Ogbuagu Anikwe chatacterizes the recent Bayo Onanuga threat against Ndi-Igbo over Lagos politics as a misspeak that borders on intolerance.
Let me make myself abundantly clear: the views I express on Twitter are my personal views. I don’t owe anyone any apology for addressing the existential threats of our people. I am after all, first of all a Yoruba, before being a Nigerian. – Bayo Onanuga
Mr. Bayo Onanuga, spokesperson of the Bola Tinubu Presidential Campaign Council, says things that should make citizens fear for the Presidency of his master who, all things being equal, is set for inauguration on 29 May 2023 as President of Nigeria. Sadly, his recent Twitter rants threatens his image and forces him into the class of citizens who sporadically promote overt intolerance to put the nation under stress. It is therefore important that the Nigerian state reprimands or restrains further divisive utterances from him. Sleeping ethnic warriors that the shouts of Mr. Onanuga threaten to awake are all over Nigeria, east, north and west. They operate in all socio-economic sectors, economic, religious, and ethnic. They have the capacity and tools to put the nation under stress, as is already happening in Lagos where lives are being lost and properties destroyed.
Last week, this respected journalist said something that we often hear whenever the Nigerian state is subjected to unnecessary tension. Onanuga, a Yoruba, issued a stern warning to the entire Igbo ethnic group, asking them to stop “interfering” with the politics of Lagos. This warning was not restricted to Igbo living in Lagos. Reading it from my living room in Enugu, 556 kilometers away from the Lagos jurisdiction, I felt that he was also referring to me and every other Igbo who lives outside Lagos, no matter where they are in the world. His statement cast an entire ethnic group as a people that are collectively invested in the political affairs of Lagos State. It also by the same token, represented that all Yoruba, no matter where they are in the world, are also somehow interested in who governs Lagos State.
Onanuga’s warning is neither new nor different from those issued by other politicians who were at risk of having their chokehold on the finances of Lagos relaxed. The likes of MC Oluomo and other ethnic irredentists were there before him. In other words, his warning and the fact that he joined those promoting intolerance was no surprise; the letdown for many was that he delivered his dark message without wisdom and apparently without deep reflection.
In the introductory quote above, Bayo began by saying that he was first a Yoruba before being a Nigerian. He didn’t have to state what is obvious, given the fact that he has peculiar names and identifies from a certain geographical setting in Nigeria. Everybody knew that he is who he said he is, and he knows this too. Therefore, he was merely stating what is so obvious in order to use this as a handle for the sustenance of the poison that was already injected into the body politic. For a man of his education and experience in journalism, this was not a particularly reflective statement. He did not realize that he is telling the Igbo how they should relate with him personally. Keep in mind that Bayo did explain clearly that his does not represent the views of the political party that he currently serves as spokesperson nor was he speaking for the ethnic group to which he proudly identifies. He was speaking for himself, and letting Ndi-Igbo know what he thinks of them.
Undoubtedly, Mr. Onanuga has every right to his opinion, a constitutional right that all citizens enjoy. The law and the Constitution invest every citizen with the freedom to express their personal views and opinions. Still, there is a reason why the law also concurrently forbids citizens from expressing personal opinions that threaten national cohesion and peace. This is why, without personally firing a gun or physically threatening anyone, separatists Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho have had their run-ins with the law. The reason is that those who are quick to assert their rights often fail to understand how those same rights can easily infringe on common rights in multicultural settings. It is a problem that Nigeria grapples with today as the nation is subjected to unrestrained psychological abuse by self-righteous citizens.
The psychological abuse of the nation begins each time an influential citizen (or a rabble rouser) launches self-concept battles in promotion of ethnic or religious identity politics. It can be accepted if theirs were feel-good or entertainment presentations, the kind that comedic actors represent in their hilarious ethnic parodies. In serious political discourses, however, they are often carefully contrived and launched in hopes that as many members of their in-group may buy into the intolerance that they promote. I have so far carefully refrained from the use of “bigotry” or “hate” to describe what they do. Once their words arouse the nation, everyone in the camps of both abuser and abused becomes agitated and immediately escalates the original individual self-concept battle to an inter-group skirmish. The emotional effusions being discharged tethers our weak nation to a confined spot in the public square where intellectuals and the less informed are free to charge in and lash out. If not controlled or restrained, the situation may boil over into violence and destruction while the scoundrels who enabled them with their words smirk in their dark corners of the globe.
The intolerant constantly puts the nation under stress. In southern and northern religious, ethnic, and economic spaces, every sectarian agitation begins with an influential individual offering a narrow-minded opinion that they push to become the opinion of their group. What they do constitute an abuse of the nation and its citizens. Nigeria has somehow become comfortable with these constant abuses of citizens that result from individual citizen’s promotion of sexual, religious, ethnic, or other intolerance. The abuses persist because the Nigerian state either looks away at critical moments or overtly supports the serial psychological abusers enabled by the words of demagogues and irridentists.
Examples of psychological abuse of citizens In southern Nigeria are the separatist rantings of Adeyinka Godsons in London, and Simon Ekpas in Finland. Is what they do from their safe havens abroad far removed from what the respected Bayo Onanuga has tragically chosen to practice with MC Oluoma at home in Nigeria? We should be careful not to ascribe their prejudice to the ethnic groups to which they belong. The Ekpas and Godsons are fighting self-concept separatist battles. The Onagugas and Oluomos, aim at a political prize and a chance to be at the table Nigeria gets repeatedly mismanaged. In both cases, promoters of intolerant often appear oblivious of the pain and suffering that their words could instigate in the community, perhaps hoping that their “group” will gain the upper hand in the blood spilling and property destruction that follows. They do not remember that nothing is ever guaranteed when law and order breaks down. Or as the Igbos put it, a person who hurls a stone into a crowded marketplace cannot guarantee that his relation will not be hit.
An individual political opinion hurled into the public sphere is no longer a private opinion but an attempt at public persuasion. It transforms into promotion a group or selfish interest, inviting a captive audience to adopt in their dealings with the other. This is why perceptive individuals are careful not to ascribe such individual opinions – whether hurled in from the east, the west or the north – to the Igbo, the Yoruba or to the Fulani. Nigerian ethnic groups rarely meet to plan how to bully or subjugate others; the decision is usually taken on behalf of the group by a gang of self-seeking natives among them. And, often, the motive is not the welfare or protection of the group but the selfish interest of the gang.
Nigeria should find a way to restrain the political gang members and their paid promoters from vomiting their narrow-minded views in the public space. How to do this is the primary responsibility of the agencies set up to manage community safety. So far, this responsibility has been difficult to discharge in political spaces because, for the most part, the Nigerian state remains under capture by the gangs, some of whose members are hired to deploy their pens and keyboards to promote intolerance.
When the state as constituted cannot do this, it behooves the Nigerian people to carry out this duty during election cycles. Citizens know what to do and have so far stayed the course. For instance, Mr. Peter Obi could not have gained national acceptance if Nigerian voters suspect that he is in cahoots with either Nnamdi Kanu or Simon Ekpa. In the same way, Mr. Bola Tinubu would have struggled if the electorate suspects that he may be secretly funneling funds to enable the ethnocentric rantings of Adeyinka Godson or the separatist designs of a Sunday Igboho.
This is why it is disappointing that after Tinubu was declared winner of the presidential election, a major spokesperson of Tinubu Campaign, one from his ethnic group, choses that moment to launch his own brand of intolerance. And he does so by rousing ethnic pride, proudly identifying himself as a sectarian actor before a national citizen while perhaps also hoping to serve the nation after his unfortunate self-branding. This is why it becomes equally worrisome that Onanuga’s Twitter rants have neither been pulled down nor disclaimed by both the APC and his boss, the candidate that was declared president. His arrogant posture makes anyone who is not afraid of what a Bola Tinubu Presidency portends for the Igbo, and other non-Yoruba ethnic groups, to be.
the Lagos debate
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
The Bayo Onanuga misspeak
Author
