Nigeria is often broken down into simplistic differences: Muslim North, Christian South; North, West, East; Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa-Fulani. But Nigeria’s past, present and future are creole, argues concerned and elite minded Nigerians.
Nigeria is often described as being made up of three major ethnic groups: the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani: with the management of this combustible ethnic balance being the defining characteristic of Nigeria’s politics and identity since independence. But maybe, just maybe, this account is wrong. Nigeria has, of course, always been more complex than the caricature we’ve learned since its independence, and arguably, this ethnic caricature has been at the root of its problems, rather than the full reality on the ground.
It’s time both the outside world, and more importantly, Nigerians started to read the country through a different lens, and to see it for what it is, a creole nation. Right from the beginning, even before the official colonial era, the paradox of this artificial nation, created out of many pre-existing kingdoms and territories, is that it has always been a place of mixture and admixture, in a history that is rarely acknowledged.
In this fascinating account of the Nigerian military’s time in government, historian Max Siollun writes about the well-known fact that the leader of Nigeria’s first coup, a young military officer, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, was Igbo by origin, but grew up in the north, speaking fluent Hausa, and considering himself, effectively, a northerner – and his is not a rare Nigerian story. A mixing of cultures was already happening long before Nigeria’s independence, and extends even into pre-colonial times; among the myths of the Yoruba people is that the mother of the fourth, and deified king, Sango, was from amongst the Nupe in the Middle Belt; such a story certainly gives a lie to the idea of implacable ethnic hostility.
Professor Ade Ajayi, the venerated scholar of African history, made the point that the vagaries of time and history may very well have brought the people of the Nigerian territory together in some way, shape or form, if not under the auspices of the British. That Nigerians labour under the illusion that our identities are clear-cut is a retardation of our national identity, and that we continue to operate our politics on this basis is nothing short of a national tragedy.
The creole nature of Nigerian society does not destroy the underlying cultures and language, but it does help shape them. While not every individual in the land is creole, it is not just Nigeria’s elite who are. Urban Nigerians – and our urban populations are growing quickly – are a creolised people. In our habits, attitudes and day-to-day language, we have absorbed and mixed the different cultural elements that have existed in Nigerian life, to arrive at something approximating Nigerian-ness; especially those Nigerians who have grown up speaking only English and pidgin as their language, even if they are from a particular ethnic group.
This diversity is not reflected in Nigeria’s public, political discourse – at least, not until recently. The discourse that has been served up over the past 50 years is that Nigeria is a multi-ethnic state – a portrayal of a static state of affairs. Nigeria’s politics may have always believed in the convenient concept of “the hand that stretches across the Niger” – that is, political alliances across the country, even as they built their support on ethnic bases. It’s one way to work the politics of a complex society like Nigeria, but it would be quite a different and audacious outlook for political and social discourse to move away from maintaining and tolerating the country’s ethnic difference and social diversity, to actively encouraging the process of creolisation that’s happening in spite of the state.
This process, which is taking place regardless of political rhetoric and practices, should be actively embraced. A Nigerian identity that is self-aware of its creolisation, rather than maintaining the illusion of a “multi-ethnic” patchwork, would not only be an exciting national project, but truer to the emerging state of affairs.
This does not mean that ethnic identities are consigned to the dustbin of history. Some may disappear but for most, the linguistic heritage will be decoupled from narrow ethnic identity. On a practical level, identifying Nigeria as a creolising society may go some way to producing a change in how power is shared across the country – the insistence on federal character, which has led to the demand for state creation to the point of absurdity, may be diminished if Nigerians could increasingly see that the manifest ethnic identity of a minister does not directly benefit them, and in fact, very often, somebody ostensibly from your ethnic group has cross-cutting loyalties to other groups; more pressingly, their concerns could become more about where they actually live, than whether their ethnic group is perceived to be getting a share of the “national cake”. Certainly, if we encouraged active intermixing and creolisation, individual states would be compelled to create passports to “citizenship” for those considered non-indigenes, and ultimately abolish the outdated idea of indigenes and non-indigenes entirely.
Perhaps the word Naija best expresses the possibilities of reshaping Nigeria’s identity and politics. The word, originally drawn from pidgin, is widely used by a broad cross-section of society. It implies that the business of living in Nigeria should be approached less through the lens of ethnic affiliation and benefit, and more in terms of efficiency and efficacy. These Naija speakers may be or speak any of Nigeria’s identities or languages but their lived reality of Nigeria is in sharp contrast to the old view of a country of three parts bisected by the river Niger. Their country is one richly varied whole, which spreads its creolised culture across the African continent and the world. It’s a view that Nigeria’s elite should adopt. Ultimately, creolising is a process that’s happening whether the Nigerian state and its custodians like it or not, but it would be great if they got with the programme.
I am a proud Nigerian...
I rep NAIJA!
