Benue State and the Quest for Development:
Confronting the Curse of Ethnic Disunity and Intolerance (2)
Samuel Enyi Otsapa. samuelotsapa@gmail.com
I am an ardent football fan but since February 2020; owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, football games all over the world, except in a few countries like Belarus, were suspended (the German Bundesliga resumed on 16th May 2020 with games played in empty stadiums) and my new found favorite pastime is watching old boxing matches. One evening, I tuned to a boxing channel and there was an ongoing bout between a white boxer and a black boxer. Although both boxers are not superstars (I do not know them), I subconsciously took a liking for the black boxer and wishing that he wins. Prayed, but why did I immediately prefer the black boxer when I do not know him or his white opponent? Realizing my unjustified and unfortunate bias, I was to later reprimand myself with “may the best boxer win” and at that moment it dawned on me that my first disposition was because human beings tend to take a liking to or have a soft spot for people of their own race. I am a black man and wanted the black boxer to win. If I am a white man, it is likely that I would want to see the white boxer win.
What is the point been made here? As human beings, we are easily and quickly drawn to liking and associating with people who share one or all of racial, cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious and physical attributes with us. For most of us, it goes to show that as human beings we are always conscious of like-people because of the learned attachments we have developed about these human variables. To do otherwise, and which is the better alternative of the two, we have to intentionally train and discipline ourselves so that we can effectively divorce our minds and behavior from being guided only by these consciousness in our interaction and relations with people within and outside our spheres of influence. This is the purpose of this article.
At this point, it becomes important to reiterate (and one can never say this too many times) that being conscious of one’s race, ethnic group, religion, culture, etc and identifying with one’s kith and kin is not a bad thing to do. What is bad, and as already mentioned in our previous discussion on this issue, is when ethnic profiling and stereotyping and nepotism becomes the guiding torchlight for every of our dealings. Unfortunately there are many people in Benue State, both among the leadership class and the followership, whose engines grinds only on the altar of profiling and generalizations about the ‘others’ as opposed to ‘us’. These kinds of people are extreme tribalists and ethnic champions and their activities, on a state-wide scale, are anti-development and anti-progress.
Claude Ake in his magnum opus, A Political Economy of Africa, argued that tribalism is not altogether a negative practice because it has some economic advantages. According to him tribalism “provides access to ‘important’ people for villagers and the unemployed seeking jobs in the cities; it fills to a considerable extent the gap left by the lack of a social security system in most of Africa; and it serves the economic and political interests of the African bourgeoisie by promoting solidaristic ties across class lines.” Ake succinctly ends his argument on the importance of tribalism by stating that “our failure to take full account of the economic underpinnings of tribalism has also been detrimental to the effort to solve the ‘problem of tribalism’. He argues, and I agree, that tribalism is a problem only to the extent that we are yet to understand its importance so that we can deploy its usefulness and benefits, appropriately.
Indeed, there are economic gains – or benefits if you like, of tribalism because through it many people have gotten job employments and political appointments that have helped provide for them, their families and their dependants. In Benue State (through tribalism), many young people with the help of their tribal/ethnic group big men and women who occupy important political offices have gotten admission and employment into the Benue State University, the Benue State Polytechnic, the state colleges of education and scholarships to study abroad. This example is but one of the many economic advantages of tribalism that Ake makes a case for – but this is different from the extreme and negative form of tribalism which creates enmity, disunity, intolerance and conflict among and between the ethnic groups in a heterogeneous state like Benue State.
It is also important for us to understand that the extreme form of tribalism is favoritism – and that it is this that raises tensions and conflicts between and among intra-ethnic and interethnic groups in Benue State. For example, the last recruitment into the Benue State Internal Revenue Service (BIRS) generated a lot of hues and cries because 80% of the successful candidates were from one part of the state; favouring a particular ethnic group. So while the others ethnic groups complained about being sidelined. It is this kind of situation that fans the ambers of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic disunity, hatred, division and intolerance in the state which ultimately hinders meaningful state-wide development and progress.
Thus, while we preach against intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic disunity and intolerance in Benue State in particular and Nigeria in general in the manner under the scope of this article, we must also understand that the opposite is not to cut oneself from one’s own people or desist from helping one’s people. The equilibrium is for us to not become extremists – and fanatics. So while it is wrong to engage in activities that encourage inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic disunity and intolerance, particularly in a way that makes us see our own tribe or clan as superior to others, we must also not become cut off from our own people forgetting that charity still begins at home.
How then does one strike a balance between the two? It is in first seeing everyone as a human being, before being from Benue State and before being from a tribe/ethnic group. Thus, love for humanity must become our major, but not the only, preoccupation such that when we occupy political office or in a position where we can assist the unemployed get jobs, we do not give every job slot to only people from our tribe or clan but also consider others from other tribes/ethnic groups. But importantly, we must ensure that whosoever is given a job, whether from our own tribe or not, he or she is qualified to perform on the job. Doing this is very important because one of the main albatross in the civil service and government departments and agencies is that inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic profiling, instead of candidates or workers qualification and competence, determines who gets what, when and how – and so round pegs and placed into square holes, which crashes down the performance and productivity levels of the state’s workforce.
As already highlighted in the first part of this discussion, this writer has noticed that the section of Benue people, whether ordinary citizens or leaders, who hold tight to their tribal/ethnic group sentiments against other tribes/ethnic groups and the lot who are active ethnic champions and profilers are mostly individuals who were born and raised within the state. This stance is empirical because this writer interacted with many Benue people using the participant observation instrument of gathering data to arrive at this conclusion. The opposite is that Benue citizens who were born and raised in other states within Nigeria or outside the country but now living in Benue State rarely engage and participate in the primitive profiling of other indigenes of the state from the angle of where they come from.
To help the next generation of Benue sons and daughters cut the unwanted umbilical cord of ethnic intolerance and division, we need to catch them young. One of the ways to achieving this is for Benue parents living within the state to expose their children to other states within Nigeria or other countries. During midterm breaks or long holidays, Benue parents are encouraged to send their children outside Benue State so that they can meet and interact with children and people from other ethnic groups in Nigeria. Traveling is part of formal education, so these children, the next generation of Benue State, would come back better exposed to the world around them and recognizing that while it is good to attach to ones tribe/ethnic group, holding tightly to tribal/ethnic sentiments and generalizations about other tribes/ethnic groups is now outdated, unproductive and thus should be discarded. For example, this writer is of the Idoma tribe but he is a pan-Nigerian because he was born in Kaduna State and raised in different states in the country. This is why today, he has friends who are Tiv, Idoma, Etulo, Igede, Atyap, Berom, Yoruba, Itsekiri, Efik, Fulani, Igbo, Jaba, Afizere, Mada, Kanuri and Nizom. The average Benue indigene living within the state, both young and old, have most of their friends from within their own tribe/ethnic group and this is the reason why many are bottled up in the “them-against-us” mindset that plants and fertilizes ethnic disunity and intolerance which ultimately slows down the pace of development since all hands are rarely on deck and in agreement.
Benue State has abundant material and human resources to become one of the most developed states in Nigeria but her people are allowing ethnic disunity and intolerance to undermine and slow its pace towards growth and development. Benue people must, even with its benefits, now purge and deliver themselves from overindulgence and emphasis on tribal/ethnic group sentiments – and begin to looking people from a humanistic perspective while also embracing their own ethnic and tribal peculiarities. This is important because development cannot occur nor can it be sustained in a society where all the structures are not performing their given functions, owing to strong ties to tribal/ethnic and clannish sentiments and generalizations.
This generation of Benue owe it to the next generation of Benue sons and daughters a united, developed and prosperous state; a state devoid of primitive ethnic and tribal stereotyping; a state where merit, competence and capacity trumps mediocrity and “man know man”; a state where no one is judged by their surnames but by their personality; a state where although her citizens embrace their ethnic diversities and peculiarities, they do not allow tribal/ethnic/clannish sentiments overshadow reason; a state where everyone is given an equal playing field without undue government support for one ethnic group over others; a state where justice and equity is the common norm; a state where tolerance and love for each other is the rule rather than the exception; a state where although there is intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic disagreements and quarrels, they do not degenerate into hate and violence. We owe this and more to the next generation of Benue sons and daughters and the time to start is yesterday; the time to develop Benue State is yesterday. We are certainly trailing behind time in Benue State.
