Prince Charles Dickson Ph.D.
As oyinbo people like black things, Black Maria, blackmail, black angels, black coffee, black market and Black Friday, the Black man still proudly uses white tissue paper for black business. That is the tragic comedy of our civilization. Even in the toilet of history, we are still negotiating identity.
Nigeria is that kind of country. We argue over ownership of Lagos, ancestry in Jos, indigeneity in Kaduna, settlement in Kano, and citizenship in places where our taxes are accepted faster than our humanity. We are one nation by anthem, many nations by suspicion, and 774 local governments by form-filling trauma.
There is a book, Disappearance, which imagined a world where men woke up one morning and discovered that all women had vanished. Not travelled. Not relocated. Vanished. The first part of the book explored how men tried to survive without women. One can imagine the chaos. Men would finally discover that pepper does not enter stew by faith, children do not bathe themselves by motivational speaking, and a house does not clean itself because someone shouted “I am the head of this house.”
The second part reversed the matter. Women woke up and discovered that all the men had disappeared. One imagines the relief, the confusion, the silence, and perhaps one or two women wondering who would now pretend to fix the generator while worsening the problem. Both scenarios are funny until they become frightening. A world without the other is not freedom. It is an amputation.
So, let us ask our own uncomfortable questions. Would life be easier for Christians if they woke up and all Muslims had vanished? Would life be easier for Muslims if all Christians disappeared? Can we have Kano without the Igbo trader, Lagos without the Northern labourer, Jos without its complex mixture of memory and wound, Abuja without everyone pretending they own it? Would Nigeria suddenly become paradise if PDP vanished, APC disappeared, and all political crooks developed immediate respect for accountability?
These questions sound ridiculous because they are. Yet they expose the madness hiding inside our national thinking. We have developed a slaughterhouse imagination. We think the absence of the other will cure the illness inside us. But killing, hatred, revenge and exclusion do not resurrect the dead. They only give birth to new graves, new bitterness, new widows, new orphans, new propaganda, and fresh committee reports gathering dust in offices where air conditioners work harder than conscience.
Somebody says nobody owns Lagos. Another says Igbo people like trouble. Somebody says Northerners are born to rule. Another says Christians are plotting domination. Another says Muslims are taking over. Yet when night falls and fear begins to knock, many of these same people quietly consult pastor, imam, prophet, herbalist, godfather, Babalawo, marabout, auntie with “spiritual eyes,” and one WhatsApp prayer warrior in Mowe. We are deeply religious people with an impressive talent for disobeying the God we quote.
We developed Lagos, developed Abuja, developed estates, developed churches, developed mosques, developed malls, developed slogans, developed accents, developed appetite for SUVs, but somehow, we have refused to develop Nigeria. We have built cities without citizenship, roads without destination, elections without democracy, schools without education, and politics without shame.
Since the return of what we generously call democracy, the fabric of Nigeria has been stretched like old elastic in a market trouser. Every election cycle leaves us more suspicious, more bitter, more tribal, more religiously armed, and less human.
Instead of examining the deep narratives that produce conflict, we slap labels on everything. Once you name a problem wrongly in Nigeria, you have already created three committees, two hashtags and one useless communiqué.
Nobody chose to be Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Berom, Tiv, Ijaw, Fulani, Nupe, Idoma, Efik, Kanuri, Urhobo, Igala or anything else. We arrived in the world and inherited names before we even understood hunger. We did not choose our village before birth. We did not conduct a referendum in the womb. Yet we behave as if ethnicity is an achievement and birthplace is a university degree.
I was born on the Mainland in Lagos, of Eastern extraction, with strong Tarokh blood, schooled in Jos, worked within and outside Nigeria, and have lived across the map of this restless country. Kaduna. Gusau. Biu. Birnin Kebbi. Dutse. Jos. Lagos. Nigeria has passed through my body like pepper soup through the nose, hot, unforgettable, complicated. My early documents once pointed to Lagos as my state of origin. Later, I was advised to acquire the one that connected me to Abia, where my parents hail from, just in case the national cake was being shared.
National cake. That criminal confectionery. The only cake in the world that disappears before ordinary people smell vanilla.
Meanwhile, I have ancestral links in Plateau, have lived and invested in Jos, and yet I have missed opportunities because I do not possess the certificate that declares me indigenous enough. I can pay tax, vote, contribute, mourn, build, defend, and belong emotionally, but when it is time for access, I become a visitor. A familiar stranger. A Nigerian with footnotes.
This is the absurdity of our citizenship. We are citizens until opportunity arrives. Then we become settlers, migrants, strangers, non-indigenes, guests, tenants, accidental residents, and other bureaucratic insults dressed in administrative English. The same government that collects your tax will ask where your grandfather was buried before it gives you full belonging.
Every form reminds you that where you live is not enough. Your competence is not enough. Your contribution is not enough. Your sacrifice is not enough. Your love for the place is not enough. The form wants your local government of origin, not your local government of commitment. It wants your bloodline, not your usefulness. It asks for ancestry where merit should be sufficient.
And so, we have weaponized belonging. Settler. Indigene. Landlord. Landowner. Migrant. Host community. These words have become small knives in our national pocket. Nobody agrees on their meaning, but everybody knows how to use them to wound.
The Yoruba man sometimes believes he is more Nigerian than the Igbo man. The Igbo man suspects the Hausa-Fulani man wants to swallow the federation with cap and babanriga. The Northerner suspects the Southerner thinks wisdom was born in Lagos and raised in Onitsha. The Middle Belt cries of marginalisation. The Niger Delta says its oil built the party and it was not invited to eat. Everybody is injured. Everybody is innocent. Everybody is accusing everybody. Even marginalisation itself has been marginalised.
When appointments are announced, the first question is not competence. It is, “Where is he from?” Then we count ethnic slots like hungry children counting meat in soup. How many from the North? How many Yoruba? How many Igbo? Is the secretary Muslim? Is the chairman Christian? Is the treasurer from our side? The assignment itself becomes secondary. The nation can burn gently in the background while we calculate tribal arithmetic.
This is not a federal character. This is federal caricature.
Of course, every nation has its ethnic complications. America has its racial ghosts. Europe has its migrant anxieties. Africa has its colonial borders and inherited fractures. But serious societies manage diversity with institutions, justice, inclusion and memory. Nigeria manages diversity with prayer meetings, security briefings, rotational anger, and official denial.
Hear an American speak: “I am American. I live in Chicago. I am of Scottish descent.” Hear many Nigerians speak: “I am from Okene, in Kogi State, but my mother is from somewhere else, though I was born in Lagos, raised in Jos, and currently live in Abuja, but please do not use that one against me.” Our introduction alone requires a constitutional amendment.
Unity in diversity has become one of those phrases politicians wear like borrowed agbada. It sounds elegant, but it is rarely practised. Our diversity should have been a national orchestra. Instead, it has become a noise market, everyone beating their own drum and accusing the other person of making noise.
Our ethnic anxieties have produced militias, pressure groups, cultural armies, emergency defenders of tribes, and professional mourners of marginalisation. OPC, MASSOB, ethnic unions, regional bodies, Northern this, Southern that, Middle Belt this, Niger Delta that. Many are born from real wounds, no doubt. But many also become vehicles for ambition, contracts, relevance and political bargaining. Everybody is charging like a bull, but few are sitting like elders.
The deeper tragedy is that our leadership has failed to build a governance system that can convert difference into strength. Instead, we get speeches. Long speeches. Speeches that begin with “fellow Nigerians” and end with more Nigerians becoming less fellow. Leaders speak of peace while distributing appointments like family inheritance. They preach unity while funding division through silence, patronage and selective outrage.
Religion, too, has become a convenient uniform for old prejudices. We claim to fight for God, as if the Almighty is a helpless party chairman looking for thugs. Allah does not need our machetes. God does not need our petrol bombs. The Creator who made colour, creed, tribe, tongue and difference is not confused by plurality. We are the confused ones. We are the ones who reduce divine mystery to street-level hatred.
The Christian who hates his Muslim neighbour has not defended Christ. He has betrayed Him. The Muslim who despises his Christian neighbour has not honoured Allah. He has insulted the mercy he recites. The traditionalist who is mocked by both may even be the only one quietly wondering why people who claim heaven are making earth unlivable.
Nigeria will not be saved by one tribe defeating another, one religion humiliating another, or one region outsmarting another. No section has enough purity to rescue the country alone. No tribe has a monopoly on wisdom. No religion has a monopoly on decency. No region has a monopoly on corruption either, though some people are clearly in advanced placement class.
The truth is simple, but we fear simple truths. We need one another. Lagos needs Kano. Kano needs Onitsha. Onitsha needs Aba. Aba needs Kaduna. Kaduna needs Jos. Jos needs Warri. Warri needs Maiduguri. Abuja needs everybody because Abuja produces almost nothing except files, sirens, rent stress and political rumours.
To be divided is easy. Even a plate can break. To remain together with justice is the harder work. That is nationhood. Not forced unity. Not silence. Not pretending wounds are not there. But honest, negotiated belonging. A country where residence matters. Where contribution matters. Where citizenship is not held hostage by ancestral paperwork. Where a child born in Sokoto to parents from Enugu can belong without footnotes. Where a woman from Oyo married in Zamfara is not treated as imported furniture. Where a man who has lived in Jos for forty years is not suddenly discovered to be a stranger during election season.
We must redefine belonging before belonging destroys us. We must stop raising children who inherit enemies before they inherit values. We must stop teaching them that the other Nigerian is a threat before he is a neighbour. We must stop building a country where the census of suspicion is more accurate than the census of people.
A divided nation does not fall in one day. It leaks slowly. Through jokes. Through forms. Through appointments. Through sermons. Through school admissions. Through market insults. Through careless speeches. Through silence when the victim is not from our side.
And yet, this same Nigeria, maddening as it is, still contains something stubbornly beautiful. A Muslim mechanic repairs a Christian woman’s car and refuses extra payment. An Igbo trader gives credit to a Hausa customer. A Yoruba nurse saves a Fulani child. A Plateau farmer feeds a stranger from Rivers. Ordinary Nigerians keep doing quietly what elite Nigerians keep destroying loudly.
So perhaps the country is not dead. Perhaps it is merely exhausted, betrayed, and waiting for better witnesses.
We can continue dividing ourselves until everyone becomes a minority of one. Or we can finally admit that no one disappears without taking part of us along.
When will we understand that the other Nigerian is not the obstacle to our survival, but the test of our humanity?
Only time will tell.
