As Nigerians reflect on 50 years after the civil war, hundreds of Nigerians living in the United Kingdom, Europe and America have called on the Nigerian authorities to follow up with recent calls for a National Dialogue by Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, and some Northern leaders.
The Nigeria professionals under the aegis of Fatherland said it was time Nigerians came together for constructive national dialogue to deal with the growing ethnic suspicion and other socio-political problems afflicting in the country.
Fatherland is a network of Nigerian professionals largely living abroad.
The group said it welcome the call by a key Northern leader, Dr Usman Bugaje, a leading intellectual in the North who late last year called for a National Dialogue on the future of the country.
“In our view it is always good to talk. We share Dr Bugaje’s view on the urgent need for us to find a way forward out of the present morass for the benefit of all of our peoples and so we are pleased to accept his call. However, there are some errors and misconceptions in the lecture that he delivered which need to be corrected. When making the call he identified three things which he said “becloud our vision” and which, he says, we must unshackle ourselves from “before we can arrive at a national consensus,” the statement signed by the Group Chairman, Mr Dele Ogun, a lawyer who lives in the UK noted.
Ogun, on behalf of the group said Fatherland supported Bugaje’s argument, but pointed out some misconceptions in his theory.
The group said while Bugaje cites Somalia as an example of a failed state despite being people of the same language, faith and culture, it was not the whole story because he must also be aware of the peace and prosperity that multi-ethnic Switzerland had enjoyed despite the nationalities of which he said were made up having fought each other in two bloody World Wars.
“This feat has been possible because the country faces up to and embraces its diversity in its constitutional arrangements. The post-Apartheid, Rainbow Nation of South Africa offers even better example in how diversity should be embraced,” Fatherland said.
Ogun said the focal points of Bugaje were Demystification of Ethnicity, Knowledge Driven Discourse and Appreciation of the Future.
The group said in relation to the “Demystification of Ethnicity” Bugaje complained that “we seem to have allowed the ignorant to lead the national discourse on ethnicity or better still those who know better looked the other way when the ignorant and the manipulators were using the ethnic card to score their cheap points”.
He is wrong in this, the group said.
The group added that “far from the discourse on the need for constitutional arrangements to take account of the reality of our differences having been led by the ignorant it has, in fact, been led by those who have refused to play the Ostrich by burying their heads in the sands of denial. These are the ones who have opened their eyes and minds to the obvious fact that skin colour alone does not make us one.”
It said in an effort to support his claim that those who had faced up to the realities had been scoring “cheap points” he pointed to England and said “Today the Turkish roots of the current British Prime Minister are very well known and acknowledged, but it did not make him any less British”.
“He fails to realise that the four remaining fingers of his hand are pointing home to Abuja where no Southerner has been allowed to occupy the office of Minister for the Federal Capital Territory even though we are all Nigerians. England is in fact a bad example for him to point to because, in the same way, no practising Roman Catholic has ever occupied the office of Prime Minister of England.”
