By Japheth Omojuwa
Today,
it hurts to be Nigerian. That pain hits many in different ways. For graduates,
four out of every five of them feel that pain in their lack of jobs. For a
pregnant mother, that pain hits her when she realizes that Nigeria is one of
the harshest places in the world to birth a child. For a pensioner, the pain
stems from the realization that his/her life savings can get lost through the
hands of those responsible for its keep.
For
a child, the pain comes hitting hard in many ways: first, s/he is burdened by
the fact that her country is home to the world’s largest population of
out-of-school children; burdened by the possibility of being subjected to child
labour; and burdened by the likelihood, if her parents are not as rich as
Nigerian Senators, of being bought into marriage by a rich man before she even
comes of age.
These
are some of the problems Nigeria burdens us with. There is another one, though
not as tangible as the aforementioned ones but as telling on why we are where
we are as a country: in Nigeria, you cannot have a conversation around any
issue without being burdened by religion and ethnicity. It hurts!
No
country can move forward without a conversation with itself, and among its
elements and constituent units. These conversations take on different forms:
they come in structured and unstructured ways; they often happen spontaneously
but are sometimes planned. They could take place at such prestigious places as
the National Assembly and state houses of assembly; or, of no less importance,
in pubs and marketplaces.
One
of such conversations this year was the hijab ban the Lagos government was
flirting with. One realized that were a Muslim to make an argument against the
ban, the average Nigerian would pass it out as the rant of an angry or liberal
Muslim.
And if a Christian had argued that, well, s/he would be labeled a
typical Christian. Ordinarily, the religion of the person making the argument
should not matter, only the spirit, the essence and the logic of the argument
should. But not in Nigeria. When you take a stand on an issue, you better ask
how they’d interpret your religious or ethnic stance.
The
greatest beneficiaries of this national inability to have a robust and healthy
debate, devoid of religious and ethnic sentiments, are the politicians. They
have perfected the art of even raising the dry bones of ethnicity and religion
where you’d have thought there was no life in a debate. If you have an opinion
on the Petroleum Industry Bill, the Niger Deltan reminds you about the fact that
the oil belongs to his ancestors.
A Yoruba person who has an opinion on
Professor Chinua Achebe’s “There Was a Country” has to keep such opinions to
himself/herself because raising it would make him/her a hater of the Igbos.
Were such a person to be Igbo, the individual could be accused of selling out.
An
average Yoruba person would see an Igbo person’s opinion of Chief Obafemi
Awolowo, if unpalatable, as being only borne out of the hatred of the Igbos for
Awolowo. A Yoruba man had better not see Chief Awolowo as less than a god
because then he’d be regarded as a bastard. The opinion of a Nigerian of
southern origin on the Boko Haram menace could have such labeled as a hater of
the north.
If a Nigerian of northern origin calls for the need to examine the economic
and social deprivation that threw up Boko Haram, s/he will be labeled a
supporter or sponsor of terrorism.
The
issues are unlimited. There is no issue that cannot have religion and ethnicity
thrown into its mix in Nigeria. This is a painful reality. If we cannot talk
about these things, how can we even begin to talk about them sincerely and when
do we begin to move forward as a people without a sincere conversation?
Human
rights are universal and are inalienable. Children, especially those from indigent
backgrounds must be protected from all forms of abuse. The arguments around
Section 29, Subsection 4b of the Nigerian Constitution somehow brought the
issue of child marriage into national prominence.
One can argue the issue
originated from the Senate as a religious one with Senator Ahmed Yerima having
based his argument on religion. Would it have been possible to have the debate
without throwing ethnicity and religion into it? Maybe in other climes. But not
here.
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