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NIGERIA AND PROBLEM OF MANAGING DIVERSITY
In the face of renewed uproar over the appointments made by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu since he resumed office as President of Nigeria, the spotlight is again clearly and harshly on Nigeria’s federal arrangement and the difficulties of managing diversity in a country riven by ethnic and religious politics.
It was always going to be a difficult arrangement and so it has proven to be. Nigeria’s colonial masters ignored numerous warning signs and red flags to amalgamate the Northern and Southern protectorates to form Nigeria in 1914. More than a hundred and ten years down the line, the fissure which first⁶ flexed its enormous muscles in 1966 and 1967–1970, continue to power many of Nigeria’s fault lines .
Nigeria has made it a point of campaign to emphasize the unity in its diversity and just how much it can harness that diversity for development. While talk has been easy, harnessing it has proven far more difficult.
Getting Nigeria’s disparate zones and regions to click together in the chorus of Nigeria’s development has proven a forbidden task, however. In a country where everything is viewed through the lens of religion and provincialism, integration has been very difficult.
Nigerians have not been able to properly gel together for their development because of nepotism. Many Nigerians think only along ethnic, religious and regional lines. When they bring this mentality to the national table, dialogue and development is necessarily impeded.
To counter criticisms of the president’s lopsided appointments and seeming nod to the pitfalls of nepotism, some of the president’s more confrontational supporters have pointed out that his predecessor also packed his government with people from a certain section of the country giving particularly short shrift to fairness and federal character.
There is certainly some truth on the tongues of those who argue like this. There were certainly loud howls of hypocrisy and nepotism when former president, Muhammadu Buhari was in power. He was severally accused of giving undue and unjustifiable preference to the North, especially his Fulani stock.
The conversation around political appointment and political appointees has always been one to drive divisions in Nigeria. It has always been dogged by controversy and accusations of unfairness.
Who are those advising the president? What is behind this clear but disturbing predilection to concede many key government positions to people of one ethnic stock? Should government positions ever be used to settle political merchants and cronies, who would then most likely put sycophancy above performance while in office? Even if that has always been the tradition in Nigeria, shouldn’t a forward-thinking president like Mr. President be at the forefront of discarding that odious tradition?
Nigeria has colossal potential as a country. But as experience and economics have shown, potentials are never nearly enough. The country must take decisive steps to integrate all its different parts into one cohesive unit. To achieve this, nepotism, cronyism and all the vices that poison politics while driving people apart and derailing development must be eschewed.
Appointments into sensitive political positions should never be used to reward one’s kinsmen or for whatever reason save merit.
Nigeria’s federal character principle, which is such a key prescription of the constitution, must be fully respected so that Nigeria does not find itself grappling any time soon with a crisis it may not be able to handle.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
