Mamdani: Nigeria Issue is more than Leadership Challange

The problem is a deep one. This political culture has become so entrenched that it has become a mindset; so, it is not just a question of leadership. There is a leadership problem, but the real problem is that the people respond to their leaders because they think their leaders are right when they tell them that some people are indigenous and the resources rightfully belong to them, and that the others are outsiders. The people respond to it; they think it is true.

How do you change this? Of course, you have to remove the sense of threat, first of all; you have to convince people that a common citizenship is not going to be at their expense. Again, you have to start, at the end of colonialism, to convince people that they have a reason to be in Nigeria. Why should an indigene of Plateau State want to be a Nigerian if Nigeria just means to them a Hausa Fulani encroachment, etcetera. You have to give them a reason to be Nigerians.

I think this will involve a protracted political process; it will involve reform of the legal system, the Constitution, temporary guarantees to those who feel threatened, not a permanent regime so that affirmative action does not become a permanent feature of the political and social landscape. That would be understood to be a temporary feature with certain outcomes, which would remove the rationale for it. It (process) can't be foisted from above because it would be resisted; it would involve the building of a consensus in Nigerian society. It would involve necessarily, elements more than the political class; it would have to involve all the literate classes, in other words, all those who can be part of a discussion, which is beyond face to face. It is the springboard of an initiative.

I remember attending the centennial celebration of the Sokoto Caliphate in Abuja and I was so struck by the fact that there were two starkly opposite views in that meeting. One was that the British ended the promise of the Sokoto Caliphate; the other view was that the British saved us from the danger of the Sokoto Caliphate. In the same country, there two views; the British is the saviour, and the British is the problem. If you shifted it to the colonial period, the two sides would change their argument; those who saw the Caliphate as the danger would see the British as artificially maintaining the Caliphate, and the other side would say the opposite.