The Many Social Controversies About The Nigerian Polity

There quite a number of social controversies over Nigeria as a political institution. While some of these social issues are deliberately left unraveled by the government maybe to avoid heating up the polity, a lot more have usually occurred out of neglect and casualness whereas it is very appropriate that the citizenry familiarize themselves with the issues which ordinarily would lead to a better understanding of the environment. It is also apt to submit that in some cases, the government of the day absolutely reorganized and twisted the minds of the people to assume certain fictions now made to look like facts about the country.

It is curious to recall that in its entire 50 years of existence as a nation, the Nigerian people do not have the faintest idea of their population so that series of population censuses conducted in the nation have not produced any result near what the masses expect. For this reason, demographers often rely on estimates presented by the UNO. Analysts believe that censuses conducted by the government are grotesquely distorted to favor a certain region of the nation thus leaving such censuses as absolute waste of resources and groundwork for controversies in the country.

With the population of the Igbo increasing almost on annual basis covering states such as Imo, Anambra, Ebonyi, Abia, Enugu, Delta, Benue, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Cross-River, Edo it becomes difficult to reason with some rough population figure estimates produced by the government to underline the population of the people. Again, it was hard to believe that Kano would by population census adjudged to be more thickly populated than Lagos where almost every family from all parts of the nation is represented. Such is the handiwork of the Nigerian population miracle. In all, the recent population figures released by the Babangida and Obasanjo administrations are suggestive of gross reduction in the number of the nation's citizens. Why is it that usually, the population figure estimates of the country released by the UN and other agencies are more than those officially made to appear on government's papers?    

We are still wondering why the government with its powerful and speedy machination has always avoided revealing a detailed population figure of the various ethnic groups in the country. Interestingly, the government does not have an understanding of the actual number of ethnic groups in existence in the country. Is it not vexatious to always find "over 250 ethnic groups" forever appearing on all government papers? If the colonial masters failed to accurately come up with the actual number of ethnic groups in the country why will our own indigene government also fail in this necessary exercise? Sometimes, it is just possible to ignore the easier and vital role and waste away time with impossible arduous tasks. The story is just that 50 years after the administration of the country was handed over to the indigene people, the people do not have the knowledge of their ethnic nationalities.

Another question that has also bothered me is why "Hausa-Fulani" has been made an official ethnic group only on documents and no one asks questions to find out why this has remained so. Conflicting as it may appear, when it is time for population exercise we see these two distinct and divergent ethnic nationalities often joined together by a compound symbol. Is it really possible for someone to be an Hausa as well as a Fulani? It is mystifying because it will really sound comical to hear Ijaw-Urhobo, Anioma-Igbo, Tiv-Idoma, Bini-Itsekiri since all of these are distinct in their own way. This does not also apply to similar languages or dialects no matter the circumstance. Has anyone ever heard someone arrogate to himself fluency in Hausa-Fulani as one language? An Hausa remains an Hausa, while a Fulani remains a Fulani just as part of Anioma speak Enuani, and not Enuani-Igbo, Itsekiri and not Itsekiri-Ijaw or Ishan-Auchi.

In Adamawa for instance, Hausa, Fulfulde, Bachama, Mbula, Gude, Lunguda, Kanakuru, Yandand, Batta, Highi, Kilba, Bura, Yungur are all spoken and can never be equated as Hausa-Fulani. In Yobe, Hausa, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Bolewa, Badenchi, Karikari are also spoken and it never makes sense to unduly categorize these various languages as Hausa-Fulani for we know that even though an Hausa may understand other languages within its language family, they are surely distinct. The earlier this is corrected, the better we shall understand our environment and remove controversies.