 The participants of the senior executive course 45 present, good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Let me say before I begin that I very strongly believe in the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies. And I believe strongly in its capacity to be in the coming years and months the leading thought leader for Africa in policy matters, for Africa not just for Nigeria but for Africa. And I think that we have everything course after course and as has been pointed out, I've been coming here since 2015 and course after course, participants after participants. I'm completely overwhelmed by the quality of individuals, the quality of personnel who come here and who are trained in policy issues and who eventually go out there to influence policy one way or the other. So I hope that the 45 course participants will join in this very noble and this noble company. Thank you all very much. My topic is I believe has been displayed. It is creating a homeland for all, nation building in a diverse democracy. And I want to just emphasize that the focus of my lecture will be on what I say diversity. I'm referring in particular to ethnic and religious diversity and to see how it is that we can truly build a nation despite our ethnic and religious diversities. Let me begin with a personal story of an encounter that I had many years ago. In 1989 I was about to get married and I was searching for a good place to rent, a good house to rent. I met my landlord to be who happened to be an elderly lawyer who obviously did more real estate than legal practice. I mean he was mainly just a business of real estate. So when I met him he let me know that there were three categories of people that he would not rent his property to. Of course he didn't know who I was. And the three categories of people that he would not rent his properties to were ebos, egebos and lawyers. Ebos, egebos and lawyers, he made me very clear to me I was disqualified on two accounts. He then said to me pointing behind him at a few shriveled looking books in a small bookshelf behind him that he had the arsenal to destroy any tenant in court if I gave him any trouble. He later on of course discovered to his embarrassment that I was a law teacher and at the time advisor to the then attorney general of the federation and of course that I am also Ijebu. I've shared this story to illustrative point that I think is hugely important which is that prejudice and bias are natural aspects of human nature. Everyone has prejudices and preferences that are enforced by stories and narratives that they hear. Prejudice is a function of environment in which one is socialized and the level of exposure that one has. All across this country different ethnicities are subjects of popular stereotypes whether it is the notion that Ijebos are stingy or that egebos have an excessive love for money or that the full anise are cunning, unforgiving or more recently violent or that the ebira and the hika are practitioners of seasoned witchcraft. These are stereotypes and they of course by the very nature of stereotypes while generalizations most likely to be false and unlikely to hold up to any kind of empirical tests but they are the narratives people have woven about other tribes and in fact people of other religions. Sometimes these stories are repeated so many times that they are soon accepted as facts and when we accept these stories as facts about other people and people of other ethnicities and people of other religions who we have never met with or interacted with they shape our judgments about them even before they have spoken. In other words we prejudge them. This is the nature and power of prejudice. This is how entrenched biases and prejudices come to be and become established. However when ethnic or religious prejudices are weaponized for political purposes we are confronted with a lethal potentially destructive situations. Elections for example by the very nature tend to be already divisive. Partisan democratic competition compels us to align ourselves with the camps that most reflect our ideals and aspirations. In a diverse society such as ours democratic competition is intensified by the socio-cultural privileges that exist in society. This is true of any heterogeneous society or democracy. In an election cycle in which the major contenders come from different ethno-regional classes or zooms there was always a sense that the competition was going to be particularly intense but at the same time it would not be accurate to reduce the election to an ethnic census. As we saw the contenders perform strongly in parts of the country other than their native regions. Unfortunately one of the unsavory tendencies that was witnessed in this election cycle has been so in previous ones but perhaps hited somewhat was the weaponization of ethnic religious and sectional prejudices in ways that are damaging to social cohesion. Religion was quite clearly made an issue and in some parts of the country political biases are introduced even between denominations of the same religion. In some cases ethnic profiling took place at polling booths There's a popular female food blogger and YouTuber YouTuber called C.C.Yemi a Yoruba woman who took to her verified Twitter handle to say and I quote my husband and I were not allowed to vote they said we look like Igwa people I can't believe this almost without fail in every election cycle politicians are forcefully either overtly or covertly sought to persuade voters that voting for their particular candidate or the particular political party they favor is the will of God and that voting for the opposing party was a violation of the divine will. Repeatedly we hear of prophets who support political parties one way or the other this is a matter of great concern because long after an election is over and long after the leading contenders have sheathed their thoughts the rhetoric, the words and the means used to compete can have adverse long term effects on society where the forces of primordial division and polarization are harnessed for the sake of electoral gain the venom of such devices remain and continue to poison communal relations setting neighbors against neighbors and we have witnessed the catastrophic consequences of the political weaponization of prejudice and bias in places such as Rwanda no one could have believed that in a small country with two ethnic groups the Hutus and the Tutsis who speak the same language that ethnic sentiments will be exploited to the extent that it said both groups against each other led to the Rwandan genocide in which one million people died in that conflict people who had lived together side by side for years were set upon by their own neighbors and murdered the most gruesome fasha even in our own history as a people there are ample milestones that serve as a warning against indulging in bigotry and prejudice some of the political rhetoric prepared and the cause of this election cycle have been disturbing because they recall similar rhetoric used by politicians during some of the darkest chapters of our country's existence in the first republic the exploitation of prejudice and incitement of hatred against ethnic communities led to the collapse of that democratic dispensation led to bloody pogroms and a civil war that cost in excess of two million lives we talk about the civil war but we seem to ignore the fact that it was the manipulation of ethno-religion sentiment that eventually boiled over into that tragedy the demons released by that bloody conflict amongst brothers are yet to be fully caged and we pay the price of that healing process every day that is not a chapter of our history that we should ever allow to repeat itself the Rwandis took deliberate steps to ensure that the tragedy they experienced would never be repeated including even a memorial to the dead but more importantly the strict enforcement of laws against the use of ethnically or religiously charged rhetoric and a raft of laws that criminalize divisive attitudes and behavior we also must do the hard work of providing and implementing a framework for fair, just and unifying dealings amongst our peoples we must also create a framework and that enables us to be able to enforce strictly the laws against the use of divisive rhetoric especially ethnically bigoted religiously bigoted rhetoric let me be clear people do not suddenly start hating each other during elections while political actors may invoke ethnic or sectional sentiments in an election these social and cultural antipathies already exist lurking beneath the surface and as we reflect on the takeaways from the last election cycle going forward we must consider the prevalence of day to day discrimination that occur we must consider the various forms of bigotry and prejudice that are not only present in our politics but are transmitted and effectively mainstreamed by the media and other social forces the association of whole ethnic communities with certain types of criminality which amounts to wholesale criminalization of an identity and the habit but in groups where the misdeeds of individuals are deeply problematic if we normalize these attitudes and habits it should not surprise us that they come to the fore during a heated electoral campaign and I must say just for emphasis that when a group of people or when individuals no matter how many they may be do certain things it is so easy for us to simply criminalize an entire tribe of people because of the actions of a few and we have done this kind of profiling in so many different ways such that if you ask anyone who is doing this you will say oh is people of this tribe who is doing that is people of that tribe but the vast majority of the people of that tribe do not even know that such things exist so these kinds of ethnic profiling is dangerous and it has to be contained and it has been contained in other places and I'm sure that part of what you part of the policies that I hope will develop from here will be studying these other societies that have been able to contain ethnic profiling in the way that it is done in the way that is so destructive to our communities but believe it or not Nigeria is changing there are no longer any homogenous enclaves in Nigeria as our own nations have evolved one of the most designable changes that were witnessed is the disappearance of ethnically homogenous spaces everywhere across the country people from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds are schooling together doing business together commingling intermarrying and raising families are much talked about linguistic diversity is not a barrier as many Nigerians are multilingual increasingly we see that the heart and face of a new Nigeria is a social cultural hybrid appreciative of the cultural diversity of our society attuned to its culture but also blessed with an inclusive cosmopolitan outlook for many of these Nigerians young Nigerians in particular their ethnic and national identities are not in contradiction for young Nigerians who belong to the most globalized generation in our country's history this is especially true their friendships, their education their lived experiences have brought them into contact with the febrile variety of identities and cultures in their societies and on the planet and we see their multi-cultural outlook in the social networks in the entrepreneurial partnerships and their political activism which transcend the old primordial allegiances and we saw a lot of that in the politics of this particular election cycle a lot of the young people simply chose how they wanted to vote and many of them disregarded old primordial allegiances disregarded in many cases tribe it's not only intentional migration by the way that diversifies our communities over the past three decades conflicts and climatological events have also diversified for instance floods droughts have displaced large populations of our people driving them from their traditional homesteads in search of survival and safety and so they take refuge in safer communities they plant roots there and make those places their new homes and this is one of the engines of change that has become transformative for our communities and neighborhoods and there's really nothing intrinsically wrong with this because in any event this is how nations evolve all Nigerians are guaranteed the right to freedom of movement by the constitution however as human societies have evolved there was a realization that prosperity and progress lay in the widening cycle of inclusion and broadening of our definitions of sameness tribes have given way to nations and along with this new forms of socio-political organizations more expansive interpretations of kinship have emerged a common citizenship based on a cosmopolitan world view has become the standard for societies across the world discrimination against people on the basis of the identity is consistently condemned by most legal codes including our own constitution but there is still a tension that exists between this new Nigeria and the old Nigeria as understood by generation that is much more accustomed to political mobilization on the basis of identity but we must ennoble and validate the Nigeria that our young people are consciously or sometimes even unconsciously building this is the future that we want but as human beings it is natural to react to changes in the environment with some degree of anxiety for many Nigerians as we witness our communities become more diverse and more complex there are natural concerns about what this means for our own societies what this means for our own homes these elections witness the exploitation by political actors of the fears and anxieties of people about so called outsiders any attempt to deny people the right to vote in any locality on the basis that they do not belong in that place is condemnable in the strongest terms social integration is one of the highest ideals of our constitution we guarantees every citizen the right to traverse the length and breadth of this country without hindrance and to settle in any place of their choice it affirms the right of all Nigerians not to be discriminated against on the basis of their identity above all it holds up integration as a priority the framers of our constitution did not intend to create an apartheid system that distinguishes between natives and settlers but did they in fact create one they sought to create a civic nation so it is possible to conquer ethnic or religious prejudice and build a unified nation and I think that that in itself to be a rhetorical question can we truly conquer ethnic prejudices religious prejudices and build a unified nation I think we can but it is a journey and it's perhaps the most important issue in nation building indeed as humanity sought to build a more durable just and sustainable civilization we learned that our natural prejudices and our allied irredentist urges have to be disciplined and sublimated in a mutually rooted shared humanity we cannot we cannot without discipline some of the discipline comes from the force of law we simply have to discipline our natural urges there's a recognition that sociocultural diversity while being a fact of life is neither a weapon nor a weakness and the most prosperous places on the face of the earth are places that have learned to harness diversity while building even more inclusive institutions Singapore and Tanzania are countries that have gone far in conquering prejudice and had mentioned earlier Rwanda in Singapore, the statesman Likwanyu promoted policies aimed at establishing social cohesion in a racially and ethnically heterogeneous nation among such initiatives was the ethnic integration policy which sought to prevent the formation of ethnic conqueries and to promote the integration of ethnic groups it specified the proportion of flats that could be owned by the various ethnic groups and this created a much more balanced ethnic mix in the various housing estates that were built in Singapore Singapore made English the official language established legislative and policy safeguards to guarantee the rights of minorities and to ensure that government does not pass laws but overtly or covertly discriminate against any race or religion Likwanyu's government also entrenched meritocracy as its dominant public philosophy in 2019 the Gallup World Poor Singapore was rated top out of 124 countries for tolerance of ethnic minorities and 95% of respondents stated in that survey that for racial and ethnic minorities Singapore was a good place to live this was higher than the global average of 70% Tanzania is another example of a country that has been able to effectively manage its diversity its founding president Julius Nyerere wanted to avoid tribal prejudice that had plagued other African countries and implemented three measures he promoted an overarching national identity by establishing Kizwahili as national language second he promoted a Pan-Tanzanian history a deliberate writing of history which introduced into primary school curriculum we taught children to see themselves first and foremost as Tanzanians in doing this he was not attempting to erase ethnic identities but to ensure that ethnic prejudices did not blow up and he achieved this aim of making Tanzanian citizenship the primary way in which Tanzanians saw and identified themselves Nyerere was also a sincere preacher of national unity and coexistence I believe that Nigeria is neither unique nor exceptional on account of her diversity the genre of scholarship and public polemic that makes a problem of ethnicities and religions and characterizes it as a profound flaw is one that I differ strongly with I very strongly differ that merely because we are ethnic nations that came together or that we are from different religions for that reason it is necessarily a huge problem that is insomountable my diversity is neither a liability nor a curse it is in fact a blessing and an asset diversity deepens the pool of sociocultural capital available to us we are enriched by the frothy ferment of the vast multiplicity of perspectives which provide us with a treasure of tools for growth and progress and I have long maintained that in Nigeria what is that issue is not and has never been our diversity but our capacity to manage it with a sense of fairness, equity and justice there is no denying that diversity can be a harbinger of friction and we have seen it anyway so often it is natural as different groups on various backgrounds and with different world views mingled the interaction is characterized by degree of tension and even conflict all diverse nations find their unique ways of managing the tensions which inevitably arise from the co-mingling of an assortment of people and let me add that inclusion is essential to prosperity as we go forward this is another reason why divisive politics is completely counterproductive over the past five decades we have sustained a political economy in which our crude oil wealth extracted at considerable cost to the Niger Delta has been the fuel of economic and administrative life of our country in recent years it has become clear that we are now entering a post oil age whether we like it or not with all the developments in the world and all the talk about energy transition and all the talk about renewable energy whether we like it or not we are certainly entering a period when oil is going to be is going to grow in irrelevance our developmental and growth aspirations cannot be centered around the distribution of rents from oil we have realized what the advanced economies have long recognized in the 21st century the true wealth of nations is human capital and this means that places that have learned to attract and retain the most diverse pool of capital of skilled capital easily win the race for success diversity means a multiplicity of perspectives and worldviews a broad range of cultural, philosophical and philosophical and intellectual approaches for solving problems in this rich soil nourished by various ideas and schools of thought productive synthesis is possible and innovation flourishes the world's richest nations are those places that have learned to attract talent from various places and to harness diversity as a driver of growth in Nigeria this will also increasingly be the case a state's chances of growth will depend on how much qualitative capital it can attract and the richer the human capital pool as its disposal the more taxes it can harvest to fund governance and social services in this scenario the politics of division and tribalism will only breed poverty because it can only alienate the human capital that a state desperately needs for its growth it will become productive and destabilizing to exclude Nigerians from the political life of their communities on the basis of where they come from while simultaneously expecting them and requiring them to pay taxes taxation without representation is clearly a recipe for instability there are of course some issues that should focus all our commitments affirming the right of Nigerians to be free of all forms of discrimination it's not just a moral idea if we are truly committed to economic growth then we must also be committed to creating inclusive communities and strengthening social cohesion put another way the only thing that grows in a climate of tribal hatred is poverty this is why justice and healing and a stronger commitment to the ideals of integration are so important let me just very quickly return to the issue of elite responsibility leadership does not today a Nigerian leadership today does not have the luxury of toying with prejudice the leadership elite and when I refer to the leadership elite I refer not just to the political elite I refer also to the religious elite and to the business elite we have a duty to conduct ourselves with a high sense of responsibility even as we prosecute the context for power historically conscious and patriotic elite all over the world recognize that beyond the letter of the law beyond what the law asserts there are lines that must not be crossed in the pursuit of political power especially in fragile societies and democracies such as ours one of such lines is the willful exploitation of sectional sentiments and the invocation of ethnic antipathies to mobilize a political constituency it is dangerous because it is an attempt that seeks to mobilize by fostering division and hatred and when the elite fail to compete responsibly and moderately foster a sense that everything goes and all of that can only breed instability we have seen this dynamic play out time and time again in our history the model of competition that recognizes no ethical limits or boundaries is a threat to our democracy is a threat to the well-being of our country is incumbent upon politicians and the leadership elite to act and conduct competition responsibly in all the countries in all the countries that have been relatively successful in the journey to overcoming prejudices such as the examples I have given of Singapore and Tanzania and Rwanda that I have just talked about leadership has been critical responsible leadership a responsible leadership elite has been critical the elites of both countries recognized by cohesion and peaceful existence have to be intentionally prioritized and pursued it is not a side agenda it's not a side issue for these countries that have succeeded so far they did not consider cohesion a side issue or just something we talk about they took deliberate steps from policy to implementation this is the challenge of leadership in our own country today and it's a challenge that our leadership elite face elites have a responsibility to discipline themselves first and foremost in the pursuit of political ambitions and their exercise of power to ensure that the fabric of our communities is not rent asunder we must recognize that if peaceful coexistence is sacrificed on the altar of partisan politics then all will be lost we have spoken about the need for politicians to act responsibly but that burden is also on what is called the third sector civil society including and perhaps especially the media the media has a twofold responsibility as an institution that is uniquely influential in shaping public perceptions and attitudes it has to be extremely mindful of what sort of narratives it is projecting and how it frames disputes especially in multicultural and heterogeneous context there are also a number of measures that we must consider as we attempt to chart a way forward first justice is necessary where crimes have been committed they must be stridently prosecuted we know that political actors for example before these elections signed a peace accord on the eve of the elections under the auspices of the national peace committee one point of action is for us to assess the extent to which the actors complied with the undertakings to which they freely committed during the signing of that pact and perhaps even if it is just to inquire to find out to what extent was there complied and it might be the role of small study groups to look at it to what extent are these peace accords relevant to what extent are they useful and what do we need to do to make them even more effective more broadly the government has a responsibility to affirm the rights of all Nigerians to pursue their lawful business and be free from discrimination wherever they live in their country and to repudiate the idea that there is a hierarchy in which some Nigerians may become second class citizens there is absolutely nothing that supports the idea that Nigerians are banned from participating in public life or seeking political office because they allegedly belong do not belong to or do not belong in the places where they reside and must reject any hint of this precisely because Nigerians are everywhere across this nation the people that are most discriminated against in our nation are those that are referred to non-Nigijians wherever they may live in our country and yet many of us are non-Nigijians in some way or the other it makes no sense to exclude so many Nigerians from the public life of their communities communities in which they reside and to which they are contributing merely on account of the fact that they are considered settlers or non-Nigijians Incidentally from the earliest days Nigerians of various ethnic extractions have sought and won political office outside their native regions the first mayor of the Enugu municipal council was Umaru Altani a Fulani cattle dealer who held the position between 1952 and 1958 we have since had similar examples in our democratic practice so we must dismiss the idea that these things are impossible let me conclude with another personal story on the 16th of July 2022 I went in for a surgery on my right femo at a hospital in Lagos as I lay on the operating bed and I was about to be anesthetized full anesthesia which will put me out completely now completely unconscious for the three hours or so for the three hours or so the three hours or so that the operation would take just before I lost consciousness a thought crossed my mind that I would be absolutely at the mercy of these surgeons and paramedics and anesthetians who surrounded the bed that I was lying on it struck me that I had actually allow these people to take over my life and I had to entrust them with my life one of them was from the South East the head of the team was from Delta some were Muslims some were Christians some were from the North some were from the South in fact I suspect that one of them who I spoke to later did not even believe in God yet as I lay on that bed it didn't seem to matter where they came from because they were experts when we make the decision that affect our lives and the decisions that affects our children the most somehow we are able to ignore tribal or religious prejudices the pilots who flew our planes or who fly our planes in fact the pilots about a couple of weeks ago I was flown to Lagos by two female pilots amongst my team who discriminate against women they were left entirely in the hands of these two ladies who flew us all the way to Lagos we don't complain about the pilots who fly our planes a smaller fact I said once that if I was told as I entered one of our presidential planes if I was told that the reason why the pilot was selected was because it's from Ikenia, my hometown and go back to my office and wait until they can find a competent pilot from anywhere in Nigeria I would not insist that you come from my hometown the teachers who teach our children in school we don't necessarily ask where they are from so long as they are good teachers the soldiers and other law enforcement agents who put their lives on the line for our safety every day we don't ask them where they are from so long as they can do a good job even the members of our national football team we don't care if all of them are called so long as they can score we don't care where they are from and we don't ask those questions this is the attitude that we must adopt always to build the nation of our dreams mobilizing the people of a country as complex and heterogeneous as ours under the banner of a common purpose was never going to be an easy task but that's not to say that it's impossible let us never forget that although we may speak different languages and belong to different tribes and profess diverse creeds we are bound by a shared language and a shared hope by a common humanity as Nigerians and a supreme faith in all of the possibilities that lie in our country thank you very much for listening