This is not an essay about the B.A.T.

The 2023 elections were a very terrifying portent of Nigeria's possible future. It is time we addressed it head on.

I thought of several other ways to start this essay, but I kept coming back to this sentence. Because it is emblematic of the problem this essay seeks to explore.

Over the last 8 months, Alhaji B.A.T has dominated public discourse in Nigeria. Like a hydra, his name, antics, ambitions and murky past has infiltrated every kind of media, from documentaries to exposes, to memes and even music (looking at you Ruger). He has been blamed for the rigging of the 2023 elections, the avalanche of fake news and propaganda that overshadowed all legitimate discourse around said elections and the escalating wave of ethnic and religious bigotry that threatens to tear the very fabric of the country we call Nigeria. 

Of course, B.A.T has been accused of doing and saying some egregious things, but inexcusable as his alleged actions have been, he is one man, and cannot be blamed for the shitstorm we witnessed during the 2023 elections. 

This is also not an essay to explain why Nigerian tribes hold such enmity towards Igbo people and other minorities. That would require an exhaustive deconstruction of how British colonists attempted to ‘punish’ the ethnic groups that resisted them during their colonial expansion by socially ostracising them through stereotyping that persists till today. 

Instead, it is about my observations of the virulent, Nigerian strain of bigotry that has metastasized in the last decade and why it should worry us. 

WHY HAVE NIGERIANS BECOME SO OBSESSED WITH IDENTITY POLITICS?

The rising wave of bigotry in Nigeria can be linked in part to our long and complicated relationship with mass migration and how that process shapes culture and identity. 

Nigerian mass migration follows a cycle; people emigrate to flee unfavourable social or political conditions, then repatriate when conditions improve or an event that triggers nationalist patriotism inspires them to do so. Assimilation into the host country’s culture happens during the emigration phase, and cultural evolution in our home country happens during the repatriation phase. This cycle is integral to the development of Nigeria’s cultural identity and the ideologies that govern its politics.

Our earliest records of documented ‘Nigerian’ mass migrations can be traced to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, four years after the colonies that would become the Nigerian Republic were amalgamated and nearly 100 years before the mass migrations of 2020. The nationalist Independence movement of the 1940s and 1950s were spearheaded by repatriates, who returned 20 years after they first migrated to Europe as teenagers and young adults. 

The second wave of migrations happened after the coups of the 60s, to the USSR which was looking to finally establish a stronghold for its communist ideologies on the continent. The USSR established diplomatic relations with Nigeria in 1961 following our Independence from British rule and was a strong ally as Nigeria sought to rid itself of colonial influence and establish itself as a sovereign republic. The beneficiaries of this cycle of emigration make up a significant portion of Nigeria’s elder political class and its policies inform their obsession with the nationalisation of public infrastructure and resources as a solution to any economic crisis. 

Up until this point America had not featured prominently in our migratory behaviour. This is partly because, before the 1970s and 1980s when a lot of America’s racist and exclusionary laws were repealed, the US of A was hostile to migrants from the continent. That changed with the introduction of the American Visa Lottery, established in 1987. It was one of the overt attempts America made to overcome racial bias, diversify its population and enrich its culture. Many Nigerians, with their nuclear and extended families, were beneficiaries of this lottery scheme and would form the first generation of Nigerians introduced to the ‘double-barrel’ identity that is unique to America. 

There is a clear difference in ideology between the technocrats that were influenced by Soviet communism of the 60’s - 80’s and the technocrats that were influenced by contact with the neo-liberalist ideologies of the Americas from the 80’s to 1999. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dora Akunyili, Akin Adeshina, Chukwuma Soludo (in his hey-days) and the much revered Bart Nnaji, were all deeply influenced by their contact with American politics and education and the individualism that defines that culture. Having three successive presidents (two of whom were academics) who trusted them enough to execute their radical ideas led to the economic boom of 1999 to 2014.  

But this contact with America wasn’t all positive. The beneficiaries of the US Visa lottery system left Nigeria during the worst stretch of Nigerian military occupation, a situation that was so traumatising, most chose to fully assimilate and sever their ties to Nigeria. It was their children, first generation American citizens who had little to no contact with Nigeria, who began to repatriate after democratic rule was restored in the country in 1999. These repatriates, as well as repatriates from Europe who had become radicalised by American political rhetoric, were partially responsible for the great economic boom of the 2000s. 

Along with their knowledge and their business acumen, this new generation of repatriates also brought ideological absolutism into Nigerian politics. American absolutists refuse to see merit in the ideas and achievements of their political opposition, and either try to discredit these ideas, undo these achievements or repurpose them to serve their own agendas. America’s two-party system, its obsession with control vs freedom and the practice of using dog whistles and virtue signalling to rally support for ideas are all features of this approach to politics. 

It is also important to mention that the absolutist concept of Us vs Them was first introduced to post-independence Nigeria by America’s Pentecostal ministries. It is not too hard to draw parallels between the messaging and theatrics of the religious crusades of the 1980s and 1990s (Benny Hinn, Reinhard Bonnke and co) and the colonial motif of missionaries coming to Africa to convert and indoctrinate the ‘unsaved’ noble savage. These religious interventions created moral panic and taught the language of bigotry that repatriates would eventually use to hijack political and social discourse in Nigeria.

SO, WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH NIGERIAN BIGOTRY?

The rise of bigotry as a political tool in Nigeria can be directly linked to the American presidential elections of 2008, which saw President Barack Obama sworn in as the first black President of the United States, and by extension the free world. 

Barack Obama’s first term as US president was heralded publicly  by many white people as a significant leap towards a post-racial America. He was black, part African and from a blue-collar family. Think pieces postulated how Obama would finally give people some pride of place in American life, and for some it did. But privately, many saw his tenure as a trial of all American minorities and a genuine challenge to America’s stratified race/class system. Many believed there was no way he would perform better than the 43 white presidents before him, most of whom had their terms as president marred by an avoidable scandal.  

But Obama was in all ramifications, a perfect American president. His racial diversity prevented him from being dismissed as a white supremacist and prevented him from being attacked by the white elite for fear of being labelled as racist. Barack’s two terms invalidated many of the stereotypical tropes and dog whistles many of his detractors had hoped to use against him. Their argument that Obama was too aligned to the black and brown people of the world to protect America’s interests, were soundly dismissed by Obama’s almost fanatical commitment to stamping out ‘terrorism’ in Africa and the Middle East.

TRUMPIAN POLITICS GOES GLOBAL 

Following President Obama’s unimpeachable first term, American conservatives began to express their disillusionment and search for a demagogue to rally around as they ‘fought’ to ‘Make America Great Again’. They found that person in Donald J. Trump, a former reality TV star and 3rd generation immigrant ‘billionaire’ who had enough money and visibility to act independently of the complex political structure of the American conservative party, the GOP. Trump was considered a joke at first, as are many other memorable figures who contest for office in America. But that changed as Trump began to articulate many of the regressive ideas the American conservative party and the white majority held but considered impolite to express publicly. This ‘honesty’ and entitlement gained him reverence and notoriety in equal measure. 

Obama’s legacy might have been questioned outside of America, but he left office as an American hero and whoever he supported would enjoy immense goodwill. The only way it seemed that Obama and the democratic party he represented could be discredited and Trump platformed, was through attacks against his legacy and the democratic party from first-generation black and biracial Americans with double-barrelled identities. 

And they did, in their numbers. Finally platformed in a country where this particular demographic was often dismissed when they tried to participate in political discourse, many Nigerian American immigrants became political pundits (Omarosa anyone). They championed conservative causes, parroted the racist, bigoted rhetoric of the conservative side and legitimised the absolutist rhetoric of the liberal side. While they couldn’t really demarket Obama, they became an integral part of legitimising the eventual bewildering presidency of Donald J. Trump. 

But long before they helped Trump to bluster his way into the Oval Office, their influence was already shifting politics in Nigeria from a semi-civil affair into a terrifying cocktail of authoritarianism and ideological conservatism. 

The first bold move to introduce ideological conservatism as a replacement for issue-based politics in Nigeria came with the 2013 SSMPA Bill. This somewhat incoherent bill, criminalises ‘Gay Marriage’, an aspect of queer life in Nigeria that was never a problem to begin. Now the motivations behind the SSMPA Bill become even more apparent when you consider that it was first introduced to the Nigerian senate in 2006, the same year America repealed its Defense of Marriage Act, and outlawed the ban on Gay Marriage as a last ditch attempt of the conservative party to appeal to liberal voters. One can only surmise that the Bill was resurrected in 2013 as a way to hijack the growing discourse around Gay Marriage that had defined the 2012 US general elections and create panic in Nigeria. The tactic worked, albeit partially. The SSMPA Bill was signed into law, but President Goodluck Jonathan who was advised to sign the law as a way to improve his popularity at the polls, and a decision he later distanced himself from, lost his re-election bid. 

President Muhammadu Buhari unseated President Jonathan. Buhari was pronounced as a divine response to Nigeria’s ongoing problem of corruption, and his win was celebrated. Some Nigerians referenced his past as a military dictator who was forcefully removed because of his harsh policies but they were a small minority. For the first year of his tenure as president, many people talked about Buhari’s ‘body language’ being enough to deter corrupt government officials from fleecing the country. He gave the now infamous quote, ‘I belong to everybody, and I belong to nobody’ as a precursor of the kind of government that he would lead, one that drew its legitimacy from the people but was not accountable to it.

WHY DOES IT MATTER THAT BUHARI CAME INTO OFFICE, AND HOW DOES IT PLAY INTO BIGOTRY?

Nigeria chooses its leaders based on their ability to unite the country against a common enemy. At some point, the enemy was colonists, at other points that enemy was agents who sought to divide Nigeria. The goal was always uniting our diverse ethnic groups under the umbrella of national sovereignty, and all the ignoble decisions made by our elite, were justified because we all shared this collective goal. Even as early as 2007, and 2011, a candidate’s view on constitutional reform and a national referendum was the swing issue that decided the outcome of every political campaign. 

Despite this, each successive Nigerian government fails to make any headway on this all-important topic. Instead, the political class works to suppress all opposition who could demand accountability so thoroughly, they are now burdened with a despondent workforce who would much rather lay down and die than reckon with the painful epiphanies that precede revolution. Our elites have become trapped in the farce of pantomiming patriotism, their charade growing more and more ridiculous as the despondency infects more and more citizens. 

But instead of freeing themselves by doing the gruelling work of creating structures and systems that reward true patriotism, Nigeria’s elites deflect by playing fast and loose with the sovereignty of ethnic heritage and political borders. On one hand they encourage interreligious and interethnic ‘mixing’ through government policies such as the NYSC scheme and Federal Character, promoting these policies as honest efforts to unite the divided interests of the country’s 300+ ethnicities. But they also aggressively punish products of this kind of ‘mixing’ by enforcing draconian state and ethnic quotas for political office and government benefits.  

The goal it seems is to feed two parallel but equally insidious experiments. One experiment breeds economically disadvantaged, purebred Nigerians (think Almajiri crisis and the now infamous ‘Yoruba Ronu’) whose unquestionable lineage grants them ‘divine right’ to claim the land as theirs. The other breeds an ethnically ambiguous majority whose placelessness can be soothed by convincing them their lack of identity is a void that can be numbed with patriotic fervour. 

For both groups, sovereignty is the rallying cry. The enemy is anyone who doesn’t belong either by birth or by nationality, and who wants something other than this utopian dream that is being sold. 

The impoverished purebred is useful, because they can be mobilised and funded to act as a militia, advancing the interests of the elite with whom they share ‘pure heritage’. Classic examples of this are the ‘bandits’ who are allegedly imported from Chad to wreak havoc across Nigeria, the militants of the Niger Delta creeks who radicalised to protect the interests of the many South-South elites, the OPC of the 90s and the NURTW of the present day who operate a sophisticated taxation system on behalf of the Lagos state government. 

Nigeria’s elite take the risk of assembling and arming a militia because they understand that the system of corrupt oppression is not durable and its benefits are not infinite. The elite needs the active participation of the masses in this patriotic charade, consent optional. They also need protection when the bubble eventually bursts and people want accountability. So, the militia, usually tied to the elite by religion or ethnicity, suffices. 

The desired outcome of this parallel experiment is a future where the masses stay subdued and the militia finds its purpose in the misappropriated integrity of being trusted with the power over life and death and the mandate to wield it, especially over perceived enemies, at home and away. A concept which is startlingly similar to the fraught relationship between the American redneck and the American WASP, and the British nobility and the British Brexiter. 

When Nigerians parrot this rhetoric, borrowing from colonising cultures that used race-coded segregation, slavery and violence to usurp the indigenous owners of their lands, we legitimise those methods as a necessary evil in pursuit of our ideal utopian future. The West’s definition of ‘good’, is only useful as long as there are others to contrast this goodness with. Without the other, the group will eventually cannibalise itself. 

We don’t even have to look too far to see how this will play out. In America, the ideological battle against ‘wokeness’, a blanket term that is used to de-fang anyone who proves an ideological threat to American absolutist politics has metastasized into a rampage where minorities are facing coordinated attacks that include oppressive policies, physical violence, social ostracization and digital doxxing and harassment. 

It is quite similar to what happened to queer people in Nigeria after the SSMPA Bill was passed and the majority of Nigerians were ‘persuaded’ to ‘protect’ Nigeria from homosexuality. Successive governments have passed laws that don't address any real issues when it regards queerness in Nigeria and the cases of individual attacks on queer people skyrocketed, while the real challenges with insecurity, corruption and poor governance remain unaddressed. Following in its wake is the radicalisation of Nigerian men into incel culture, which positions women as a monolithic group who have collectively decided to withhold sex and companionship from men as a bargaining tool. That is still at the point of rhetoric and isolated incidents of violence, but soon it will escalate into a major concern. 

In the 2023 elections, this othering spread to ethnicity, and the ethnic heritage of a front-runner candidate was used to demarket him in the election campaign. This demarketing eventually spread, and during both presidential and governorship elections, Igbos were targeted with violence in ways that exposed the real motivations of its perpetrators. At that point, what had been pockets of violence targeted at Igbos for the last 12 years became a very real problem for all Lagosians, no matter their ethnicity or religion. 

At the polling units, even Yoruba persons who spoke the language and were well known in their communities were harassed and attacked by other Yoruba persons who denied them the right to vote because they didn’t have traits that are ethnographically ‘yoruba’. There was no apology when this proved to be wrong, and those who were affected were expected to accept that they would be collateral damage in this politically motivated ethnophobia.  

So again, this is not an essay about B.A.T or the very valid question of why Igbo’s have been singled out as the other in the Nigerian experiment. It is a warning about the severity of the monster that threatens what little peace and stability we still experience in Nigeria. Physical violence and oppressive legislation have already been employed to harm the manufactured opponents of the political ruling class in Lagos and that tactic will spread if there are no consequences, or at the very least, a reckoning of what this means for our collective future. 

Nigeria DOES NOT have the robust legislature and social structures that shield the everyday Briton or American from the full brunt of the follies of its political class. If America’s current trajectory has any bearing on how this dangerous new path will play out, it will only be a matter of time before once again, Nigeria finds itself teetering on the edge of genocidal levels of violence and oppression.