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nonso@nsu.edu Norfolk, VA, USA

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TRIBAL POLITICS AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN THE UNITED STATES - LESSONS FOR A JUST, SUSTAINABLE NIGERIA

SUMMARY

t is tempting to surmise that clannish politics and similar ethnic relationships no longer dominate, or even exist, in the 21st Century United States of America (US). As a "developed", "modern", "first world" society, the US has developed beyond all forms of tribal affiliations, many people argue. In contrast, they continue, Nigeria, an "underdeveloped", "third world" society, remains poor because of an entrenched culture of tribal political and social associations. If this assessment is accurate, it will illustrate a stark contrast between Nigeria and the US. However, the events of the 2000 and 2004 US general elections instruct us to the contrary. By those events, Nigeria and the US are more similar than different on the related issues of tribal politics, immorality and illegality in public affairs, inadequate social control, and injustice to their respective citizens and non-citizens. Thus, building a just, sustainable Nigeria should focus on the big issues of restructuring Nigeria, as well as the small issues of providing basic infrastructures to transform the country from its present poor, underdeveloped condition to a developed, modern society.

INTRODUCTION

An earlier title for this paper read: "Tribal USA 21st Century: Monitoring the Democracy and Social Control of a First World for a Third World". That was before the recent US National Intelligence Council's report on Nigeria ("Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa's Future"), which, in a nutshell, predicts "outright collapse of Nigeria" within 15 years if Nigerian leaders continue with the bad leadership of the country. I think that the US report, whatever the motive behind it, deserves some consideration in this essay. Hence, the final title of this article, which suggests that this paper addresses the US political and social control experiences vis-à-vis Nigeria's and how those experiences can inform honest efforts to establish the elusive just, sustainable Nigerian nation.

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Even if the US intelligence report is accurate, it demonstrates the extent of the US image war against Nigeria. This war, by the US government, public officials, and institutions, as well as their private versions, portrays Nigeria and her citizens as never-do-wells, at best, and as criminals, at worst. I know of a recent case in which a person made travel arrangements with Lufthansa airlines for a return trip to Nigeria. He wanted to pay the nearly $2,250 fare with his credit card, but the airline staff refused because the traveler is a Nigerian. As the staff explained to him, they accept credit card payment from all nationalities, except Nigerians, who have to pay by cash or certified bank checks. That boldly asserts that Nigerians are more criminal than all other nationalities. How, if at all, is this label justifiable?

A person not familiar with the great contributions that Nigerians make to the US economy and other aspects of its society would readily accept the false picture that Nigerians are a stock of humans deserving of avoidance because they are especially untrustworthy, unproductive, and criminal minds. But the truth is that a great majority of Nigerians, inside and outside the US, are trustworthy and reliable, productive, and law-abiding, hence their great successes in all professions and endeavors in the US. I must add, however, that most Nigerians here in the US remain here because of the particularly difficult economic lives that they would face if they returned home to Nigeria. Not to be discounted is the enormity of the corruption in the successive Nigerian governments, including the prevailing Obasanjo presidency. So, despite the fact that the US wants and needs Nigerians' great contributions to the US economy and society but does not want Nigerians, refugee-circumstances force us to remain in the US.

References to the Nigerian traveler and the Lufthansa airline, and the US intelligence report set the stage for me to examine the semblances and differences, respectively, of parochial politicking and social control in Nigeria vis-à-vis the US. It seems that the same unsophisticated, provincial politics, associations, and controls of citizens found in Nigeria dominate the US scene. However, the US has an important advantage over Nigeria. This US advantage is responsible for the country's progress. The US developmental progress lies, not in a sophisticated political structure nor in advanced, capable leaders, but in the society's ability to make room for the small, everyday needs of the citizens to be met, mostly by private persons, groups, and organizations. This provides the citizens with the basic comfort level to tolerate the assaults on the fundamental pontifications of the US basic laws and other norms. Of course, the US governments deserve some of the credit for the provisions of the citizens' basic comfort by providing the enabling environment. But the private sector is directly responsible for providing such comfort, which has made it possible for the citizens to absorb much of the governments' atavistic and antisocial conducts to its citizens as well as to citizens of other nations.

HOW, IF AT ALL, DO TRIBAL POLITICS AND SOCIAL RELATIONS IN NIGERIA DIFFER FROM THOSE IN THE USA?

Is there a difference between Nigerian tribalism that produces parochial leaders and the US tribal politics and elections, based on the north-south chasm, otherwise called "blue states-red states", that recently returned George Bush as the US president? The blue states are those that vote predominantly for the Democratic Party and the red states vote mostly for the Republican Party. An examination of the 50 US states clearly shows the regional and kinship patterns in the distribution of the blue states and the red states, respectively. The red states are exclusively in the southern US, except for a couple of states that George Bush, a southerner and the Republican presidential candidate, won in the north. The two states are Indiana and Ohio. The point is that George Bush won the US 2004 presidency with 51% of the popular votes because his kinsmen and tribal states voted exclusively for him, in so far as the US electoral college system is concerned. The votes of his tribe gave him nearly 50% of his electoral college votes, while the remaining percentage came from the two northern states of Indiana and Ohio. In the US presidential election, for almost all the states the candidate that wins the highest number of votes in a state secures all that state's votes at the electoral college voting for the president. Thus, all the US southern states gave Bush all their electoral college votes. Add to these the fact that, but for the President Bill Clinton tenure, George Bush succeeded his father, Bush, senior, as president. Of course it is fitting to ask: Is the US government based on democracy or on hereditary monarchy, where leadership passes from one family member to another based on the absurdity of "blue, royal blood"?

How does the US situation differ from Nigerian Yoruba voters casting their votes almost exclusively for Olusegun Obasanjo, a Nigerian presidential candidate from the Yoruba stock? Or is it different from the Igbos overwhelmingly supporting a political party with strong Igbo roots more than any other party? Also, consider the recent obnoxiousness in Togo. Even the demise of the dictator, Gnasingbe Eyadema, who ruled the country with an iron fist and uncommon brutality for decades, could not save Togo and the Togolese from the evils of the Eyadema family. Hours after the blood-sucking ruler's death, Togo's military installed Gnasingbe Eyadema's son, Faure Gnasingbe, as the president. The military installed the junior Gnasingbe contrary to the Togolese Constitution, which stipulates that the parliamentary speaker would take over as the country's president on the president's death. Instead, the military banished the speaker to exile in a foreign country. Faure Gnasingbe and the Togolese military have since "legitimized" his presidency by holding a farcical presidential election and declaring him the winner.

In the end, there is no substantial difference, if any, between tribal politics, ancestral kinship and other clannish social relations in Nigeria, Togo, and the US. The parochial nature of these forms of politics, kinship and other social relations often produces mediocre leaders.

MORAL FORCE OF POLITICS AND SOCIAL CONTROL

The moral worth of a government is to be judged by what the government does toward its citizens as well as what it does toward other countries and their citizens. This is particularly significant where a government claims, as the US government does, moral superiority to all governments and nations. The nature of its internal and external politics, as well as its moral authority on social control, goes a long way to defining how a government is perceived. High moral ground in politics and government strengthens a government's social control ability in its national and international engagements because the high moral ground signals to all that the government will be fair and can be trusted with authority.

More often than not, especially in a democracy, such as the US claims, the government reflects the citizens' overall views, including standards of decency, morality, and legality. Where the government of a democratic society, example the US, exhibits largely immoral stands on a variety of national and international issues, the citizens are blameworthy, even though not all the citizens share the government's immoral positions. You blame the citizens because, since they have the voting power to choose their leaders, the fact that a majority of them voted for the government responsible for the impugned positions means that they support the government. On the other hand, the citizens of a dictatorship, such as Nigeria and Togo, are less blameworthy, if at all, for their leaders' indecent, immoral, and illegal actions and omissions because dictators neither account to their citizens nor assume power by the citizens' votes.

When president Olusegun Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party (PDP) "won" the Nigerian 2003 elections with wide margins at all levels, over all the other political parties and candidates, reasonable Nigerians and non-Nigerians rightly concluded that the ruling PDP rigged the elections to preserve itself in power. President Obasanjo himself and some key PDP leaders have since verified that they stole the "landslide" mandate that they supposedly received at the elections. Many Nigerians continue to protest that the PDP victory was prearranged and realized regardless of the voters' preferences. Despite admitting to immoral and illegal actions, Obasanjo and the PDP have refused to give up the power that they stole at the 2003 elections. Togo, under the father and son, Gnasingbe Eyadema and Faure Gnasingbe, is in a similar dictatorial situation in which the citizens' votes do not matter.

In both Nigeria and Togo, as "third world" examples, the citizens are not to blame for their respective governments' immoral and criminal policies, programs, and other actions and inactions, except to the extent that the citizens should be held responsible for not taking necessary steps to remove their immoral and criminal governments. Note, of course, that the US, a "first world" example, directly and through its multinational companies and other organizations, supports, facilitates, and encourages most of the "third world" governments' immoralities and criminalities so long as they further the gainful interests of the US (see "Halliburton's Destructive Engagement: How Dick Cheney and USA-Engage Subvert Democracy at Home and Abroad", Earthrights International report online, retrieved June 16, 2005). In the "first world" US, the citizens supposedly control their destiny by their power to hire and fire leaders through periodic elections. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the US government reflects the citizens' moral and legal stands on domestic as well as foreign issues.

The present US government under George Bush illustrates the hollowness of the US morality and legality on a wide range of domestic and foreign issues. As it should, this hollowness negatively impacts the government's attempt at social control of US citizens and citizens and governments of other countries. At this juncture, the following question is relevant: What responsibility does the US electorate bear for the immoral and illegal policies, programs, actions, and inactions of their democratic government? The voting pattern and result in the US 2004 presidential election, which returned president George Bush to office thereby vindicating his domestic and foreign policies, deserve further analysis.

To those of the US electorate who professed that they voted for president Bush and the ruling Republican Party because they stand on the correct side of the "moral issues" (abortion, ethics in government, truth and honesty in public service, etc.), I ask: What is moral about Bush's economic and social policies that are so unfair and so unjust to so many people? President Bush's policies mainly reward the wealthy and influential, at the expense of the poor and unimportant. Also, every possible avenue has now been used to confirm and reconfirm that Iraq never had the "weapons of mass destruction" that president Bush, in justifying his planned invasion of Iraq, claimed that Iraq possessed and was preparing to use in attacking the US. How could the vaunted US intelligence been so wrong on such a critical thing, except someone wanted to use the "intelligence" report to justify the prosecution of an already set agenda?

How is it moral to profess a "pro-life" stance on the abortion issue and at the same time, to put it civilly, hastily send arms and military personnel thousands of kilometers to Iraq to inflict astounding misery, destruction, and death on innocent Iraqis on the basis of inexistent evidence of possessing "weapons of mass destruction"? Are the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives that the US invasion of Iraq has so far wasted not important enough for the US "pro-lifers" (Bush's Republicans and their right-wing voting block) to support the preservation of these lives? Can a president morally and legally pontificate so loudly that he is "pro-life" and at the same time formulate and execute policies that are so anti-life? Such a president is, in truth, anti-life and pro-death for all, except the few chosen lives like his.

FURTHER ILLUSTRATING SELECTIVE MORALITY

As in "third world" Nigeria, parochialism abounds in the "first world" US. This limited, if any, regard for all others except one's kind is found in the individual conduct of most US citizens as well as in their government's policies and programs. The Bush government's policies and programs to the "minority groups" in the US and to most of the world show the extent of the contempt with which the dominant US white male treats humanity. Thus, as demonstrated in this paper, the following elements of parochialism dominate the US society: tribalism, regionalism, ethnicism, classism, sectarianism, and religious bigotry, among others. Each parochial facet gives underserved, unwarranted, dubious, unscrupulous advantages to the European-American, especially to the white male.

Parochial idiosyncrasies in the US, as in Nigeria, often lead to mediocrity. My personal experiences in the US illustrate this. As a doctoral candidate (having satisfied all requirements for a doctoral degree, except a dissertation) in Criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, I was entitled to a "Teaching Associate" position, according to the applicable University and departmental rules. The doctoral program director denied me the earned opportunity because I was black and African. Instead, he gave the three of the available positions to mediocre students who had not even achieved half of the things that I had achieved towards a doctoral degree, even though they entered the program the same time that I did. The only thing the benefiting students had going for them was that they were white and American. This mediocrity contradicts what the US, "the land of the free and equal", supposedly stands for. Shortly after Gibbs corruptly denied me of the teaching opportunity, he apologized to me. According to him, he had to be sorry for what he did because he was "an Irish catholic". Talk about sectarian parochialism - if I was "an Irish catholic" he would likely not have taken away the opportunity that I had earned to be a Teaching Associate. Also, Gibbs' "Irish catholic" prayer illustrates how corrupt and immoral religious pretenders latch on to their claimed religions and expect that that is enough to correct their sins against others.

On no issue is the US public's moral selectivity more evident than on abortion. United States religious bigots, otherwise called the "bible belters", do not tolerate an alternative view or person other than the bigots' pre-selected and ordained righteous position on an issue, such as the question whether or not to end a pregnancy prematurely. There is a host of reasons why a pregnant female (and her male partner) may end a pregnancy. The US bible belter does not care about or accept any of the reasons because he (and males dominate the bible belters) is "pro life". To the belter, being "pro life" suffices to make a leader's other immoral and illegal actions and omissions right.

Thus, in US politics and elections, "bible belters", as a block, always support a "pro-life" candidate, even if the candidate is bad for the country in general. Remember that a candidate only needs to declare and repeatedly avow that he is "pro-life". The routine declarations suffice in the eyes of the "bible belters", notwithstanding that the pontificating candidate may have demonstrated death wish for all other than "bible belters" and "pro-lifers". I repeat my earlier observation in this essay. And it bears repeating. Where is the morality or even legality of claiming to be "pro-life" and at the same time travel thousands of kilometers from the US to Iraq to wage unprovoked war, to destroy, ruin, and kill innocent Iraqis in their homes? What is more anti-life than that level of blood-letting in the 21st Century, especially in view of the fact that an overwhelming majority of humanity, individually, by countries, and through the United Nations Organization (UNO) strongly opposed and continue to oppose the US atavistic enterprise with its accompanying bully mentality? But, to the morally selective "bible belter", president Bush is a righteous man so long as he is "pro-life".

MATCHING THE UNITED STATES' FIRST WORLD MORALITY

From the foregoing, the US message to the world, especially the so-called "third world", ought to be clear, thus: "Do as we say, not as we do because we will do whatever suits our selfish interest, even if it is immoral or illegal". The "first world" morality is overwhelmingly immoral judging by the variety of ways in which the US and the other "first worlders" have deceived, destroyed, killed, exploited, and stolen from the "third worlders", and continue to do so. Any US claim to superior morals is a ruse, at best. Rather than superior morality, the reasons for the success of the US society, relative to the Nigerian version, lie elsewhere.

As The Guardian editorial on the US Intelligence report points out (see "The US Intelligence Report on Nigeria", The Guardian online, June 1, 2005), many of Nigeria's ills afflict the USA:

Understandably, many Nigerians feel offended by the US report as much for its provocatively negative conclusions as for its arrogant posture as an oracle on our future and fortunes. Lest anyone claims a monopoly of the moral high ground, we make bold to say that the ills that threaten Nigeria are not peculiar to her. The US, for example, occasionally suffers race riot (bigotry); political chicanery and dubious presidential election (political corruption), and its economic system remains skewed against the have-nots (economic injustice). Besides, the US and the rest of the West have actively contributed to the present state of our country - by receiving and benefiting from money stolen from [Nigeria], by burdening us with a dubious, ever-growing debt, and by urging upon our leaders unrealistic and socially destructive economic policies. The list could go on.

See also "Halliburton's Destructive Engagement: How Dick Cheney and USA-Engage Subvert Democracy at Home and Abroad", Earthrights International report online (retrieved June 16, 2005). However, the Nigerian societal ills, cited in the quoted Guardian editorial, and those identified in the US National Intelligence Council's report referred to above, as well as Laolu Akande's "U. S. Report Scores Nigeria Low on Electoral System, Human Rights" (The Guardian online, March 3, 2005), have to be addressed to build a just, sustainable Nigerian nation.

As we move to address these big ills, Nigerian leaders need to address some less overwhelming, but no less important, issues in Nigerians' lives. Nigerians' socio-economic and political circumstances differ from those of the US citizens in that our economy is not nearly as diverse as the US economy. In Nigeria, individuals and groups depend too much on the Local, State, and Federal governments for sustenance and wealth. The circumstances on the ground militate against the success of virtually all manner of private entrepreneurship. The ones that succeed belong overwhelmingly to the few already wealthy Nigerians and top government officials who corruptly use their official powers and connections to receive advantages over other Nigerians. Comparatively, the 2004 presidential election illustrates how independent US citizens and private groups are from their government. In the aftermath of the elections that returned president Bush to power, many US citizens were angry and extremely disappointed because they believed that the votes had been rigged for Bush and the Republican Party. Some of the anguished citizens reportedly inquired about relocating to Canada! Soon, however, these disillusioned citizens were able to return to their respective businesses and to continue to do well. These citizens' continued successes hinge on the fact that the US economy and society are so diverse that no one needs to pledge allegiance to a president or other political leader, whether fairly elected or illegally installed, to excel or make a living in the country.

Opening up the Nigerian socio-economic landscape, to allow the majority to participate in growing Nigeria, requires Nigerian leaders to focus on the following basic needs, in no particular order of importance: one, motorable roads throughout Nigeria to allow for the free movement of human and material goods and services; two, reasonably steady power supply throughout the country not just Abuja and a few chosen communities; three, clean water supply; four, functioning hospitals and medical centers; five, good and functioning schools; six, reasonable publicly organized security of life and property in public and private spaces. At present, it costs too much for each person to privately secure his life, his family, and business. Seven, a legal provision, preferably in a Nigerian Constitution that a Nigerian who continuously resides in a state for one year or more thereby becomes an indigene of that state, would greatly reduce the suspicion and uncertainty surrounding "non-indigene" Nigerians (Nigerians living in Nigerian states other than states in which they were born) and improve the camaraderie and security among all Nigerians. Such a provision would also encourage present "non-indigenes" to invest, without equivocation, wherever they may reside in Nigeria.

With the necessary assistance from Nigerian leaders, our private entrepreneurs will take us to where the USA and other "first world" countries are.

CONCLUSION

In Nigerian, as well as US politics and social relations, there is block voting on the basis of race, region, state, ethnicity, religion, etc. In both countries, there are electoral malpractices. Many of the leaders and citizens of both countries are corrupt. Many of the public institutions and structures of both countries favor the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and weak. In short, many of the ills that afflict one country abound in the other, even if they bear different names and interpretations between the countries. The basic separating factor between Nigeria and the US is the fact that simple, basic, everyday institutions and agencies in the US work, while those in Nigeria largely do not. The US institutions work mainly because the US citizens, from about 1776 when the present US was founded, have demanded that the local, state, and federal governments allow the citizens to control their individual and group entrepreneurial destinies, while the governments provide the conducive grounds for growing the citizens' entrepreneurial spirits. Of course, there is no doubt that the US government leaders, especially at the inception of the country, after breaking away from colonial Britain, were largely patriotic. That patriotism fuelled their desire to do what was necessary to build a better US than the one they inherited from hegemonic Britain.

Some patriotic zeal among Nigerian leaders would likely lead to a similar result in Nigeria. Good roads, steady power, clean water, adequate security, credible educational system, competent and equipped medical facilities, and an enabling law guaranteeing citizenship of the state in which a Nigerian resides should be the focal points of government policies and programs to create a just, sustainable nation. In the final analysis, these are the points of departure between the Nigerian and the US societies.