Why the north appears to dominate Nigeria
To understand why there seems to be a Northern domination of the Nigerian polity (as against Hausa or Fulani domination which is a myth), one has to read and understand the principle of unity found in Genesis 11:6 which reads:
- “The LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
The above verse of Scripture is the bedrock of the seeming Northern dominance in Nigeria. You see, even if a people are more intelligent and educated than their neighbors, they will nevertheless serve those neighbors if they are not united and the neighbor is united because unity is greater than both education and intelligence.
To understand the Northern psyche, try to join several social media fora. In such fora, you will find that Southern Nigerians are very indiscipline in the way they use their words to run down their own leaders and people. Nothing is sacrosanct to them.
Southerners can and have insulted their political, traditional and spiritual leaders using some of the foulest language on earth. I know of young Southern Nigerians who have called former President Jonathan ‘pig’ and Southern elders who have called his wife a ‘hippo’ and others who have used the most insulting words on the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria.
When we behave like this, we show ourselves as pedestrian to our Northern brothers. We indicate that we are a people of a lower culture because no matter how educated you are, if you cannot respect your own fathers (whether they deserve respect or not) then you are lower than an illiterate who respects his father.
In Exodus 20:12, God commanded us to honor our father and our mother. He did not say we should honor them because they are honorable or because they deserve respect. He said we should honor them because He as God commands it. And he attached a promise to that command-“Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
Northerners understand this principle. The principle is that you should honor your own father and mother, not your neighbor’s father and mother. They are honoring their fathers and their mothers and that is why God is ensuring that they “will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” That is why they are ruling and leading and deservedly so!
And if you notice, the average Northerner will join you a Southerner to insult your own leaders and fathers. If you want to insult ex President Jonathan, they will join you. If you want to insult Pastor Oritsejafor or his successor, Pastor Ayokunle, they will join you. If you want to insult the Oba of Benin or the Ooni of Ife, they will join you. Even if you want to insult Southern leaders like Chief Olu Falae and Afenifere or Alex Ekwueme and Ohana’eze Nd’Igbo or even Chief E.K. Clark and the South South People’s Assembly, they will join you.
However, the minute the matter shifts to Northern leaders or elders or traditional rulers, the Northerner will show the stuff he is made out of and will not join you in insulting his or her elders and institutions. It does not matter if that particular leader, elder or traditional ruler is more guilty of an offense than his Southern counterpart. As long as he is Northern, the average Northerner, commendably, has the discipline to respect his own.
I urge you, if you are a Southerner, to think back to all those Northerners who joined you to insult and rubbish then President Goodluck Jonathan. Are they doing the same to President Buhari? Are they supporting you when you call attention to the President’s misdeeds?
Where are those Northerners who left the North to sit down with you in Ojota to dance to Pasuma Wonder as you demonstrated against Jonathan for removing the subsidy on petroleum products? Did you hear even a whisper from them when President Buhari did even what Jonathan did not do and increased fuel without increasing salary? (Jonathan increased salaries before increasing fuel price).
Or have you noticed that they are making excuses for the President? Are you seeing that the same persons who joined you in rubbishing Dr. Jonathan are calling on you to exercise patience with President Buhari?
What about when the Sultan of Sokoto defended Fulani herdsmen and asked the media not to criminalize them and said that criminals who kill people during fights for grazing grounds are to be differentiated from herdsmen, did your Northern neighbors pounce on him the way you pounced on Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor when he called on Christians to defend themselves against the radical Islamic sect of Boko Haram?
I remember young Southerners who called Pastor Oritsejafor every evil and foul name in the world when he said that. They were gleefully joined by their Northern neighbors. But now that the case has been reversed, have those who joined you to rubbish pastor Oritsejafor invited you to do same to the Sultan? Of course not!
You see, when you sell your own mother for a penny, you cannot expect your neighbor to price her for a pound. And when you neighbor sets the price of his mother at a pound, he will never sell her to you for a penny.
Those Southerners on Twitter and Facebook who were championing the downfall of then President Jonathan are now providing excuses to justify the downfall of our beloved Naira from ₦225 to a dollar that Jonathan left it to ₦470 to a dollar today.
As vile as you and I down south consider the late General Sani Abacha to be, he is still beloved up North so much so that more monuments and facilities are named after him in the North than are named after any other Northerner with the arguable exception of the late Murtala Mohammed.
This is a man of whom it has been established beyond every reasonable doubt that he was a thief and not just a thief but a blatant one of whom billions and hundreds of millions of dollars of his loot are still being repatriated today. Yet, when our corruption hating President Muhammadu Buhari went to pay homage to him on the tenth anniversary of his death he said and I quote “Abacha never stole”!
Yet today, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, will arrest those who served in the previous administration and without providing any evidence, Southerners will deride and convict these people simply because an EFCC “source” leaked to the press that they are guilty!
So, to all those who called Jonathan, who gave us the third fastest growing economy in the world, a ‘pig’, you can now see that your neighbors who laughed with you when you did that know in their heart that you are the real ‘pig’ because they will never trust a man like you who insults his own mother and father to please his friend with any type of power.
They may not like me, but I assure you, if push comes to shove, they will prefer me and others like me because they know that a man who respects his father and mother is a man who understands power!
And that my friend is the reason for the seeming political dominance of Northern Nigeria over Southern Nigeria. They are united and because of their unity, “nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
Omokri is the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California, author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept and the host of Transformation with Reno Omokri
Must admit, some of the words are unarguably well thought out and hold true. However, what the writer and some others may have failed to realise is that respect is a northern thing that’s not solely relative; it’s not just towards their fellow northerners, but to people in general. It’s true that some northerners have joined the southerners when they tongue lash their leaders, but that isn’t a conclusive ground to base it that northerners are disrespectful of others (as this write up has ‘subtly’ inferred). I’ve schooled up north and down south, sorry to say but religion and politics aside, the southern culture is highly deficient in the concept of shame/SHYNESS! Everyone is allowed to ‘speak his mind’, with very little consideration for who’s on the receiving end. I once witnessed a student point his finger (literally) to the face of his university vice Chancellor and other elderly members of the school Senate in ‘warning’ just to get his point across. Same goes for the numerous times within the class room and other places on campus, people fight often, are easily enraged, show blatant disrespect just to pass an opinion. Being born and brought up in the north, I experienced a cultural shock when I had to live among southerners to get an education (some part of it), I literally spiraled into anxiety and depression from the level of aggression people showed one another. It was astonishing, and I had to look back and realise how blessed I was when I was up north where your colleagues reached their explosive points so rarely but rather take out time to pass across what they’re feeling/thinking. This is to mention but a very FEW situations. I just had to comment seeing as this article tries to sell it all (or at least most of it) to politics. It shouldn’t be so limited, southerners need to work on imbibing respect in general. You don’t have to say all that you feel without consideration, shyness pays! Between, my family is a heavy mix of North and south 🙂 I genuinely love a lot of things about both sides. I especially must commend how the south give some rights to its youth, giving them chance to be outspoken, it’s just that anything done without boundaries becomes a problem. Praying that people become more accommodating, hate less, love more and enjoy whatever time we’ve been given on earth.
Civility.
It may sound simple – but important things are simple. There is a chronic need for greater civility in our social markets.
That said; the paradox remains – that metrics of development – infrastructural and intellectual -seem greater in the fractious South than in the North –
you may attribute this to largely argumentative or competitive social structures.
Both traits – (which you may not have ascribed correctly; seem more plausibly delineated by ethnic groups, than a North/South divide) – have their limitations.
To what would we ascribe such deep generational poverty in several parts of the North? – certainly not cohesiveness – at the Elite level. Yet, the argument you raise, largely holds, as I have observed it severally.
In much more of the country, since the 60s, we confuse debate for confrontation, and advancement with lack of hierarchy – therein lies the rub.
Your article raises, for me, the more delicate question of communal Civility.
I think its more important than ethnic groups seeing their leaders as infallible. That almost never ends well – which explains a few things.
I am most unimpressed by this write-up. The arguments are way too weak for an intellectual discourse
Northerners are loved, humbled, disciplined, truthful, trustful and kind to one anothers but Christians are enviouse of one another.