One Nation

The podcast discusses the issue of tribalism and ethnicity in Nigeria and the need for unity as one nation. The speakers emphasize the importance of personal transformation and education to combat tribalism. They also highlight the need for difficult conversations and addressing past traumas to move forward as a united country. They argue that competence and character should be prioritized over religion or tribe when it comes to governance. The overall message is that embracing diversity and love for one another is crucial for healing and progress. Hello, hi, my name is Isaac and you're welcome to the third edition of the Tribe of Man podcast. I'm the producer of Tribe Nation or Tribe Legos, Tribe Nation actually. Tribe Nation, yes. With me here today, we have three amazing people, that's right, you can't be doing it that way. You have to focus, you look like a giver. I have like great people here with me today. I have Gifts. Gifts. Hi. How was your journey back to Lagos? It was good, it was good. Lagos is always home, you know? Yeah. I mean, the people in Lagos make Lagos home. Do you bring anything? Kiloshe. I brought Kiloshe. Boy, you did not tell me before we started this. We'll talk later. Hi people, good to be in the house. It's good to be here. Thanks so much. We're happy you are here with us. And also... Kimba. Yo, what? Kimba. Kimba? Is your surname Kimba? No, it's not. Bro, come on. Kimba or Jimba? Kimba. I can imagine. I remember one time I was in, I was going for post-grad classes. And then the man called my name in class. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. And then the man called my name in class. Kimba. And the flower returned to the cat. He said what? The flower returned to energy. It responded to the energy of the man. Kimba. Kimba. Kimba. I cheated. Kimba. My classmates laughed. Yeah, whatever. Amazing. Anyways, I'm excited to be here today. Also, my name is Isaac. And we're talking about One Nation. I think that it's kind of like what Sonu was saying before. Amazing topic to treat. Because of where we are coming from. You know? So, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. 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I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be here. Well, when it comes to elections, we're just coming away from election season, you'll find that at any point in time, people weaponize religion, weaponize ethnicity and tribalism, and sometimes it gets heated up. They use it because some people vote across ethnic lines. Those are the fault lines, but when you begin to think about it, it's when someone gets into office, you can vote someone who's not competent, but is from your tribe. So life is not any better for it. I think on the fundamental level, most Nigerians are not as educated to ask the right questions during elections. And if you look at across the world, this mechanism or this concept of tribalism and ethnicity is on different levels. When you go to South Africa, it's xenophobia, right? And yeah, when you go to America, it's institutional racism. But if you go all the way to the world wars, you find out again that a lot of this world war was because a particular tribe or a particular country thought themselves to be superior to the rest of the world. And then they started to exploit that, whether it's the Holocaust and all of those things. One of the things that I found out is if you have a low revelation of the image of God in a man, you would judge them less than who you are. So what comes to the very fundamental or the common denominator that runs across racism, xenophobia, even things like ethnic cleansing, like what we found in Rwanda, or even genocide, it's because somewhere along the line, some people took it upon themselves to think that some other tribe or a group are not worthy of existence because they don't speak my language, they don't look like my color, right? And anything that dehumanizes one man, dehumanizes the rest of us. So it's important for us to start to shape the conversation because from school, people need to be taught how to appreciate people, right? The true sense of humanity, yes. The true sense of humanity. And on one level, it spills, right, even when we talk about things like feminism, and sometimes people tend to box people into ideology. And then in a sense, you're not seeing the image of God in the person, and you're projecting an ideology or you're even exerting your own ideology over the person, right? We can have our differences, but it should not lead us to war, right? We can have our political differences, but it should not lead us to saying another tribe will have to drown or be thrown out, right? So I really think One Nation is an important conversation because the nation is on a pathway to healing. And that healing is not going to happen by itself. We all are part of the healing. The church needs to bring the balm to once again remind us of why we are better together. And because there is nothing wrong with tribes, there is only something wrong with tribalism. There's nothing wrong with ethnic groups. There's only something wrong with ethnicity. So the idea is, how can we have tribes without tribalism? How can we embrace the diversity of ethnic groups without the peril of ethnicity? I think that is the ideological tension, right? The church is the pillar of truth. So we must call people away from the attachment to tradition, attachment to tribes. And that I see people through the lens of God. Love becomes that very factor, that very thing that God expects us to. You know, I was talking about something yesterday at the wedding. Right. And one of the things I'm learning about love now is that, I told you guys in one Sunday that there was no word for agape when Jesus manifested love. They had love for Stokely, they had for Filio, they had for Herod, but they didn't have for agape. But to realize there was a type of love that was self-sacrificing, self-giving, and was self-emptying. That this nature of love was incapable of existing in and of itself without the other. That this love rushes towards the other. That the object of this love, the entire purpose of this love, is that the other is amplified. So it's like the love sets itself on fire so that the other will be warm. And that nature of love is very much the nature of God, and it's the nature we are called to have. So as we journey to healing, elections are over, people are going back to work. If you don't have life, you realize that whatever you voted, that you are voting to protect a tribe or to protect a religion, is not the point. I wouldn't mind, sorry guys, this will shock you, I wouldn't mind a competent Muslim over an incompetent Christian. When it comes to governance, capacity, competence, and character is more important. Because religion, and all these are now cultural concepts, I really had hoped that the life of a Christian would bear upon the job. But the reality of things is that transformation is always a skin deep. For many people, it's a walk talk, not a life talk. You know, it's very interesting what you're saying, and you know, thank you for that. I was coming from a coffee shop, you know, and we got into a cup of coffee and I said, can I weigh in on this, and they were talking about, you know, religion, and how, you know, pastors have, you know, changed the conversation, and I'm like, are you a Christian? Because, well, well, pathetic, you know, and you know, try also be, and know God for yourself, so that when you get to the stage, you too, you will not by your own, by any chance, see how it is, you know, so stop judging, you know, it's okay, I'm not saying, I'm not supporting whatever anybody's doing, but my point is, do this. And then we switched to politics, and instead of talking about, of course, they were supporting political parties, and then I started to state, you know, my claim, I said, this and that, and this guy was like, so what are you supporting? Are you the other guy? Are you even, you know, and I said, yes, I am. I told him my son's name, and he was shocked, you know, and then at some point, he kept quiet. He didn't have a negative check, and I said, well, nice conversation, and then what just came to me is that what we're actually missing is personal transformation, that people see Christianity as more like an umbrella than actually something that you need to shine, to leave, to leave from, and that's what has happened, because people are not actually transformed, because when you are transformed, you will first love the other person, first, before you know what tribe you are, I don't know that I know where you're from, I'm even going to be honest, I don't know, I'm honest, I don't know where you're from, I don't know where you're from, I don't, I just want to, you know, like you to find and, you know, keep doing the word of God with you, and I was kind of, I didn't want to know where you're from, yeah, fortunately, I know where you came from, you know, you don't know where I'm from, the name has given him away, you know, so I just want to hear your thoughts about, you know, you know, One Nation, and how do you think that is actually achievable? Okay, so first off, I want to say that it's almost like we have untold stories, which make tribalism in itself an instrument for people to just, you know, do the things that are unimaginable and when I say untold stories, Rwanda, for example, the genocide that happened and the clash between two ethnicities, they lived that experience, they have a museum where they tell stories of what, you know, what happened, and I think everybody came to realize, in my just being a bystander, everybody came to realize that this is not worth, so how can we make our economy better, how can we live together, even if it's a bit difficult, but because they know their story, they know where they've been from, it's easy for them to like forge a unity and say, you know what, we can make things better. If we take a flip to Nigeria, it's almost as though we have a way of covering our stories, we don't have a really good way of telling those stories and that's why some ethnics feel like they don't feel seen, they don't feel heard, because people do not even know that something had happened and that's what has made them come up and maybe too strong or too, you know, yeah, so there's that part of, there's a need for us as Nigerians and even Africans generally to own our stories, because that in itself helps with personal transformation, you cannot change something you don't know, right, and you can only know something when you go back to your roots and it's almost the same thing with Christianity, you can't live your life as a Christian if you don't go back to your roots, so who is it that God has made me really and when you know that, you can then live your daily life in transformation, so I just wanted to say that, so is it possible? It is possible, but it's going to take a while and it's going to take intentional, intentionality by Nigerians in itself, it's going to take an overall of how we, our education in our mindset, I say this because I did politics while I was in uni and I was, I think I can categorize myself as a minority in the political scene, even in the university, in university politics, if you are not Yoruba, I mean I went to University of Ibadan, so it's like you're in Yoruba land, if you are not Yoruba or you're not something close to what they can identify with, they don't see you as someone that can lead, you know, so if that can exist even in the university climate, talk more of the wider political scene, so there is a need to, for it to be possible, there's a need to re-educate ourselves and for us that know better, we need to call out when conversations are happening and the ignorant people are leading those conversations, we need to call them out and say this is not what it is, this is not how it should be and we need to re-educate those people in situations that we find ourselves in those kind of conversations and that's how I think little by little we can get there. Yes, it's interesting because I remember my dad would tell me that, tell us when we were growing up, but the problem with Nigeria's tribalist, you know, nature, it starts with Jambo, to say that if you're filling out a form in school, that place that says, you know, even when you get to the university, that place that says where you from, that place of origin, just say Nigeria, Nigeria and you put this as of origin because what you want to do now is to let people of this, you know, state know where you're coming from, you know, and then gain admission first, they are the preferred choice that, and then what happened, you know, I know they did, you know, because they were trying to encourage a lot of, you know, household children to go to the catchment area, you know, catchment area and then that's the, you know, that's like the nature of it, however, here's what I think, I think that, let's just see, what you said in terms of going back to the roots, let's take Bini for example, Bini used to be a very strong kingdom where, you know, and it's still a very strong kingdom, but you know that even Bini were the owners of Lagos at some point, and Lagos echoed even the Bini word, and all of those things, but I would also say that in knowing your space, because there are some histories that are faulted, they are, because you don't want to leave from that space, do you understand, because if you really go back to a place where, for example, talk about the Biafras, it was great what they fought about, what are you, and you can either support to say you want them to fight, keep on, but it should not be from a place of, I'm going to fight because they killed other people, it should be what is needed for us to, during the referendum, during it, what is needed for us to, why did they do that in the first place, you know, and there, and then, of course, I agree with you about calling people out on us, it was also, I think, I used to say that a lot of, you know, if you want to change something, come and do it yourself, do you understand, like, come on, actually, there's something that has been going on in the debate, I would even like you to speak to that, for instance, in America, it's not about state of origin, it's about state of residence, so if you're born in New Jersey, you're from New Jersey, even if your parents are originally from New York, right, in fact, you can spend three months in a particular local government, in a particular state, and fit in everything, and still be integrated into their culture, right, so when we don't see state of residence, say, for instance, you work, you work in Lagos, you live in Lagos, you are not Lagos, you're Ogun State, but you pay your taxes here, but the day you want to run for rep, they will tell you, go to Ogun State, and you've not paid taxes in Ogun State, because somewhere along the line, we don't embrace that progressive ideal that, as a world, for us to integrate people in the country, what we are trying to do with NYC can happen naturally, right, if somebody decides to settle in Kano, can he be a citizen of Kano in a few years, so even if we're not accepting of other tribes, isn't it law, how do you know, and then the other part of it is that, if you even look at it, even among tribes, right, I remember there was a time in Anambra, they rejected a bishop that was from Anambra, how evil can it get, but the point again is that, you can't go there, they need a bishop that is from Anambra, so that's why we say, let's split, let's split, if it's okay, let's split, you will still meet the same tension at different levels, right, there are some tribes within a state that can't marry each other, you understand, there are some neighboring villages that we are still trying to get them not to fight each other, right, so the point again is, is the state of the human heart more than anything else, right, I don't know what your thoughts are, well, I mean, you all have said quite a lot, I think that, and to pick from what you said, I think that one of the things that really rings out to me is conversations, having difficult conversations, and I'm saying this from a personal from a personal place, and then I'll take it to the larger political space, I think that we grew up not learning how to have difficult conversations, I think that our best response to issues was always fight and shout, you know, either we fight, either we freeze, either we fight, you know, or abandon it, you know, avoidance, you know, and then our best effort at conflict resolution was to just cover it up and move along, and you can see that in the in the Biafra war, okay, the war ended, but how, we know the story of what happened in the war, that was the story we heard, there were people that were hurting from that, people from that region are still feeling marginalized, and they've been different, even though their intentions are good, but the way they are going about it, it's absolutely wrong, you know, and I want to have to say that, and many times we find that these things continue to come up, because they are not addressed like hidden traumas, they will always rear their ugly heads every now and again, you know, and if you say divide, divide, divide, how, how far can we divide, because if we divide nationally, the states will still divide, the local governments will still divide, that's it, you know, so people that are even like inter, inter-tribal marriage, so when they divide, what will happen to families? So I think that, I think that for us to forge ahead, it has to, we have to be able to sit down and have difficult conversations, and difficult conversations is about, um, it's about stating your claim, and say, okay, this is why I think this is this, and being able to hear the other person, and that's where this referendum thing that you mentioned comes into play, because, um, the reason why it is, the reason why it's looking like, or the reason why it looks like, um, one nation is, is a, is a tough nut to crack, or it's, or it looks like, yeah, it's because the people, you know, are not willing to sit down and have difficult conversations, you know, you need to be able to spell out what peace and progress means to you, you need to be able to spell out what justice and equity means, means to you, the truth of the matter is that righteousness does not understand religion, righteousness does not understand ethnicity, it is a human thing, you know, because we are made in the image of God, it's a character of God, so God is righteous, so if somebody that embodies God, regardless of religion or tribe, as a human being, as somebody that was made in the image of God, if the person sits in the place of power, you disagree? Not disagree, I'm just reminded of that part in the scriptures, where they were trying to be the power of Babel, yeah, and the language, the language, and then even when God, when God gave that covenant to Abraham, right, and even Abraham within his household, there was like, love, you know, so it's almost like, this is, it has always been time immemorial, that internal, again, if we don't define oneness, when we say one nation, what are we talking about, um, any one nation that has no equality will not deliver, right, so there has to be a sense that we must, um, accept equality, equality of people, regardless, quite frankly, regardless of their, um, of their, their tribes, regardless of their religion, right, um, equality of people, regardless of their gender, so it's not because a woman is a woman, so she can be an MD, right, you know, we still have those issues, the patriarchy runs deep, so, um, and some men are just entitled to have their type at home, right, the point is, you might have your type at home, but if she's smart at work, it actually, you can do the job, right, so there's a lot of education, so healing has to happen at different levels of the conversation, they will not be tidy, they'll be difficult, at the national level, the referendum is going to be important, let's come back to decide what is the constitution, and who made it, who made it, I mean, we've carried this constitution since the 90s, knowing the people, but we just carry this constitution over and over again, and a changing world needs a changing constitution, absolutely, so we're sitting down with a generation now that is fully awakened, and guess what, every generation today requires a new type of negotiation of what becomes the tenets upon which they want to build the country, and I think they're allowed to contribute, right, and when you see our voting pattern, it's almost a repressive state of expression, that people can just wake up, where am I pressing, they're just stressed, they're not thinking, because what is there is trauma, they're actually reacting, it's not so much, nobody's profiling, okay, I want this president, but is this senator on the same party qualified, what about the house of rep, you know, Ban Ki lost an election, right, yes, he did the work, but Ban Ki campaigned from last year, we all saw Ban Ki, and when it was happening, I was like, what's happening here, but who won, nobody knew his name, he has nobody, but they don't need that thing, they don't need Ban Ki, sorry, you understand, my God, and even some people could not just separate in their own mind, because that's what trauma does to you, anger now festers, and rather than have an intelligent voting process, what you have is a reactive voting process, right, and even on this side that we're pushing, and the challenge is that some people are not prepared for a rep to get in there, and some days you just say, move on, move on, you go to school, we don't know, you're just seeing those things, right, they're all hoping now that people are prepared, but some people are just lucky to have got form, and then the wait came, right, so we need to heal, because every voting from NSARS, NSARS was also another hush, don't talk, the same with the civil war, NBC will cut anything that looks like civil war in a movie, and it limits the ability, because storytellers bring healing, how you express your stories can bring the country to a point that it can express renewal, right, that reason for forgiveness is needed, the pastors, which is what we do, we have a place to be able to reinforce the fact that forgiveness is not something we must hold, it's something we must give, and it's not something you can ignore, it requires telling the truth, making an apology where there is a need for one, and embracing people across the table, right, it is very very important, that renewal has to happen, right, whether you're a writer, you're making music, I want to commend some musicians, I've not seen part of this album, right, but quite frankly, some people have told me that meant that album was an awakening, because it was confronting some of the social ills, yes, we can use music as a tool for healing, we can use movies as a tool for healing, even teachers have a responsibility to communicate healing through their curriculum, yeah, even in the way we design our curriculum, we can't take history out, because history is asking questions, yeah, how about bringing the answers in a way that can bring healing, yeah, you know, so they took history out, because at one point it was like, people don't want anybody to be reminded of the past, but the past is part of our experience, at least from our parents leading up until now, if we don't do history, we'll repeat history, absolutely, it's hard to tell the history, that has to be very important, like Seth, because we don't want to tell the history and everything, so the question is, most of them, Seth, may not have learned history in school, yet they know the history, you know, have you ever seen Black November, they took it out, don't spend money by acorn, and he told the story of Niger Delta, beautiful, this movie was ahead of its time, released sometime in 2016 or so, showed everything, like, you know, but they took that movie out, it could not be, you know, showed, even Half of a Yellow Sun, I read the book, I was looking forward to the film, and I went to see the film, and I was like, what did I just watch, like, and somebody explained to me, that MBT took out some parts, in a way that it was not struggling to make sense, yeah, and people didn't go ahead, so people didn't get the review, because they felt that it was insightful, but those things were part of the experience, so what's the role of the church in all of this? Healing is part of the church, the calling of the church, we are called to embody healing in our messages, embody it in our heart, there are some churches, the truth is that you can't control some people, we can only live it in our lives, and hope that they learn, and our lives will become an invitation for them to embrace it, even in themselves, because the apostles who stood on pulpits, they don't vote a candidate, because he's not from here, he's not from there, he's not a Christian, so those are not necessarily the conversations, right, so there is a sense that even the church still needs to be educated enough on how to negotiate and involve in politics, sometimes involvement is also still a reflection of their sense of limitation of failure, inability to understand fully, but I think that this election, with all the folks, Nigeria is getting better, I think people are now getting more interested, asking more questions, and even with the rigging that, okay guys, the alleged rigging that happened on the mass kill, I still feel like there are some people that told me they voted for the first time, they came out, they stood out in the rain, they may not have delivered what they had hoped for, but that they were part of, they made their voices heard, with a signal, I think that the incoming president, who knows, whoever becomes the incoming president, will know that over time, that there is a need to at least deliver the promise of the people, right, because you cannot continue to play with them for so long, moving on, so yeah, and that's where it's at, so thank you boss Feddy, for that, for that, so we'll just wrap this up right now, and so I just want you to like find out, and for me, one thing that we want to know is, in the heart of your heart, do you think that it's actually, because I don't like places where we are just honestly, we need to have conversation, conversation, conversation, we have a conversation from now to 50 years time, but is this thing possible, do you think that we can maybe get to a place where we have at least 60 percent or 70 percent, you know, world oneness, you know, and these conversations can be had, and what I'm looking for actually, like what you've said already, that apart from this, people need to rise up and get into positions, absolutely, yes, and say this, because one thing that I like about, you know, a particular political sphere is that he's saying something, you know, and people are, it's just by that move, people are, and a lot of people need to do that, the role of church for me, is that a lot of Christians need to be more transformed and bold to come out, and if you don't believe in something, don't stand behind, you know, something, I just feel like, no, I don't know, I think that I don't, for me, I don't think it's about, because there's also this narrative about, oh, Christians need to come out, come out, and it's turning towards, Christians need to be more involved in politics, no, I think Christians need to take their Christianity to affect every facet of life, for instance, there needs to be a man in high neck, so that they don't hold us in our high neck, no, there needs to be a Christian, you know, man in logistics, man in tech, man in, in all this, in every area, that's what I'm saying, I'm not talking about presidency or governorship, like you said, high neck, like you said, minister of education, you understand, I'm everywhere, if you have the two pews, speak, if you are in very similar negotiations, talk, if you have an audience, you know what I'm saying, so the idea is, let your light to shine before men, I don't just mean politics alone, okay, yeah, but this was a really good conversation, I think for me, my last, you know, thoughts or contributions to this would still be around knowing your roots and calling out, you know, when I tend to use the word, the seemingly ignorant people that don't know better, calling them out and educating them, and also maybe, I probably would say this because, you know, the elections as well, also I heard that people were trying to hear the international passport, sorry, the Nigerian passport and all of that stuff, I think for me, it's staying true to where you have or who you are as a country, right, so you see that the Americans, they are bold to say, I'm American, that's a conversation for another day, it's just like, as Nigerian, we're bold to say you're Nigerian, when you go to, when you travel, be bold to say you're Nigerian, let that identity that embodies oneness, you know, be in that. My final thought is that healing is not an event, it's a journey, and moment by moment interaction with each other, the people, is an opportunity for healing to be expressed, so as we meet people, what do we do with them, how can we embody compassion and empathy in how we talk to people, how we do business, how do we become carriers and agents of healing and not agents of thoughts, because the greatest healing comes through relationship, and I think it's for us to be able to locate that healing possibilities within ourselves and to become part of that too, through which healing can be expressed, therein lies the greatest power of God flowing through us into the world. That's amazing. Thank you guys so much, it was such a conversation, amazing. Thank you. Thank you Abuja International. What? I don't think you're from this part of Lagos. Right. We love you, thank you for coming. We love you guys. Thank you Kimba. Thank you. Thank you for having us. All right guys, see you guys next episode. All right, cheers guys. Bye.