It seems the contrived, ill-advised controversy over the ‘ownership’ of Lagos will not go away anytime soon as more and more agent provocateurs are deployed on the worldwide web to drive a wedge between the historically liberal aborigines of Lagos and non-Yoruba residents of the mega city. That development is an unkind payback to the aborigines who are, by nature, one of the most liberal people on the surface of the earth.
There are Lagosians and there are Lagosians. Some Lagosians are aborigines, some are Lagosians by birth and acculturation, while some are just residents of Lagos. Don’t confuse one with the other. When you encounter a Lagosian of any hue, his comportment will tell you where he belongs in the classification above, even if we agree to call all of them Lagosians. There is a marked difference between an ‘Omo Eko’ (the Lagosian) and an ‘Ara Eko’ (the migrant resident).
Lagos is like a lagoon. It tolerates any kind of filth but also harbours some choice marine life. In line with its Yoruba linguistic and cultural heritage, its Oríkì says it all: It is the city of wisdom, ready to bend and contort but not break. Who’s contending with Lagos? If you go to Lagos and don’t end up wiser, throw in the towel – you’re unteachable! Lagos, where the man on stilts runs faster than the prized athlete. City of aquatic splendour, solid in the knowledge that if its marshes are not denuded, neither will Lagos. Eko will prevail!
Half-Lagosian
I am as proud of my half-Lagosian maternal heritage as I am of my father’s Oyo ancestry. Growing up in the melting pot that Lagos was, one couldn’t avoid noticing that the temperament of the average Lagosian was founded on the principle of live and let live. Before the early colonial days, Yoruba people from other parts of today’s southwest had been migrating to Lagos in such numbers that the local chiefs and kings gave them large parcels of land to settle. That’s how you have names like Abule Egba (village of the Egbas of Abeokuta) Ijeshatedo, (named after ethnic Ijeshas from today’s Osun State).
Lagos means “lakes” in Portuguese, the language of the first Europeans to arrive at the land already inhabited by the Awori who are a sub-ethnic group of the Yoruba people. By the early 19th Century, it was a small kingdom and a tributary to the Oyo Empire. It sent embassies to the Portuguese colony of Brazil, and became one of the first countries to recognise the independence of Brazil in 1823. With the collapse of the Oyo Empire, Lagos assumed the leading economic position regionally, becoming the most important market in the Yoruba territories as well as growing substantially.
The truth is that Lagos, over the years, has emerged as a forward-looking Yoruba city which opens its hands wide to welcome all manner of people.
Contrary to what obtains in most parts of Nigeria, Lagosians don’t discriminate against non-indigenes. That is why, from time immemorial, they allowed outsiders to acquire properties and settle down. They are so self-assured that they don’t feel threatened by the prosperity of migrants who choose to make the place home.
Tolerance
A visit to Ajegunle will show the extent of the tolerance of aboriginal Lagos people. There, you’d see Ijaws, Ilajes, Uhrobos, Itsekiris, Igbos, Etsakos, Ikas and other micro-nationals who are, to all intents and purposes, now Lagosians. Musician Daddy Shokey, whose forebears hailed from Olomoro Kingdom in Isoko South LGA of Delta State, is an Ajegunle Boy and is celebrated by Lagosians as one of their own. He has earned his stripes.
In terms of jobs, I wager that there is no other state in Nigeria with the number of non-indigenes that Lagos employs. And their promotion and retirement prospects are the same with the locals. Contrast this with what obtains in some parts of the country where non-indigenes are employed only by contract, never on a permanent or pensionable basis, and are not allowed to own landed properties.
I think what has fuelled the fire of the current rancour is the renewed drive to abuse the tolerance of Lagos aborigines after the last elections and the “Oro” festival that accompanied it. Last week witnessed the wide distribution of a podcast claiming that Lagos was a No-Man’s-Land. According to the misguided fellow, all Yoruba towns were founded by Igbos. He went on to stand history on its head, making one wonder why we haven’t restored history to its pride of place in our schools from primary to university level.
Lagosians have refused to tolerate the reinvented insults to their heritage and some of the most unlikely, otherwise taciturn, indigenes have publicly intervened to call the migrant cyberwarriors to order.
Conspiracy Theory
It is quite possible, as some have argued (considering the irrationality of the podcast and other such irritants), that there is an orchestrated attempt to smash the cordiality existing between the indigenes of Lagos and Igbos who, together with other micro-national groups, have contributed positively to the development of the megacity.
Could there be an agenda to set up the Igbos for extermination when the doomsday predicted by Igbophobes finally arrives? If there is, it won’t be the first time such a thing was used to demonise a people and set them up for extermination as happened in the run-up to the Rwandan massacre.
A visit to the genocide museum in Rwanda convinced me that any kind of ethnic phobia built on ultra micro-nationalism is bound to lead to mass depopulation. I had never seen so many human skeletons (and the last clothes worn by the butchered victims) under one roof!
The Other Side
Those propounding the theory of a possible setup of Igbos for mass attack are countered by others who argue that the Igbos are their own worst enemies because their style is grating, chauvinistic and pompous. They also point to the anti-Yoruba, anti-Fulani, anti-Nigeria broadcasts of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu and his acolyte, Simon Ekpa. But would that be sufficient reason to target them for destruction?
They wonder why it is only Igbos who complain of harassment when they are not the only set of non-indigenes living in Lagos. They insist that latter day arrivals among the Igbos are the ones fuelling the problem because they are not acculturated, bringing their gruff attitudes to a cosmopolitan setting. They don’t want Igbos to be chased out of their land; rather they want them to imbibe the Lagos spirit. Whichever way you look at it, you’ve got to salute the generosity of the Lagos aborigine.
As I straddle both sides of the divide, I often wonder what the political elite are doing about these kinds of development. These are the issues that ought to engage the attention of the major socio-cultural groups. Igbos need Lagos as much as Lagos needs everybody, thanks to its magnanimous spirit.
The renewed brickbat over the ownership of Lagos is dangerous because if the aborigines of Lagos (the most welcoming, most expansive, most cosmopolitan people in southwest Nigeria) decide to move against the interests of any single group in Lagos, the sight won’t be pretty at all — and the fount of amity existing between that group and the aborigines of Lagos would have been poisoned for all time.