Africa
By Benprince Ezeh
MATTHEW Hassan Kukah, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, has said that the country has descended from aspiring to become a united country to a country of many nations.
The bishop, who stated this at the 80th birthday celebration of Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, on February 23, 2022, in Lagos also said: “What constitutes these nations and when did the consciousness that we are nations emerge from? Why have we decided to rebel against the dreams of our founding fathers? I will try to place in context why these agitations have emerged and if they can be curtailed.
“I will ask, whether we should be like the elephant which often has to retreat before it charges to attack. Is it possible that our threat to go our separate ways is just, as Fela would say, shakara, a plea for attention to our grievances?
“I will argue that we can still gather the debris of our broken dreams and continue this journey to national greatness. We cannot outsource this obligation.”
According to him, identity politics, which is the consciousness of our worth, is driven by both a perceived threat, fear, and anxiety created by a circle of social, or political decisions that are directed at excluding particular groups.
“The fears that drive identity politics lead to the reawakening of tribal consciousness. The fear of threatened groups could be based on race, group identity, sexual orientation, ideology, etc.
“People congregate around an identity whose fluidity often helps them to mobilise on a broader scale to take in all forms of grievances and many react in anger, they become defensive, identify an enemy who could be the state itself, an actor, institution, or a law.
“Ordinarily, as Chinua Achebe very well said, there is nothing wrong with Nigeria or Nigerians. We have continued to play the ostrich as a nation, refusing to face squarely the reasons for the inability of politics to deliver on good governance, for the inability of our hospitals to offer a cure to our people, for the inability of our security forces to keep us safe, for the inability of our educational institutions to deliver on quality education, for the inability of our communities to stay united, for our inability to feed ourselves, for even our seeming inability to be happy as a people or a nation.
“We are refusing to even ask why is it that things have become so bad that everyone wants to go their separate ways. We can use the above identity typologies to reflect on how they have affected our lives today and why we are suddenly realizing that we are nations is an expression of our frustrations,” he said.
He, however, said that this is applied to Nigeria and it is not uncommon to hear Nigerians blame one group, region, religion, or ethnic group for being responsible for the woes of our country.
“Adolf Hitler did the same with the Jews, it is often a very dangerous and slippery slope to climb,” the bishop said.
– Feb. 25 2022 @ 11:47 GMT |
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