Beroms living in Kano have no more rights than Hausas in Jos. Both are “settler communities” that must live peaceably and within limits imposed by the so-called indigenous communities. This design has long been part of our political reality. A Christian running for election in Katsina is as anomalous as a Muslim seeking office in Jos.

If these formulations sound like categorizations of Nigerian citizenship, it is because that is exactly what they are. “Settlers” in Nigeria are second class or third class citizens regardless of their contributions to the community and local economy.

These are the tragic bitter truths of life as a Nigerian citizen. Unless we are ready to address these blights on our civic life, we will find that ethno-religious violence will continue impervious to the remedial powers of presidential sermonizing and political homilies.

We must also resolve the role of religion in our public life. Politicians have been especially disingenuous in employing religious sentiment to divisive effect. In theory, Nigeria is defined as a secular and multi-religious state. Section 10 of the constitution affirms the essential secularity of the Nigerian federation.

In practice, successive regimes have mixed politics with religion in dangerous ways. General Babangida’s surreptitious smuggling of Nigeria into the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), the enactment of Sharia law by some northern states, and the Obasanjo administration’s foolish involvement in the building of the National Mosque and the National Cathedral are prime examples. The arena of governance has become a theatre of competition between religions.

The Federal Government must work on erecting a wall of separation between religion and politics. It should cease sponsorship of pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem . It is an abuse of public funds and may well qualify as religious discrimination. (Islam and Christianity are not the only religions in Nigeria so why must they get special treatment?) With justification, one could question our sense of priority. It is absurd that we can subsidize religious pilgrimages but cannot find the will and the funds to subsidize healthcare, education or even agriculture so that we can feed ourselves.

Serious failures in the intelligence and security administration paved way for last week’s outbreak of violence. That no one apparently foresaw the possibility of violence in a historically volatile area calls into question the credentials of the security services. Much of this failure is rooted in the deficiencies of our federal system.

A state governor is presumably the chief security officer of his state but has no control over the police or the domestic security service. A state police commissioner answers to the Inspector General of Police in Abuja . The National security and law enforcement bureaucracy as it is presently constituted is too cumbersome to rapidly respond to threats to public safety. For this reason, some have called for the creation of state police agencies. And yet one must consider that under the canons of the present political climate, state police authorities controlled by state governors would be used to enforce electoral heists and intimidate the opposition.

Thirdly, Nigeria ’s dysfunctional federal structure is the background for ethno-religious conflicts across the country. A clash over a local government chair or a gubernatorial seat is about more than just prestige. Most of our states and local government areas have no internally generated revenue. With the notable exception of Lagos , most of these states depend almost entirely on federal allocations derived from oil exports from the Niger-Delta. This monthly avalanche of unmerited petrodollars eliminates any incentive for productivity in the states.

In essence, politics and political contests revolve around who controls the freebies of oil money. Nowhere else are the ghastly consequences of this cult of dependency more obvious than in the north. With its vast acreage of arable land, the region ought to be the food basket of the country and the answer to all of our food security challenges. Instead it is ground zero for poverty, illiteracy and disease. Nigeria ’s development indices are generally bad but those of the northern region are even more abysmal than the national average.

I submit that if the Nigerian federation operated on the principle of 50 – 100 percent derivation with states earning based on what they produce, what we often describe as ethnic and religious violence would be severely limited as there would be little or no oil money to fight over in many states.

The impetus for productivity would be so urgent that politicians and the public would be united in a resolve to be self-reliant. The fundamental nature of our politics would be dramatically altered since elective offices would cease to be fast tracks to personal enrichment and become real jobs for people with ideas.

Politics in Northern Nigeria as in other parts of the country is fundamentally elite parasitism in demonstration. The difference is that in the north, this parasitism is fraudulently conflated with religion, and portrayed as being in consonance with the aspirations of millions of ordinary Nigerians for a better life.
Until we remedy our flawed system of wealth distribution by adopting fiscal federalism, politics will remain rooted in the basest rungs of self-interest. Poverty will continue to increase and our people will continue to find ethnic and religious trenches attractive.

This point leads us to a factor that is often understated in the reportage of ethno-religious violence in Northern Nigeria . A frightening number of our young people are unemployed, unschooled and unskilled. They live on the margins of the society from where they can be recruited to torch churches and mosques or to blow up oil pipelines.

The dynamic is the same whether we are discussing fanatics and terrorists in the north or militants in the Niger Delta. The fact is that young people who perceive a future for themselves and are reasonably equipped to face it rarely join rioting mobs. Whether they are Muslims or Christians, they have no reason to burn churches and mosques.

Our society is mass producing millions of people who have no future and who have nothing to lose. Whether we call them Almajiris, area boys or street urchins, they constitute an army of malcontents that can be readily mobilized to unleash death and destruction.

This is the often understated class dimension of ethno-religious violence. One is not likely to find middle class and upper class Nigerians among the casualties of these conflicts. Only the least of our people, those illiterate enough and poor enough to be controlled by religious and political demagogues will fight and die for illusory causes.

One will also find that in these episodes of violence, the worst-hit areas are the slums and the ghettoes of the dispossessed while the upscale neighbourhoods of their paymasters remain remarkably secure. Our society’s most vulnerable groups are also potentially the most dangerous persons. Until we as a society commit decisively to eradicating poverty for the majority of our people, there will be no peace in Nigeria .

Finally, the humanitarian and social costs of these eruptions of violence are inestimable. Jos, Kaduna and Kano are cities that already bear the scars of divisive politics. These cities have been fractured along sectarian lines. Many have lost loved ones, property, and peace of mind; many have narrowly escaped death at the hands of neighbours. The psychological and psychic effects of such trauma will haunt communities for a long time. Life will never be normal for many.

Walls of distrust have been erected that will take several decades to take down. Hatred and mutual suspicion have become generational and such deep-rooted sentiments are often the seedbed of ethnic cleansing and genocide. These catastrophes are not cast in stone and are by no means inevitable. But we need honest and intelligent statesmen who can craft the right policies and promote healing and recovery.

I have no doubt that Nigerians can live together regardless of creed or ethnicity. Human beings fundamentally want the same things regardless of tribe or faith; they want to dwell in peace and safety, and raise their children, with the basics of life provided. Politicians who have no clue how to deliver these common aspirations cling to power by rehashing the old tactic of dividing and conquering.

In the north, as in the whole country, this pattern of elite behaviour can be easily summarized: some politicians come in the name of Allah; others come in the name of Jesus. The end result is the same – the plunder of the treasury and the impoverishment of the people.

This formulation is strongly verified by the condition of the north. The domination of the northern elite at the highest levels of national politics has only set the region back several decades.

Ngwodo writes from Lagos