The unfortunate thing is that the moment we start fighting these ethno-religious battles, we are winning the war for those who are bent on seeing the country crumble.

“I write this letter with deep sense of thought and responsibility…”

The above is the sentence with which I started some of my formal letters back then in secondary school. But because the letters were usually fictional, the sentence held less or no meaning.

Now, with a reasonable level of reality, away from any form of fiction. I write this piece with a deeper sense of thought and responsibility first as a non-atheist Nigerian above being a Muslim from the south western part of the country.

I was spurred into writing, this time, due to the ethnic and religious chauvinism that has eaten deep into the hearts of many Nigerians and thus posing as a major stumbling block to the nation’s development since her independence in 1960.

Many Nigerians harbor deep and often negative stereotypes of each other based on ethnicity and religion. This, in many cases, regulates the way a Nigerian interacts with a fellow Nigerian from a different ethnic group or religion. This blinkered mentality often determines the choice of partners in business dealings, political affiliations and friendship. It also plays a significant role in the selection of job applicants to be employed into sensitive positions even though such individuals do not have the relevant qualifications/experience, leaving unemployed the more qualified/experienced applicants from other ethnic groups.

This has affected us so much that we even vote with blind ethno-religious fanaticism at the expense of credible leadership and the general development of the nation.

You should note that I’m not a disbeliever in the saying that “the environment in which one grows up has the ability to influence the person’s views and ideas about life.” Hence my belief in the concept of culture shock. You should also note that because of this, if a southerner spends all his life in the north, he would share so many of the northern ideologies and vice-versa.

I have discovered that when you ask many of these xenophobic Nigerians why they feel such reprehensible enmity for others, you’ll notice that a higher percentage of them do not have any immediate or direct incident to draw from. It is mostly born out of ordinary malicious hearsay. This is indeed sad.

Even sadder is the fact that this latent xenophobia exists among the people of the same ethnic group. An example is my friend who is from Abeokuta in Ogun state. His mother categorically warned him never to bring home an Ijebu wife due to reasons best known to her, despite being from the same state. I wonder the kind of offence the Ijebu people committed against her though. An even more surprising incident is the case of an Igbo colleague of mine whose family mounted pressure on to stop seeing a lady he would’ve loved to marry. Their reason? She is an ‘Osu girl’ and that would spell doom if he married her despite being from the same Amaokpara village under Engwere Local Government in Imo state.

This kind of ethnic segregation happens across the country because of our level of belief in superstitions which were unfortunately passed down from older generations. It’s quite ruinous for people to still hold these kinds of beliefs in the 21st century.

After a critical examination of the teachings of the two major faiths in Nigeria (Islam and Christianity), I’ve come to realize that none encourages its adherents to treat people from other faiths with such ill-will that is common among some Nigerians. Don’t ask about the Benson and Hedges boys (as me and my friends call the BH perpetrators) because the reason behind their incessant killing of innocent Nigerians have no basic justification in any of the faiths. Our government should be in the best position to address that.

Regarding ourselves with such wonted animosity is what makes it easy for us to pick up arms against each other at the slightest opportunity. The unfortunate thing is that the moment we start fighting these ethno-religious battles, we are winning the war for those who are bent on seeing the country crumble.

We should not forget the strong fact that no human being, I repeat, no human being has the ability to choose the continent, country, state, house and family into which he/she would be born (if we had this power, I doubt if you would’ve chosen Nigeria as your country). It is absolutely by God’s doing that we find ourselves in ‘Naija’.

Also, many of us are Christians or Muslims not because we chose to but just because we were born into Muslim or Christian families. Very few of us could boast that we’re in our present faith by choice and not because we found our parents doing it. Why then do we have to despise other people on this basis? Why do we follow our religious leaders blindly while we neglect the basic teachings of our religion? Why do I have to attack my fellow Nigerian just because I was told that people from their part of the country are enemies? Why do I have to treat my neighbor with such disdain just because he doesn’t practice the same religion as mine?

If we truly believe in God as we claim, why don’t we just take time to think that we could have been from other parts of the country different from where we’re from? Yes, you could have been that Hausa man you detest so much, that Igbo woman you hate speaking to, that Yoruba boy you never want to see, that Ijaw lady you look down upon, or that Nupe woman you would rather die than get married to. You’re who you are not because you want to be.

We should know that no meaningful development would be achieved in a society where its people refuse to live in unity and peaceful coexistence with each other.

Therefore, let’s treat each other equally in all regards and see ourselves first as Nigerians above our ethnic and religious differences.

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First published on Salako’s Blog.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.–