By Anote Ajeluorou
Nigeria’s minorities, especially those in the Niger Delta,
have always cried foul over the marginalization they suffer for being denied
full enjoyment of the oil mineral resources from their soil. This is just as
their land and waterways are polluted from oil exploration. While their
marginalization also spreads to include their exclusion from government’s plum
jobs, some of them have cornered certain business niche categories where they
play a dominant role almost to the exclusion of even their majority counterparts.
But while the North,
East and South-West majorities are busy fighting against each other in their
bid to acquire political power by constantly bickering, the minorities have
sneaked up on them to acquire certain tools that the majorities will need in
their fight-to-the-finish for power. So, while President Goodluck Jonathan’s
ascendancy to the seat of power is a bonus, his minority compatriots may have
wielded a different kind of power, the real lever that keeps the political
barometer in check.
Media and bank
ownership and comedy business are areas where minorities of the Niger Delta or
South-South are enjoying dominant, almost unchallenged advantages. So sums up
Jimanze Ego-Alowes, who has done painstaking study of the subject just
published in an expository book, Minorities
as Competitive Overlords. His theory is seemingly faultless, as it sheds
light on certain assumptions taken for granted and without questioning.
A catalogue of
businesses in the media, banking and comedy businesses shows clearly how
entrepreneurs from the minority South-South have outpaced their counterparts
from the majority areas in the successes achieved. For Ego-Alowes, the success
so achieved by the minority players in these fields is largely attributable to
the accident of history, particularly the Nigeria Civil War (1967-1970) that
exposed the tribal cleavages rampant in the polity.
For Ego-Alowes, the
sociology of business since the end of the civil war favours minority people of
the South-South, as they stand as a bridge between the big three majority.
Knowing that they do not have the might and means to contend for political
power, which their big brothers have cornered for themselves, they are content
to play complementary roles that bring all parties together in one roof for the
continuation of dialogue that should preserve the health of the union.
In appropriating the
power of the media and how the minorities have come to harness it for the
benefit of all stakeholders in Nigeria’s commonwealth, the author argues, “The
media are also power measuring meters. They are projectiles of power and a
state’s defence and repair mechanism. This is obvious in free and open
societies as it is in closed and communist dictatorships…
“So, at any time (in
Nigeria), there is a race; an arms race for power. It therefore follows that
there is also a race for the instruments of protecting, preserving and
perpetuating that power. And one of the most serviceable and proficient
instruments outside the business of actually shedding blood, is the media… In
open societies, in peace and democracy, the media are a theatre of war to
contending powers”.
In a section titled
‘The Nigerian Sociology of Media History’, Ego-Alowes traces the history of
Nigeria media with its ownerships being first in government hand and political
heavy-weights. But after independence, things began to shift, as the tribal
factor quickly crept into the political menu. This situation bred mutual
suspicion among the majority tribes of North, South-West and South-East. It’s
this festering tribal antagonism that the South-South media moguls saw and
effectively filled with the titles – The
Guardian, ThisDay, Vanguard, BusinessDay, ChannelsTV, AIT & RayPower,
Silverbird radio and TV.
According to
Ego-Alowes, “The media are the boots on the grounds; the frontier soldiers.
While the majority-persons’ media are in pitched and fixed positions, the
minority-persons’ media position is to bring antagonists to the round table,
which is not a self-sacrificial adventure of the minority media, but in their
very best interest, to get the talking going on. The minority acquires its
greatest power by mediating two or more superpowers”.
It’s this mediating
role that media owned by South South minority people plays that endears them to
all the contending, majority power blocks, Ego-Alowes argues convincingly in
his book. For not being able to contend with the North, the South-East and the
South-West, the South-South have contented themselves with the pursuit of
justice as the one commanding denominator that would most appeal to the other
power-hungry members of the Nigerian commonwealth albeit grudgingly.
According to
Ego-Alowes, “The critical position of the South-South is that they do not have
any irrational viewpoints or obsessions… It’s just that they do not have the
resources to and cost to author and finish the huge project of overwhelming the
majorities, jointly or severally…being powerless, the South-South’s best bet
incidentally is in justice for all and in openness…
“The incapacity of
the South-South to project power, ironically, is a source of power or what we
might call the power of the impotent… So, while the big three are the legs of
the tripod, the South-South are the ring that connect or brace together.
Clearly, connecting and connections are all the media do. Indeed, there may be
no greater connection and bracing tissue in the world than the media. The power
of connection, of the brace, actually resides in the hands of the
non-belligerents that are independent. So, the South-South wins!”
In other words, the
author believes that the majority players on Nigeria’s political turf distrust
each other and find a ready ally in the media owned by the minority South-South,
which ensues that they bring all shades of the argument to the table. So it
will be easier, for instance, for them to fight their political wars in neutral
papers and TV or radio stations owned by the minorities than in ones owned by
contending regional power players.
The author applies
the same sociology of business advantage to banking, something the author terms
the ‘Golden Deltans’. It will be safer for a Northern or South-Eastern politician,
say, to deal with a bank in the hands of South-South minorities than go to one owned
by a South-Westerner. They are in safer hands with a neutral banker than with a
partisan one from another majority political block.
He argues, “…The
three compounded geographical zones – aka Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo and the Yoruba
– each has a locked in preference and trust for the Big Deltans or South-South
minority bankers, alongside or even before their own indigenous players… It is
simply sociology of the Nigerian existence (and thus markets) that plays in
their financial favours.
“The truth that
drives this (thinking) is sometimes not spoken but is there. It is that these
three hegemons or geopolitics, aka Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba, are jostling
for power, influence and dominance… Thus, if you deny your opponent or
competitor his finances or financial strength, it will weaken his imperial
reach, and strategic flanks.
“It is thus in the
geopolitical (sociology) interest of the contending powers of the East, the
West and the North to as subtly as they can, take money out of the reach of
fellow contenders, or seize it themselves (which could lead to open declaration
of war), or better still, put it in political neutrals. The state of
existential and or political neutrality is what the Big Deltans or minority
clan bankers have if not achieved, successfully projected. Thus Delta is our
financial Switzerland!”
The author applies
the same rule to comedy business, arguing that while the South-Southern
comedians can jibe at all the others without loosing sleep or incurring their
wrath, the same cannot be said of comedians from the big, majority blocks;
their jokes might cause unease and be regarded as politically incorrect.
Indeed, Ego-Alowes’
book navigates a path often not taken, forgotten or neglected, but which has
deep sociological implications to the ordering of society. Jonathan and the
South-South may have emerged top gainers from Nigeria’s current political power
games, they still hold sway in the sectors that matter, in sectors that have
binding powers.
Ironically, they are
sectors that their peculiar position, as the dispossessed will continue to
occupy. This is so long the majority, contending powers continue to treat them
as a conquered people even as they produce the wealth that sustain their
inordinate ambitions to be political overlords!
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