₦airaland Forum

There is no alternative to Nigeria's unity. People who call for secession would ultimately have to put in the work for create a national identity for their seceded states.

The only reason why Yoruba/Igbo/Hausa are united is because they're defending themselves from other ethnic groups.

If all the major ethnic groups have their own country, their incipient tribalism would rear its ugly head.

Nigeria hasn't even divided and yet the Alaafin of Oyo and the Ooni of Ife are locked in a battle for supremacy. There's also the Ife-Modakeke conflict that would rear its ugly head once again.

The Ekiti people would remember that they fought a war for decades to free themselves from Ibadan domination.

And so on and so forth.

I'm using Yoruba examples because that's what I'm very familiar with. I'm sure that there are similar divides amongst the other ethnic groups.

So, the point is that if the hard work of nation building has to be done after we divide the pie, why don't we maintain the bigger pie and do the hard work now?

People also talk about true federalism. But it would ultimately fail if we don't take active steps to encourage Nigerian nationalism.

How do we encourage nationalism? First, we need to unite behind a single language. Look at Indonesia.

They united behind Indonesian - which is basically Malay pidgin. This is despite the fact that the various ethnic groups in Malaysia already have their own languages.

We could unite behind Nigerian pidgin, but it has some drawbacks. English is better as it has a lot of advantages. Instead of pidgin, we can standardise Nigerian English.

We can do stuff like have a Nigerian English dictionary that adds Nigerian terms and expressions. Terms like sapa, fanimorous, and so on and so forth.

We should also encourage mass cultural appropriation. Students in the North should be made to learn a Southern language and children in the South should be taught a Northern language.

The Nigerian state should promote inter ethnic intercourse. A Yoruba person should be able to wear igbo traditional cloth and vice versa.

The ultimate aim is to be unable to tell what ethnic group a Nigerian is on the face of it.

The best example of this nationalist vision is the united states. The different European ethnic groups who had been fighting each other for centuries became one people in the United States. Russians, English, French, Italians and Jews all became American.

They all united under American English. There was cultural intercouse. Everyone eats pizza, croissant, spaghetti, and so on and so forth.

There is no alternative to unity. If we divide the country, we still need to cultivate a national identity. So, why go the disastrous route of dividing the country and still having to do the hard work of nationalism when we can just do the hard work now?

PS:

I originally published this article on substack and repurposed it for Nairaland. You can check out the substack post here -

https://naijachronicles.substack.com/p/there-is-no-alternative-to-nigerian?r=1rvd6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

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Yoruba should bury their identity under Nigeria?. Hausa should bury their identity under Nigeria?. These are nations in their own right that should hold their own in the comity of nations. There can be competition among Yoruba subgroups. That is normal. There is competition among siblings. If Nigeria will be one country with one police one army and etc. Why not Europe? Why not the whole of Africa? Why not the whole world?. It is not good organisation. If Germans, French, Italians, Russians etc have their own countries then Yoruba, Hausa etc should have their own countries because they are simply not the same people and should be managing their own pieces of the Earth. They are not the same people. Simple

lawani:
There can be competition among Yoruba subgroups. That is normal. There is competition among siblings.

It's no more competition when people start killing each other.

lawani:
If Nigeria will be one country with one police one army and etc. Why not Europe? Why not the whole of Africa? Why not the whole world?.

I have no problem with the world uniting. If everyone sees themselves as one. There would be no more wars. No slavery, etc. But we're starting small, with Nigeria.

lawani:
If Germans, French, Italians, Russians etc have their own countries

Yet all these people came together in the US.

lawani:
They are not the same people. Simple

They aren't the same people yet.

olyrayy:
It's no more competition when people start killing each other.



I have no problem with the world uniting. If everyone sees themselves as one. There would be no more wars. No slavery, etc. But we're starting small, with Nigeria.



Yet all these people came together in the US.



They aren't the same people yet.

The whole world can not unite like that because the monotony will bring more disadvantages than advantages. Let everybody do their thing and let us learn from each other. Variety is the spice of life. So do you like the condition the Yoruba is in presently? Police and army manning Yoruba land are non Yorubas. Before Nigeria Hausa were living peacefully among Yoruba and many were working in the Alaafin's civil service but post Nigeria Hausa could gang up to kill Yoruba on Yoruba land. Igbos ganged up and killed two Yorubas on election day during the last Presidential elections in Lagos. Is that the kind of country you want to live in?. I am an Ijesa man and a nation where the Ijesa can not have their own police force is not acceptable to me.

lawani:
The whole world can not unite like that because the monotony will bring more disadvantages than advantages. Let everybody do their thing and let us learn from each other. Variety is the spice of life. So do you like the condition the Yoruba is in presently? Police and army manning Yoruba land are non Yorubas. Before Nigeria Hausa were living peacefully among Yoruba and many were working in the Alaafin's civil service but post Nigeria Hausa could gang up to kill Yoruba on Yoruba land. Igbos ganged up and killed two Yorubas on election day during the last Presidential elections in Lagos. Is that the kind of country you want to live in?. I am an Ijesa man and a nation where the Ijesa can not have their own police force is not acceptable to me.

If Nigerian nationalism becomes a reality, then it won't be Hausa killing Yoruba. It would be one Nigerian killing another Nigerian. That is a crime, and would be treated as such.

Division between north and south through a peaceful referendum will be good. The difference between north and south is too much, I don't think it can ever meet.

The British joined us for administrative convenience, they joined us to cause confusion between us, to make it easy to run us, and use us.

We have to save the future of our children and our future generations, it's clear that what we want from this existence, our ideology, thinking and aspirations is completely different from the north. We must save ourselves from this evil machination of the British.

For a nation to achieve it's full potential, the aspirations of the people must be synergised and pursued by all. Our aspirations are different.

olyrayy:
If Nigerian nationalism becomes a reality, then it won't be Hausa killing Yoruba. It would be one Nigerian killing another Nigerian. That is a crime, and would be treated as such.

Can you merge two people together as one even in marriage?. No there must always be a boundary. That boundary is not being respected in Nigeria and no group in Nigeria can achieve its full potential as part of Nigeria. Even in a Yoruba nation, you still have to respect boundaries to make it work but the Yoruba are a natural nation bound by language and culture. One Nigeria is counter productive and the map of West Africa should be redrawn. The total population of land where Yoruba is lingua franca in west Africa should be over or up to one hundred million and there is no reason why they should not stand alone. At least they have a basis for unity which is language and the next challenge will be to draw up a constitution fair to everybody