If your answer is your ethnic group, then you don’t need any further proof to know that you are ethnocentric and chauvinistic. Bigotry may also be part of your persona. Ironically, a person who believes and even professes that his or her culture is the best may also regularly claim to be detribalised, free-minded, and non-prejudiced.

The greatest threat to world peace is the belief that one’s religion or culture is the best and that it must be foisted on others willy-nilly. It has been the worst challenge to Nigeria’s unity and peace even from pre-independence days. Sometimes, it manifests in violence and bloodshed, but most times it manifests in hatred, intolerance and distrust, which are no less dangerous than physical violence.

Even from seemingly educated minds, you regularly hear childish and narrow-minded comments like: “The Yoruba are the most civilised or most cultured in Nigeria;” “The Igbo are blessed by God and the best in Nigeria”; “The Hausa/Fulani are the most dignified people and stand ahead of others;” The Niger Deltans are the most endowed and wisest people in Nigeria.” And the person in turn castigates the other ethnic groups as uncivilised, uncultured, uneducated, uncouth, dumb, and barbaric, while justifying it with a statement like: “This is a simple statement of fact. If you don’t accept it, then you don’t like to hear the truth.”

A tribalist can pretend, but he can never hide what is inside him. It manifests at the least “provocation.” A tribalist or sufferer of xenophobia, when angered by Osagie, responds by attacking Osagie’s people (village, town, state, ethnic group, country, race, continent, or religion). His comments usually contain: “You people.”

But whatever Osagie has done was not a collective action of whatever group he comes from. Everyone from that group cannot be like Osagie. Even if there may be many from Osagie’s group who act like Osagie, there must be some others (even if in the minority) who do not act like Osagie. Tarring Osagie’s group with the same brush is unjust, myopic, uncultured and uneducated.

Education and travelling open people’s eyes. An open mind makes one understand other people and see things from their perspectives. For example, a close-minded Nigerian will think that the Hindu man in India is foolish for not killing the cow or eating its meat. Such a person would think of how tasty and delicious the suya, kilishi, and pepper-soup, made from beef, are, and then wonder why a sane person ever think of denying himself such delicacy from such a large domestic animal.

In the same vein, a myopic Yoruba or Hausa who prostrates or kneels down to greet an elder would see an Igbo man or Efik man who stands to greet elders as lacking in respect, while the Igbo or Efik man would see such a Yoruba or Hausa as blasphemous for giving to a mortal an honour only reserved for God. To the Yoruba, greeting an elder without prostrating, kneeling or at least bowing or curtsying is a sign of ill-breeding. But to someone from the old Eastern Nigeria, such acts are reserved only for God. An elder is to be properly greeted, but prostrating or kneeling down is for God alone: not even a king deserves such divine courtesies.

Another example is the bride price. A Nigerian whose people don’t pay any bride price to marry may look down on those who do so as buying their wives. But that is why cultures differ. For example, an Igbo woman whose bride price has not been paid feels miserable and cheap. She may have 10 children with the man, but in the eyes of the man’s kinsmen, the woman has not been married: the two are just cohabiting. It does not matter if they are married in the registry or church. It does not even matter how much the bride price is: it can be N100 – which was the amount my father-in-law took from the money I presented to her- or it can be N20,000. You can give your in-laws a car or a house, but if you have not done the rite of paying the bride price, all the children delivered by your so-called wife actually belong to her father, because you have not married her. Such rigorous practices in Nigerian cultural marriages make marriages more enduring.

Another example is the act of whipping a suitor by the Fulani. You may frown on it but that is their culture. To them, it is a noble part of their culture. They may actually look down at your so-called more civilised culture as that of weaklings who cannot endure pain in a world filled with pain.

When a person from outside Delta State, for example, hears that human beings eat starch, he may make a face. But starch is a delicacy, prepared specially and savoured by the people, especially with banga soup. You cannot teach people what to eat and what not to eat, as long as it is not human flesh.

What about those who eat dog meat or snake meat? Before you wince or sneer, ask yourself, is the meat poisonous to human beings? Just as you find beef delicious, so do the Hindus find it a taboo. Just as you find pork tasty and healthy, so do Muslims and Jews find it abominable. The same thing goes for snails.

The bottom line is that no culture is better than the other. People do certain things over the years which become part of their culture. Some of these things are not logical or explicable. But as long as these customs don’t involve the taking of human lives or the exploitation of the weaker members of society, it is to be respected by people from outside that culture. Not doing so portrays one as uneducated and crude.

When the children of the Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Tiv, Ijaw, or Urhobo play together, there are usually no barriers: no race, no ethnic group, no class, no religion. But as they grow, they are fed with prejudices and consciousness of race, religion, class etc. Some use this consciousness to achieve noble results; others use it to achieve ignoble results.

Human beings are not born with ethnocentrism, racism, bigotry or xenophobia. We acquire these vices from our environment. Those who acquire true education – not just that which is available in classrooms – either refuse to acquire these vices, or drop them when they become conscious of the worthlessness of possessing such vices. And if we truly want to make this nation grow, many of us need to drop these vices.

Written by Azuka Onwuka