$Unique_ID{COW02628}
$Pretitle{357}
$Title{Nigeria
Chapter 2C.   Ethnic Relations and Regionalism}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert Rinehart}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{ethnic
class
political
status
social
yoruba
groups
education
ibo
power}
$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Country:     Nigeria
Book:        Nigeria, A Country Study
Author:      Robert Rinehart
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 2C.   Ethnic Relations and Regionalism

     Despite the common recourse to ethnicity in the search for support and
solace in difficult situations, neither the organization nor the aims of
entities defined as ethnic have usually been traditional. (In rural areas a
people may seek to preserve its way of life, but even so the group may be
forced to organize in new ways to hold off competitors.) Ethnic entities may
stress traditional elements as symbols of their cohesion and of their
difference from others. But they have often organized themselves in new ways
to seek access to political and economic resources and opportunities.

     Some Nigerians have seen the country's problems in terms other than that
of rivalry between ethnic groups, and some have sought to minimize its
importance. Some groupings, e.g., religious ones, were in principle
universalistic in orientation and sometimes succeeded in cutting across ethnic
or regional lines. Sometimes, however, such institutions came in fact to be
coterminous (or nearly so) with ethnic categories and therefore reinforced
them. In any case the combination of competition and insecurity characteristic
of Nigeria's changing society and economy, especially in the urban areas,
tended to generate reliance on the familiar, that is, on the ethnic community.
In such circumstances the unknown or poorly known-other ethnic
communities-became the source of one's problems. It is probable that the
establishment of states may mitigate or alter the nature of conflict on the
national level and on what used to be the regional level, but ethnic
competition is likely to continue for some time even if the terms are
different. Secession (like that attempted by the Ibo) as a solution to
conflict may have been obviated, however.

     Political scientists Robert Melson and Howard Wolpe have provided a set
of propositions in terms of which the Nigerian experience may be depicted. To
begin with, some peoples acquired an advantage as competitors in the emerging
economy early in the colonial era (or even before it) by virtue of the nature
of their contact with European influence, a fruitful physical environment, and
perhaps most important in the long run a cultural or psychocultural
predisposition to change. Precisely what enters into that predisposition is
difficult to pin down, but it does seem to have an effect. As a consequence of
that advantage, access to wealth, status, and power in the modern system
tended to coincide with ethnic groups or sections of them rather than cutting
across them. Sometimes, however, early access to European influence, (for
example among that segment of the Ibibio called the Efik) led to an early
advantage but resulted in a comfortable adaptation, thus making the people
resistant to further change. By the same token, a long period of separate
development in the north under a colonial regime that encouraged the
maintenance of traditional structures was, in a sense, an advantage to the
Hausa or at least to their Fulani rulers. But it can be argued that it put the
Hausa at a disadvantage when circumstances changed. The Hausa and the Kanuri
also faced a difficult physical environment. Some segments of the Yoruba near
the coast had advantages of early contact with Europeans and education similar
to those of the Efik and in addition had fertile land suitable for a valuable
cash crop-cocoa.

     The Ibo did not initially have the opportunities that stemmed from early
European contact, nor were they in a particularly good physical environment.
In some areas they lacked adequate amounts of land. Their predisposition to
seek aggressively the rewards gradually made available in a changing economy
and society led many of them to acquire the means (particularly education) to
gain those rewards. In the years after World War II, the Hausa were not only
culturally different from the Ibo, a situation reinforced by religious
differences between Muslim and Christian (or pagan), but they were often
poorer (although there were of course wealthy Hausa merchants). Moreover in
the quest for high status positions requiring education credentials, the
Hausa lagged far behind. It is in part for this reason that young Hausa,
beginning to oppose their elders and the conservative social and political
order in the mid-1960s, nevertheless made common cause with the northern
ruling class when Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi proposed a unitary civil
service. They feared that they still lagged so far behind in education that
Ibo would dominate the civil service in the north.

     Similar patterns of relative advantage applied in the relations between
groups at the regional or provincial (roughly that would now be the state)
levels. Some of the coastal groups, such as the Ijaw and the Ibibio who had
moved ahead by virtue of their initial opportunities, were the object of envy
and dislike of smaller groups in the interior. For example, inland Ibo envied
the riverine Ibo of Onitsha, and inland Yoruba felt the same way about the
Ijebu (coastal Yoruba).

     The narrowing of the gap between two groups has not necessarily
diminished ethnic antagonism. As the conditions of interaction and competition
changed and as the later starting Ibo approached the Yoruba in numbers engaged
in and qualified for modern political and economic roles, the intensity of
their conflict increased. On the one hand the fast moving Ibo were still
uncertain of their status and were uncomfortable outside their home grounds
despite their willingness to go anywhere in search of opportunity. On the
other hand the Yoruba, long dominant in both public and private sectors of
developing Nigeria, found themselves hard pressed and came to perceive the
Ibo as a threat. Yoruba solidarity was sporadic and often depended upon the
presence of another ethnic group. As sociologist Pierre van den Berghe points
out in his study of the University of Ibadan, Yoruba-Ibo conflict was an
important element of student and faculty politics until the Ibo left at the
onset of the civil war, whereupon conflict then became characteristic of the
relation between Yoruba sections.

     Up to a point the relative segregation of one people from another
minimizes conflict if the groups involved are engaged in non-competitive tasks
rewarding in some sense to both. Anthropologist Onigu Otite describes the
relation between Yoruba landlords and migrant Urhobo tenants as having been
free of severe conflict. The Urhobo had the skills to exploit the taller palm
trees on Yoruba land and paid rent to do so, remaining apart from the Yoruba
otherwise. In a changing society and economy such as Nigeria's, however,
relations of this kind are likely to be unstable. In this case a rise in the
world price of palm oil led to the acquisition of the relevant skills by
Yoruba. Moreover other uses for the land diminished exploitable resources for
the Urhobo. What had been a symbiotic relationship became a competitive one in
which the Urhobo as tenants were at a disadvantage. The relations became
politicized and even more remote.

     Except in some rural areas, residential and social separation in
Nigeria, whether or not initially voluntary, has generally occurred when the
peoples involved competed for the same resources or related to each other
only as buyers and sellers in the marketplace. These conditions permit if
they do not generate reciprocally stereotyped and pejorative views. Hausa
cattle traders, self-segregated and organized to maintain a monopoly of their
role as cattle suppliers to Yoruba butchers in Ibadan, tended to speak of the
"machinations" and "treachery" of the Yoruba who in turn referred to the
"exploitation" and "greed" of the Hausa.

     In the 1920s and 1930s change, especially that connected with
urbanization, led to the formation of a variety of communal associations,
initially by such peoples as the Ibo and Ibibio who were entering urban areas
for the first time. In the beginning these associations were based on
membership in subsections of what later came to be seen as the all-embracing
ethnic group. The emphasis then and until after World War II was largely on
the help these members could give each other to survive and find jobs in the
urban areas and on the sociability it afforded migrants with persons of their
own culture. At the same time they contributed to the atmosphere of ethnic
competition, especially when the better organized associations succeeded in
gaining, temporarily at least, what looked like a partial monopoly on some
kinds of jobs for their members. The associations also acted as links with
the rural areas and helped spur a degree of ethnic consciousness even among
those whose own experience had not yet generated it.

     By the 1940s and 1950s many of these subethnic organizations had been
united into overarching entities, such as the Ibo State Union and the
Yoruba-speaking Egbe Omo Oduduwa (Society of Descendants of Oduduwa),
which politicized ethnic conflict. They also provided opportunities for the
emergence and honing of political skills for many more persons than were able
to participate in political institutions formally established by the colonial
authorities. Eventually the political roles of these associations were taken
over by specifically political parties (see Emergence of Nigerian Nationalism,
ch. 1). The more localized components of these associations continued to play
a role in the choice of candidates in ethnically or regionally based political
parties.

     Political parties and political groupings of any kind with overt ethnic
or religious orientations were not permitted during the era of the military
government, and the Constitution of 1979 prohibits parties explicitly based
on ethnic, regional, or religious grounds (see Federal Military Government,
ch. 1; Political Parties of the Second Republic, ch. 4). The Constitution
does, however, permit the formation of culturally oriented organizations.
The form that such associations are likely to take and the tasks they might
perform are not clear, but it is possible that the part played by such
entities in exacerbating interethnic competition will diminish.

     Although the new political parties are in principle not ethnically,
regionally, or religiously based, the patterns of leadership, party
recruitment, and voting may suggest an orientation not to a class or coalition
of (nonethnic) interest groups, but to ethnic, regional, or religious
interests. In any case they are likely to be perceived in that way by many
Nigerians. That perception may be of particular importance in those
multiethnic states where the party in power tends to get most of its votes
from one or two of the ethnic groups involved, leaving members of the others
feeling that the government in power lacks full legitimacy. The effect of
such ethnic perceptions accounts in good part for the demand for more states.

     Nigeria's democratic politics-the mass participation of Nigerians in
voting and in the political process generally-has been conducive to ethnic
and regional (and sometimes religious) orientations. Appeals to interests
defined in these terms have had greater effect in a multiethnic and highly
competitive society such as Nigeria's than have those couched in terms of
pan-Africanism (as in the early 1950s), pan-Nigerianism, or socialist
ideology. Indeed attempts to gain support on nonethnic grounds either failed
or were abandoned as changes made as a prelude to self-government and
eventual independence made mass participation possible, and it became
necessary for political leaders to gain the support of large numbers of
voters. In the north the orientation of most leaders was regional. Many had
important offices in the traditional system, and preservation of the
traditional order was one of their values. Some would have had difficulty
competing in the national arena in terms of modern criteria for status.
Elsewhere, however, many made their ethnic appeals because in the end they
had little alternative if they were to get and keep a mass base.

     In the second republic such appeals could not be blatant. They would
bring official and unofficial condemnation as "tribalism," and many
Nigerians have been wary provocative language since the bloody civil war.
Nevertheless more subtle language (codes) may be developed to make a case,
the open espousal of which would bring public disapprobation.

     Cultural and linguistic similarities and regional propinquity that had
not provided bases for political union, economic cooperation, or social
cohesion earlier became the grounds for such links in the face of conditions
that emerged during the colonial regime and persisted in newly independent
Nigeria. Before the colonial era what would later become ethnic groups were
divided, sometimes to the point of armed competition and predation. During
the colonial period divisions among such entities, putatively of the same
ethnic group, were reinforced, e.g., in the case of the Yoruba, by the fact
that these traditional units provided the basis for subregional administrative
divisions. In others (the more fragmented Ibo, Ibibio, and Ijaw, for example)
the new administrative divisions became the units relevant to resource
competition, their cultural similarity notwithstanding.

     The framework for ethnic relations has changed since the introduction of
new states. Thus the Yoruba core area is divided into three states, each
comprehending in varying proportions traditional local subgroups and Yoruba
originating elsewhere. On the one hand the states themselves may be
competitive rather than cooperating entities. On the other hand local
administrative areas, linked at least in part to subethnic groups, may
engage in intrastate competition. There are already indications that Ibo
of different parts of the core Ibo states are identifying with smaller units.

     The establishment of a number of states in the far north has put the
Hausa-Fulani in a different position. Despite the relative unity displayed
in national politics in the 1950s and 1960s there had been differences of
interest between various subregional elements of the Hausa-Fulani, especially
between Sokoto and Kano. Thus although Sokoto was the seat of the heirs to
Usman dan Fodio's religious leadership of all the Hausa-Fulani emirates, the
two areas (and others) had been differently affected by Islamic currents of
the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover Kano had long been more
important as an urban center encompassing both commercial and intellectual
activity than had Sokoto and had attracted much more modern industrial
activity than Sokoto or any of the other Hausa states, giving it somewhat
different economic interests. Another factor with potential for dividing the
Hausa-Fulani is the speed with which each state will implement or gain the
benefits of the turn to secular education beginning in the mid-1970s.

     The historical conditions that led to the construction, organization,
and widening of ethnic groups also led to the internal differentiation of
these groups in socioeconomic and ideological terms and to the emergence
of an elite of mixed ethnic origin and varied composition (see The Social
Order: Elites and Social Stratification, this ch.). Identification with
socioeconomic groups has not necessarily permanently replaced ethnic
identification in the political and social lives of those who were active in
them, although there have been some for whom class or ideological
considerations usually superseded all others. In most cases particular
conditions have made for the saliency of class consciousness, but that
consciousness has then given way to an ethnic orientation as conditions have
changed.

The Social Order: Elites and Social Stratification

     A significant range of variation in wealth, status, and power has marked
all but a few of Nigeria's ethnic groups and is certainly characteristic of
the larger ones. Aspects of the system of stratification bore some relation to
local or regional cultural, social, and economic differences as these had
developed during the colonial era and the period of independence. For example
only a few areas have ever had significant industrial plant and a modern
industrial working class (as opposed to self-employed craft workers). Only
certain ethnic groups, such as the Hausa-Fulani and the Kanuri, have a
tradition-based sociopolitical hierarchy that, despite important
modifications, has remained fundamental to regional patterns as they have
developed in the north. In general the important bases for differentiation
have emerged in the context of political, social, and economic changes of the
twentieth century and apply to all of Nigeria. The most obvious of these
is education in the Western mode. Distinctions with respect to power,
status, and wealth therefore cut across local and regional boundaries in
apparent disregard of ethnic considerations. Nevertheless the ways in which
these dimensions are linked, particularly the extent to which wealth and
power may generate or underlie high status, vary with local cultures.

     Ethnic or subethnic affiliations have given way in some circumstances
to collective action based on socioeconomic considerations, but most
Nigerians see action in class terms relevant under some conditions but not
others. In most cases ethnic or subethnic loyalties have been more readily
mobilized than loyalties based on a sense of class interest if only because
it is easier to communicate in one's mother tongue and to use readily
recognizable symbols than to communicate across linguistic barriers and
construct new symbols. Beyond the more easily evoked emotions of ethnicity,
however, is the fact that ethnic affiliation has frequently been perceived as
more immediately advantageous to the individual or his local community. Except
for what some have called the dominant class or the elite, sustained class
consciousness had not emerged in Nigeria as of the early 1980s.

    The difficulties in describing the composition, dimensions, and relations
of social strata in modern Nigeria stem from several sources. First is the
fact of continuous social, political, and economic change. Second is the
initial heterogeneity of the social systems characteristic of the country's
many ethnic (and subethnic) groups. The three major groups (Hausa, Yoruba, and
Ibo) alone exhibit much of the range, and the introduction of others such as
the Tiv widens it further. Anthropologist Peter Lloyd, an authority on the
Yoruba, has noted the wide differences in the precolonial political and
social arrangements of sections of that people alone.

    Variable rates and kinds of change mean that the system of stratification
as it was experienced by men and women in specific communities in the late
1970s and early 1980s has been quite different. Thus modern higher education
as the path to prestigious, lucrative, and powerful positions enters into
Nigerian social stratification at every level. But it entered earlier in the
south, and the receiving system was different there than in the north. As
important as it has become in regional social systems among the Hausa-Fulani
and the Kanuri, education has not yet achieved the dominance that it has among
the Yoruba, Ibo, and other peoples. A similar variation marks the part that
wealth alone may play in the allocation of status and as path to power.

    Individuals in the same community have adapted differently to change.
All do not necessarily agree to recognize certain attributes (roles) of
individuals as determinants of status. Nigerians-even those of a given ethnic
category-do not have a unanimous view of the worth of emirs, obas (kings), or
of occupations requiring a modern education. Some may defer to the power of a
wealthy businessman or an educated bureaucrat but regard the incumbents of
such positions as less worthy of deference than an oba or vice versa. In
some cases a person's disvaluation of a role generally granted prestige by
others may reflect an ideological position. Thus some Nigerians are opposed
to the continued deference given incumbents of traditional offices (despite
their diminished power) and consider them irrelevant to modern Nigeria. In
other cases the status of individuals gives them a different perspective on
the entire system of status allocation. For example many women among the
Kanuri are not persuaded that maleness confers higher status, although they
may be powerless to change the system in the near future. Often, however,
discrepancies in emphasis on the worth of this or that role simply reflect
a complex personal experience of change and the unsettled state of Nigerian
society.

    Differences of wealth, status, and power on the one hand and the
significance of kinship, local community, and ethnicity on the other come
into play under different conditions. Very often, however, the two kinds of
social ordering mesh from the point of view of any individual. A person's
chances for social mobility (or for the maintenance of social status, economic
resources, or power already achieved) may be more readily enhanced by a
patron-client relationship than by collective action of those in similar
positions. Such relationships have long been common in many of Nigeria's
ethnic groups, even those characterized by relatively heavy emphasis on the
inheritance of high status positions. In the modern system, the kinds of
patrons and the kinds of help they can give have changed, but the pattern is
much the same.

    In any case, the obvious patron is a kinsman, someone from one's home
community, or someone of the same ethnic group (more usually the subethnic
group). Both patron and client are seeking to enhance their status-the client
by moving into a more lucrative or more prestigious job, the patron by
demonstrating his power and generosity, necessary if he is to be considered
a big man rather than simply a wealthy one.

The Dominant Class

    Given the wide range of incomes and the connection between affluence and
superior education, it is easier to distinguish the elite from the mass in
modern Nigerian society than to apply the language of class analysis
implying a number of strata arranged in a single hierarchical system, as
anthropologist Peter C. Lloyd has noted. Even so, there is some dispute
concerning the characteristics of the elite; particularly at issue is the
extent to which the interests of its members are essentially similar and their
behavior a manifestation of a Nigeria-wide class consciousness.

    In 1963 political scientist Richard L. Sklar wrote of an emergent class
(in 1979 he called it a dominant class) "engaged in class action and
characterized by a growing sense of class consciousness." In that class were
persons with high status occupations almost invariably associated with
high income. Included were professionals (physicians, lawyers, university
teachers, and others), wealthy businessmen (owners and controllers), and
senior functionaries in the civil service and in public and private
enterprises. Superior education (in the early 1960s, secondary education or
better; by the mid-1970s, higher education) was the path to many of these high
status occupations. As Nigerians became increasingly involved in higher
managerial and technical ranks of public and private firms, higher education
provided access to these occupations as well. Despite its importance, however,
education alone has not always guaranteed high occupational status. Here
patronage has played a part.

    In 1963 Sklar did not include the higher ranks of the military in his
incipient dominant class. Despite (or perhaps because of) their political
role for nearly fifteen years, information about their social status in the
early 1980s was uncertain. High ranking officers were marked by superior
education and incomes, but whether Nigerians thought of them as integral
members of the elite and saw a military career as a possible route to such
membership was another matter.

    In 1979 Sklar distinguished between southern Nigeria, in which the
dominant class was generated by "Western education, modern methods of
communication, urbanization, and the growth of commerce," and the north
(the Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri-dominated areas) where "modern class formation
occurs within the firm context of a traditional order structured by the . . .
principles of aristocratic birth and sociopolitical rank." There modern
functionaries of both aristocratic and commoner origin and businessmen,
chiefly of commoner origin, have not replaced traditional rulers in the
sociopolitical hierarchy but have coalesced with them.

    Omitted from Sklar's discussion is the role of important religious
leaders. Again, there is a difference between south and north. In the
south, prominent religious figures, particularly in the standard
denominations to which many of the southern elite adhere, have status and
may interact socially with members of the elite. But there is no indication
that they were part of the power-wielding class in the last quarter of the
twentieth century. In the north, some Muslim religious leaders (by no means
unanimous in their outlooks) are, at the least, respected advisers to
traditional rulers. Others, even if they did not engage in regular
decisionmaking pertaining to the political and economic spheres, were still
in the early 1980s potential sources of support for or criticism of ongoing
changes in Muslim society.

    Lloyd focuses on the Yoruba, who have provided a very large proportion
of the national elite-highly educated politicians, judges, senior civil
servants, and wealthy entrepreneurs. Except for the traditional rulers,
he includes in his conception of the elite essentially the same elements
as does Sklar. Although some obas are well educated and have high incomes,
their power has been substantially diminished. Their roles and influence
are inherently more localized than that of members of the elite in the
southwest and the great emirs in the north. (It is possible that some obas
will carry greater weight in each of the three states into which the former
Western Region has been divided.)

    Lloyd calls attention to the sectional interests within the elite. In
the private sector, for example, those employed by foreign firms or whose
business is subsidiary to such firms may have different interests than the
indigenous businessmen who compete with them. He also distinguishes between
the different interests of politicians, civil servants, and businessmen
of whatever level. Lloyd, however, was writing of the period before massive
indigenization, and in Sklar's view that indigenization was a means, among
other things, of consolidating the dominant class. Most of those who
immediately benefited from it were already members of the elite. Nigerian
politicians (including the military in their political role) have made a
point of supporting indigenously-owned private enterprise, and many
politicians and senior civil servants (and the military) are either directly
or indirectly (through members of their families) engaged in private business.
Indeed, the high ranking civil servant who relies wholly on his salary has
come to be seen as one of the less affluent elements of the elite despite
the fact that his salary and other perquisites provide a standard of living
far higher than that of most Nigerians.

    Sklar argues that the elements of Nigerian society that enter into this
dominant class, whether aristocrats, or functionaries and entrepreneurs
of humble origin, "appear to unite and act in concert-consciously so-on
the basis of their common interest in social control." For example he
suggests that the support for regionalism in the first years of independence
brought together those in power-north and south-who were concerned that
southern antiregionalism had been coupled with radical opposition to the
dominant class. In general the members of that class, whatever their
occasional differences of interest, are concerned with the maintenance of a
system that guarantees them status, wealth and, above all, power.

    Given continuing opportunity for a share in the acquisition of wealth
and the exercise of power, it is unlikely that sustained conflict-as
opposed to differences of interest that can be compromised-will arise within
the dominant class. The next generation of the elite, i.e., university
students, tend to see themselves as entitled to a share in the present
ordering of wealth, status, and power rather than to question that order. That
tendency is likely to persist as long as they can continue to find a place in
the elite structure.

    In the north the traditional ruling class has accommodated the new
Western-educated civil servants and wealthy businessmen. From time to time
individuals have seen traditional rulership as anachronistic, and a potential
for fission in the northern dominant class exists should significant numbers
of the educated elite and wealthy (but generally commoner) businessmen become
dissatisfied with their share of power and prestige. Complicating the
situation (except in Borno State) and perhaps enhancing the possibility of
conflict is the sense of some Hausa that the traditional ruling class is
alien, i.e., Fulani.