Rev. Chukwunulokwu Fyne Nsofor, PhD, President
St. Augustine Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS)
#6, Oduobi Crescent (Plot 91), Ikenegbu,
Owerri – Imo State, NIGERIA
083-305 795; 0806-825 1705
cfynensofor@juno.com
saiacs@globalnetinc.org
The Department of Religious Studies
Imo State University
1st Annual International Conference
Theme: Religion and Social Development in Nigeria
Owerri
November 27th – 1st December, 2006
Introduction
Like most peoples in the human family, Nigerians identify with, and live, work and otherwise interact with others in a web of social groupings and relationships. In addressing the question of Nigeria’s national integration, therefore, close attention need be paid to the nature and quality of interactions; the contestations and cooperation within and between Nigeria’s key social groups. Without question, inter-group relations in Nigeria often devolve into issues of interethnic/inter-religious concerns. Nigerians value and maintain strong religious and ethnic ties. Religion and ethnicity evoke visceral passions and exert profound influence in the articulation of social identities. Nigerians tend to see themselves firstly and secondarily as members of their ethnic and religious groups, and then Nigerians.
This paper examines ethno-religious narratives in national socio-political discourse; and proposes the proper application of religious values and scriptural principles towards the formulation of creative models of harmonious coexistence in a multiethnic, multireligious Nigeria.
Understanding Ethnicity and the Question of Identity in Nigeria
George de Vos defines an ethnic group as “a self-perceived inclusion of those who hold in common a set of traditions not shared by others with whom they are in contact” (Romanucci-Ross and De Vos 1995, 18). These “set of traditions” include “folk” religious beliefs and practices, language, a sense of historical continuity and common ancestry or place of origin. Fredrik Barth and Steve Fenton each approach the subject of ethnicity by pointing to its psychological and social dimensions. In both Barth and Fenton, while plurality is fundamental to ethnic identity formations geography is peripheral. Hence for Barth, in the context of contested spaces; ethnicity becomes a means of defining, and maintaining both psychological and territorial boundaries between in- and out- groups (Barth 1969). Fenton drawing from Barth’s work, lays emphasis on ethnicity “as a social process, the moving boundaries and identities which people, collectively and individually, draw around themselves in their social lives” (Fenton 1999, 10). In Barth and Fenton ethnicity is seen as a means through which a group appropriates certain specific markers for the purposes of defining and maintaining boundaries, often mobilized as a basis for the exclusion of those who are perceived as outsiders and/or as posing a threat to the in-group’s survival and interests. Against that backdrop, “ethnic community and identity are often associated with conflict and more particularly political struggles in various parts of the world” (Hutchinson and Smith 1996, 3). Ethnic identity elaborations in Nigeria have taken all the various courses of re/constructions and elaborations of mostly putative ancestries and histories, and boundary definitions and maintence.
The processes of ethnic/group identity construction, definitions and redefinitions, continue progressively in response to new socio-political realities that impose new inter-group conflicts and challenges (Parrillo 2002). Significant events in the life of the Nigerian nation, some of which can be described as epochal—the entry and impact of Islam and Christianity in the Nigerian space, British colonialism and postcolonial trauma, the birthing and birth pangs of a new nation and postcolonial political development, the Nigeria-Biafra war and its aftermath—are a few examples of key events in the life of the Nigerian state that have combined to shape the Nigerian’s perception of national identity and his/her groups place in it. As new political realities emerge, as the geo-political map of Nigeria is redrawn due to new State, local government and autonomous community creations, group identities, allegiances and alliances shift and former insiders become new outsiders. With amazing speed and frequency, the we-them game begins to play out just soon after a new state, local government or autonomous community is created out of an existing one. The confluence of national-ethno-religious conflicts and intergroup dynamics have also accentuated “the creation of newly salient identities and group loyalties defined as ethnic in nature that are, actually, based on a past only recently fabricated, which comes to justify a presently sought-for, selectively contrasted social belonging” (Romanucci-Ross and De Vos 1995, 17). A not-so-sophisticated illustration of this dynamic at work might be the postwar deconstruction-reconstructions in the former Eastern Nigeria geopolitical space which created Rumuola, Rumukorochie, etc out of Umuola, Umukorochie, etc in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
At the macro national level, the British conquest and collapse of Sokoto empire in March 1903, and the Administration’s reconstitution of the Northern and Southern Protectorates and the Colony of Lagos into the new nation of Nigeria in 1914, brought together largely diverse peoples, with divergent religious and socio-cultural aspirations too suddenly and virtually forced them into one central Nigerian nation—a nation to which they lack inert sense of patriotism. (The feeling of being “united by force” still persists and a certain degree of cynicism is very present in many Nigerians about any prospect of national unity). Quite early in the political history of Nigeria, patterns of majority/minority groups, dominance/subordination, and disenchantment/resentment began to emerge. The need for the preservation of group interests within the new national reality dictated new alignments and realignments. Minority ethnic groups began to be assimilated into others to form even large ethnic groups.
Earlier on, the Islamic conquest of the larger northern parts of West Africa and the introduction of Arabic script into the area had facilitated the consolidation of the Hausa/Fulani ethnic group (Turaki 1993). The emergence and expansion of Islam in the area, the adoption of the Hausa language as the lingua franca of the Empire by several of the “ethnic nationalities” of the area on the other hand, and their acceptance of the system of administration based on the Emir, were all factors that helped to create the Hausa or Hausa/Fulani ethnic group. Progressively, the Hausa and Fulani began to perceive themselves, and be perceived by others, as a culturally homogenous group, even if, as Eghosa Osaghae notes: “the fact that the Fulanis have generally different physiognomic traits from the Hausas, and that there exists a Fulani language—fulfude (sic)—make the Hausa and Fulani different ethnic groupings” (Osaghae 1986). There are resonances with the other main ethnic groups in Nigeria.
Language, as a key ethnic identity marker, continues to play a strategic role in ethnic reformulations with religious institutions often playing the main catalyzing part. According to Adrian Hastings, the converting of oral vernaculars into writing—a legacy of Christian missionary effort—helped to consolidate ethnic affinities, and “created identities which did not until then exist” (Hastings 1999, 148). As with the Hausa/Fulani group, the two other main Nigeria’s ethnic groups—Yoruba and Ibo as they are now constituted—have also been shown to be indeed fairly recent creations and the direct result of the Colonial and Christian presence.
William Bascom has argued about what is now the Yoruba ethnic group that, originally “there was no comprehensive name for the Yoruba as a whole, and people referred to themselves by the name of their subgroup” (Bascom 1969, 5). According to his thesis, even the (not too complimentary) name Yoruba was “originally given [only] to the Oyo Yoruba [and not even by the people but] by the Fulani or the Hausa (Ibid). And, if Osaghae is correct, “it was the development of a “standard” Yoruba language by Church Missionary Society in the late 19th century that brought about a Yoruba ethnic group” (Osaghae 1986). That notwithstanding, in the narratives of present day Yorubas, such history has been subsumed into a meta-history that now reaches back into a Yoruba ancestry of mythic dimensions and which dates back to the cradle of mankind.
About the Ibo/Igbo ethnic group, Victor Uchendu had acknowledged the difficulty in determining their origin as a people because they “have no common tradition of origin.” As he reminds his readers, it is only recently “that some Igbo-speaking communities have ceased to claim that they are not Igbo” (Uchendu 1957, 15). Ezera is quoted in Osaghae to the effect that “It would be a mistake to think that the Ibos are strictly a homogenous unit…,[because] there are marked dialectical and cultural variations between their subdivisions.” Again, the three main factors that coalesced into the formation of a pan-Igbo ethnic group included: the establishment of Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission in Onitsha in 1857 (and the subsequent translation of the Bible into “central Igbo,” the destruction of “Long Juju” by British forces in 1902, and the imposition of taxation on Igbo men in 1928 (first time in their history).
The foregoing not only demonstrates the reality and transitory nature of our ethnicity, but also, I hope, shows the prospect and potentials of reconstructing a new Nigerian national consciousness through the employment of national identity markers and the facility of religions.
Religion and the Question of Identity in Nigeria
Clifford Geertz defines religion as “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (Geertz 1973, 90). At the very least Geertz’ definition provides a general framework for sketching religious phenomena in Nigeria; and also for exploring the contours of pro-Nigeria interfaith relations.
Geertz’ definition of religion aims to address both the psychological (subjective) and sociological (cultural) dimensions of the subject of religion. Both dimensions play a part in the individual’s sense of self and as a member of a group. At the individual/personal level, religious symbols “formulate a basic congruence between a particular style of life and a specific (if, most often, implicit) metaphysic, and in so doing sustain each with the borrowed authority of the other” (Geertz, ibid). Further, Geertz contends that religious concepts “spread beyond their specifically metaphysical contexts to provide a framework of general ideas in terms of which a wide range of experience—intellectual, emotional, moral—can be given meaningful form” Geertz 123). For the group, religion undergirds their sense of common bond and shared experience-in-community. Religious symbols, creeds, rituals, myths “function to synthesize a people’s ethos—the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood—and their world view—the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order” (Geertz ibid). Thus, among other things, religion provides individuals and groups the facility of meaning making and locating themselves in the vast universes of conflicting and competing realities. But if religion renders group ethos intellectually meaningful, or even because of it, religion also evokes visceral passions. In Nigeria and elsewhere, the emotive properties of religious identity have often been appropriated in pursuits other than piety and public good, and often resulting in, or exacerbating intergroup conflicts. In fact, the available data strongly indicate a reckless proclivity of many a Nigerian opinion leader throughout our nation’s history for appropriating religious symbols and discourses to further parochial socio-political agenda often to the long-term detriment of national integration.
Faith as Ethnicity
To fully address the question of religion and intergroup relations, it is important that we problematize religion itself and deal fully with the socio-cultural dimensions and issues of organized religion. The privileging of religion on one hand or the viewing religion in essentially spiritual terms on the other hand short-circuits inquiry and unnecessarily insulates religion from needed critique. Organized religion functions as social groups within complex socio-cultural human networks and settings, and by human (social) beings. Faith, especially Nigeria’s two main living faiths of Islam and Christianity as well as the various internal subgroups and denominations, functions as ethnicity.
To some degree or another, the aspiration of creating a hegemonic theocratic social order has historically been present in Christianity and in Islam. However, that idea seems to be more deeply rooted in the Islamic concept of ummah. Especially from the Hijra and Prophet Muhammad’s settlement in Medina, Islam was conceived as religio-political community, for the development of Islam and state institutions. In Fazlur Rahman’s words, “Islam insisted on the assumption of political power since it regarded itself as the repository of the Will of God which had to be worked on earth through a political order (Rahman 1979, 2). In principle, each Muslim-in-community with all other Muslims belongs to the one transnational theocratic House (or Nation) of Islam to which s/he owes primary socio-political allegiance and from which s/he derives his/her sense of group identity. There are doubtlessly a lot of positive examples to cite, but on the negative side of the ledger, it has been observed that in several ethno-religious conflicts in Nigeria, Muslim nationals of neighboring countries like Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic have often been implicated as co-combatants of brother Muslims against fellow non-Muslim Nigerians. The Maitatsine uprisings in the 1980s and the more recent crises in the Plateau and other areas show evidence of such cross border infiltrations.
Having said that, we should be careful to not oversimplify the complexities of multiple identity elaborations and navigations in the Nigeria society. Identity elaborations based on markers other than religious continue to impinge upon the core in-group sense of a subgroup within adherents of an adopted faith as they encounter members of the same adopted faith persuasion who they consider to belong to ethnic/racial out-groups. It has been strongly suggested that the political fortunes (or misfortunes) of the late Chief Moshood K. O. Abiola illustrate the inherent tensions in intra-religious and inter-ethnic affinities in Nigeria. According to this school of thought, a key piece of why Abiola did not become president in 1993 was because he was Yoruba and did not come from the “right” ethnic group though he was a prominent Muslim.
The complexion of organized religious faiths in Nigeria—whether Christian or Muslim—have not only been overly shaped by the ethnic realities of dominant groups but also continue to be used as instrument of exclusion of other Christians (or Muslims) by dominant Christian (or Muslim) ethnic groups. Often, members of minority groups—as is the case of Christian or non-Muslim peoples in Northern parts of Nigeria—may find that adopting the faith of the dominant majority (even nominal Islam) guarantees a sense of ‘first class’ citizenship and security. Especially among minority peoples of these regions, the percolations of identity crises often boil over into volatile intergroup conflicts. At yet another level, what has often been overlooked in most stereotyping of “mushroom” or “splinter” churches and mosques is the possibility that the prevalence of ethnic/racial churches, synagogues and mosques may be indicative of the continuing quest by groups and sub-groups for a sense of belonging due to the lack thereof in the groups characterized by oppression and dominance.
The intersection of faith and ethnicity increase the complexity of nationality and national identity re/construction in Nigeria. In fact, some may see religion as a major clog in the wheel of national integration. Yet I will argue that it is only in the enduring values and principles of religion qua religion that we can glean the ingredients for the construction of a nation state that affirms and protects the dignity of the individual person as divine image bearer; and, guarantee a humane, free and virtuous social order. Not only the Qur’an and the Bible, but also ATR espouse the idea of harmonious coexistence among peoples as captured in the traditional Igbo wisdom of egbu bere ugo bere (live and let live).
Towards a Nigerian National Identity and National Integration
Nigeria’s national question goes beyond religious harmony between faiths, and further into a collective quest for national self-identity—an overarching sense of national us-ness in the citizenry. By the very nature of colonialism, it was not in the interest of the creators of Nigeria to encourage and nurture national consciousness in the people. Whether by accident or (as the cynic might suggest) by design, the Nigerian society was never organized to succeed. Joseph Okpaku had charged that the “Nigerian colonial state was established by the British to erect an efficient and effective administrative state, not to carry out a program of political development” (Okpaku 1972, 170. At the demise of the colonial state, transfer of authority motivated the emergence of a brand new political society. The new republic required representative participation of the diverse groups that make up the Nigerian state. A group’s representative at the center must of necessity secure legitimacy with the group s/he aspires to represent. The process of galvanizing legitimacy for national leadership, made it politically inevitable for emerging national leadership to mobilize, enlist or even create and exaggerate sectional or ethnic interests/differences in generating votes. With time, the process of power acquisition and maintenance has produced a political class that in turn continually devises new ways of galvanizing group symbols and sensitivities, and in ways that are often detrimental to national unity.
The Politicization of religion has been indicated in the “rash” of declaration of statewide shariah in most of the Northern states of Nigeria and, for non-Muslims and increasing number of Muslim, is illustrative of how the Nigerian political elite foments and manipulates narrow ethnic/religious cleavages for political gains. Many Christians have contended that the ascendancy of President Olusegun Obasanjo—a Christian president from Nigerian Southwest—which, meant power-shift at the center from the Muslim North to Christian South, was behind the shariah move by Northern Muslim politicians. According to this theory, the North’s feeling of loss of power motivated elements of Northern Muslims to foment as much crises as possible to heat up the polity, in order to make Nigeria ungovernable with the hope of regaining power, presumably by military takeover.
Inquiry into the propriety of Nigerian national identity and national integration immediately raises the question of possibilities and potentialities of such a quest especially in view of not so rosy picture of Nigeria’s ethno-religio-political realities and complexities. Is Nigeria national integration possible in Nigeria Are Nigerians so ethnically entrenched, so religiously alienated and so politically fractionalized that any hope of national integration is but the proverbial pipe dream? What might be considered the pathways to national integration in Nigeria? To these questions we shall provide answers, but first, what are we talking about when we say nation or nationalism?
What are Nations and Nationalism?
To many historians, nations arise out of nationalistic ferment incubated within proto-nationalistic ethnicities (Gelner 1983, 55; Hastings 1997, 3; Anderson 1991, 9f). A sense of shared culture and recognition of mutual rights and obligations imposed by that membership are essential elements of a nation. “A mere category of persons (say, occupants of a given territory, or speakers of a given language, for example) becomes a nation if and when the member of the category firmly recognize certain mutual rights and duties to each other in virtue of their shared membership of it” (Gelner, 7). However, nationalistic instinct or a desire for self-determination in and of itself, does not always eventuate in the creation of new nationalities (Hobsbawm).
Historians of the Hans Kohn, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner schools insist that ‘nations’ and ‘nationalism’ must be understood as modern ideas the origins of which must be located in the French Revolution of the late 1780s. According to Kohn, “[n]ationalism as we understand it is not older than the second half of the eighteenth century. Its first great manifestation was the French Revolution, which gave the new movement an increased dynamic force” (Kohn 1960, 3). Hobsbawm speaks of “nation as novelty”, and approvingly quotes K. Renner to the effect that the “birthday of the political idea of the nation and the birth-year of this new consciousness, is 1789, the year of the French Revolution” (Hobsbawm, 101). Emphasizing the modernity of the nationalistic idea, Gellner aims at dismantling the notion that nationalism merely awakens nations to self-consciousness. For him it is nationalism that rather “invents nations where they do not exist” (Gellner 1968, 169).
In The Meaning of Nationalism, Snyder adopts Frederick Hertz’s definition of nationality as “a community formed by the will to be a nation” (Snyder 1968, 73). Hertz’s definition of nationality is helpful not only because of its brevity, but also because of its emphasis on a community’s will to be a nation. Its main attraction is in pointing to the subjective and psychological element in the construction of nationality. The collective willingness of a people to be a nation becomes sine qua non, and something that can be mobilized and reinforced, in constructing national identity.
However, it bears restating that the sheer will to be a nation does not adequately account for the emergence of nationalities. Breuilly’s impatience with, and rejection of any definition of nationalism that will include every expression of national consciousness becomes understandable, otherwise a “vague definition of nationalism which would include any and every expression of national consciousness...or the subject becomes so large as to be meaningless (Breuilly 1982, 4). Adrian Hastings supplies a critical missing element in the discourse of nations and nationalism by highlighting the crucial role of religion—Christianity in particular—in the rise of nationalism. “Biblical Christianity both undergirds the cultural and political world out of which the phenomena of nationhood and nationalism as a whole developed and in a number of important cases provided a crucial ingredient for the particular history of both nations and nationalisms” (Hastings 4). He further takes issues with aspects of Hobsbawmian-Gellnerian constructions of history, as well as the scanty attention Hobsbawm in particular has paid to religion in the construction of nations and nationalities.
While agreeing with the central thesis of Hobsbawm and Gellner, Hastings challenges both their dating and analysis of the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism.
I do not wish to dispute the rapid spread of nationalist ideology and nation-creating movements from that time, nor do I question the sort of Hobsbawmian analysis of why in the nineteenth century this took hold of central and eastern Europe in the way that it did…. But a balanced history of nationalism in its entirety must not be allowed to belittle the primacy of experience of the Atlantic coastal states. The basic question remains whether 1789 or thereabouts is a reasonable starting date for study of the subject. Hobsbawm wrote a history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalism, but not a history of nationalism, and denial of the first half of the story has inevitably skewed the whole. In particular it impairs an understanding of the nation-nationalism relationship because while in the later period nationalisms may often have preceded nations rather than the reverse, in the earlier period it is far truer to say that nations as they grew more self-conscious, or came under threat, produced nationalisms. (Hastings 1977, 11)
Hastings finds Hobsbawm and Gellner’s treatment of the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism “quite unconvincing.” While conceding that not all ethnicities evolved into modern nation-states, he insists that it demands a more thorough and different kind of analysis than what Hobsbawm presents, to debunk the primordial origin of nationalism. In Hastings view, what has to be asserted counter to modernism is not any kind of primordialism - a claim that every nation existent today, and just those nations, all existed in embryo a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago – but, rather, a finely constructed analysis of why some ethnicities do become nations while others do not. (Hastings, 11-12). He goes on to compare other situations.
The defining origin of the nation, like that of every other great reality of modern western experience, whether it be the university, the bureaucratic state or individualism, needs to be located in an age a good deal further back than most modernist historian feel safe to handle, that of the shaping of medieval society.(1977,12)
It is not our task in this presentation to attempt a resolution of the disputed issues between these great historians and scholars of nations and nationalism. Our purpose here is simply to recognize significant voices and awareness of ideas on nations and nationalism, as a foundation for inquiry into the subject of constructing Nigerian national identity. As Kohn indicates, nationalities come into existence only when certain “objective bonds” delimit a social group. These “objective bonds” may include common descent, language, customs and traditions, religion, common territory or the state, and “a living and active corporate will” (Kohn 1960, 14-15). However, even Kohn seems to recognize that he was reflecting pristine notions of nationality that might represent some time gone by. With nations and nationalism behind us, let us return to the proposals for national identity and integration. How then may the ideas we have garnered so far apply to the articulation of a Nigerian national identity?
One Nation under God?
The 1999 Nigerian Federal Constitution was enacted for the purpose of “promoting the good government and welfare of all persons in our country, on the principles of freedom, equality and justice, and for the purpose of consolidating the unity of our people.” One crucial element of this grand vision is that in contradistinction to a radical disestablishment clause, the Nigerian Constitution deliberately subordinates the “sovereign state of Nigeria ‘under God.’ Explicitly the Nigerian constitution clearly indicates the intention of religious participation in public square, and I will argue anticipates religion as the essential instrumentality for the realization of such a lofty goal. However, subordinating the nation state under God is one thing and the realization of harmonious coexistence in a multifaith-based polity is another thing. It seems clear that since independence the lofty aspiration of one united Nigeria has remained largely unrealized. Ethnic and religious cleavages, with attendant interethnic and inter-religious conflicts, have continued to make elusive the quest for nationhood and formation of truly national cohesive identity. Still at the heart of what is today commonly referred to as “the national question” is the task of fashioning constructive ways of welding the peoples of Nigeria into a cohesive modern national entity with a healthy sense of national identity.
It is towards that task that we shall now turn. In exploring the role of religion in national integration, we have sought to approach our subject matter with particular emic attention to the conceptualization of multiple allegiances within the nation state. It probably bears restating that religion does not function in a vacuum, but among persons within a web of group affinities and distances. Thus, discussions about religion and intergroup relations in Nigeria involve not only inquiry into the relationship between religion and a sovereign nation state, but also the perspectives, elaborations of/and contestations among religious peoples within the socio-political space of Nigeria. At least tangentially, it touches on the idea of subordinated sovereignty, the secularity of the Nigerian state, and the place and role of religion in the public sphere. In pulling our thoughts in this presentation together, let me suggest key issues implicated in the quest of national integration.
1. ‘Imagined Communities’ and The Will to be a Nation
Khon had suggested ‘common descent’ as one of the ‘objectives bonds’ implicated in the emergence of nationalities. In the modern nation states however, members of a nation need not be bound by blood or ‘race’ in order to constitute a nation. Even Khon himself accedes that nationalism, by definition—our identification with the life and aspirations of uncounted millions whom we shall never know, with a territory which we shall never visit in its entirety—is qualitatively different from the love of family or of home surroundings (Kohn 1960, 9). In fact, Anderson refers to nations as imagined communities. Imagined because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 1991, 6).
As we have already noted, the historical antecedents to the formation of the Nigerian nation, lacks certain of the essential ingredients of nationalism as the creative ferment of nations in the traditional sense. Nigerians do not claim any real or imagined common ancestry. It appears that except in largely superficial sense, a truly nationalist sense of oneness has continued to elude the people of Nigeria. Nigerians consistently see themselves as first belonging to their particular ethno-linguistic or ethno-religious group, and secondarily, to a patently loose “confederation of nations.” That much said, it is true that whether or not a nation consists of persons of ancestral connections on one hand, or are of putative connections, the element of a strong sense or feeling of us-ness is essential for national identity. The point is that even speaking with discordant voices, there appears an underlying willingness among Nigerians to be, and live in harmony as, a nation. Religious institutions and authorities should not only harness this willingness but draw from their own traditions and holy books to affirm the common brotherhood of humankind, relative transient socio-cultural identities and accentuate the re/construction of meta-narratives for the Nigerian nation.
2. ‘Sovereign nation under God’
Beyond the will to be a nation is the question of the kind of nation Nigerians envisage. Is Nigeria a secular or multireligious state? This question of Nigeria’s secularity or otherwise has been a moot one because of the apparent ambiguity of the Nigerian constitution on the subject. On one hand, Chapter I General Provisions, Part II.10 of the 1999 Federal Constitution, contains the Prohibition of State Religion clause, which states inter alia: The Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion. For many Christians, this disestablishment clause disavowing state sponsorship of religion is conclusive prove of the secularity of the Nigerian state. In view of perceived Muslim use or abuse of state apparatus for advancing pro-Islamic agenda, Christians have often resorted to repeating to Muslims that ‘Nigeria is a secular state”. On the other hand, the opening words of the Constitution reads:
We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly and solemnly resolved, to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God, dedicated to the promotion of inter-African solidarity, world peace, international co-operation and understanding, and to provide for a Constitution for the purpose of promoting the good government and welfare of all persons in our country, on the principles of freedom, equality and justice, and for the purpose of consolidating the unity of our people; Do hereby make, enact and give to ourselves the following Constitution....
Clearly, the Constitution does not intend unequivocal secularism, as the term is commonly understood, or as defined in Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary (2001) as “a system of political or social philosophy that rejects all forms of religious faith and worship.” As such the secular state implies an autonomous self-sustaining sovereign political entity, which commands absolute allegiance from citizens. It does not seem that Nigerians intend the kind of radical separation of faith from state that the secularist ideology proposes. It appears that whatever else state sovereignty may mean, that Nigerians intend a sovereignty that is subordinated ‘under God’. If that is the case, Nigeria’s idea of state sovereignty subordinated ‘under God’ should be considered a profoundly desirable proposition, and one that demands sustained critical articulation vis a vis the role of religion in a multireligious polity like Nigeria.
The concept of limited or subordinated sovereignty is not necessarily incongruent with the idea of sovereign state, since the limitation is not externally imposed or due to subservience to unequal temporal sovereignties. Whether in strictly religious faith terms or in terms of other isms that mimic faiths, humans whether as individuals or collectives, always find ways of acknowledging a Higher Authority. “Those who have no religious faith require some other moral support and turn to one of the several political doctrines for assistance. Nationalism and Communism are both, to a certain degree, synthetic substitutes for religion” (Heater, 161).
It does not seem that any one faith community independent of the others can fully work out the ramifications of subordinated sovereignty in a multi-faith environment such as Nigeria. This is one area open to interfaith cooperation between living faiths in Nigeria. Christians and Muslims in particular owe the nation a great deal of debt in getting beyond their petty and not so petty theological differences to help a nation grapple with what it really means to be a sovereign multiethnic multireligious nation under God.
3. A New Political Order.
The Nigerian political order was founded on the necessity of galvanizing and playing up narrow group identities, aspirations and interest for the purpose national political legitimization. While this might have been useful in ensuring adequate federal representation at some point (and may still be useful and in strictly controlled and carefully managed circumstances), a new order that deemphasizes often parochial group interests that continue to do damage to the task of national integration. Here religion might begin by healing itself of the tribalism, sectionalism, schisms and all the isms that bedevil Nigeria’s organized religions in order to be able to speak more prophetically to an increasingly cynical nation.
4. Lingua Franca
We have shown in this paper the role both Islam and Christianity had played in the formation of major Nigerian languages and ethnic groups—even if inadvertently. In the absence of ancestral connections, a lingua franca will assume a greater significance in the construction of national sense of self than being just a means of communication. But, if a common language is an important element of national identity, the challenge of fashioning a national language has been exacerbated by ethno-linguistic competition for dominance within Nigeria’s over 350 ethno-linguistic groups. Over the years, attempts have been made at adopting one or more of Nigeria’s indigenous languages as the official language of the country. But such attempts have always been hampered by the multiplicity of languages coupled with their codification into writing, ethnic pride and waves of cultural revivalism. There seems to be greater resistance today to the idea of adopting one local Nigerian language than before.
Although English is widely spoken and until recently served as the lingua franca of Nigeria, national pride has required the adoption of Edo, Efik, Fulfude, Hausa, Idoma, Igbo, Kanuri and Yoruba as national or official languages, particularly in the states where they are widely spoken. However, in Hobsbawm’s view a national language need not arise from primordial foundations.
National languages are therefore almost always semi-artificial constructs and occasionally, like modern Hebrew, virtually invented. They are the opposite of what nationalist mythology supposes them to be, namely the primordial foundations of national culture and the metrics of the national mind. (Hobsbawm 1990, 54).
Whether English or one or more Nigerian languages is adopted as lingua franca, what may be of importance is that it be given a pride of place and the study and use be pursued more purposefully at all levels. A practical step may be making compulsory the study of two or more national languages in schools and religious institutions and places of worship in Nigeria.
REFERENCE LIST
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso
Barth, Fredrik (ed.) 1998. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc.
Bascom, William. 1969. The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999. Accessed September 23, 2005. Available from http://www.nigeriaworld.com/documents/constitution.htm; Internet.
Fenton, Steve. 1999. Ethnicity: Racism, Class and Culture. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Gellner, Ernest. 1964. Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
____ 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell
Hastings, Adrian. 1997. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heater, D. B. 1971. Political Ideas in the Modern World. New York: Barnes and Noble.
Hobsbawm, E. J. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hunwick, John O.,ed. 1992. Religion and National Integration in Africa: Islam, Christianity, and Politics in the Sudan and Nigeria. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Hutchinson, John and Anthony D. Smith, eds. 1994. Oxford Reader on Nationalism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
____. 1996. Oxford Reader on Ethnicity. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Khol, Hans. 1965. Nationalism: Its Meaning and History. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company.
____.1967. Prelude to Nation-States: The French and German Experience. Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc.
Odumegwu Ojukwu, Chukwuemeka (Col.). 1969. The Ahiara Declaration: The Principles of the Biafra Revolution. Text of speech on the 2nd Anniversary of declaration of independence.
Okpaku, Joseph, ed. 1972. Nigeria: Dilemma of Nationhood. New York: The Third Press.
Osaghae, Eghosa. 1986. On the Concept of the Ethnic Group in Africa. Plural Societies. XVI:2.
Parrillo, Vincent N. 2002. Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Rahman, Fazlur. The People of the Book and the Diversity of ‘Religions’. In, Griffiths, Paul J., ed.1994. Christianity through Non-Christian Eyes, New York: Orbis Books
_____. 1979. Islam. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Romanucci-Ross, Lola and George DeVos, eds. 1995. Ethnic Identity: Creation, Conflict, and Accommodation. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press
Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press.
Smock, David R., ed. 2002. Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Turaki, Yusufu. 1993. The British Colonial Legacy in Northern Nigeria: A Social Ethical Analysis of the Colonial and Post-Colonial Society and Politics in Nigeria. Jos: Challenge Press.
Uchendu, Victor. 1965. The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Religion and National Integration: Religion and inter-group relations in Nigeria.