How to stop ethnic violence in Nigeria:
By Dr Femi Olufunmide
In his reaction on All Progressive Congress, (APC) platform, Olufunmidd argues that economic systems of Capitalism and Communism have both failed to stop ethnic nationalism leading to break up of even prosperous countries. He warns that Nigeria faces peril unless ethnic agitations are addressed.
Most of the Diasporans here live in Europe. Can you show me one multi-ethnic state in Europe where one group is positioned to dominate the rest that hasn’t broken up?
For those who may not know, what you call ethnic groups in Nigeria are called nations in Europe.
There’s nowhere in the world where the white man accepts domination from another white man in perpetuity.
It used to be so under the Roman empire and the like. Not anymore. The Communists tried it, dividing society into capitalists and proletariats, deluding themselves that ethnicity is effectively swept under the carpet, but what followed? The Communist edifices in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the big brother, USSR, all collapsed, while the two Germans that are ethnically the same but split by communism vs capitalism were reunited. Such is the power of ethnic nationalism.
Czechoslovakia was made up of two ethnic groups, the Czech and the Slovakians. Both separated peacefully on 1st January 1993. The former is today 10.6 million people and the latter 5.4 million. Added together, they’re not up to Lagos. Yet, they split for peace. Two masters can’t be in the same house.
Yugoslavia in 1991 was 23.2 million, barely more than Lagos population. It broke into six countries same year – all along ethnic lines, namely: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,
Macedonia, Montenegro,
Serbia, and Slovenia.
Then the big brother, USSR. It had, at least, the following ethnic groups identified by their languages:
Regional languages:
Ukrainian
Belarusian
Uzbek
Kazakh
Georgian
Azerbaijani
Lithuanian
Moldavian
Latvian
Kyrgyz
Tajik
Armenian
Turkmen
Estonian
Minority languages:
Abkhaz
Bashkir
Buryat
Chechen
Finnish
Volga German
Korean
Ossetian
Tatar
& various others.
Today, your fingers will not be enough to count the number of countries that have emerged from the USSR.
Sit down there and be preaching unity in Nigeria as if you’re the kindest gentleman on earth while you have no solution to the genocide in Southern Kaduna, the illegal but officially condoned arms in the hands of killer herdsmen roaming the country, and be condemning those better informed about the fact that the country is undergoing the strains of a forced union and should be peacefully restructured or let people go their separate ways.
In Europe, the two best examples of fairly stable multi-ethnic states are the UK and Switzerland. The former is led by reasonable men who permitted regional autonomy to the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh, while the English dominate Westminster. That’s something some of us are asking for, but you’re fighting against it in your own country wracked by ethnic crisis. Your own people are better off under oppression of fellow black men because your people have bad leaders who can’t do better than their new internal colonisers.
The latter country, Switzerland, has four ethnic groups. Each of them rotates the presidency annually through seven cantons that constitute the federation units. All the four languages of the four ethnic groups are recognized as official languages and school languages to boot, namely, German, French, Italian, and Romansch that has just a few thousand speakers!
There’s nowhere in the world where the Caucasians allow the domination of their group by another.
In Canada, Quebec is the only full French-speaking province, aside a little section of New Brunswick. The other seven provincesare English-speaking. Yet, Canada is bilingual for the sake of Quebec! And each of the provinces is largely self-governing.
Here we are in Nigeria, you have people arguing vehemently that a decrepit, structurally-flawed, and crisis-prone artificial contraption badly configured by the British only needs good people to survive. Why not centralise the powers of the British regions to London and see what happens?!