ETHNICITY AND RELIGIOUS CRISS THE BANE OF AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT ABSTRACT:- Since the exit of colonial masters in early 1950s and late 1960s, the African continent has witnessed series of conflicts with devastating consequences on lives and property. Such conflicts merged from religious, ethnic, labour, land to political disputes. The causes of these conflicts are varied and numerous. The paper examines ethnicity and Religious Crisis as the bane of African Development. INTRODUCTION: There is no doubt that the African continent with its variation belief and tribal multiplicity is seen by the old and modern world as the most important factor in addition to its strategic medium location and various resources which were the source of the foreign forces conflicts at the beginning of the elapsed century and were the reason for the extension of greed in its wealth over the past and until present time. Though, it is only in Africa that leader see themselves as God – ordained rulers over their subjects, whether such leaders are doing well or not. From the Horn of the continent down to the Cape of Good Hope in the Southern tip, the story is just the same perhaps; again Africa has the largest list of world’s bloody despots and tyrants in the garbs of revolution rulers. Is it Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe or Libyan Muammar Qadhaffy, or Paul Biya, Omar Bongo, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Gabon and Cameroon, that have over stayed their welcome in their countries various political landscapes. In almost every African society, there is a creation story that always tends to place the tribe, the community as being special and the fact that their coming into being is God’s Plan-Even when a community traces its ancestry to a totem or a founding father, reverence to it, and becomes part of the community’s spiritual universe. In Africa, these festivities now lie side by side with sometimes similar celebrations on the religious calendars of both Muslim and Christians. For example, in Nigeria, the idea of the New Year Harvest Festival is mean to celebrate and show appreciation and gratitude to God as being the provider. In these celebrations, the community seeks to reconnect with God the creator who provides for his servant by blessing the work of their hands. ETHNICITY AS THE BANE FOR AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT The various policies of the colonialists, their utterances, actions and inactions, and in fact, their newly introduced alien socio-economic relationship, within the geographical expression, but also acted as the catalyst for its perpetuation. Nigeria has moved from one crisis to another since the mistake of 1914 when Lord Lugard amalgamates the southern and Northern parts of two protectorates that stormed present geographical expression called Nigeria into a single political entity. The political contraption thus formed has since then moved from one logjam to another. Because of people who are not so knowledgeable in the politics of both the pre and post – independence era, especially the bitterness that characterized the nation’s ethno-politics. Thus people blaming Awo or the Yoruba race for the ethnic politics responsible for most of the nations socio-economic and political trivial since independence has always been, the 1951 western Regional election in which Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe was prevented from taking over reins of Government in the west as a result of political maneuvers. Those mostly involved in this lines arrangement are from Igbo ethnic group or N.C.N.C. members and sympathizers. Ifeanyi (1993) “In an article titled Unity in ethnicity, published in the Daily Champion Wednesday December 29, 1993, wrote, “Ever since chief Obafemi Awolowo introduced tribalism into the Nigerian politics in 1952, political parties have stood on the tripod stand of three major tribes”. Although the article touched the bane of Nigerian politics and true unity, but their claim is a phenomenon of pre and post independent Nigerian politics usually based on the carpet crossing in the western region by some members of defunct Nine (which was then regarded as Igbo party) to the defunct AG (also regarded as Yoruba party). This action denied an Igbo son Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe, the unique privilege of ruling the western region. This has wrongly been regarded as the genesis of ethnic politics in Nigeria even by people who ought to know better by virtue of their academic claims. Ethnic rancor in the real sense of it did not come into the fore until February 1941 when the former president of the first pan-Nigerian political association, the Nigerian youth movement (NYM) Dr K. A. Abayomi, resigned his seat on governor’s executive council. There was a struggle for succession between the incumbent president of the NYM, Ernest Ikoli and the vice president, Samuel Akinsanya, Awo backed Earnest Ikoli while Zik supported Samuel Akinsanya. Something should be noted here, Awo, now being tagged tribalist by the real tribalist did not even support an Ijebu Yoruba man like himself, but backed Ikoli, an Ijaw. As a result of the colonial setting, the Igbo state union emerged in 1936 to champion the interest of the Igbo in their relationship or rather struggle with other ethnic groups for national cake of the emerging nation. So the emergence of Egbe Omo Oduduwa led by Awo in 1945 was more of a response to the real and imagined threats of the Igbo micro-nationalism being championed by the Igbo state union. Obaro, I. (1980) said, “During the turbulent political situation arising from the AG (Action Group) crisis in the early 1960s the Igbo leaders, in a document Ibo national caucus – protocol “marked secret and confidential, declared” play up Awolowo at all times, this will keep up the resistance of the action group members and stop them from writing with the NNAP to form a solid Yoruba front. This is vital and there is no longer a headache or danger to us. Intensify all propaganda against Akintola. Don’t hold that he is sufficiently discredited already, he is still dangerous. We must always keep the quarrel between himself and the Action Group alive; this will ensure the disunity amongst the Yoruba leaders”. From the above cursory reviews of the past there was no mention made of the north and the northern leaders here, this because as far as the North and many of its influential leaders are concerned, they are yet to purge themselves of misconception of a monolithic north and hegemonic tendency within which the define Nigeria’s unity or what they consider to be Nigeria’s interest. And the major problem facing Nigeria is the mutual suspicion between the Yoruba and Igbo if Yoruba and Igbo’s can agree today, more than ninety percent of the nations problems will dissolve into Oblivin Abasis for their agreement therefore has to be created, this can begin by putting records straight. In the Rwanda, tragedy between April, 6 1974, when the killings started and July 17, when the present Rwandan patriotic front government took over power about eight hundred thousand Tutis, and some moderate Hutus, were brutally massacred. It has been estimated that about 75% of the total Rwandan Tutsis population were anointed in the hands of the Tutu extremists. This is one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century. It is one of the most brutal assaults on humanity on the continents of Africa through our history. The man who presided over the 100 days massive was Jean Kambanda, who was a leading member of the extremist Hutu party, the Movement Democratic Propulsive, this movement came to power in April, 1994, after president Juvenal Haby Arinana was killed when his plane was short down by Hutu extremist, who were opposed to the Arusha agreement, the implementation of which president Haby Arinana had accepted at a regional summit in Daresalam. From the 8th April 1994 when Jean Isambanda became the interim Prime Minister to 17th July, 1994, when the government was driven out power he chaired the many cabinet meetings where the heinous crimes of the final solution “were planned and eventually executed. He personally ordered to road blocks to be set up to appeaser Tutsis who were massacred. He also used his powers of a Prime Minister to dismiss the Tutsi government in his home town of Butare and appointed a Hutu extremist to pave the way for of the most terrible mass killings of Tutsi’s during the 100 days killing spree. Gasama E. (2000), in preparing for the massacre of Tutsi in the sixties, the Kayibanda, Hutu dominated, regime mounted intensive and omni present claiming that the Tutsi were foreigners who had rapeseed the Hutu people in Sertdom for four centuries and that the revolution and the republic were expression of the victory of the Hutu majority over the feudal minority Tutsi. The official ideology was propagating the idea according to which all Hutu were poor peasants and all Tutsi were feudal oppressors con sequently, ethnic antagonism was portrayed as an obvious fact as total. These speeches, which amounted almost to conditioning people to violated the population to internalize the racist biasis of the regime foundered on an antagonistic vision of the Tutsi.” All serious work on the Rwandan genocide have corroborated this. It is almost the same as Buyaya of Burundi said since 1970 our bane has been that the Tutsi of Burundi , who are minority of minorities in population, in education, in management skills, in the economy have held Burundi at the Jugular, scheming political maneuvers that make them hold on to power at all costs and in all circumstances. In any case can genocide be justified just because a section of the elite that belongs to a particular ethnic group happens to be in power were the children massacred and the focuses destroyed in the wombs of their mothers all oppressors? RELIGIOUS CRISIS THE BANE OF AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT It is well known fact among western educated people that religion ought not to interfere with political life. While the principle of secularism is automatically identified with progress, every suggestion to consider practical politics and socio – economic planning under the aspect of religious is dismissed out rightly as reactionary. Perhaps people in the west have became disappointed with their Christian Religions and this disappointment is reflected in the ethical, social and political chaos now pervading a large part of the world African continent and other third world countries. Instead of submitting their decisions and actions to the criterion of a modal land which is the ultimate aim of every religion, People have come to regard expediency as the only obligation to which public affairs should be subjected and because the idea as to what is expedient naturally differ in every ethnic group nation and community, the most be wildering conflicts of interest have come to the fore in the political field. The west today has no norm by which to judge between good and evil, and between right and wrong. The only possible criterion is the nation’s interest. But in the absence of an objective scale or moral values, different group of people, even within one nation may have and usually do have widely divergent view as to what constitutes the nation’s best interests. Proliferation of regional militia with an attendant chaos, mayhem and bloody communal clashes that threatened the very foundation of the nation’s integration has been the hallmark of Nigeria’s first three-year journey with former president Olusegun Obasanjo. Barely a month after his assumption of office as the commander in chief of the army forces, Ibadan went up in flames as Yoruba lord carries engaged the Hausa goat dealers at Bodija market in a bloody clash resulting in the death of more than 20 persons with 35 shops razed and about 26 vehicles burnt or vandalized. In July 1999, less than a month later, the Bodija clash became a child’s play when hundred of lives were lost and millions of naira worth of property destroyed in a clash between the Hausa settlers and Yoruba indigenes in Sagamu. This was closely followed by reprisals in Kano following the arrival of a lorry carrying the corpses of Hausa people in Sagamu. This clash claimed about 101 lives and more than 300 people were wounded. Kaduna is an amalgam Christians, Muslims atheists among others, but the former two surpass others given their ubiquitous nature shown by statistics. This composition of the state is considered by many to be responsive for the volatility in the Kafanchan riot of 1987, Zangon Kataf carnage of 1992, Jema’a crises of 1999 and the two ethnic-religious debacle of 2000 coupled with 2002. this chain of violence has caused apathy among the various segments of the state with its attendant hostilities. In the Onitsha case, both government and Red Cross figures indicate that about 1,000 innocent northerners were killed and their property looted and nobody, not even the Federal Government is making case for the victims. In Jos, four ethnic groups are struggling for indigeneship, namely, Berom, Anaguta, Hausa-Fulani and Jarawa. The cause of the problem is that our politicians will never think of us when in office, but when they have problems they can use us, instigating violence and using religion in to achieve their aims. In Bauchi boiling point, Tafawa Balewa, six years after the unfortunate crisis of 1995, and 10 years after the bloody specific of 1991, exploded again on June 18 2001. This time around, the entire Muslim community of the town was sacked by militant Sayawa Christians. Scattered, the Muslims, consisting of Hausa-Fulani, Sayawa and Jarawa tribes have become refugees in villages like Bununu in Tafawa Balewa local government area, and in other towns like Dass, Liman Katagum and Bauchi. Recommendation The role of the mass media whether in conflict reporting or in peace time is to inform, educate, transmit cultural values and entertain? But today, in fact, it would appear that some papers are interested in provoking violence in some parts of the continent, for political purpose without in the least bothering about their consequences. Thus, in an article Sunday Tribune of September 7,1997, titled “whose National Question Bola Ige Wrote “it would be stupid of the Yoruba or the Igbo to expect the Hausa and their Fulani masters to give up the power which the British manipulated for them and which the military regime maintain (even though their interest do not coincide)”. John D. (2002) said: “As a reporter, you should know that media reports of conflicts have the tendency to either escalate or diminish and de-escalate such conflicts. This is because the media do give publicity to the conflicts, which may generate reactions from people within and outside the area or location of the events. The reactions do come from people of similar or the same interests, which could be religion, tribe, profession etc. with the parties involved in the conflicts. The reaction therefore is a show of solidarity, which is normal with group membership. It is the best method of protecting or promoting group interests and relevance. Most importantly, the reactions are normally negative or positive, violent or non-violent, spontaneous or piecemeal, sudden or gradual, all depending on the nature of the conflict. Conclusion The world entered the new millennium amid an economic revolution, which many believe could create the context and the means for Africa’s rejuvenation. This economic revolution often referred to as globalization has entered into a new phase. Shrinking of the world into a global village in part by advances in information and communication technology. But in Africa one of the biggest problems that we have is the artificial boundaries that were created during the European scramble for Africa in the colonial period. It imposed on Africa a lot of political problems, because in almost every African society, there is a creation story that always tends to place the tribe, the community as being special and the fact that their coming into being is God’s plan. Even when a community traces its ancestry to a totem or a funding rather, reverence to it becomes part of the community’s spiritual universe. It is taken as a given fact that the essence of every religion is to seek to reunite fallen humanity with creation or the creator. Whatever name we choose to give him is largely immaterial because the essence is basically the same. Most of the religions have a repertoire of stories and myths that seek to explain both the origin of the world, the role of the creator and the centrality of the human person. All religions believe at least that somehow, the relationship between the creator and the creative has been severally fractured.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:56:47 +0000
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