READ Full text of speech by Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo
GREATER TOGETHER THAN APART.
The conveners of this event, the Yar’ Adua Memorial Centre, the Ford
foundation and the Open Society initiative West Africa, have done us an
enormous favour by offering us the platform for this profoundly
important conversation. They deserve our deep gratitude for this
opportunity for individual and collective introspection.
Introspection is probably what separates us from beasts. That ability
to learn from history is perhaps the greatest defense from the
avoidable pain of learning from experience, when history is a much
gentler and kinder teacher. Indeed, the saying experience is the best
teacher, is incomplete, the full statement of that Welsh adage is that
experience is the best teacher for a fool. History is a kinder and
gentler teacher.
I was ten years old when my friend in primary school then, Emeka,
left school one afternoon. He said his parents said they had to go back
to East, war was about to start. I never saw Emeka again. My aunty Bunmi
was married to a gentleman from Enugu, I cannot recall his name. But I
recall the evening when my parents tried to persuade her and her husband
not to leave for the East. She did, we never saw her again.
I recall distinctly how in 1967, passing in front of my home on
Ikorodu road almost every hour were trucks carrying passengers and
furniture in an endless stream heading east. Many Ibos who left various
parts of Nigeria, left friends, families and businesses, schools and
jobs. Like my friend and aunty some never returned! But many died. The
reasons for this tragic separation of brothers and sisters were deep and
profound. So much has been said and written already about the “why’s
and wherefores’’ and that analyses will probably never end.
This is why I would rather not spend this few minutes on whether
there was or was not sufficient justification for secession and the war
that followed. The issue is whether the terrible suffering, massive loss
of lives, of hopes and fortunes of so many can ever be justified.
As we reflect on this event today, we must ask ourselves the same
question that many who have fought or been victims in civil wars, wars
between brothers and sisters ask in moments of reflection….“what if we
had spent all the resources, time and sacrifice we put into the war,
into trying to forge unity? What if we had decided not to seek to avenge
a wrong done to us? What if we had chosen to overcome evil with good?’’
The truth is that the spilling of blood in dispute is hardly ever
worth the losses. Of the fallouts of bitter wars is the anger that can
so easily be rekindled by those who for good or ill want to resuscitate
the fire. Today some are suggesting that we must go back to the ethnic
nationalities from which Nigeria was formed. They say that secession is
the answer to the charges of marginalization. They argue that separation
from the Nigerian State will ultimately result in successful smaller
States. They argue eloquently, I might add that Nigeria is a colonial
contraption that cannot endure.
This is also the sum and substance of the agitation for Biafra. The
campaign is often bitter and vitriolic, and has sometimes degenerated to
fatal violence. Brothers and sisters permit me to differ and to suggest
that we’re greater together than apart.
No country is perfect; around the world we have seen and continue to
see expressions of intra-national discontent. Indeed, not many Nigerians
seem to know that the oft-quoted line about Nigeria being a “mere
geographical expression” originally applied to Italy. It was the German
statesman Klemens von Metternich who dismissively summed up Italy as a
mere geographical expression exactly a century before Nigeria came into
being as a country. From Spain to Belgium to the United Kingdom and even
the United States of America, you will find many today who will venture
to make similar arguments about their countries. But they have remained
together.
The truth is that many, if not most nations of the world are made up
of different peoples and cultures and beliefs and religions, who find
themselves thrown together by circumstance. Nations are indeed made up
of many nations. The most successful of the nations of the world are
those who do not fall into the lure of secession. But who through thick
and thin forge unity in diversity.
Nigeria is no different; we are, not three, but more like three
hundred or so ethnic groups within the same geographical space,
presented with a great opportunity to combine all our strengths into a
nation that is truly, to borrow an expression, more than the sum of its
parts.
Let me say that there is a solid body of research that shows that
groups that score high on diversity turn out to be more innovative than
less diverse ones. There’s also research showing that companies that
place a premium on creating diverse workplaces do better financially
than those who do not. This applies to countries just as much as it does
to companies. The United States is a great example, bringing together
an impressively diverse cast of people together to consistently
accomplish world-conquering economic, military and scientific feats.
It is possible in Nigeria as well. Instead of trying to flee into the
lazy comfort of homogeneity every time we’re faced with the
frustrations of living together as countrymen and women, the more
beneficial way for us individually and collectively is actually to apply
the effort and the patience to understand one another and to
progressively aspire to create one nation bound in freedom, in peace and
in unity.
That, in a sense, should be the Nigerian Dream – the enthusiasm to
create a country that provides reasons for its citizens to believe in
it, a country that does not discriminate, or marginalize in any way. We
are not there yet, but I believe we have a strong chance to advance in
that direction. But that will not happen if we allow our frustrations
and grievances to transmute into hatred. It will not happen if we see
the media – television and radio and print and especially social media –
as platforms for the propagation of hateful and divisive rhetoric. No
one stands to benefit from a stance like that; we will all emerge as
losers.
Clearly our strength is in our diversity, that we are greater
together than apart. Imagine for a moment that an enterprising young man
from Aba had to apply for a visa to travel to Kano to pursue his
entrepreneurial dreams, or that a young woman from Abeokuta had to fill
immigration forms and await a verdict in order to attend her best
friend’s wedding in Umuahia. Nigeria would be a much less colourful,
much less interesting space, were that the case. Our frustrations with
some who speak a different dialect or belong to a different religion
must not drive us to forget many of the same tribe and faith of our
adversaries who have shown true affection for us.
My God-son is Somkele Awakalu, his father Awa Kalu, SAN, and I taught
at the University of Lagos. My first book was dedicated to Somkele and
my two other God-children. Chief Emmanuel Dimike is almost 80, he was my
father’s friend and business associate in his sawmills in Lagos. Chief
has been like a father. I see him most Sundays, he worships with me at
the chapel.
The individual affections and friendships we forge some even deeper
than family ties, must remind us that unity is possible, that
brotherhood across tribes and faiths is possible.
Let me make it clear that I fully believe that Nigerians should
exercise to the fullest extent the right to discuss or debate the terms
of our existence. Debate and disagreement are fundamental aspects of
democracy. We recognize and acknowledge that necessity. And today’s
event is along those lines – an opportunity not merely to commemorate
the past, but also to dissect and debate it. Let’s ask ourselves tough
questions about the path that has led us here, and how we might
transform yesterday’s actions into tomorrow’s wisdom.
Indeed our argument is not and will never be that we should ‘forget
the past’, or ‘let bygones be bygones’, as some have suggested. Chinua
Achebe repeatedly reminded us of the Igbo saying that a man who cannot
tell where the rain began to beat him cannot know where he dried his
body. If we lose the past, we will inevitably lose the opportunity to
make the best of the present and the future.
In an interview years ago, the late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu,
explaining why he didn’t think a second Biafran War should happen, said:
“We should have learnt from that first one, otherwise the deaths would
have been to no avail; it would all have been in vain.”
We should also be careful that we do not focus exclusively on the
narratives of division, at the expense of the uplifting and inspiring
ones. The same social media that has come under much censure for its
propensity to propagate division, has also allowed multitudes of young
Nigerians to see more of the sights and sounds of their country than
ever before.
And for every young Nigerian who sees the Internet as an avenue for
spewing ethnic hatred, there is another young Nigerian who is falling in
love or doing business across ethnic and cultural lines; a young
Nigerian who looks back on his or her NYSC year in unfamiliar territory
as one of the valued highlights of their lifetime. These stories need to
be told as well. They are the stories that remind us that the journey
to nationhood is not an event but a process, filled as with life itself
with experiences some bitter, some sweet. The most remarkable attribute
of that process is that a succeeding generation does not need to bear
the prejudices and failures of the past.
Every new generation can take a different and more ennobling route
than its predecessors. But the greatest responsibility today lies on the
leadership of our country. Especially but not only political
leadership.
The promise of our constitution which we have sworn to uphold is that
we would ensure a secure, and safe environment for our people to live,
and work in peace, that we would provide just and fair institutions of
justice. That we would not permit or encourage discrimination on the
grounds of race, gender, beliefs or other parochial considerations. That
we would build a nation where no one is oppressed and none is left
behind.
These are the standards to which we must hold our leadership. We must
not permit our leaders the easy but dangerous rhetoric of blaming our
social and economic conditions on our coming together. It is their duty
to give us a vision a pathway to make our unity in diversity even more
perfect.