Introduction
The media is abuzz
with the latest display of political incoherence and strategic blunder of Lagos
State in the guise of internally deporting Nigerian citizens across state
boundary under false premise. For a state that converges as the commercial
centre of the country and an international interface such a policy comes in
conflict with expectations of social-conscious governance for both the state
and its governor. The article attempts
to review the issues at stake including positions taken by select members of a
motley crew of state officials and media sympathisers as well as point out rich
reserves of historical amnesia on their parts.
Action Governor
This week many
newspapers have been running with the story regarding internal deportation of
70 Nigerian citizen-residents of Lagos State to Anambra State on the orders of
Governor Babatunde Fashola. Further
investigation confirmed that the policy is standard policy of the state as part
of an overarching policy implementation instrument. This is an interesting development in the
life of both state and the republic as it carries a lot of uncertainties. Our
position is to review the position taken by the state from a legal point of
view.
Legal Hellhole
A number of pundits
have resorted to becoming state echo-chamber without credible facts for or
against the policy. Nevertheless before tackling the problem one must initially
address the issue of citizenship in Nigeria with regard to states and local
governments. While the first line of citizenship is without question except
when ex-president, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, deported Alhaji Shugaba to the Sahel,
internal deportation has always carried the spot-mark of illegality mostly
under the threat of death under irrepressible religio-politcally motivated
violence.
It my understanding
that 2nd line and 3rd line citizenship based on domicile
is unclear in Nigeria. It is common knowledge that citizens can reside in
another part of the country for years and not be legally recognised as citizens
of those states/local governments hence contract working arrangements in the
public sector for proverbial non-indigenes in many states. Surely internal
discrimination! One must conjecture that this fuzzy application of right of
domicile as criteria for citizenship is part of the motivation of the
legal-governor to strike. It is
unfortunate that other variables were not critically considered including her
role as primary city/state. If Nigerians have the right to reside in any part
of the country therefore they are not supposed to be internally deported to
another state unless convicted of a grave crime or in compliance with an
extradition request. The absence of coherent legal structures to formalise 2nd/3rd
level citizenship through right of domicile exposes the flawed concept of
Nigeria’s federalism.
Then the 70 (Igbo) men
or so women were ‘convicted’ by the governor and summarily dispatched like cattle
across the state boundary without recourse to law and potential social
opprobrium. Maybe Ikeja conjured that quick and fast internal deportation is
cheaper than going the whole legal route. Above all they rested on their
historical amnesia laurel as if such action is ethnic-neutral in a country
where ethnic sentiment is high for very good reasons. The question will be what
happens to a Yoruba/Lagos indigene fitting the criteria adopted for current
internal deportation?
The shallowness of the
affair has exposed the governor as lacking in clarity in the purported exchange
with his counterpart in Awka who rightly raise the issue with Abuja. Sadly Ikeja failed miserably to provide its
legal justification to the media at least to bolster her position which is more
in line with uncoordinated understanding of information management. Therefore
Ikeja succeeded in scoring an own-goal which in part left her reputation in
tatters. In Fela’s parlance, legal
teacher has taught me legal nonsense. It is Law stupid!
Semantics Illusion
Concerned citizens
have jumped onto the issue from both sides with their eclectic array of
understandings. Some have moved across the aisle to dismiss any suggestion of
ethnicity as if ethnicity is a no-go area al a IBB. It is the
fundamental question in Nigeria and only when it is tackled with respect,
clarity and progressive strategy can the country move forward. Currently Nigeria is
an unfortunately leaking umbrella holding over disappointed 250 nationalities/ethnic
groups. The speed with which some pundits rushed to dismiss the ethnic footprint
of the victim reeks of rootless intellectualism without functional dimension.
Which part of the world is ethnicity delimited or discredited with reckless
aplomb? Even France failed to construct herself effectively along such
lines. This motley crew of knowledgeable
men and women seem to forget that states are social constructions with dynamic
changes over time.
It is insensitive of
Lagos State and her governor to embark on this wild chase without historical recollection.
Maybe they gave it thumps-up as doing politics by other means in parallel to
Lenin perception of war as politics by other means.
Another vista of this
intellectual hubris is attempted justification of the most inhuman act with
pretentious light touch of Marx without details distinguishing from Bolshevik
communism. It is impressive that these streams of knowledge deliberately run
dry suddenly at the river’s youthful stage. Marx not only deconstructed class
conflict but flayed those who assume power in the name of bring good only to
betray it. In his 18th Brumaire of Louis-Napoleon, he
incisively remarked on the grave dangers of the French revolution which
pretended to sweep clean the political landscape only to evolve into a position
no different to the preceding decadent days. He noticed how the upper and
middle classes conspired in the Napoleon III coup d’état to betray the commons
with the massacre of Paris Commune leaders that represented the lower class.
Eventually what the usurpers of powers succeeded in doing was adopting the
state toward tight coupling with machines of capital accumulation via the
market.
Despite the fact that current governor got into office by elections, some similarity is found in the
latest fumble of Lagos State as the targeted deportees are no more than those
the state considered wretched of the earth, unfit to share the space and
largesse of the state with the powerful, the rich and the elite. Marx was right
after all. Unfortunately these
unfortunate individuals are treated in the media as if they lack history and
humanity, or have never contributed positively to the state and have no
positive and lasting links with the state. Similar action by a foreign state on
a Nigerian may potentially carry the mark of institutional racism and
discrimination.
Final Legal
Recollection
One of Punch Newspaper
respondents in favour claiming to be a lawyer gave his widow’s mite by
considering the act as legal and labelled it resettlement. In an
increasingly interconnected world such justification attempt to lump Lagos
State with some of the most despicable episodes of inhumanity. It is worth reminding readers that as Dr
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to peace
everywhere”.
Words similar to resettlement have
been used and adopted to justify dispossession, repression and annihilation of
peoples in recent memory. Scramble for Africa was implemented with similar
illegal and forceful movement/dispossession/genocide of various African peoples
by the French (in Congo), Belgium (in DRC Congo), British (in
Zambia/Zimbabwe/Kenya), Germans (in Namibia/Cameroun/Togo) and Portuguese
(Angola/Mozambique) in the name of law and order. The eminence grise of
concentration camping of the innocent!
Peoples of
Pre-Columbian America where invested with similar resettlements, dispossession,
rape and genocide that reached its zenith in the United States during Andrew
Jackson regime that finally consigned indigenous Indians to reservations till
the present day. Eminent historian Howard Zinn captured these stark realities
in his excellent book, Peoples History of the United States. Similar
exploitations of peoples through forced relocation policies in the Americas is reconstructed by Eduardo Gealano in his epic, Open Veins of South America.
In the last century
European elites not only decimated their population with industrial killing machines
called world wars, but equally condemned the weak and vulnerable in forced
relocation policies that annihilated millions like sanctions flowing from Adolph Hitler’s executive legal
orders. Consolidation of nascent communist power projected Joseph Stalin to
corrupt the first fruit of practical Bolshevik communism with mass murder of
millions through forced deportations to gulags across the land. The remnants
are today littered across the former Soviet Union with returning Tartars in
conflict with later occupiers of their lands in Crimea and the burning
Nargano-Karabak conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Lessons
In conclusion it is
wise to admit that leadership is complex but short cuts do not provide lasting
solutions. Leadership without understanding of history is counter-productive
and such expression must be condemned. Lagos State and her leaders must be
clear on the implication of their decisions because it has a vibrant brand
within and beyond her boundaries that could be tarnish by reckless resort to
quixotic pseudo legalism. Such mustn’t be allowed to happen again.
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