DURING the recent #EndBadGovernance protests, Jos was in the news; but not of violent religious and ethnic conflicts. The narrative has changed from that of bloodletting, anguish, and despair to that of hope, love, and joint emancipatory struggles by hungry Hausa Fulani Muslim youths; and poverty stricken indigenous Christian youths of the Plateau, who used to maim and kill each other at the slightest provocation.
Against the disunity which prevents exploited Nigerians to collapse the wedges which divide them; and build bridges across the fault lines of the nation, a tiny segment of Nigerians is unabashedly unified by political, economic and social ties. They are so unified that in boardrooms of companies, they are blind to ethnic and religious colourations. They don’t operate as ethnic, sectional or regional shareholders and directors. As individual directors, and shareholders, they operate to increase their net worth, not that of any ethnic, sectional, or regional entity. Unlike the poor citizens retarded by various wedges to effectively reach out to each other in the nation, they build more bridges across regions, zones, ethnic, and religious groups to consolidate political, economic and social privileges.
Multi-cultural societies are usually ridden with primordial wedges, which constitute the fault lines undermining communal and national unity. A divided people are more prone to exploitative manipulation, which retards the appreciation of their common bondage, and prevents them from charting a way out of it.
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These wedges used to keep the people apart under colonial rule, making them hostile to one another, also spilt over to the post-colonial era, and have proven to be very potent than the integrative devices designed to enhance national unity.
In Nigeria today, each region is apprehensive of the other. Minority ethnic groups are dreadful of majority ethnic groups; one religion is pitted against another; a section of a region is rabidly hostile to another section. Such is the nature of inter-regional, inter-ethnic, inter-faith, and intra-regional engagements, fostered by the selfish manipulation of the nation’s diversity.
Besides these multi-layered fault lines, accompanying apprehensions, and subtle hostilities, new anxieties and fears, with higher tension quotients, are induced whenever regional, ethnic and religious champions lose political steam, relevance and privileges. The anxieties and fears are instrumentalised to undermine unity at various levels, which makes violent engagements between communities; ethnic and religious groups a frequent affair.
In Osun State, Ife and Modakeke, neighbouring communities have had violent engagements. And Aguleri and Umuleri in Anambra State have had violent encounters with one another. The Christian Middle Belt is apprehensive of the far North. Since the ’90s, Jos has been the epicentre of violent ethnic and religious conflicts; the Igbos are hostile to the Hausas; as the Yorubas are increasingly hostile to the Igbos in Lagos, etc.
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Love and cooperative emancipatory struggles underscored the recent Jos protests against bad governance. For the Christian Berom, Anafizere, Angas, etc, youths, most of the Hausa-Fulani Muslims, smouldering under intense economic hardships, are no more the problem of the Plateau. And for the Hausa-Fulani youths, the exploited indigenous Christian ethnic groups are no more the cog in the wheel of progress. The fundamental problem for both is located in individuals drawn from all Nigerian ethnic and religious groups who constitute the ruling class, who breathe, and wouldn’t allow the poor to breathe.
But the cat has been let out of the bag. The exploiters aren’t necessarily the negatively profiled out-group members (Hausa-Fulani Muslims or the Berom, Anafizere, Angas, etc). They could be the unsuspected in-group members, posing as ethnic and religious brethren, who collude with other out-group members in the fraternity of the ruling club to impose their interests as those of the nation, who could only be restrained by the cooperative endeavours of exploited Nigerians across regional, ethnic and religious divides. Christian youths on the Plateau, and those across the nation, have discovered that despite the Muslim-Muslim government, poor Nigerian Muslims haven’t been enamoured of its unfriendly policies.
Against the disunity which prevents exploited Nigerians to collapse the wedges which divide them; and build bridges across the fault lines of the nation, a tiny segment of Nigerians is unabashedly unified by political, economic and social ties. They are so unified that in boardrooms of companies, they are blind to ethnic and religious colourations. They don’t operate as ethnic, sectional or regional shareholders and directors. As individual directors, and shareholders, they operate to increase their net worth, not that of any ethnic, sectional, or regional entity. Unlike the poor citizens retarded by various wedges to effectively reach out to each other in the nation, they build more bridges across regions, zones, ethnic, and religious groups to consolidate political, economic and social privileges.
Unfortunately for those who delay the unity of exploited Nigerians, the wedges which divide the people aren’t perpetual. At critical moments, they crumble, and like the Berlin Wall, would be pulled down.
Love and cooperative emancipatory struggles underscored the recent Jos protests against bad governance. For the Christian Berom, Anafizere, Angas, etc, youths, most of the Hausa-Fulani Muslims, smouldering under intense economic hardships, are no more the problem of the Plateau. And for the Hausa-Fulani youths, the exploited indigenous Christian ethnic groups are no more the cog in the wheel of progress. The fundamental problem for both is located in individuals drawn from all Nigerian ethnic and religious groups who constitute the ruling class, who breathe, and wouldn’t allow the poor to breathe.
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With revolutionary zeal, Solomon Dalung, and Isa El Buba were a gift to the August protesters in Jos, who led them with an uncommon candour and valour, which radiated hope and love in the protesting community.
Despite the failure of the protesters to get any concessions from the Tinubu regime, the rage has successfully laid the basis for a cooperative emancipatory struggle: the Dalung-El Buba model which threatens divisive politics in Nigeria. In this vein, the blood of the gunned down protesters, and the injured, as sad as it is, hasn’t been in vain.
As a former minister of an APC government, Solomon Dalung could have chosen to identify with the ruling class, pacify the protesters to give the regime more time to consolidate its policies, and use it as a bargaining chip for favours. But to do so would irreparably damage his Christian and humanistic conscience. He decided to cast his lot with the poor, thereby serving humanity better.
Isa El Buba, the president of El Buba Outreach Ministries, cut short his evangelical nationwide tour to lead the Jos protesters. He could have sided with the ruling establishment, use his Ministries to douse the protests, as many clerics have done. Not for Buba, who found it better to serve his Lord by freeing the people from hunger.
He was not yet done on the battle fields of the Plateau; he escalated the struggle to Arise News, trouncing Reuben Abati’s team, whose soft side for the regime, despite their avowed non-partisanship, was revealed by their encounter with him.
The Jos protests were illuminated by the unity of strange bedfellows, who were separated by a Berlin-type Wall in the Plateau. When it was time for prayers, Christian protesters urged, and provided cover for, Muslim protesters to pray. With the Wall dismantled, the exploited inhabitants of the Plateau on both sides of the divide harmoniously intersected at a point as an endangered collective.
While struggling to make life better, the protesters in Jos underscored a new wave of peaceful and cooperative inter-ethnic and interfaith relations, which have begun to pull the tall wall which makes it impossible for all the exploited people on the Plateau to come together, analyse their conditions, and identify their actual exploiters, who transcend ethnic and religious boundaries.
Had the Dalung-El Buba model been used in the places where lumpen elements hijacked the protests, loss of lives, destruction of public properties, and thefts could have been prevented or minimised.
Jahun, a commentator on public affairs writes from Dutse, Jigawa State Capital. He writes this column every Wednesday under the title: ‘The Other Perspective’. He can be reached via email@ aminuhabibu58@gmail.com or WhatsApp at: +237 3903 8088.
