Mismatch between power and identities weakens Nigeria

But it’s extremely dangerous when the state cannot turn power into authority, because that often leads to one of three things. First, the state can repress people to force compliance. Second, if people push back, as they often do, there can be open conflict. And, third, the government can simply give up, resulting in a state of anarchy

From the medieval times of Plato and Aristotle to the present day, there has been recognition of the causal relationship between political stability and sustainable development. Political stability is a critical precondition for economic and social progress. But at the heart of political stability is the relationship between power and identity. A mismatch between power and identity in any county would severely undermine its stability and progress. My argument is that there is acute misalignment between power and identities in Nigeria, which impedes its stability and progress.

In this context, power is the ability of a government to direct the internal affairs of the state; the ability to raise and collect taxes, to maintain law and order, to ensure national harmony and social cohesion etc. Put simply, it’s the ability of the state to get its own way! Identity is about group characteristics that people attach to themselves. For instance, if push comes to shove and people must choose, which takes precedence: their ethnic or national identity?

Now, power and identity are misaligned if, for instance, power lies at the centre and identities lie at the subnational levels. Several studies have established that when there is mismatch between power and identity, it’s difficult to turn power into authority. As Professor Paul Collier of Oxford University put it, “authority is where people chose to obey without a lot of effort, where compliance becomes semi-automatic”. But compliance won’t become semi-automatic when those required to be compliant don’t share identity with the people in power.

There is indeed a major problem with voluntary compliance with authority in Nigeria. This is because of the big mismatch between power and identities, which is why the government can’t effortlessly stem ethnic tensions and militancy across the country. A related reason is the erosion of state legitimacy, which results from government failure and the fact that organisations, such as Boko Haram and the killer herdsmen have interests that are at variance with those of the Nigerian state.

But it’s extremely dangerous when the state cannot turn power into authority, because that often leads to one of three things. First, the state can repress people to force compliance. Second, if people push back, as they often do, there can be open conflict. And, third, the government can simply give up, resulting in a state of anarchy. All these three have happened in Nigeria.

Last year, for instance, the federal government used military force, under so-called “Operation Python Dance”, to force compliance with its orders following militant agitations by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Indeed, successive Nigerian governments have used repression to force compliance with authority. But people often pushed back, resulting in open conflict and the deaths of thousands of Nigerians.

But there are also situations where the government simply gives up, creating a state of anarchy. For instance, the failure or refusal of the Buhari government to stop the incessant violent herder/farmer clashes is clearly a surrender. The herdsmen repeatedly ignore the government’s orders to stop their killings and violence. Yet, perhaps out of share incompetence or duplicity, the government has done nothing. The result is an open theatre or a state of anarchy, with the criminal herders murdering farmers at will and with impunity.

So, we know what could happen when there is mismatch between power and identities, and when the state can’t turn power into authority: it is either repression or open conflict or theatre or all the three. And the above is just about security; there are many areas where the Nigerian government is struggling to secure voluntary compliance from the citizens. But no state can develop and make progress under such circumstances. Voluntary or semi-automatic compliance with authority is necessarily to achieve stability and progress. That’s why it is critically important that power and identity are aligned in any country so that power can be turned into authority.

Which brings us the key question: how can this be done? Well, there are two approaches, supported by empirical evidence. The first is to move the structure of identities towards the structure of power. This, in other words, means building a shared national identity, where the people regardless of their ethnic identities define themselves primarily in terms of a common identity. However, this approach usually only succeeds when adopted at the birth of a nation rather than when separate identities have been fully formed and entrenched. It was the route followed by Julius Nyerere and Lee Kuan Yew in meshing together their respective countries, Tanzania and Singapore, despite the diverse ethnic identities in each country.

As the founding president of a country, a medley of several tribes, arbitrarily put together by the colonialists, Nyerere was determined to create a common national identity. He introduced a common national language, Swahili; created a national curriculum that taught a common narrative history; changed the capital from Dar es Salam to Dodoma to bring it to middle of the country; and decreed that civil servants must not work in their ethnic areas. Lee Kuan Yew did similar things in Singapore. The result is that Tanzania and Singapore have a sense of common national identities and are peaceful, stable countries devoid of malign ethnic tensions. Of course, Nyerere’s socialist policies harmed Tanzania economically.

By contrast, Nigeria did not follow the Tanzanian or Singaporean model. At independence in 1960, Nigeria’s founding fathers owed primary allegiance to their ethnic groups, just as Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s founding father, did. Nigeria later tried to do some of what Nyerere did to promote national unity. For instance, it introduced the National Youth Service Corps, under which tertiary education graduates are required to serve for one year outside their ethnic areas; it also moved its capital from Lagos to Abuja to locate it in the middle of the country. But none of these has worked. Nigeria is as ethnically divided today as it was in 1960; it’s hard to see a common symbol that unite the disparate ethnic groups.

Of course, Nigeria is not Tanzania or Singapore. Nyerere and Lee Kuan Yew forged common identities with force; they operated a repressive one-party state. The United States is, however, a country that has managed to weave together a plethora of nationalities and ethnicities without force. But America was not constituted by people who defined themselves by ethnic characteristics rather by immigrants, who, arriving in the land, subordinated their original identities, Jewish, Irish, Spanish etc, to a common American identity, even though they still owe primordial allegiance to Israel, Ireland, Spain etc. Secondly, America’s federalism, which entrenches a real balance of power between the centre and the states and under which every nationality or ethnicity gets equal opportunities and fair material treatment, makes it easier to forge a sense of national identity. I mean, Barack Obama, a mixed-race from the tiny state of Hawaii, became President of the US! Whereas politics in Nigeria is a struggle by the different ethnic nationalities for or against domination.

The truth, let’s face it, is that most multi-ethnic states cannot become like Tanzania or Singapore or America. Even in Britain, forged together 300 years ago in 1707, the British identity is still weaker than the people’s core identities of either English or Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish. Why? Because the core identities were formed and entrenched a long time before Britain came together. The same is true of Nigeria: its proud and strong ethnic nationalities, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa/Fulani etc, predate the cobbling together of the country by the British, which is, like Britain, the Nigerian identity is weaker than the underlying identities.

Which brings me to the second approach to aligning power and identities, namely to move the structure of power towards the structure of identities. Basically, this means decentralisation or devolution of power. Radical decentralisation is the route followed by developed countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium and Canada, and by countless other multi-ethnic countries. This approach has guaranteed peace, stability and progress worldwide.

Every nation must either move identity towards power, by building a common, centralised identity, or move power towards identity, through decentralisation; otherwise it’s chaos. Of course, Nigeria must build a shared identity, but radical decentralisation is its best way forward. Nigeria must move power significantly towards the locations of identities in the country by returning to regionalism. That’s the best way of aligning its mismatched power and identities and ensuring its stability and progress.