Essays & Discussions

In the week of April 18th through 25th, 2001, the Nigerian internet community received an ample supply of Bala Usman’s essay provocatively titled “Ignorance, Knowledge and Democratic Politics in Nigeria." It is the text of his presentation at a symposium at Bayero University, Kano, on Tuesday, 17th April 2001.

In several pockets of human history, groups and individuals who assume the status of aristocrats have claimed the significant privilege of insulting others. They are so used to the exercise of this privilege that they get agitated when their targets of insults reply. My reply to Bala Usman’s assertions appeared in the internet on April 29, 2001. A week later, I received an email message from an intellectual of Yoruba origin living in the United Kingdom to the effect that those whom he described as “Arewa mandarins” were unhappy with my essay and that they will reply in full force. Since then several other Niger Deltans have responded to Bala Usman’s claims and attacks on the Niger Delta.

The second distortion of Bala's message is more serious. His critics suggest that he argues that the Urhobos or the Igbos and Yorubas had no history in the sense of being non-existent before colonialism. This particular falsehood is laughable because the claim itself is an epitome of insipidity. Dr. Usman never suggested that colonialists "created" Urhobos or Yorubas or Hausa-Fulanis the way Muslims and Christians for instance believe God created Adam. One is therefore amused at the extent some critics went to dig up any mention of words like "sobo" (meaning Urhobo) and "Yoruba" before colonialism. Certainly there were human beings called Yoruba or Hausa who spoke those languages before colonialism. The point is not this but that the existence of the Yoruba or the Hausa or the Urhobo as a cohesive ethnic group was the product of colonial intervention in the territories they inhabited which became known as Nigeria.

It is this spirit of inquiry; this permanent search for knowledge and this daily concern for its dissemination to awaken the overwhelming majority of the people to their condition, rights, duties and potential, which, in my view, are some of the most important aspects of his legacies, which this country badly needs now if its democratic system is to survive and grow.