Dele Meiji Fatunla in New African:
Nigeria is often described as being made up of three major ethnic groups: the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani: with the management of this combustible ethnic balance being the defining characteristic of Nigeria’s politics and identity since independence. But maybe, just maybe, this account is wrong. Nigeria has, of course, always been more complex than the caricature we’ve learned since its independence, and arguably, this ethnic caricature has been at the root of its problems, rather than the full reality on the ground.
It’s time both the outside world, and more importantly, Nigerians started to read the country through a different lens, and to see it for what it is, a creole nation. Right from the beginning, even before the official colonial era, the paradox of this artificial nation, created out of many pre-existing kingdoms and territories, is that it has always been a place of mixture and admixture, in a history that is rarely acknowledged...[more]
