beyond the government. It is so widespread and culturally embedded that even the organizations who fight HIV/AIDS have corrupt practices.
The anthropologist Daniel Jordan Smith’s case study of Nigerian HIV/AIDS NGOs directors illustrates the spread of corruption amongst non-government (2012). It also shows that corruption is not only necessary, but is good in many people’s eyes. He presents two cases that starkly contrast each other in terms of the nature of attitudes, self-interested and nepotistic. First is the case of Pius Okadigbo, whose benefit to the sick was largely elusive. Evidence of misappropriation is found in the Smith’s description of Okadigbo’s office:
“His office had all the accoutrements that I had long since become used to seeing in the offices of “big men” (and “big women”) in government and NGOs: a chilly air conditioner, a computer and printer, a phone (though cell phones have recently almost entirely displaced landlines), and a private refrigerator stocked with cold drinks. But in Pius’ office the furniture was more expensive than is typical, the refrigerator was bigger than usual, the computer seemed to be the latest laptop, the printer was a laser rather than inkjet, and Pius made a point of showing me that he had internet service (at the time widely available in internet cafes, but uncommon in private offices). He clearly enjoyed showing off his success.”
(Ibid, 477)
The other case Smith wrote about is the case of Naija Cares, who was corrupt in her own right. The difference between her and Pius, however, is that she would at least benefit the people close to her make advances they would ordinarily not be able to do (Ibid, 478). Thus, while she is a culprit in the perpetuating corruption, she is at least benefitting the community somewhat. She is operating outside the law but she provides for herself and her kin. This kind of behavior is commonly accepted in Nigeria (Smith 2007) as gaining an advantage in an environment that is not conducive to survival or prosperity within the strict parameters of the morally powerless law. This is especially true if you are helping others.
21 4.3.2 Crime and Vigilantes
Blatantly stepping outside the boundaries of the nation state’s laws is another symptom of the lack of ethical commitment to the nation state. While crimes like criminal fraud are thought to be largely harmless, the general acceptance of such crimes creates an atmosphere that lowers the threshold to commit violent crimes. The demand for justice answered in the form of vigilante groups - and their own complicity in criminality - shows that the move away from codified norms enforced by an impartial entity gives room for instability and violence. This is what this section aims to demonstrate.
419 is the legal code for criminal fraud under Nigerian law. The crime is so common that 419 has become a slang term for general deceptive behavior. Many people have received an email from a person in Nigeria claiming they needed assistance unfreezing money. This kind of email usually states that they either are a person from a big company, the wife of a deceased dictator, or someone else of financial magnitude. The idea is to trick the person receiving the email into wiring money to the scammers. The money is never seen again (Smith 2007, 28-52). This form of crime is evident of what level of damages are accepted. The targets of these scams are thought to be rich people from the developed world who will not miss their money anyways.
More dangerous and destabilizing are violent crimes such as robberies and murders in the process of those robberies. Figures are nearly impossible to find (Ibid, 175). However, it is clear that the prevalence of violent crime in the 1990s led to the formation of vigilante groups. The most famous one was called the Bakassi Boys (Ibid, 177; Maier 2000). Their popularity was such that they were even believed to be superheroes. This led people to draw comics about their supposed bringing of justice in the form of death to violent criminals (Smith 2007, 179). Eventually, they were exposed to be frauds who were not acting in the name of justice but being complicit in the same acts of supposed immorality they claimed to fight (Ibid, 187).
Criminals survive outside of the law. That is how they deal with the lack of provisions of public goods by the state. This brings with it more violence and further division amongst the Nigerian people. The call for extrajudicial justice gives way to more death and thus to the approximation of
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a ‘state of war’ (Hobbes 1998). In turn, more people flee into the realm of the primordial for morality and survival.
In summary, the widespread corruption is tolerated by the public because the nation is not unified; the secular nation state is still considered extractive to the people. Furthermore, it does not provide public safety. They find refuge from the violence and perceived immorality in primordial society. They break the secular laws in order to survive. Heads of state, police officers and regular people take advantage of this and the disinterest in state becomes heightened. Without a sense of belonging to the nation, there is no unified fight against the problems of violence and poverty. Nonetheless, people have entrenched the primordial divisions emphasized by colonization. The following sections cover this.
4.4 Primordial Affiliation
The previous section showed the disregard for the laws of the nation state and thus, only showed people’s interactions in the civic public. This does not suffice to show that the division between the two publics is responsible for the lack of secular nation state legitimacy. The following sections explain that the refuge in the primordial public is damaging to the entirety of Nigeria. The competition between primordial ethnoreligious nations to gain power and resources leads to an undesirable status-quo. Evidence of this is the violence among different religious groups, which I shall discuss first. Secondly, I show that ethnocentrism is also responsible for many of Nigeria’s issues. All of this further underscores the need for a national consciousness that can bring cooperation among the different peoples of Nigeria to change the situation for the better.
4.4.1 Religion
Many Nigerians deal with the perceived immorality of the secular state by turning to religion for moral guidance and safety. Before I continue, I must acknowledge that the definition of religion of itself is extremely debated and, therefore (Droogers 2009), I request that the readers please satisfy themselves with the following definition. For the purpose of this thesis, religion is defined as a concept that “[…] covers man’s relation to the entirety of existence. The characteristic feature
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of religion is conviction, and its contents a world conception which serves for the regulation of conduct” (Carus 1904, 770).
I discuss religion as a polarizing phenomenon and as a solidifier of division in Nigeria. Initially, I tell basic facts about religion in Nigeria. Two sections follow. Each of these sections describes a form of coping – tied to religion – with the perceived failure of the state, whether it be moral failure or failure to provide basic goods. The first describes the manifestation of religious violence, focusing mainly on the ‘Jama’atul Athol Sunnah Lidda’wati wall Jihad’, more widely known as the Boko Haram (Onuoha 2012). Then, the example of the Pentecostal church - as a social movement - will show that religions need not demand violence or discrimination, even when they are powerful.
To be clear, I am in no way attacking the religions, their organizations or their members based on what they believe. The investigation of the validity of any belief system is not the aim of this chapter. Neither do the examples in this section serve to favor the spread of any specific religion, or denomination thereof. Furthermore, I am not arguing that all religions are the same. This chapter is not about comparing religions. The importance of religions as a detrimental factor to Nigerian national identity is unrelated to the content or soundness of any belief system. One should also keep in mind that monotheistic religions discussed in the Nigerian context have traditional African elements in them (Marshall 2009), making them different from what Western people may think of when speaking of Islam or Christianity.
Most Nigerians are religious and the demographic is split roughly in half. Just over half of all Nigerians are some form of Muslim, while the other almost half is made up of the different Christian denominations, leaving a small margin of purely traditional African believers (Okpanachi 2009). While neither Islam or Christianity are indigenous to Nigeria - Islam came before Britain expanded its protectorate northwards (Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 168; Campbell 2013, 47). Christianity came with the colonists (Erivwo 1989). – they are currently functioning as a more powerful source of identity than national identity. This is a problem because it further divides the public.
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As discussed in the previous two sections, the state is failing to bring about conditions that are beneficial to the Nigerian people and is not a source of morality or authority. Thus, the people stay divided and entrenched in the primordial public, relying on religious organizations to help with basic provisions and a sense of moral security. This will become evident further in this section. In 2013, the mean years of schooling were roughly five years, the average life expectancy was 52, and a GNI per capita was the equivalent of just over 15 euros (2017 exchange rate) (National Human Development Report 2016, 15). Thus, it is no surprise that the people look for an alternative source for identity and help. Religious groups step in because the state is failing to pull the people out of poverty and what is seen as complete moral chaos (Marshall 2009; Smith 2007). The most obviously undesirable consequence is religious extremism.
4.4.1.1 Extremist Violence
Ninety percent of Nigerians are ready to be martyrs (BBC News 2004). Thus, religion has the power to mobilize in the name of what believers deem is right. In the first eleven years after the last military dictatorship, which ended in 1999, over 10,000 people died due to violence with religious background (Uzodoke and Maiangwa 2012). Since then, the violence has only become more prominent.
Since the supposed ascension of Abubakar Shekau to lead the Boko Haram there has been a spike in religious violence (Weeraratne 2015, 3; Campbell 2013). The Boko Haram alone killed almost 5,000 people in the first seven months of 2014 (Weeraratne 2015, 4) The reason is that the Boko Haram is increasingly targeting civilians in contrast to its original modus operandi. The dehumanization of their victims by manipulation of religion has enabled them to kill anyone who is defiant to them. The following statement by Shekau is evidence of this. “I enjoy killing anyone that God commands me to kill the way I enjoy killing chickens and ram” (BBC News 2014).
Granted, the concentration of this specific violence is in the Northern part of Nigeria and the capital Abuja (Campbell 2013, 129). It is spreading rapidly, however, and at the end of 2014 it was estimated that roughly three million people were under the control of the Boko Haram as the group had expanded past the borders of Nigeria and declared its own caliphate (Weeraratne 2015, 9).
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This is a clear manifestation of the weak state losing control. The absence of a unified Nigerian spirit allows this to happen. People giving up on the state to join a religious terrorist organization is an obvious undesirable condition, evident in lives claimed by the Boko Haram in the name of their extremist mandate.
While the religious do good for their communities and faith is a source of hope for many Nigerians, a danger presents itself in the strengthening of the religious because it can be easily used to dehumanize others. There is nothing wrong with having a religious identity; however, there should be a shared identity within a nation which supersedes that. Those who think a phenomenon like the Boko Haram are simply a result of a weak security problem need to realize that it is precisely the excessive use of force which has provided the Boko Haram with sympathizers to join their ranks. Indiscriminant state violence has given a justification for more extremist violence in a community that largely despises it (Weeraratne 2015, 18). The use of more force is not what is needed. The leaders of terrorist groups capitalize on the further alienation of the people by the state which is already perceived to be illegitimate. A strengthening of national identity and the provision of public goods by the state would be beneficial, so that a moral and financial vacuum is not left for extremist leaders to fill.
4.4.1.2 Social Movements for Hope
The least contentious manifestation of the turn to religion are movements like the Pentecostal church. The appeal of this moral alternative to the secular state is summarized by Ruth Marshall. “Capitalizing on the moral uncertainly engendered by the boom and bust, converts presented themselves as a new sort of citizen: honest, hardworking, trustworthy, and incorruptible” (2009, 114). She is describing the born-again members of the Pentecostal church in the 1990s. The image of the benevolent religious, which is a stark contrast to the corrupt government, still attracts many Nigerians. The Pentecostal church has had a massive revival since the 1970s (Ibid.). This revival is a symptom of the turn to the primordial public as described by Ekeh. Religion does not only have a hold on people in Nigeria because of the economic despair but also because religion is perceived to be a source of salvation. The religious dress modestly (thought a sign of being a good person) compared to the supposed immoral folks and they educate themselves. They are perceived
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to be all around good people. In some sense, being a born-again Pentecostal is even a fashion statement (Ibid.).
Religion is not by its nature divisive or destructive. In our context, it is quite clearly a polarizing phenomenon as it is so important to many Nigerians and the groups are understood as moral nations within the immoral nation. It gives people hope (Maier 2000, 265). People are willing to die for their religion by combatting the amoral state and other religions. This demonstrates the need for an identity in Nigeria that supersedes religious boundaries and can bring everyone together. While the secular state is clearly failing, religion does not seem to be an alternative national identity because while it does not necessarily profess violence, it is used to mobilize Nigerians against each other. Historically, this has been done to dehumanize those who hold different beliefs or no beliefs to justify the use of violence. Violence or the threat thereof is then used to extract resources and deprive the objectified of the same (Agbiboa 2013, 9). It is nearly impossible to get someone to kill another person for no other reason than their identity without dehumanizing them (Grossman 1996). Recognizing that religious difference is not as important as it appears to be for those who are hopeless, is key to curbing the violence and bringing people together.
4.4.2. Ethnicity and Regionalism
As if the rampant corruption and religious divisions were not enough, Nigeria is home to major ethnolinguistic diversity. “There are three major ethnic groups in Nigeria: (a) the Igbo in the southeast, (b) the Hausa-Fulani in the north, and (c) the Yoruba in the southwest” (Agbiboa 2013, 10). These three major ethnic groups do not make up the entirety of the population – only about two thirds – and are supplemented by minorities, who are not to be discounted from the political landscape. Furthermore, all the groups mentioned can be further divided into dozens of linguistic groups, making up hundreds of variations (Jinadu 1985; Agbiboa 2013).
Ethnic diversity does not necessarily present a problem. It is the political mobilization along the regional ethnolinguistic lines that creates problems. Similar to the mobilization by appeal to religious belief, the creation of a political identity linked to ethnicity has a strong pull. One’s kin is believed to be more reliable than the state. The colonial British were aware of this and largely created the divisions between the different ethnic groups (Agbiboa 2013, 13), labeling them tribes.
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The most obvious example is the Yoruba ‘tribe’. It was a completely artificial creation and “[Prior to the British mission…] Yoruba as a political unit or identity was nonexistent” (Ibid.). The fusion of ethnicities to make a larger one was used to gain political relevance. The Hausa- Fulani and the Igbo followed suit, and after a short unification to expel the British, they turned against each other and went on to dominate their respective regions (Ibid.).
The divide and conquer tactic of the British empire has had damaging effects besides the extraction of resources and exploitation of the Nigerian people until this very day. The first major ethnic crisis was the attempted secession of the Igbo people to create a Biafran state in 1967 (Campbell 2013; Cunliffe-Jones 2010), an endeavor which left 2 million people dead (Agbiboa 2013, 17). However, the mobilization by ethnicity has been the norm from the very beginning of Nigerian independence as the disparity of resources left politicians to band their ethnic coalitions together to gain power, leaving the rest of the country behind.
Evidence of this was the makeup of the first three Nigerian political parties. The first party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), was a mixed party (Davidson 1992, 111). Another early Nigerian party was the Northern People’s Congress (NPC). It was a party that was mainly made up of Northern Hausa-Fulani, taking the first institutional step towards ethnolinguistic regionalism (Eze et al. 2015, 114). The second party to embark on the path of ethnolinguistic regionalism was the Action Group, a party mainly made up of Yorubas from the Southwest (Davidson 1992, 111).
The creation of these parties along regional and ethnic lines was ideal for politicians. The people in each of the large ethnic groups felt they were in a vulnerable position (Suberu 2001), making it nearly impossible to band together under the national banner. The state was not seen as reliable, moral or strong enough to spread resources equally among the civic nation. The supposed disparity of resources enabled the politicians to fear monger, claiming they would get the people of their groups the resources they needed. Cooperation between ethnic groups was thought not to be a worthwhile pursuit. The idea is that one takes care of kin and does not bother with the rest of the Nigerian people (Smith 2007, 11).
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In the case of Nigerian resource contestation, we are talking about the struggle for oil (Maier 2000). Nigeria is one of the most oil rich countries in the world. For some, the stakes are worth killing for. What intensifies the desire to dominate the other groups completely is the fact that oil makes up for over ninety percent of all Nigerian exports (Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 129). If you control the oil, you control the economy, the wealth, and thereby the country.
Even though the origins of the ethnic groupings are artificial, it does not make them any less real. The following captures the reality of the discriminatory and hostile feelings among the different groups which hinders national unity and prosperity in Nigeria:
‘“A lot of the landlords were Igbos, and everybody I’ve talked to, and certainly I felt a little bit of this after the war, felt that Igbos look down on Ogoni people,” Saro- Wiwa’s eldest son, Ken Wiwa Jr., told me in an interview in London. “The whole chauvinism made a distinct impression on the Ogonis. Ogonis were almost like slaves on their own land.”’
(Ibid, 84)
These ethnic divisions yield little understanding of national interest and sharing of power in Nigeria. This allows for the ascension of demagogues. The people tolerate corruption because national political power is seen as a tool to get resources for one’s kin. The rulers who have been pocketing Nigerian state funds live lavishly, however, and leave little to those they claim to champion. The following is evidence of this. The Northern Hausa- Fulani have been the most successful ethnocentric politicians, though the North is the poorest and most violent area in the country (Campbell 2013, 12).
4.5 Conclusion
I showed that people take refuge from the extractive amoral state and that these refuges are criminality, religion and ethnocentrism. Furthermore, I have shown that the disinterest, lack of belonging to the Nigerian state has further enabled the corrupt government and violent non-state actors, nearly regressing to a ‘state of war’ where the state has neither the monopoly on violence nor legitimacy from any other source (Hobbes 1998). It is the abandonment of the government and
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the lack of congruency of the political and national unit which allows the decay of the state and violence in the public sphere.
Thus, secular nation state legitimacy remains unachieved. Without a unified spirit the problems of violence and poverty go unanswered and are amplified. The capital to finance the solution to solve all of Nigeria’s problems exists. Nigeria boasts over 100 billionaires who live in safety and clearly benefit from the real financial potential of the nation state (Campbell 2013, 13), yet the population lives with just enough or not enough to survive by legal means. This disparity in wealth is the source of the criminality and the corruption so embedded in Nigerian society that the criminal code for fraud – 419 - has become an omnipresent slang term for any sort of shady behavior (Ibid; Maier 2000; Smith 2007; Cunliffe-Jones 2010). The people are occupied with a free-for-all for the scraps that are left by the billionaires. This distracts them from the fact that they are being neglected. It is the greed of those who have the wealth and power in Nigeria which is responsible for the corrupt behavior of the citizens who are simply trying to survive. The people are not happy about the spread of corruption (Smith 2007, 225), but the cost of fighting the corruption for the average citizen is too high. When things like refusing to pay a bribe at a checkpoint can get you shot in the head (Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 21), the risks seem too costly unless you have a high chance of success. Divided as Nigeria is right at the present, the problems will not be solved. Collective moral outrage is needed to make corruption too dangerous for the elites. This tool cannot be conceived if people let themselves be manipulated into division based on whatever differences there may or may not be. Nigerian nationalism is something that will bring about a demand for change. Apathy and acceptance of chaos - which is what the turn to the divisions of the primordial is - leaves everyone worse off as violence and poverty persists.
If people only care about their kin, then situations such as the onslaught of the people in Niger Delta will continue. The people there have been fighting for preservation of the purity of their waters, of their homes, and of their lives for decades (Maier 2010; Campbell 2013). The abuse continues. People who are paid off to kill people in the next village comply because they need to eat. They have to survive this way as long as the government fights on behalf of the oil companies and corrupt politicians. (Maier 2010). Meanwhile the rest of Nigeria stands by. Politicians in Nigeria know that division is what keeps them rich and they learned this from their predecessors.
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There was reason behind the British pursuing a policy of divide and conquer in their colonies (Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 73): A divided society is a playground for the greedy.
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5. Chapter 2: Nations, Nationalism, and Collective Consciousness
The last chapter establishes that there is a disconnect between the people of Nigeria and their alien government. Furthermore, the lack of public goods provided does not counter the historic disconnect because the state has failed to bring safety and prosperity. I also established that this disconnect allows for Nigerian civil society to devolve into a ethnocentric free-for-all which flings Nigeria into an undesirable status-quo. In this chapter I argue for the importance of Nigerian nationalism to bring about conditions favorable to the population of Nigeria and to restore secular nation state legitimacy. This will highlight the need for a vehicle that can bring about the conditions necessary to establish such national consciousness. The argument is made up of four parts. First, I discuss civic nationalism as a concept rather than an ideology, combatting conventional liberal attitudes towards the term along the way. Then, I briefly discuss Indonesia’s history and current situation to show that a unified populous can have a positive effect on prosperity, illustrating the need for civic nationalism in Nigeria. I also discuss the concept of a nation, which is important because it demonstrates that Nigeria is and should and should be recognized by its people as a legitimate nation. I finish the chapter by showing that Nigeria is not without its nationalist tendencies. However, a connection between the different Nigerian primordial groups is needed to bring about nationalism and the collective demand for safety and prosperity.
5.1 Civic Nationalism
Nationalism is a term that triggers imageries of hate, exclusion, racism and murder. I am in no way referring to this kind of nationalism. Ernest Gellner wrote that “Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (1983, 1). I do not think this definition suffices. The concept of nationalism I am referring to is a love for one’s community that supersedes any kind of interest, and demands sacrifice (Anderson 2006, 144). Civic nationalism is not by its nature exclusive. It expects contribution in return for protection. “[…] from the start the nation was conceived in language, not in blood, and that one could be ‘invited into’ the imagined community. Thus today, even the most insular nations accept the
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principle of naturalization (wonderful word!), no matter how difficult in practice they make it” (Ibid, 145).
Exclusion is not an inherent part of civic nationalism, it was simply made to be so. Since the civic nation is a community hoping for a joint, prosperous future, things like racism in fact only work against the nationalist principle. A true nationalist anywhere would be failing his community immensely by excluding those who bring potential benefit to the same. Because the pragmatic nationalists realize - as those who champion dialogical Ubuntu – that “The stranger or traveler is appreciated not necessarily because they possess subjective superiority, but in-as-much as they bestow on the community epistemic access to fresh ideas” (Eze 2017, 100). In this sense, it would be counterproductive to be exclusionary because it would not benefit the civic nation in its pursuit of greatness. “[…] nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of eternal contaminations, transmitted from the origins of time through an endless sequence of loathsome copulations: outside history” (Anderson 2006, 149). Thus, racism has its origins in separating nobility from the common man (Ibid.). Blood lineage was emphasized to justify the distribution of feudal power. It was a way to separate those of supposedly divinely ordained lineage and the noble from the serf.
Therefore, ethno-nationalism is contradictory in itself. The modern nation state is sovereign because it is an empowerment of those previously ruled by those belonging to the “hierarchical dynastic realm” (Ibid, 7), breaking down the barriers set by genetic difference. Thus, it is contradictory to say that civic nationalism equates to racism in any way, though one must admit that the history of ethno-nationalism has given doubt to the inclusiveness of the term. Nationalism is only limited in the sense that even the most pluralistic nations have borders, however elastic they may be (Ibid.).
Popular rule or democracy are not necessary conditions for civic nationalism. What civic nationalism requires is an imagined community, limitation, and sovereignty (Ibid.). The nation state has the right and obligation in the mind of the people to bring about greatness, which is felt in the everyday life of those subjected to the laws of the state. It is felt in their safety and in their prosperity.
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5.2 Indonesia and Nigeria
The last chapter established that there is a disconnect between the people of Nigeria and their government. It showed that the primordial communities remained more important than the state because the state is considered extractive and does not provide basic public goods. I briefly present a contrast to the Nigerian case: Indonesia.
The Indonesian case is relevant because it is strikingly similar to the Nigerian one. Even the dates of the first coups and end of dictatorial rule are within a year of each other. Indonesia was a colony, an artificially unified territory. Number four globally in terms of population, Indonesia has multiple major religions and more than 200 languages are spoken there (Ibid, 121). Therefore, there is ample potential for division along ethnoreligious lines.
A big difference in their history is the level of resistance to the colonial occupier. The Nigerians never united against the British. More importantly perhaps, is the fact that there was not a true fight for independence. The British left somewhat voluntarily (Cunliffe-Jones 2010). The British worked together with the proponents of Nigerian nationalism on the ‘Nigeria Project’ leading up to independence (Campbell 2013, 5) The movement for Nigerian independence was thus not a widespread phenomenon, or an extremely violent struggle that brought cohesion to the Nigerian people. The story in Indonesia was vastly different and shows that nationalism, a collective demand for national greatness, is crucial to positive developments. The Indonesians and the Dutch had had very violent confrontations since initial contact, through which a feeling of national togetherness was forged.
‘In Java in the 1820s the Dutch encountered fierce revolts. Then, in 1870, when they sought to add the province of Ache to the colony, they faced awesome resistance. And, in the end, the Dutch only took control of the province after a 30-year war that cost the lives of 37,000 soldiers fighting for the Dutch, and more than 100,000 lives in total. Even then, they required a force of 35’000 men to hold their hard-won prize, part of a 70,000-strong force required to maintain their grip on Indonesia as a whole […] The comparison of the force the Dutch needed to take control of Indonesia with the 2,000- 3,000 men required to take Nigeria- at scant loss of British life-is a striking one indeed’
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The current Indonesian people always saw the Dutch as their enemy. This lead them to form Indonesian parties to resist the Dutch occupation as early as 1920 (Ibid.).
Indonesians continued to have collective moral outrage. The fight against the Dutch brought the Indonesians together. The struggle for independence was the vehicle that brought about
nationalism, which demanded the betterment of their lives and help from the government. This is why the Indonesia has prospered in comparison to Nigeria: Indonesia has “[…] a literacy rate of nearly 90 percent instead of 60 percent, and an average life expectancy of 70 years, not 45 years” (Ibid, 185). The violent struggle against an occupier is not a necessary condition for the fostering of a nationalist feeling; however, it can serve as a vehicle for the unification of a people as it did in the Indonesian case.
While Suharto, the last Indonesian dictator, was corrupt, he still was forced to raise the standard of living steadily (Ibid, 184). Even that was not enough for the unified Indonesia. He was forced out of office in 1998 because he was not living up to the standards expected by the population. It had led to nationwide protests (Ibid, 185). Thus, a feeling of togetherness which demands excellence from the state is present in Indonesia. This is the importance of nationalism. The demand for prosperity and safety is key, whether the state is democratic or not is irrelevant. What matters is that the political unit acts in the interest of the members of the civic nation.
We can see that a unified civic nation demands the betterment of their standard of living. Indonesia got their affirmation of the nation from their resistance to the Dutch. The affirmation of unity then led them to keep demanding the betterment of their society in later stages of their nation-state. They had a transformation, expelling undesired alien administrators to make their own nation-state. Nigeria never had a vehicle such as the violent struggle against occupation to bring about a fusion of variety into a shared national consciousness. The alienation of the Nigerian secular state does not mean Nigeria is not a legitimate nation-state and cannot have its own nationalism, however. Nigeria just needs a vehicle to bring about shared national
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From reading the last section, one may think that a bloody revolution against the alien government of Nigeria is the key to forging collective consciousness. This is not necessary or desirable, however, as we are operating under the assumption that the whole point of politics is collectively avoiding violent death (Hobbes 1998). If the betterment and preservation of lives was not the goal, I might as well have argued for the creation of nation states within Nigeria – Yoruba, Igbo, etc. – as is sought after by some (Cunliffe-Jones 2010, 177). The problem with pursuing the paths of self-determination for each of these nations is the potential for incredible bloodshed. The Biafran war should serve as a lesson that the stakes are too high. The different regions in Nigeria depend on each other too much to split (Ibid.). Furthermore, an ethnocentric government in each region would open the door for more problems as seen with the increase in violence since further divisions in the federal system (Eze et al. 2015, 116).
The counterargument demanding partition holds that the numerous ethnic conflicts of the post-colonial states come from the fact that the territories which later became the African nation states were artificially created in the Berlin Conference of 1885 (Maier 2000, 10). The same misconception is made about states in the Middle East and elsewhere. Though the carving-up of territories by Western powers completely disregarded and was often not informed by the make-up of the populations involved, the artificiality of nation states is irrelevant to their reality. Even if the population does not feel to be one, the nation state still exists. It is the enduring civic dedication of those who do believe in the nation state, even if they are few, which affirms its validity.
Thus, the reason Nigeria is fractured to the point where secular nation state legitimacy is questioned is not because of the artificiality of the nation. It is the emphasis on division which hinders Nigerian prosperity. It is the division between the two publics that Ekeh described which leads to the questioning of Nigerian secular legitimacy (1975). British colonial policy highlighted and even created differences in ethnicity to keep the people focused on them. This has had a lasting effect (Achebe 1983, 27). What detracts from the belief in the nation state is not its artificial origin, but its perpetuation of the extraction and alienation.
