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Some of the false problematiques put before the recently concluded Jonathan National Conference (JNU) are reconciling citizenship and indigeneship and creating grazing corridors and reserves across the country for cattle raised by nomadic Fulani cattle farmers. Since the advent of post-military rule, Nigeria has been introducing complications to political discourse through creation of words that ordinarily have no meaning in other democracies and federations. One of such words is settlers in contradistinction to indigenes. Establishing a committee on citizenship and indigeneship at the Jonathan National Conference underscores the confusion in political leaders’ understanding of the concept of federalism in a post-colonial State like Nigeria.

In countries that are invaded by colonialists, such as Nigeria, the phenomenon of post-colonial indigenous populations is rife. Without mincing words, Nigeria is an assemblage of indigenous peoples assembled through amalgamation into a colony that later developed into a state-nation after 1960. It is therefore unimaginative for those ruling the country to be worrying about existence of indigenous populations, as there are no other populations in the country. In invaded or colonized countries with settlers from foreign countries, such as Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, to name a few, indigenous peoples are endowed with another identity separate from regular citizenship, to the extent that such populations have two types of identity: citizenship at the national level and indigeneship at the community level. Such classification allows for special recognition for native or aboriginal populations swamped or swallowed by invading groups through conquest or colonization.

But in Nigeria, indigenous populations in all parts of the country have a new layer of recognition: citizenship of the entire country, to tell them apart from people in other countries. Being Nigerians in the post-colonial state entitles such citizens to various rights and responsibilities that include the right to vote and be voted for, to live in any part of the country, to own passport to enable them travel out of the country, and the duty to pay taxes and be called upon to defend the country when the need arises.

Asking delegates to reflect on the relationship between citizenship and indigeneship smacks of heating the polity avoidably, as citizens themselves do not complain about the distinction between general citizenship and specific indigeneship that exist in every part of the country. Members of all ethnic groups in Nigeria share the following aspirations identified by the UN and the World Bank as characteristics of indigenous peoples: a) Self-identification as indigenous people at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member; b) historical continuity with pre-colonial societies; c) strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources; d) Distinct languages, cultures, and beliefs; e) Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities; f) the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions.

It must be the recognition of the peculiar status of post-colonial Nigeria as a state occupied by indigenous peoples that encouraged the committee on Citizenship and Indigeneship at the Jonathan Conference to state that an indigene is one whose parents or grandparents were born in a community within today’s Nigeria before 1914, the year of the creation of Nigeria through the assemblage of various ethnic groupings in the geographical space called Nigeria today. Similarly, it must be the recognition of the need to nurture a multiethnic federation that enabled the same committee to recommend that the right of every Nigerian to migrate to and live in any part of the country must not be abridged by any constitution. For a Nigerian citizen to enjoy the full rights of citizenship anywhere he or she chooses to live within the country, he or she does not need to aspire to become an indigene of any specific ethnic group, other than his or her own native community. In other words, being able to make an aboriginal claim to any territory within Nigeria is not necessary for citizens to enjoy or express their citizenship fully in any part of Nigeria.

Correspondingly, being a Nigerian citizen should not negate the right at the subnational level for ancestral owners of a territory to throw away their beliefs and traditions and their right to identify with other members of their natal communities. Citizens desiring to belong in toto to any specific ethnic group other than their own should have the right to do so by becoming assimilated into that community. Until such persons become assimilated to the extent that indigenes of the community accept them as members, they remain simply as individual residents in such communities with unfettered rights to live without threat or discrimination in such communities. But it is senseless for any constitution to seek to create another layer of recognition for settlers with rights to establish and sustain a counter-culture including creating parallel traditional political systems within communities in which they are just legal residents.

What those seeking to serve as framers of Nigeria’s constitution in future need to do is to accept the peculiar circumstances of the country as a multiethnic post-colonial state in which no group, regardless of how numerically strong or politically powerful, has the right to migrate to ethnic communities with the intention to dominate or intimidate traditional members of such communities or take over their ancestral lands. There have been too many inter-ethnic tensions in various parts of the country, particularly in Plateau and other states in the northern part of the country that are traceable to conflicts between indigenes and so-called settlers. It is the view of Ooduapathfinder that the move to erase indigenous cultures from the country’s social and political experience and the talk about finding a space and voice for settlers within indigenous communities is not just a distraction from the main challenges of operating a truly democratic multi-ethnic federal system. It also smacks of an attempt by certain ethnic groupings to dominate and drive pre-colonial indigenous communities out of their space. A recurrent vocabulary during the era of colonialism is settler colony, a situation in which groups from other countries forcibly settled into indigenous African communities and started claiming sole or joint ownership of such communities. Apartheid South Africa was one such country and Kenya and Rhodesia before decolonization were others to name a few. There should be no group referred to as settlers in any part of Nigeria. Since Nigerians have the right to move to and live in any part of the country, Nigerians who choose to move out of their natal communities to other communities within the country should be treated as residents of such communities.

This must mean that such Nigerians are guaranteed their rights to live peacefully in such communities, whether they choose to be integrated into the local cultures or not. Where they choose to belong to the local communities of their residence after assimilating into the ethos of such communities, they should not need any constitutional support to do so, beyond their right to live in any part of the country they so desire. The only support such persons should need is the acceptance by the community of such citizens as sharing willingly and without pre-conditions in the culture of their adopted community. No constitutional effort needs to be made to find special position or recognition for settlers or Nigerians who relocate to other communities. No group referring to itself as settlers should be encouraged to create counter cultures to subvert the communities they have chosen to move to from their own natal communities. Federalism is about shared governance and shared sovereignty and the sooner framers of our constitution realize how to create protocols for sharing governance and sovereignty between national and sub-national levels, the better for the entire country.

Citizenship ,indigenship
The only thing that matter is :

1I am proudly yoruba
2 I am an omoluabi .
3 I detest crime .
4I detest disorder
5 I detest what the two fraudulent religion have done in/to my homeland
6 odua states in the only place I care about.
7 I will be stand up to be counted to preserve our culture,values ,homeland and way of life.

That conference was the conference of Ahmadu bello 's descendants and their southern minions.
Those whose very existence depend on feeding on their own people and other people .

All na wash. By 2020 if Nigeria still exist we will be running the economy of all regions via PROXY