The Resident Electoral Commissioner of Benue State, Professor Samuel Egwu has said Nigeria as a country, is still lagging behind in becoming a united nation, due to ethnic citizenship that has eroded nationalism.
Prof. Egwu states this while delivering a paper at a 6th Convocation lecture titled “Tertiary Education, Citizenship and Nigeria Democratic Development” organized by Salem University, in Lokoja.
According to him, the Nigeria system of ethnic citizenship has shown a high propensity to undermine unity, cohesion and continued existence of Nigeria as a corporate entity.
“At the micro-level, conflicts and violence along indigene/settler fault lines has undermined peaceful co-existence and pitched communities in deadly confrontation, while at the national level, discriminations based on states of origin, ethnicity, region and geopolitical zones have weakened bonds of national unity and the notion of common citizenship.”
He further said that the Nigeria University system has hitherto worsened the situation, as public Universities have become the most vicious sites for fomenting ethnic and regional division.
“This is because key University processes, especially recruitment of academic and non-academic staff, recruitment of principal officers and admission of students are increasingly captured by local interests, fueled by the ideology of “statism” and “indigeneity”.
“In most cases, these divisions have permeated the students’ movement such that both federal and state-owned universities are held hostage by such interest.”
“Similarly, growing authoritarian tendencies with the University system has crippled the system to a point that the universities lost their pre-eminent positions as sites for the reproduction of knowledge that supported the struggle for the expansion of the democratic space as well as autonomous space of resistance to authoritarian rule,” he added.
Prof. Egwu insisted that Nigeria Universities, especially the public funded ones must demonstrate manifest commitment to the advancement of the ideals of national unity.
