My excuse for using this picture of Tromso, Norway is that I do refer to a conversation I had there in this post! By the way, this picture was taken without flash around midnight in July 2016 at 2322hrs.

There is a popular saying: no man is an island. As it is with human beings, so it is with nations. No nation is an island. When there is a physical demarcation, we love to construct bridges, just take a look at the image attached again. Conversations in bigger economies whose news take centre stage will inevitably impact other nations. If you doubt this just reflect on the “War on Terror” narrative. The very moment Bush and Blair deployed it, it was taken up by other national actors across the world all the way from Israel to Russia for all sorts of reasons.

Although Nigeria has always been uncomfortable with the current federal arrangement, nevertheless, the debate between Globalism and Nationalism has no doubt fuelled the restructuring debate. Please note that I use Nationalism/Nationalist in this article to represent those who oppose Globalism. I do not mean all who oppose Globalism hold extreme views. I have friends who are opposed to globalism but are not extreme nationalists.

The Globalists argue that there are problems that we can’t solve at national level, therefore we need global institutions to handle these problems. Globalists love to highlight climate change. Another one is regulation of financial institutions. It is hard to challenge them on these couple of points. Yet there is a truth that the current economic arrangement has resulted in poverty for many in the unskilled sector of the economy in many developed nations.

The Nationalists on the other hand argue that Globalism has created a small elite in this world who take decisions, thereby taking the democratic rights of citizens away from them and undermining national sovereignty. The EU is the typical institution that Nationalists love to cite. They point to Juncker and Tusk as examples of elites who go around undermining national sovereignty. They conveniently forget that Juncker and Tusk reports to the council of nations of the EU.

How did we get here? High school economics taught us that there is such a thing as specialisation and localization of industry. A nation is to focus on what it is best at. That was partly how it started. Of course Europe fought two costly wars that people did not want to repeat. These factors, among many, resulted in global institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, United Nations and UNESCO.

Somewhere along the long, capitalism ran amok and it became a matter of producing wherever it is cheapest. Corporations took jobs away from their nations to countries where it was cheaper to produce. A worker in many European countries is entitled to pension, national health care and other rights. This is not the case for the poor of China and India. Therefore, jobs moved from Europe/North America to locations where cost of producing was cheaper.

That was yesterday’s problem though. What is today’s problem? Three years ago we were in Tromso, Norway, located in the Arctic Circle. We wanted to experience the midnight sun as there is a period of time in a year during summer when the sun does not set. You see the sun drop to the horizon. On afternoon we went on a tour of a Sami settlement in Tromso. The Samis are semi nomadic people and they farm Reindeer. As we talked to the man who came to drive us down there, we mentioned that Norway exports a lot of stock fish to Nigeria. One thing led to another and we ended up discussing globalisation. The man said that due to automation, some of the jobs that Norway used to farm to China/India are now being done by machines.

Machines would be cheaper than Indians and Chinese workers.

The Globalism versus Nationalism debate focuses on where power should lie: with Supranational organisations or nations? Globalist are comfortable with empowering supranational organisations while Nationalists view those organisation with deep suspicion. However, in view of the fact that in another decade or two we will not be contending with who can come into Germany/UK/USA to work, but it will be machines whose reach knows no national boundary, what is the best way to look after the interest of people? National organisations or Supranational ones? A remote intelligent device will allow a cleaner to operate a machine from Africa to clean a hotel in Berlin while a more sophisticated device would allow a surgeon in Africa to operate on patients in London. Are national institutions enough to police these international devices?

Last year or the year before, I went to work in our office in Wroclaw, Poland for a week. As I sat at the market square one evening socializing with my colleagues, I observed the beautiful churches there. One of my colleagues there remarked that Wroclaw itself used to be in Germany! So what should be the identity of a person born and bred in Wroclaw, Poland? it depends on how far the person wants to go.

As it is in Poland, so it is in Nigeria. Due to a common language, a Yoruba or an Igbo may think they have much more in common with fellow speakers of the same language. However, if you go further back, you would discover that the Yorubas are not as homogeneous as the language suggested. What you find are much more fine grained identities: Oyos, Ijebus, Ekitis, Ijeshas, Igbominas, etc. While some of these sub identities have their own account of their relationships to one another (accounts that would be severely contested), many bitter wars were fought by our ancestors. Prosperity returned to the Yorubas when their laid down their weapons and started talking to one another, united with other people group in Nigeria to drive the colonialist out of their land.

The capital of the old Oyo Kingdom is closer to Niger state ( a city known as Oyo ile, Oyo Katunga, Old Oyo) than Oyo State. So those people who currently inhabit that area what is their ethnic identity? Who knows? And those people who live in Ago Oja (the present Oyo town), who knows the identity of their ancestors?

As people clamours for restructuring (whether of power or physical national boundaries), they should realise that the identity they hold on so tightly to today may not be the one that their ancestors held 200 years ago. If the world continues for another 200 years, nobody knows what the identity our descendants will be. Judging by history, it may not necessarily be the one that we hold dearly today.

This article can also be found here: https://ajarofclay.co.uk/2019/04/06/globalism-vs-nationalism-and-the-clamour-for-restructuring-in-nigeria/

Copies of my book, "A Jar Of Clay, Part1: Made in Nigeria can be obtained from here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jar-Clay-Part-Made-Nigeria-ebook/dp/B07G6WCJVB/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=a+jar+of+clay+part+1+made+in+nigeria&qid=1555150141&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
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