From Dancing While Nigeria Drowns
In Nigeria, truth is negotiable—but tribe is sacred.
It does not matter what a man does, only where his mother was born. It does not matter how deeply he fails, so long as he shares your dialect, eats your food, and curses your enemies. Tribe is the altar. Truth is the sacrifice.
Here, justice does not wear a blindfold. She wears a gele. She listens, not to facts, but to names. She rules, not on merit, but on ancestry. And so every argument collapses into ethnicity. Every debate is filtered through tribal bias. Every act of wickedness is either defended or denied, based on the geography of the perpetrator’s tongue.
Our politics is not a contest of vision—it is a census of village loyalty.
When a northern governor steals, his people say: “At least he’s helping our own.”
When a southern senator plunders, the chorus is: “The others did worse.”
When a president fails, his defenders scream: “They hate him because he’s from here.”
This is not nationalism. It is necromancy—a dark enchantment that compels a people to defend their own executioners. We are so loyal to our tribes that we offer them our futures, even as they destroy our present.
And the politicians know this.
They do not need to perform. They only need to belong.
A man with no school certificate can become president, so long as he speaks the “right” language. Another with no leadership experience can become a governor because he greets elders the “right” way. A thief becomes a hero because he built one classroom in his hometown.
Meanwhile, the honest man from another tribe is branded an invader.
Ethnic allegiance has become Nigeria’s most effective immunity clause. If you’re caught in a scandal, you don’t need a lawyer—you need a tribal spokesperson. Someone to remind your people that this attack is not about corruption, but about marginalization. Not about facts, but about fear. Not about theft, but about them.
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And it works.
The public discourse breaks down into a war of accents. Every critic is rebranded as a bigot. Every call for justice is labeled an agenda. Every policy disagreement is twisted into a tribal conspiracy. We do not argue like citizens—we feud like clans in a bad myth.
And while we squabble over whose son should rule, their sons inherit our wealth.
The children of the political elite do not know tribalism. They know airports. They speak the language of dollars, not dialects. They marry across states, do business across borders, and laugh at our street-level battles over identity. They fund thugs from every ethnic group, deploy propaganda in every tongue, and then disappear to Europe for detox.
We, the poor, are left to fight over crumbs with tribal flags in our mouths.
This is how Nigeria sustains its underdevelopment: by turning ethnicity into a blindfold. By making tribe the entry fee for empathy. By ensuring that every atrocity has a hometown choir ready to sing its innocence.
And the tragedy is generational.
We teach our children not who to trust, but who not to trust. We do not raise thinkers—we raise tribal warriors. We hand down suspicion like inheritance. We baptize them in bigotry, then wonder why peace is so elusive.
But what if, for once, we chose the truth before the tribe?
What if we judged leaders by their actions, not their surnames? What if we voted for ideas, not accents? What if we saw injustice as injustice—regardless of who suffers or who benefits?
Until we do, our democracy will remain an ethnic chessboard.
Our government, a game of musical chairs for tribal champions.
Our hope, perpetually postponed.
Because the day we love tribe more than truth is the day we sell the nation’s soul.
And we have been selling it—daily.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is a distinguished Nigerian-born investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst, whose work spans critical intersections of media, law, and policy. His expertise extends across strategic management, leadership, and international business law, where he brings a nuanced understanding of institutional dynamics, cross-border legal frameworks, and executive decision-making in complex global environments.
Currently based in New York, Professor Nze serves as a full tenured professor at the New York Centre for Advanced Research. There, he spearheads interdisciplinary research at the forefront of governance innovation, corporate strategy, and geopolitical risk. Widely respected for his intellectual rigor and principled advocacy, he remains a vital voice in shaping ethical leadership and sustainable governance across emerging and established democracies.