Ethno-nationalist claims in southern Nigeria: insights from Yoruba and Ijaw nationalisms since the...

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Ethno-nationalist claims insouthern Nigeria: insights fromYoruba and Ijaw nationalismssince the 1990sCharles Ukeje & Wale AdebanwiPublished online: 28 Jan 2008.

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Ethno-nationalist claims in southern

Nigeria: insights from Yoruba and Ijaw

nationalisms since the 1990s

Charles Ukeje and Wale Adebanwi

Abstract

There are several competing explanations for the rise in ethnicnationalisms in Nigeria, but there is an agreement that identity politicsand conflicts tend to incubate and thrive best in underdeveloped settings.To this can be added the crises produced by prolonged military rule,during which the intensity of contestations for power translated the questfor ethnic ascendancy into the rule rather than the exception. This essayprovides the contexts and extenuating circumstances in which ethnicnationalisms by the Yoruba and the Ijaw in southern Nigeria becamesalient and militant from the 1990s onward. Despite concrete variationsin their ethno-nationalist projects, the Yoruba and the Ijaw are shown tobe similar in several respects: both, for instance, contain salient strands of‘self-determination’ translating at best to pseudo-separatist inclinationstowards the decentralization and devolution of power and authority asconstituted presently in Nigeria.

Keywords: Ethno-nationalism; southern Nigeria; Yoruba; Ijaw; self-deter-

mination; violence.

Background to ethnic nationalisms in southern Nigeria

James S. Coleman’s seminal work on Nigeria’s political history,Nigeria: Background to Nationalism,1 published two years beforeNigerian attained independence in 1960, traces the social andhistorical milieu behind the emergence of nationalism in Nigeria,and how Britain was ’forced’, by the mounting clamour for self-determination into conceding radical and immediate political reformsleading towards the early independence (1971 [1958], p. 3). Colemanargues that since grievances � imaginary or real, frivolous orjustifiable � constitute a major part of colonial nationalism, any

Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 31 No. 3 March 2008 pp. 563�591

# 2008 Taylor & FrancisISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01419870701491978

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study that focuses specifically upon the phenomenon of nationalisminevitably tends to dwell upon situations, policies and actions thatproduced such grievances. According to him, ‘to interpret the complexhuman motives and aspirations that form the content of nationalismin Africa today, one is obliged to be both tentative and humble’ (1971[1958], pp. 5�6). Coleman argues further that some of the mostprominent features of the social and economic ferment in Nigeria �revolutionary changes that profoundly affected traditional loyalties,patterns of behaviour and social obligations � could be traced, directlyor indirectly, to western intrusion, which created new tensions,reinforced old ones and embittered economic insecurity, as well asprovoking other militant attitudes and values. Even though thosetensions were cushioned by the ‘tenacity of the kinship bond’, theyultimately provided the predisposing conditions or background for therise of political consciousness and the fermentation of nationalistsentiment (Coleman 1971 [1958], pp. 79�80).

At the generic level, central to the emergence and proliferation ofnationalisms around the world is the pursuit of identities in theirvarious and multiple forms: cultural, religious, political, class andethnic (Hodgkin 1956). Even though ‘ethnicity’ and ‘nationalism’ areused in some contexts interchangeably, a simplified distinctionbetween the two phenomena is that the former is founded on apeople’s cultural repositories, in contradistinction to ‘nationalism’,which is a political movement (Smith, in Palmberg 1999, p. 10).Between them, ethnicity and nationalism make for dual, and some-times, overlapping identities, especially because the behaviours andreactions evoked by both can permeate, and are strongly felt and‘normatively sanctioned’ in multi-ethnic countries. Because ethnicidentities are relational, contested and, therefore, unstable (Palmberg1999, pp. 12�14), they have intrusive effects on virtually all issues inethnically divided and politically charged societies, including admin-istrative and routine ones. Ethnic identities are at the epicentre ofpolitics, posing challenges to the cohesion of states and sometimes topeaceful relations (Horowitz 1985).

Some scholars are persuaded that in a country such as Nigeria onlyethnic identification patterns are genuine, and that national identity isa shallow invention. Others conceive ethnicity as the mimicry ofcollective consciousness masking unscrupulous elite manipulation ofthe political space using the resources of ethnicity (Horowitz 1985).Modernization, it is also claimed, intensifies identity consciousness (inethnic groups), leading to elite mobilization and opposition to thestate (Singh 1994, pp. 405�21). The reverse of this perspective is thatwhatever gaps one may assume to exist between the privileged andunderprivileged classes pale significantly in the real world as ethnicityserves the interest of both classes, as vividly shown by the ways they

564 C. Ukeje and W. Adebanwi

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respond to the foreclosure of material benefits accruable to the largergroup (Egwu 1993). Over all, nationalism among ethnic groups, it isargued, is rampant because ethnicity is gradually occupying the socialspace left by the decline of the Westphalian ideology of territorialnation-state as the most solid basis for group identity and mobilizationin the contemporary world.

According to the rational choice thesis, the kinds of orientation thatmanifest in inter-ethnic group rivalries and conflicts derive fromfestering ‘competition for resources’ because, at the same time thatthe state sets the terms of competition between groups, it becomes initself an object of group struggle2 (Lake and Rothchild 1996, pp. 42�3).To quote Bates, ‘ethnic groups persist, largely because of their capacityto extract goods and services from the modern sector and therebysatisfy the demands of their members. Insofar as they provide thesebenefits to their members, they are able to gain their support andachieve other loyalty’ (in Rothchild 1997, pp. 197�237). It is in a similarregard that ‘most politically assertive minorities want access to politicaland economic opportunities, and protection of their rights in existingsocieties and states’, rather than contemplate the difficult, if notimpossible option of ‘exit’ from the State (Gurr 1993, p. 216). Whatusually aids collective violence and protracted social conflicts is thedenial of identity of other groups, apart from the objective conditionsobtainable within supposedly ‘victimized’ communal groups. This iswhy ethnicity � and the identity symbols it usually unleashes repre-sent � ‘the most difficult type of cleavage for a democracy to manage’because it ‘taps cultural and symbolic issues . . . [while] the conflicts itgenerates are intrinsically less amenable to compromise than thoserevolving around issues of material or functional conflict’ (Diamond,Linz and Lipset 1995, p. 42). As a social instrument amenable topoliticization therefore, ethnicity serves as a basis for interest groupmobilization and, at the same time, ‘a critical ingredient in the creation,expansion and maintenance of the most potent political apparatus, thestate’ (Enloe 1980).

This elite root of ethnic mobilization is well documented in theliterature (Auster 1996; Diamond 1988; Enloe 1980; Otite 1975;Osaghae 1995). Because access to state power is recognized by mostethnic groups as a requisite for self and collective motivation,expression and reproduction, the local elites and ethnic entrepreneurswithin group set the tone and agenda of politics in ways that areparochial, beneficial to themselves principally and then to the largergroup. When the opportunity to access state power is forestalled,therefore, one of the first defensive mechanisms that an ethnic groupreadily mobilizes is that of collective, non-violent action but it scalesup steadily towards militancy and violence. Nnoli notes that ‘underconditions of intense socio-economic competition in the society,

Ethno-nationalist claims in southern Nigeria 565

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ethnicity is associated with hostility, conflict and violence’ (1993,pp. 6�8).

There are several competing explanations for the rise in ethnicnationalisms in Nigeria (Crowther 1978; Nnoli 1977, 1989; Sklar1994), but there is an agreement that identity politics and conflictstend to incubate and thrive best in underdeveloped settings wheremultiple identities along religious, cultural, class, professional, linguis-tic and ethno-communal lines tend to operate side by side. To all ofthese can be added the lingering spell carried over from prolongedmilitary rule whereby communities engaging in hostile bilateral andmultilateral relationships would have difficulties accepting the inevit-ability of resolving their problems by peaceful means rather thandrawing their daggers. In Nigeria, the intensity of contestations forpower has translated the quest for ethnic ascendancy into the rulerather than the exception. Instead of stubbornly refusing to acknowl-edge ethnicity therefore, different ethnic groups in Nigeria must buildtheir house on the strong foundations of ethnicity (Saro-Wiwa 1991).Some of the vexatious issues in the dispute between ethnic groups, onthe one hand, and between ethnic groups and the Nigerian State, onthe other, are driven by the quest for fair and equitable revenueallocation (Oyovbaire 1978), struggles for new states (Suberu, 1991,pp. 499�522; Osaghae, 2001), unending demands by dissatisfied groupsfor a sovereign national conference, resistance by minority groups ofdomination and marginalization by bigger and stronger ethnic groups,demands for an equitable power-sharing formula and so on. Arecurrent element of struggles by minority and majority ethnic groupsalike, at least in Nigeria, is that those rights and benefits that shouldordinarily accrue to them end up been absorbed by those who havecaptured the artificial State that lacks the reciprocal capacity, or eventhe sincere enthusiasm, to promote and protect the rights of ethnic andsub-ethnic groups (Osaghae 1995, pp. 323�44). No doubt, theexpression of nationalisms along ethnic lines has peaked at anunprecedented level in contemporary Nigeria, perhaps far more thanat any time since the civil war.3 Presently, there are dozens of activeand simmering conflicts associated with militant ethnic groups,centring mostly on disputes over land, chieftaincy matters, locationof local government headquarters, political representation and con-troversy over traditional suzerainty and authority, to mention a few.Indeed, Nigeria has witnessed more violent inter- and intra-ethnicclashes during the current Fourth Republic (1999�2007) than at anyother time in her history (Adebanwi 2005, p. 339).

Two phases could be discerned clearly in Coleman’s notion ofNigerian nationalism: ‘traditional nationalism’ and ‘twentieth centuryNigerian nationalism’. The former, according to him, comprisesmovements of resistance to the initial British penetration and


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occupation as well as earlier revolts over political and economiccoercion, while the later includes ‘sentiments, activities, and organiza-tional developments aimed explicitly at the self-government andindependence of Nigeria’ (1971 [1958], pp. 169�70). In truth, each ofthese facets or phases of nationalisms reinforces the other, and this factmust be borne in mind in any critical appraisal of the nationalismsproject in Nigeria. A unique feature of those phases, especially duringthe intervals between the two world wars, was what Coleman referredto as a ‘wave of organizational enthusiasm’, the emergence ofmovements or associations that frequently constituted themselvesinto the avant-garde of anti-colonial nationalism in urban centres inNigeria (1971 [1958], pp. 211�12). The twentieth-century version, onthe other hand, is distinguished by a conscious attempt to channelthese various grievances and protests against British colonial rule intoorganized political expressions and movements that were territorial �that is, each territory mapping out its own framework for anti-colonialstruggles and self-rule (Olusanya 1999, p. 547). Membership of thesemovements/organizations was along professional, ethnic, kinship,tribal, social, religious, commercial and gender lines. The robustassociational life that was the hallmark of that epoch was of crucialsignificance not only because such associations served as traininggrounds for the emergent nationalists, not because they encouragedthe flowering of the idea of collective action, but because sucha climate enabled nationalist leaders to mobilize and manipulateimportant segments of the population (Coleman 1971 [1958],pp. 211ff.). Diamond (1988, p. 28) has a different opinion about thosefactors that stimulated nationalisms in Nigeria. According to him,more as a result of deliberate policy, British colonial authorities notonly cultivated the Hausa/Fulani and Islamist identity of the tradi-tional oligarchies in Northern Nigeria, they also regionalized virtuallyeverything in order to promote mutually exclusive identities, whichwere sometimes fuzzy. Even though attempts to consolidate theseidentities in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria have further compli-cated the picture, there are still convenient fault-lines in theirconfigurations. Such convenient fault-lines, which simplify the com-plex history of ethnic relations, have been described as ‘mythico-history’ (Malkki 1995).

In whatever direction it is observed, the grand, pan-Nigeriannationalism that was mobilized against colonial rule did not endurefor any length of time after independence was achieved. In its place,Nigerian nationalism developed a patently regional flavour encou-raged by the culture of regional self-help among socio-culturalmovements and political parties in the three major regions (Coleman1971 [1958], p. 319). Perhaps this shift from a nationwide nationalismto regionalized nationalism would not have occurred without a shift in


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British colonial policy with emphasis on regionalism as a policy forpolitical control and resource extraction circa 1950. Colemanhypothesizes that the political significance of these changes was suchthat they revived or exacerbated old tensions between groups, orcreated new ones in some cases. Ultimately, the blossoming of sub-group nationalisms occurred at the expense of any further develop-ment of pan-Nigerian consciousness and nationalism (1971 [1958],p. 328).4 What perhaps did not change in the language and exercise ofethno-regional nationalisms is that the struggles by dominant groupswithin each region were still directed towards and against a centralauthority, the federal (central) government. The dissipation of theunited platform to challenge British colonialism led each ethnic groupto begin to fend for itself by moving back and forth between thecommunal realm defined by membership in an ethnic group and thecivic realm based on the notion of universal citizenship. As IDEA(2000, p. 5) pointedly noted, the net result of the ‘development of twopublic realms’, or the ‘two publics’ in Peter Ekeh’s classical coinage,has remained a major ‘source of the crisis of citizenship and identity incontemporary Nigeria’. Among ‘politically conscious leaders [thatwere] acutely aware of the relative position of their groups and regionsin the scale of modernity’, therefore,

group and regional differentiation . . . intensified intergroup andinterregional competition and tensions. The decisively importantfeature of this phenomenon, however, was that in most instancesthe appeal for united action for self-improvement was made to thekinship, tribal group, or a nationality, and, to a limited extent, theregion or even the country. (cf. p. Ekeh 1975 in IDEA 2000, p. 330,emphasis added)

It is important to state clearly that, while the nationalisms of majorethnic groups dominated much of political culture in emergentNigeria, those by minority groups also crystallized about the sametime with lesser intensity and visibility (Okpu 1977). In some cases,initially, minority agitations were subsumed under those of majorethnic groups: for instance, the middle belt minorities were under theNorthern People’s Congress-led Northern Region, while WesternNiger Delta minorities were within the sphere of influence of theAction Group-controlled Western Region (Obuoforibo 1999, pp.229�33). Where they existed previously therefore, nationalisms byminority ethnic groups were essentially ‘tributary nationalisms’ mobi-lized to serve the agenda of the major ethnic groups within the regionwhere they are located. Even then, minority ethnic groups initiallyseemed contented with clamouring for separate states and localgovernments, believing such devolution of power and authority would


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bring government and good life closer to their people. With time,however, minority ethnic groups became increasingly assertive, asdocumented by the Henry Willink Commission of Inquiry into thefears of minorities and the means for alleviating them presented to theBritish Parliament in July 1958 (Colonial Office, 1958).

Two reasons have been advanced for the delayed emergence ofminority ethnic nationalisms during the colonial era. According toColeman, first was the fact that the native authority system wasspecifically directed towards the development of each tribal ornationality group; hence one cultural group was not coercively madesubordinate to another cultural group. Second, minority grievancesand the drive to create new states are the result of, or a reaction to,modern political development, such as the growth of nationalismamong the three major ethnic groups (Hausa-Fulani, Ibo andYoruba), the countdown to self-government and unrelenting inter-party rivalry. In this context, the interlocking leadership of theprincipal cultural and political associations furthered the tribalizationof political groups as well as the politicization of cultural groups(Coleman 1971 [1958], pp. 385�36). As Anifowoshe rightly pointed outin his account of the nationalism of the immediate pre-independenceand post-independence eras:

The driving force of nationalism in Nigeria was not loyalty toNigeria as such, but racial consciousness of Africans . . . the dreamof African nationalism expressed in efforts to recapture the gloriesof a particular tribe. For some time the feeling of Nigeriannationalism did develop, but as inter-ethnic rivalries and politicalmaneuvers became more intense with the approach of self govern-ment those who called themselves Nigerian nationalists came tobehave less as Nigerians [but] as representatives of their variousethnic groups. (Anifowoshe 1982 cf. Obuoforibo 1999, pp. 230�31)

As will become clearer in subsequent sections on majority andminority ethnic nationalisms in contemporary Nigeria, popularnarratives have pointed to the reasons why ethnic groups in multi-ethnic countries cannot but lock themselves into competition andconflicts as a way of making authentic claims to national values andresources. Obuoforibo (1999, p. 231) identified several strategiesthrough which the nationalists of the early era mobilized/manipulatedethnic issues and transformed themselves into ethno-regional entre-preneurs. First, many party leaders embarked on ‘intensive mobiliza-tion of the ethnic home base to ensure its monolithic support at thetime of elections’. Second, they sought the widening of the politicalbase from the ethnic home base to include the whole region byobtaining the support of smaller minority ethnic groups with whom


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they share certain affinities. Third, political entrepreneurs with ethnicgroups were all out to win elections in the region in order to controlthe regional governmental power and, by extension, to eliminate/control all forms of opposition in the area. Fourth, they encouragedand sponsored agitations by minority ethnic groups in regions underrival political parties. Finally, they sought to control the FederalGovernment by winning majority seats in federal elections or, failingto do so, solicited coalitions that would at least guarantee sinecuresocio-economic and political rewards. An enduring legacy of inter-ethnic bitterness was that it ‘gave rise to undue acrimony, mutualdistrust and cut-throat competition . . . . The political atmospherebecame completely poisoned to the extent that it became a do or dieaffair’ (Coleman 1971 [1958], p. 231). Nnoli notes that:

more than anything else the inter-party struggle for political powerpoliticized ethnicity and spread ethnic thinking to the most remoteareas of the country. During times of election campaign, workerspenetrated all areas of the country in search of votes. Theirinvariably ethnic messages and innuendoes spread to all parts ofthe country. (Nnoli 1980 cf. Obuoforibo 1999, p. 232)

It is against this backdrop that we seek to understand two majorcontemporary manifestations of such bitterness as reflected in twoethnic groups, one a majority ethnic group, the Yoruba, and the othera group that claims to be the fourth largest ethnic group in Nigeria, yetis regarded as a minority ethnic group, the Ijaw.

Contemporary Yoruba nationalism

Nascent associational activities had become evident among theYoruba during the first quarter of the twentieth century with theformation of societies and unions based on indigenous town or ethnicorigins.5 Today, one can safely conclude that the Yoruba ethnic groupis at a critical crossroads within the context of Nigeria’s politicalhistory. There are a myriad of reasons for this. Since the amalgamationof the Northern and Southern protectorates by the British in 1914,the Yoruba, having had a head start in Western education, andtherefore Western ‘modernity’, ‘enlightenment’ and ‘progress’ (olaju)have always sought to define the contours of the emergent Nigerianformation and to lead it. These qualities, as Peel authoritatively claims,are qualities ‘which the Yoruba have prided themselves on possessing,compared with other Nigerian peoples’ (2000, p. 317). Whether at thepoint when this ‘advantage’ coalesced around the old colony andprotectorate of Lagos or later within the Western Region, the Yorubahave emphasized their progress in education, ‘advancement’ and


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‘modernity’ as key indices of the ‘legitimacy’ of their quest for theleadership of the Nigerian state. As the Lagos Weekly Record put it asfar back 1919, ‘the people had for over sixty years (ahead of theamalgamation of 1914) been reared under the traditional principles ofBritish justice and fair-play, and had been living as respectablemembers of a decent and well ordered community with all the externalindications and paraphernalia of modern progress’.6

A major thrust of the battle against the newly amalgamated Nigeriatherefore, particular by the Yoruba and the Yorubalized creoles inLagos, was the predilection of the first British Governor-General,Lord Lugard, who had been the governor of the Northern Protecto-rates, to foist the system he had perfected in the north on Lagos andon the south in general. Lugard, who was regarded as a Fulani-phileBritish colonial officer, was accused of privileging the emirs and, bydeduction, the north, despite the fact that ‘the gaiety and externalsplendour of the regal courts of the Emirs [were] superimposed upon asocial stratum of abject woe and misery among the masses’.7

Consequently the task from this time on for the Yoruba was tocounteract the Lugardian ethos that was inscribed into the veryprocess that produced colonial Nigeria and, eventually, the indepen-dent Nigerian state, particularly in the way this was/is believed to haveleveraged the rival Hausa-Fulani combinatory ethnic formation.

Obafemi Awolowo, who was to become the pre-eminent leader ofthe Yoruba, had described his people and constituency as ‘highlyprogressive but badly disunited group’ (Awolowo 1960, p. 166) by thetime he began his political career in the late 1940s. His task then, as hestated it, was ‘to infuse solidarity into the disjointed tribes thatconstitute the Yoruba ethnic group, to raise their morale, torehabilitate their self-respect, and to imbue them with the confidencethat they are an important factor in the forging of the federal unity ofNigeria’ (ibid.). This resolve led to a number of significant socio-political actions in the west of Nigeria, especially the creation of a pan-Yoruba cultural organization, the Egbe Omo Oduduwa,8 in 1948 andthe predominantly Yoruba political party, the Action Group (AG),later in 1951. As it turned out, these transformations also paved theway for the emergence of alliances with other contending ethnicgroups, particularly the Ibos. This worked in several directions: forexample, this encouraged Chief Awolowo and the AG to forgealliances with the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons(NCNC) in the East, with the United Middle Belt Congress led byJoseph Tarka and with minority organizations in the Rivers-CrossRivers and Bornu areas. By courting minority groups in other regions,the Action Group was exploiting the long-standing contempt har-boured by minority groups against principal ethnic groups and theirparties, most especially against the Northern People’s Congress. With


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hindsight, some of the defining moments in Yoruba-Ibo relationshipsfrom 1948 onwards were punctuated by the contentious politicizationof the activities of the Egbe, on the one hand, and the pan-Ibo group,the Ibo Federal Union, on the other. Almost four-and-a-half decadesafterwards, particularly in the aftermath of the annulment of theresults of the presidential elections of 1993, believed to have been wonby a Yoruba, Chief M. K. O. Abiola, pan-Yoruba nationalism hasassumed renewed visibility, vigour and format; with a conspiratorialovertone directed at the ‘Hausa-Fulani oligarchy’ believed to havethwarted the long-held ambition of the Yoruba nation to occupy thehighest political office in the country. As expected in such contexts,complex history and relations are often simplified by ethnic entrepre-neurs.

The reactions of the Yorubas to the annulment of the federalelections won by Abiola should be situated against the background ofprevious suspicions that those who, they believed, wielded power inNigeria (the Hausa-Fulani) were unwilling to allow the Yoruba achance to produce a president. Throughout his lifetime, first in theFirst Republic (1960�6) and then in the Second Republic (1979�83),Awolowo, the most significant Yoruba in the twentieth century, hadsought to lead Nigeria, but failed to capture power. With a measure oftruth, for many of his Yoruba compatriots, Awolowo was not just themost competent administrator among his peers, but also the ‘bestpresident Nigeria never had’ � as leader of short-lived secessionistBiafran state, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, attested when Awolowodied. ‘Disallowing’ him from leading the country until his death in1987 was therefore seen as a ‘conspiracy’ against the Yoruba led by nogroups other than the core power elite (Hausa-Fulani) in northernNigeria. Even then, while Chief Awolowo was at the forefront of thispan-Yoruba nationalism, there were internal fractures among thewider Yoruba ethnic group which manifested in different ways:Ibadan/Muslim contestation of Ijebu/Christian leadership; ‘Yorubaproper (Oyo Yoruba)’ led by Chief S. L. Akintola versus ‘OtherYoruba’, like the Awolowo sub-group, the Ijebu, to mention a few. It isinstructive, however, that, by the time Chief Awolowo died, he hadbecome the benchmark for describing how to be a ‘proper’ Yoruba.These old fault-lines still largely determine the direction and tempo ofYoruba politics, despite interesting reconfigurations. However, eventsin the late 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria were to strengthen thenationalist impulse of the Yoruba, while projecting their strugglesfor political control with renewed vigour on to the national platform.This nationalistic impulse soon translated into the dramatization ofviolence as a legitimate weapon for drawing attention to and defendingthe collective interests of the Yoruba. What factors invigorated pan-Yoruba nationalism in late twentieth-century Nigeria?


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The context was the transition to civil rule programme instituted bythe General Ibrahim Babangida regime. This transition programmeprovided an opportunity for the public articulation of concerns thatthe Nigerian union may, in fact, be under threat of collapse. Thisopportunity was sharpened by the biting effects of the StructuralAdjustment Programme (SAP), which the regime had put in place torescue and revive an ailing economy and restore internationalconfidence in Nigeria’s prostrate economy. However, the programme,executed under conditions of unprecedented looting of the public tillby the military, only worsened the conditions of Nigerians, with thenaira, the nation’s currency, grossly devalued, inflation rising to at all-time high and the prices of goods out of the reach of the ordinarycitizenry. The duplicitous political transition process instituted by themilitary aggravated the social and economic hardships occasioned bySAP. As civil society and pro-democracy groups struggled to endmilitary rule and defeat General Ibrahim Babangida’s schemes totransform into a civilian president, the Yoruba fatefully led the battlepitted principally against major political actors from the north. Eventhough this struggle was not a North-South contest, or a Yorubaversus Hausa-Fulani rivalry per se, on a closer examination the majoractors on both sides of the ethno-political divide � who had come tobelieve that the principal struggle for federal power in Nigeria isbetween the conservative power elite in the north and the progressivepower elite in the west9 � eventually constructed it in that manner.

After a series of convulsive political steps, programmaticallydesigned by General Babangida to cling subversively to power,presidential elections were held on 12 June 1993. The annulment ofthe election results was significant in that it provoked a series ofprotests and violent demonstrations that paralysed the country whilethey lasted. For the Yoruba in particular, the annulment was seen as anaffront to the popular mandate of about 14 million Nigerian voters fortheir son, Chief M. K. O. Abiola, from across ethnic, religious andclass divides and, as the final casus belli, as a declaration of waragainst them. For the Yoruba elite, this pan-Nigerian mandatetranslated literally into a ‘Yoruba mandate’ and a culmination ofdecades of attempts to enthrone a democratically elected Yoruba (read‘modern, efficient and progressive’)10 leadership in the Nigerian state.This hope was given further impetus as key northern elements andother non-Yoruba emerged to support the annulment. In the ensuingbattle to re-validate the election results, many Yoruba leaders werejailed, harassed and assassinated, while civil protests were counteredwith brute force by state-controlled law enforcement agencies. Abiolahimself, the unofficial winner of the election, was jailed when heopenly declared himself president one year after the elections, in June1994. Four years afterwards, in July 1998, Abiola died in detention


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under mysterious circumstances. For many Yoruba this was the heightof injustice and of ‘insults’ heaped collectively on the entire ethnicgroup. As Fasehun, leader of the original Oodua People’s Congress(OPC), puts it:

For a good part of four decades, the Yoruba were unjustly preventedfrom mounting the leadership throne of [Nigeria]. The frustrationlingered from the late . . . Awolowo . . . to . . . Abiola. Awo died. Butthe curse passed on to Abiola, another Yoruba man, the richest ofhis race, who had shared various facts of life � money, business,property, religion, even women � with the Caliphate (the north) . . . .But instead of allowing him the dividend of his victory, the military(induced by the Caliphate) cancelled the election and annulled hisvictory. Finally, he was incarcerated and killed by poisoning.(Fasehun 2002, p. 262 emphasis added)

The OPC was formed based on this version of the political historyof Nigeria, particularly against the backdrop of the annulment of thepresidential elections. The OPC is a Yoruba socio-cultural group,started by Dr Fredrick Fasehun, a medical doctor and formerpresidential aspirant, in 1994 to defend Yoruba interests in Nigeriaand push for self-determination for one of the largest ethnic-nationalities in Africa. By the time the OPC was formed, GeneralSani Abacha, Babangida’s army chief, had taken over power andconsolidated the annulment of the elections by arresting the unofficialwinner of the elections, Abiola.

It did not take long before the ranks of the original OPC began toexperience a leadership conflict precipitated largely by disagreementson the best strategies for pursuing collective a Yoruba agenda � that is,whether the struggle should be implemented through non-violent and/or violent means, and whether the group should participate in themilitary regime-supervised transition to civil rule programme. Thesplinter faction led by the then 29-year old artisan, Gani Adams,which named itself the ‘Militant OPC’, spearheaded violent clasheswith other ethnic group members in the west, allegedly in defence of‘Yoruba interests’. The orgy of violence that resulted from thestandpoint of the ‘Militant OPC’ further brought inter-ethnic relationsin Nigeria to one of its lowest points since the civil war years. PresidentObasanjo was to issue a shoot-on-sight order after violent clashesbetween the OPC and members of other ethnic groups in Lagos, whichthe president described as ‘complete madness’ (Adebanwi 2005: 340).

Adams articulates the conditions that produced the militant strainof the OPC as including ‘structural imbalances, military [rule] andrepressive decrees, destructive constitutional structure, consciousdebasement of ethnic nationalities, insecurity of life and property,


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ethnic cleansing and degenerate educational system’ (Adams 2003,pp. 97�100). He also insists that his group was provoked by the‘domination and hegemony’ of the Hausa-Fulani:

The OPC is a child of necessity that came into being after thecriminal and retrogressive annulment of the June 12, 1993 pre-sidential election in which the winner, Chief MKO Abiola wasillegally arrested and detained for more than four years before hewas subsequently murdered in July 1998 . . . . Generals IbrahimBabangida, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar who perpe-trated this evil against the Yoruba are northerners, representing thenorthern interest. (Adams 2003)

Although the OPC had become so central to the pendulum of inter-ethnic relations in Nigeria (so much that the Arewa People’s Congress(APC) was formed in Northern Nigeria and the Movement for theActualization of the State of Biafra (MASSOB) in the East), oneinternal controversy that led to a split within its ranks was around theimplications of the Obasanjo presidency for the collective struggle bythe Yoruba. It seemed that, as a result of the crisis occasioned by theannulment of the 1993 presidential election, the core power elite in thecountry tacitly agreed on ‘conceding’ power to the Yoruba in the 1998/1999 general elections. To resolve the unending and provocativebickering that ensued, the candidature of Obasanjo was acquiescedto. It should be recalled that, at the peak of the crisis over the suddendeath of Chief Abiola (and the other key actor in the power tussle,General Sani Abacha), the regime of General Abdulsalam Abubakarreleased former military Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjofrom detention, allowed him to contest the presidential elections and,when he won, swore him in as the new civilian President. As a formermilitary head of state and Yoruba from the same Ogun State as ChiefM. K. O. Abiola, President Obasanjo was believed to be a more pliantand conservative candidate raised to ‘subvert’ the agitations of theincreasingly vociferous, radical and progressive Yoruba elite who, fromthe 1980s, had been insisting on a Sovereign National Conferencewhere the Nigerian project would be ‘restructured’, particularly along‘truly federal’ lines. True federalism, for the Yoruba, is a return toregionalism, as in the First Republic, which, principally, the Hausa-Fulani political elite strongly oppose.

Obasanjo therefore represented a paradox of sorts for Yorubanationalism and Yoruba politics. For the OPC, the eventual Obasanjopresidency was to be staunchly defended as a Yoruba governmentagainst attempts, imaginary or real, by other ethnic groups to torpedoit. Yet, the government was accused of not taking the much-desiredcrucial steps believed to be necessary in order to consummate and


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safeguard ‘Yoruba interests’ in moving Nigeria towards an ‘egalitarian,modern and progressive’ entity. In this, the OPC is hardly interested inthe competing arguments of other stakeholders in the Nigerianfederation.

The struggle to convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC), itmust be borne in mind, is central to contemporary Yoruba politics.Indeed, for the group and others, the issue has become a cardinalnegotiating point in the continuous task of ‘reinventing’ Nigeria. But,subsumed under the SNC debate are many other grievances. For theYoruba, in particular, these grievances surround core issues offederalism, political domination, resource generation and control,and the military question. The prominent Yoruba socio-politicalgroup, Afenifere, has been canvassing strongly for the convocationof a ‘genuine’ national conference to discuss these and other issues.Even then, the Afenifere is also a house that is divided against itselfgoing by the split in its membership, again, in part, over Obasanjo’spresidency. A rival group of Yoruba elders, the Yoruba Council ofElders (YCE), was formed to challenge Afenifere’s dominance andlegitimacy as the sole group speaking for the Yoruba. Encouraged bythe disaffected deputy leader of Afenifere and the cabinet member inthe Obasanjo administration who was assassinated in December 2001,Chief Bola Ige, the YCE supported Obasanjo until the gruesomeassassination of Ige. Currently, the YCE and Afenifere are mendingfences as they have joined hands to condemn Obasanjo’s policies andthe electoral fraud that ousted the dominated western party, Alliancefor Democracy (AD), from power in five of the six Yoruba statesduring the 2003 general elections. One critical opinion againstPresident Obasanjo’s reluctance to support a Sovereign NationalConference is that he lacked sufficient understanding of the exact basisfor and mandates of the proposed conference. Another is that the ideais unacceptable to the retired General because of his fear (and the fearsof the elite in the core north) of presiding over the dismemberment ofNigeria which the conference might provoke. Ironically, althoughPresident Obasanjo openly opposed the idea of a Sovereign NationalConference, he still used it � in a heavily watered down format � tofurther his own agenda. He convened an inconclusive constitutionalconference where proposals were made for the review of the 1999Constitution. It turned out that Obasanjo was interested in using thereview to ensure an amendment that would have granted him a thirdterm in office. This process was defeated at the National Assembly inMay 2006.

In the context of the challenges that Obasanjo’s presidencypresented to the Yoruba, there have been interesting changes andcontinuities noticeable in Yoruba nationalism. Obasanjo would appearto have used Yoruba nationalism, its fragmentations and its paradoxes


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in the service of his own power and interests. Interesting examplesinclude how he challenged the Afenifere/AD leaders to support himagainst a ‘northern irredentist’, General Muhammadu Buhari � as thelatter was presented in Yorubaland � in the 2003 presidential elections,only to rout all but one of the elected governors of the AD; Obasanjoalso encouraged the creation and deepening of political cleavages inYorubaland which he then harnessed in different ways, as in thecreation of the YCE against Afenifere. Given the ‘unusual’ situation inwhich the Yoruba have found themselves � that is a Yoruba presidencythat does not share the key aspirations of the Yoruba and a presidencythat was won through the platform of a party originally dominated bythe northern power elite � a historical sundering of collective ethnicvision and practices is noticeable, in ways that have made it difficulttoday for any group or individual to speak authoritatively for theYoruba in Nigeria. Thus the three main groups that claim to representYoruba interests, Afenifere, YCE and OPC, all have factions.

Marginal complex and Ijaw nationalism

Rather than rely on the generalization about majority-minority thesis,a more nuanced conceptual framework of dominant-marginal groupswould suffice for understanding the relationships between differentethnic groups in Nigeria. The import of this reconceptualization, asPeter Ekeh demonstrated in Political Minorities and HistoricallyDominant Minorities in Nigerian History and Politics (1996), is that,in the Nigerian context, minority ethnic groups are not necessarilymarginalized, just as the major ethnic groups have from time to timebitterly complained of marginalization. An important caveat, espe-cially as it concerns the Ijaws, is that, even though they are admittedlystill a ‘minority’ within the Nigerian scheme of things, other minoritiessee them as dominant because they have tended to be betterrepresented in federal institutions and have used the army as a vehiclefor upward social mobility. Here then, ‘marginal’ is a fluid conceptualtool most helpful for making claims vis-a-vis others within the polity.In Nigeria, where a plethora of ethnic groups are locked in variousforms of contentious relationships, marginal ethnic groups are‘culturally distinctive and relatively cohesive groups which occupy aposition of numerical inferiority and actual or potential socio-politicalsubordination vis-a-vis other cultural sections in a political commu-nity’ (Suberu 1999, p. 118; Sanda 1996). Even though marginal ethnicgroups comprise an estimated one-third of the country’s totalpopulation, successive post-independence governments have merelybuilt on the colonial policies channelling power and resources to thedominant groups and the federal centre to the marginalization andsometimes exclusion of marginal ethnic groups in different parts of the


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country. This is the backdrop against which to distil why and howmarginal nationalisms � even though a much later phenomenon thannationalisms by dominant ethno-regional groupings � have become averitable source of violent instability in multi-ethnic Nigeria (Diamond1987; Gurr 1993). As with the majority groups, Diamond notes:

the cultural mobilization of the ethnic minorities sprang from theintricate and volatile interaction between ethnicity and class. Thechemistry of minority political ferment involved . . . mass-basedsocioeconomic competition, grounded in real cultural attachments,and elite mobilization of these attachments for class ends. (Diamond1988, pp. 53�4)

As with nationalisms by bigger ethnic groups, leaders of marginalethnic groups play a pivotal role in heightening anxiety and conflict atthe mass level and in transforming such anxieties into political capitalfor the group mobilization

On the surface, there may be little basis for comparison between theYoruba and the Ijaw ethnic groups and the types of nationalisms eachhas provoked over time. One fundamental difference between Yorubaand Ijaw ethnic groups arises from the binary separation of communalcontenders into advantaged communal contenders and disadvantagedcommunal contenders. The former describes a culturally distinct groupwith political or economic or administrative advantages over others ina heterogeneous society, while the later defines groups who are subjectto political or economic discrimination or both (Suberu 1996, p. 7).The truth, of course, is that Yoruba and Ijaw nationalisms do justshare not fascinating genealogies but aspects of their contemporaryforms are similar too. It is ironic, for instance, that the Yoruba andIjaw, seemingly dominant and marginal ethnic groups, would producestrikingly similar militant groups � that is, the Odua People’s Congressand the Egbesu Boys.

Ijaw nationalism is a product of social, political, economic,geographical and environmental factors, all of which determined,first, their relationship with neighbours, and, second, their placewithin the broader Nigerian political canvas. It is ironic that the Ijawpopulation, estimated at about 3 million is classified, as a marginalethnic group in a country where they are generally believed toconstitute the fourth largest group after the big three � Hausa-Fulani,Ibo, Yoruba. The reason for this may be that people of Ijaw extractionare not together in a fixed geographical location, except perhaps inBayelsa State, but are scattered across other coastal states adjacent tothe Atlantic Ocean, namely: Delta, Rivers, Ondo, Edo, Akwa Ibomand Ogun states. The Ijaws are typically a migrant population, movingfrom place to place in search of fertile fishing waters and small-scale


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farming activities. Thus, some of the most cantankerous relationshipsbetween the Ijaw and their neighbours, especially Urhobo and Itsekiri,have been over land and waterways (Akpoto 2002, p. 164). The scarcityof land is compounded by the leverage availed multinational oilcompanies by the Land Use Act of March 1978 to facilitate capitalistdevelopment by withdrawing the barriers which may have hithertoexisted to the commercial ownership and development of land,especially for crude oil exploration and production activities. Althougha preceding legislation, the Petroleum Decree of 1969, had conferredownership of land particularly for mineral extraction on the FederalGovernment, the Land Use Act effectively took away the bargainingposition that inhabitants of the oil-producing areas had once enjoyed,allowing the state to be the principal arbiter. Together, the manners inwhich these legislations have been implemented in the oil region madethem the objects of widespread discontentment (Ukeje 2004).

If geographical circumstances imposed a peculiar way of life on Ijawpeople in relations with their neighbours, their colonial and post-colonial experiences served to accentuate whatever frictions may cropup from time to time. Initial Ijaw access to Europeans during theAtlantic trade in slaves and later palm oil gave them access toEuropean cultural mores and values, and later missionary education.Thus, in the early days of colonial rule, Ijaw coastal elites like othercoastal elites enjoyed positions of great privilege as they wereemployed as court clerks and court messengers, positions whichenabled them to consolidate centuries of dominance. This meantthey were most favoured when colonial administrators were lookingfor reliable intermediaries. The implementation of the divide-and-rulepolicy of the British colonial administration, however, changed theequation not only by pitching ethnic groups against one another, butby favouring some over the others. This was the context within whichthe fortunes of the pro-British Itsekiri began to rise (an affection thatwas transferred to the Western regional government at the beginningof self-government and after independence). Throughout the colonialperiod therefore, Ijaw nationalism focused intensively on the quest forautonomy from the administrative, political and cultural yoke of theItsekiri. The explosive dynamics of such an inter-ethnic relationshipstimulated the unwritten colonial policy of favouritism and divide-and-rule as demonstrated by the legendary inter-ethnic violence thatcontinues to haunt the oil-rich city of Warri in Delta State (Imobighe,Bassey and Asuni 2002). Although considered the fourth largest ethnicgroup in Nigeria, the Ijaws have not been able to flex enough muscle,at least nothing close to what the three major ethnic groups in thecountry have wielded. Like other marginal groups in colonial andpost-colonial Nigeria, Ijaw complaints have focused on allegations ofdeliberate Itsekiri scheming to take over their territories, make them


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tenants and treat them as second-class citizens: the refusal of the Oluand his chiefs to recognize Ijaw traditional rulers in Warri Divisioneven though they were duly recognized by government; the usage ofthe traditional title of ‘Olu of Warri’ which allowed the Itsekiris toarrogate power and supremacy to themselves over the Ijaw andUrhobos; disagreement over the official language to be used incarrying out the activities of the Warri Traditional Council set up inSeptember 1977 � with the Itsekiri insisting on their own languagealone; the subtle attempts to make Warri coterminous with the Itsekirienclave as manifested in the renaming of major names and streets ofIjaw origin, etc. Peretomode (2002, p. 135) quoted a statement byprominent Ijaw chiefs dated 20 December 1975 to the effect that theywere:

opposed to any form of continued merger with the Itsekiri . . . in thebest interest of peace, stability and justice in the Division . . . . It isvery clear under the present oppressive and humiliating situation ofthings . . . we loathe any further association of any type with theItsekiris . . . . The Ijaws are aggrieved people in the Division . . . theIjaws want to be free from economic exploitation, social and culturalextinction and from political oppression. We want a separateadministrative division . . . any (continued merger will only succeedon our dead bodies. (Peretomode 2002, p. 135)

Up until the end of the 1960s, the key political issue for Ijawnationalists like Harold Dappa-Biriye and Isaac Adaka Boro wasautonomy in the face of the regional Igbo NCNC-led domination.This, in fact, was why Boro fought against Biafra secessionists afterhe was granted clemency by the military government of GeneralYakubu Gowon in 1967, and why Ijaw nationalism consistentlyexpressed itself in popular movements for state creation. In 1941, theIjaw People’s League was established to clamour for the excision ofthe Rivers territory from Owerri Province. Six years later, in 1947,the Rivers Province was created, comprising Port Harcourt, Ahoada,Brass, Ogoni and Degema (PABOD). In 1953, the Council of RiversChiefs was initiated, and years later it metamorphosed into theRivers State Congress, arguably more of a pressure group than apolitical party. After most of its supporters had backed down anddecided to do business with the ruling NCNC government party, in1954, the Rivers Chiefs and People’s Conference became the NigerDelta Congress under Harold Dappa-Biriye. In 1967, the militaryregime of General Yakubu Gowon created twelve states, includingRivers State, mainly as an attempt to checkmate the festering BiafranSecession (Zuofa and Odondiri 1999, p. 239). Almost three decadesafterwards, in 1996, Bayelsa State was created by the Abacha


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regime.11 It is curious that the colonial authority, despite a chain ofcomplaints to the Henry Willink Commission that held public sittingand private meetings in Nigeria between November 1957 and April1958, failed to recommend any new state for the Rivers Province atthat time. The Commission, nevertheless, suggested among otherthings, arrangements which might go some way to help the Ijaws andother coastal communities receive sympathetic consideration in theirpeculiar problems, and put forward plans of their own for improve-ment’ (1959, p. 51). It merely recommended that the Niger Delta,especially the Ijaw area be designated a ‘Special Area’, and broughtunder the creation of a Federal Board appointed to consider theproblems of the area of the Niger Delta. One immediate outcome ofthe disappointments to satisfy the demands by the Ijaw for new stateswas that movements in favour of greater autonomy for the peoples ofthat region not only became widespread but also stronger and morevociferous. Such disappointments, in part, radicalized the movementsfor autonomy and encouraged them to adopt extra-legal means fordrawing attention to nagging social problems afflicting them (Alagoaand Tamuno 1989, p. 6). Another outcome of these militant clamoursfor new states by the Ijaw was that they were encouraged tocommence the rethinking of their place and fate in the beleagueredNigerian formation and resolving that only violent grassroots actioncan secure their claims. This livid marginal group complex, char-acterized by acute fear of domination, marginalization and exclusionfrom the likely benefits derivable from the increasingly dysfunctionaland unreliable federal arrangement, became a major factor in themobilization of Ijaw nationalism with the move away from derivationtowards fiscal and political centralization which came during the civilwar (1967�70) with the creation of states, and was consolidated in theearly 1970s with the astronomic rise in profits from crude oil sales.From the 1980s onward, Ijaw nationalism stepped up when it becameclear that federal centralization to the detriment of derivationformula was undermining their dominance. Domination arisingfrom this marginal mentality is defined, according to Zuofa andOdondiri (1999, p. 237) in terms of the absence of opportunities forautonomous cultural development, absence of political power, officialdiscrimination in employment, distribution of amenities and in theprovision of basic infrastructural facilities.

All considered, the root of Ijaw nationalism is unlikely to beseparated from the broader struggle by oil communities against therapacious tendencies of government and multinational oil companies.Among the Ijaws � like the twenty-five or so other ethnic and sub-ethnic groups in the Niger Delta � there is a vicious and visible‘grievance culture’ exacerbated by years of neglect and unfairdistribution of oil wealth and accumulation (Akpoto 2002, p. 169).


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Of course, this grievance thesis needs qualification since Ijaw elitesthemselves did gain access to oil wealth but squandered it onthemselves and their people without allowing trickle down. In manyways, this critique of elite behaviour has fuelled youth-led Ijawnationalism which emerged in organized form in the Ijaw YouthCouncil (IYC) in the late 1990s. Successive colonial and post-colonialgovernments, either by design or by default, have taken actionsseemingly underscoring the paperweight muscle of the Ijaw, despitethe fact that their territory accounts for much of the crude oilproduced in the country. A modern example was the circumstancesthat led to the relocation of the headquarters of Warri South LGAfrom Ogbe-Ijaw (the ancestral home of the Ijaw people) to Ogidigben(an Itsekiri enclave) in March 1997. It would be recalled that earlier, inOctober 1996, the Federal Government created new local governmentareas, including one within the predominantly Ijaw area named WarriSouthwest. For the Ijaws, this was a long desired concession, theculmination of several failed attempts to loosen the tight grip of theItsekiris. The later decision by government to relocate the localgovernment headquarters to an Itsekiri enclave therefore came as arude shock to them, and the action sparked off another round ofethnic strife (Imobighe, Bassey and Asuni 2002). The strainedrelationship between Ijaws and their neighbours has become a sourceof apprehension, insecurity and instability throughout the oil-rich butimpoverished Niger Delta.

In what ways has the Nigerian State responded to the militarizationof Ijaw consciousness? Although the physical presence of state securityis all too obvious in the Ijaw Niger Delta, different Ijaw groups(especially a growing number of new-breed militant youth movements)are actively and simultaneously mobilizing themselves to challengewhat they see as brazen neglect by the government and multinationaloil companies in terms of provision of social amenities.12 Here, theIjaws have the advantages of familiarity with the peculiar ecology ofthe area. The circumstance of geography has certainly provided, onthe one hand, a congenial context for the emergence, spread andmaturity of Ijaw nationalism, while, on the other, deepening the heavyburdens on the Nigerian State of maintaining security, law and order.13

The indisputable familiarity of the average Ijaw with such aninhospitable coastal milieu puts them in a vantage position forattacking oil infrastructure and evading state security at the sametime. It has also allowed pan-ethnic solidarity based on strong culturalties and affinities to flourish and grow into the belligerent andcontagious forms they have assumed today. That Ijaw nationalismhas become assertive may also be connected with the insincerity ofgovernment and multinational oil companies about accepting conti-nuous dialogue and consultations with militant Ijaw communities,


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believing that these could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Instead,there is preference in favour of using repressive and coercive methodsto intimidate and subdue Ijaw communities and others (Ukeje2001a).14

Contemporary Yoruba and Ijaw nationalisms

Contemporary Yoruba and Ijaw nationalisms were significantlytransformed in qualitative terms from the 1990s onward. We haveattempted to point to the fact that the emergence of the twonationalisms cannot be isolated from a general sense of wrongdoings:for the Yoruba, against the Hausa-Fulani ruling oligarchy which‘robbed’ their illustrious son, Chief Moshood Abiola, of his electoralvictory at the presidential polls in June 1993; for the Ijaw, it centres ontheir continuous marginalization and exclusion from gaining qualita-tive access to the opportunities and benefits of crude oil prosperity.Still, the most visible and transformative aspect of contemporaryYoruba and Ijaw nationalisms to date comes from the activities ofethnic militia movements dominated mostly by youths (Ukeje 2001b;Sesay et al. 2003). Ethnic militias purport to pursue ethnic agendasespecially aimed at rectifying injustices, perceived or real, that theyexperience within the larger social, political and economic canvas ofNigeria. But their emergence also signalled some lack of confidence ingovernment’s ability to protect its citizens, widespread lack of employ-ment among the teeming population, most especially youths, and thefrightening proliferation of small arms and ammunitions in thecountry (Sesay et al. 2003).

It is instructive that, in both instances, we have witnessed theemergence of two visible leaders in the image of warlords: in theYoruba case, Gani Adams (Oodua People’s Congress, OPC, ‘MilitantFaction’) and in the Ijaw case, Alhaji Asari Dokubo (Niger DeltaPeople’s Volunteer Force, NDPVF). The two young men have come tosymbolize, through their militant actions, the disillusionment of theirpeople, particularly the younger generation, with the ways in which theNigerian ‘nation’ is organized and run. That, in spite of the violence ofthe two groups, both youth leaders have been recognized by theoperators of the state � after having had a running battle with thesecurity agencies for a length of time � also gives some legitimacy totheir struggles. In the case of Adams, after he was arrested, tried andreleased, he was eventually appointed into a national peace committeeinaugurated by the president. In the case of Dokubo, he was invited topeace talks by the president in the nation’s capital and was flown to themeeting in a presidential jet.15 A peace accord was reportedly reachedbetween him and the leader of a rival group, Tom Ateke, whose group,Niger Delta Vigilante Group, had for weeks engaged in violent


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confrontation with the latter’s group which left several people dead inthe oil-rich state. Dokubo had earlier being the much disputedpresident of the Ijaw Youth Council between 2001 and 2003, andcreated havoc within the movement, along with Dr Peter Odili,Governor of Rivers State, his sponsor. After several months of armedresistance, Dokubo’s group gave an ultimatum to oil-workers, parti-cularly foreigners, to leave Ijaw land as he prepared to launch an all-out attack against the Nigerian state. The combined force of theNigerian navy, army and the police had failed to suppress the armedinsurgency. It was against the backdrop of this ultimatum that he wasinvited by the president to the parley where he and Ateke signed apeace pact with the Federal Government. Although this peace pactcollapsed almost as soon as it was agreed to by the two factions, theFederal Government later arrested the leaders of the militant ethnicmovements, especially those of the two main OPC factions, DrFrederick Fasehun and Ganiyu Adams, as well as Alhaji Dokubo,and charged them with treason. It is important to note, however, thatelite versus subaltern discourse and rhetoric can be overplayed as theelite can mobilize and instrumentalize subaltern violence from whichthey then keep a safe distance (cf. Nolte 2004, p. 69).

The stated objective of the Oodua People’s Congress formed in 1994 isto protect, defend and promote Yoruba interests. The agenda includes acomplete restructuring of the Nigerian state into a truly federal state, theright to self-determination by all ethnic nationalities, equal rights of allnationalities to national leadership, regional autonomy, self-govern-ment and economic reconstruction, the reunion of all Yoruba in Kwaraand Kogi states with ‘their kith and kin’ in the Yoruba west, independentarmy, police and judiciary, and a sovereign national conference (Adams2003, p. 100). The fundamental question that Fasehun believed everyYoruba must ponder on is: ‘Why are the Yoruba � as educated, assophisticated, as world-acclaimed as they are � shielded from popularnational leadership?’ For Fasehun, the answers are not farfetched: theylack ‘innate cohesiveness’:

they seem unable to adapt to the chameleonic nature of theirdomineering competitors (the Hausa-Fulani) who . . . have a mili-tary wing to fall back on (while the Yoruba lack ‘a coercive secondleg’, they always make unwarranted sacrifices to preserve Nigeria’sunity, and they are unaware that they a nation. (Fasehun 2002,p. 263)

The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) spearheaded the famous KaiamaDeclaration of 1998 highlighting their collective demands for the rightto self-determination, resource control, environmental sustainabilityand the safeguarding of the rich Ijaw culture (Ukeje 2001a). At


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Kaiama, the Ijaws conceptualized the essence of persistent politicalcrises in Nigeria as due in large part to ‘the struggle for the control ofmineral oil resources which account for over 80% of GDP’, and alsobitterly complained about the ‘damage done to our fragile naturalenvironment and to the health of our people’ due mainly to‘uncontrolled exploration and exploitation of crude oil and naturalgas’. Thus, the demands of Ijaw ethnic group as articulated by theyouths centred on the complete claim of ownership of all land andnatural resources (including mineral resources) within the Ijawterritory, the abrogation of all undemocratic decrees and laws thatdisenfranchise oil communities of the right to ownership and controlof resources, leaving them without participation and consent, theimmediate cessation of military and police occupation, the rejection ofthe transition to civil rule programme at that time under the Abubakarregime and they issued stern warnings and a deadline to multinationaloil companies to vacate Ijawland. They called, also, for a sovereignnational conference of equally represented ethnic nationalities todiscuss the political future of the Nigeria.

At the forefront of the confrontational politics embarked upon byIjaw youths of a kind comparable to the one by the militant breakawayfaction of the OPC led by Gani Adams is the one by the SupremeEgbesu Assembly. Like the Adams-led OPC, the Egbesu Boys areknown to wear distinct bodily incisions and tattoos, invoking themythical Ijaw god of war, Egbesu. For its adherents, Egbesu is a deitythat stands for equity, justice and fair play. Contemporary Ijawfolklore claims that the Egbesu Boys consult the oracle to fortifythemselves before venturing on any of their militant exploits. Althoughthe Egbesu movement has clear leadership, little is known about itsinternal dynamics since most of its activities are shrouded in secrecyand constructed social mythologies. Obvious, however, the member-ship and activities of the OPC and Egbesu movements cover thewestern and south-south regions respectively, while both are known tohave sympathizers and sponsors from other parts of the country and inthe diaspora (Sesay et al. 2003, pp. 44�52).

It is important to debunk the popular claim that membership ofmilitant youth movements like these are drawn primarily from awidening cesspool of illiterate and unemployed miscreants whoseclaim to violence is not just because it provides any social elixir or anescape from prevailing miseries, but because it is the cheapest and mostattractive option under the circumstance. Nothing can be far from thiswidespread misconception for the obvious reason that these youthmovements also draw membership from the ranks of highly educated,employed and articulate youth. The error in judgement regarding thestatus of youths who dominate militant ethnic groups arises because ofgeneral refusal within academia and policy circles to acknowledge, not


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to speak of accepting, this distinctive agency of youths. In the case ofthe militant Ijaw youth movement, for instance, attention had beendrawn to the likelihood of a symbiotic bond between Egbesu ‘footsoldiers’ and those educated youths who control the more open andassertive human, minority and environmental groups operating in theNiger Delta. It is unlikely that a band of illiterate and unemployedyouths would be able to articulate and give sustainable expression tocollective ethno-communal grievances with the level of sophisticationthat the OPC and Egbesu Boys have achieved in contemporary Yorubaand Ijaw nationalisms.

By highlighting the last point above, the intention is to acknowledgethe existence of an autonomous voice and agency of youths � nomatter how seemingly weak and uncoordinated they may be at themoment. Because of this fact, we can point out that there is mostprobably a wider canvas against which youth agency can be under-stood. Indeed, there is a near tendency in the literature, essentiallybordering on intellectual naivety, to assume that the agency of youthsis merely consumptive that is, only at the receiving end of theintellectual and mobilizational creativity of the adult community. Bytoeing this line, there is a tendency to be ignorant of how communitieshave quite frequently captured and claimed those languages andidioms that are a proprietary part of the agency of youths and thefascinating ways in which youths themselves are creatively producingalternative models for their communities to consider and implement.Even though the agency of youth may sometimes coalesce with thoseof the adult and/or community, there are also important points ofdivergence that usually come to the light when youths disagree withadults over the interpretations, formats and strategies for pursuingcollective agendas. By attempting to subsume youth agency under thebroader, sometimes contradictory, agency of the community, theexisting body of knowledge has been short-changed; the type offascinating insights derivable by separating and disaggregating themare usually overlooked or completely lost. This, in part, is theintellectual misfortune afflicting the discourse on youth violence, astheir actions are generally defined in terms of irresponsible socialoutbursts and not seen as a refusal to accept the situation of socialpowerlessness with which many youths are presently confronted.

Conclusion

What we have tried to do in this essay is to provide the contexts andextenuating circumstances in which ethnic nationalisms by Yoruba andIjaw people in southern Nigeria became salient and militant from the1990s onward. Despite concrete variations, the ethno-nationalistprojects of the Yoruba and the Ijaw have been shown to be similar


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in several respects. Both, for instance, contain salient strands of‘self-determination’, translating at best to pseudo-separatist inclina-tions towards the decentralization and devolution of power andauthority as constituted presently in Nigeria. Both are fuelled by ameasure of internal consensus on the utility and viability of theirdifferent sections of the country either as separate entities or aslucrative parts of the whole. Certainly, both nationalisms have beengreatly stimulated by the festering crises bedevilling the dysfunctionalproject called Nigeria, which, among other things, has lost itsmonopoly of authority and of the means of violence (Adebanwi2004). The ethnicity of both groups is produced in the forms ofethnically defined identities and nationalisms. Their underlyingideologies, like those of nationalists, focus on ‘the cultural similarityof adherents as a marker for drawing and maintaining cultural andpolitical boundaries vis-a-vis other groups’ (Eriksen 1993, p. 6). In thenationalistic tendencies of these two ethnicities, the relationship withthe Nigerian state is as crucial as that forged with other ethnic groups.Part of the narrative of Yoruba and Ijaw nationalisms, particularlythat articulated by youth, seems to insist that politico-administrativeboundaries be co-terminous with known and acceptable culturalboundaries.

However, the salience of ethnicity for the two groups in the 1990sand beyond is constructed around the fact that the two groups feeldeeply threatened. The notions of boundary maintenance andsurveillance in the rhetoric of Yoruba and Ijaw groups, particularlytheir actual engagement with youths, have become so symbolically,emotionally and politically appealing that the Nigerian state canignore them only at great peril. Certainly, the responses of the statehave neither led to the resolution of the existing crisis nor lessened theincidence of violence. If anything, the spectre of violence hasintensified within the polity in general, and in the Niger Delta inparticular. The way things stand, without finding a political solutionto the rising tide of ethnic violence occasioned by ethno-nationalistsstruggles, Nigeria may never go beyond the stage of an unstable and‘unfinishable’ work-in-progress.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the African StudiesAssociation of the UK Biennial Conference on ‘Debating Africa’,Goldsmiths College, University of London, 13�15 September 2004.The authors thank Insa Nolte of Birmingham University for hercomments on an earlier draft. Ukeje thanks the Royal African Societyand the African Studies Association for facilitating the travel to attend


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the conference, while Adebanwi thanks the Social Science ResearchCouncil, New York, for funding his research.

Notes

1. For a range of other factors that harnessed a common consciousness of unity and

oneness in pre-colonial Nigeria, see Diamond (1988), Olusanya (1999, pp. 545�69) and Ikime

(1999).

2. Ake has called this trend the ‘overpoliticization’ of social life (1985, p. 1213).

3. See, Tunde Olusunle, ‘Brothers against brothers: stemming the spectre of communal

fracas’, The Guardian, 28 January 1998, pp. 16�18.

4. Indeed, in a curious way, the only nationalism motif that seems to unite most, if not all,

Nigerians comes from the most unexpected source � football. For many, the game of soccer

played under national colours provides a social elixir.

5. For a list of some of the societies and unions, many of them with headquarters in Lagos

and others scattered in major towns, see Coleman (1971 [1958], p. 343).

6. ‘The retirement of Sir Frederick Lugard’, Lagos Weekly Record, 1�22 February 1919.

7. Ibid.

8. The objectives of the Egbe included cultural development, educational advancement,

Yoruba nationalism, protection of chiefs and support for the unity of the Nigerian

federation. See Coleman (1971 [1958], pp. 344�5).

9. In some of the initial attempts at constructing a pan-Nigerian political party in the mid-

1990s, members of the rival political elites met in Lagos where it was resolved that Nigeria

could achieve stability only when the ‘real owners’ of power in the north and south, that is

the core conservative power elite in the north and the core progressive power elite in the west

work together within a political party. The initiative however eventually collapsed

(Adebanwi, research notes, Ibadan, Nigeria, November 2005). For an elaboration of this,

see, Wale Adebanwi, ‘Obasanjo, Yoruba and the future of Nigeria’, ThisDay (Lagos), 16

February 2003.

10. For indications of this view of things, see, ‘I’m not in hiding’ (interview with Gani

Adams), The NEWS, 31 January 2000, p. 15.

11. The different phases in the Ijaw clamour for state creation are: the Rivers State

Movement (1953�67), the Niger Delta State Movement (1979�83), the Abayelsa State

Movement (1985�93) and the Bayelsa State Movement (1993�60). See, Kimse and Lazarus

(1999, 253ff.).

12. ‘Forward March to Freedom’, communique issued at the end of the 7th Council

Meeting of Ijaw youths held at Kolobiama community in the Opobo Clan of Ijawland, 20

March 1999. See http://www.kemptown.org/shell/mar20.html. Of course, the release did not

limit itself to purely ND or Ijaw matters. It, for instance, condemned the ambassadorial

posting by the Abubakar regime as ‘insensitive, un-federal and provocative’.

13. There are several other factors that aid Ijaw nationalism, including the oil factor, a

history of collective struggle, strong cultural affinity over a wider area, being the fourth

largest ethnic group in Nigeria and, finally, a major demographic shift in favour of youths.

14. For the full text of the communique signed on behalf of the collegiate leadership by

Felix Tuodolo, Isaac Osuoka and Kingsley Kuku, see Ijaw Youth Council, press statement,

16 February 1999. In Delta News Release, http:/www.oneworld.org/delta/990119.html.

15. However, both men are currently being tried for alleged offences including treason and

murder in what some see as part of the ploy by President Olusegun Obasanjo to hold on to

power beyond his constitutionally allotted time which ends in 2007.


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Ethno-nationalist claims in southern Nigeria: insights from Yoruba and Ijaw nationalisms since the...

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