Negative Stereotyping, a clog in the wheel of our unity

"Which state are you from?" Is the usual question I get from people who come from the South anytime I string a good sentence in English. "Sokoto" I always reply and then watch the astonished  expression on their faces while they try to reconcile what they are seeing with what they have stored in their minds. Some of the more polite ones smile and warm up to me while some will continue to probe. "Are you from the Dasuki family?" One asked. "No, I replied I did not come from any of the so called elites' families that you know. I was actually raised by a widow who did not attend any western school" I will add with a smile watching as the confusion deepens.

This is a typical example of stereotyping by Nigerians against fellow Nigerians. Because it is widely believed that people from the North do not attend western school, the people questioning me cannot understand why an ordinary Fulani girl from Sokoto should speak good English. Apart from this, we also have our own beliefs up North about people of Southern Nigeria which to a large extent are not true. For example, it is widely believed that Yoruba people are not trustworthy and as such any Yoruba person is a potential traitor, while Igbos can do anything for money and should not be trusted in matters that involve money.  As a person who attended a unity secondary school, I have met amazing people from these two tribes who hardly fit into the description above.

Stereotype can be defined as  a fixed, commonly held notion or image of a person or group, based on an oversimplification of some observed or imagined trait of behavior or appearance, a  popular belief about specific types of individuals or certain way of doing things. Stereotypes can be either positive or negative but most stereotypes tend to make us feel superior in some way to the person or group being stereotyped.  Stereotypes ignore the uniqueness of individuals by painting all members of a group with the same brush. Another name for stereotyping is bias. Sometimes stereotyping can turn into discrimination if we misinterpret a bias and act upon it in a negative manner.

Even though stereotyping is a global phenomenon, we tend to use it negatively (with the intention to hate) in Nigeria, particularly among the three major tribes that we have. We most often willingly refuse to acknowledge that most of these perceptions are not true, or that they are not what generally define a particular people. As much as we know that Hausa people are trustworthy, Yorubas go to school and Igbos are enterprising, this is not always the case as we also have Hausas that are not trustworthy, uneducated Yorubas and non enterprising Igbos.

What is most disturbing is the fact that the youth who should be able to think for themselves are actively engaged in negative stereotyping. There is  therefore an urgent need for orientation especially among our  young people. We need to move away from what we have been told while growing up and begin to find out things by ourselves in order to achieve the much desired unity.

Finally, I believe that with effort, we can change ourselves and in so doing, change our society. It is very important to see the diversity that surrounds us as a good thing, something wonderful about our country, which is definately better than living in our own cultural bubbles.

What can pierce this thick skin?

'We the People' of Nigeria are some of the most adaptive people you can find anywhere  in this world. We are also loud, aggressive and  hardworking; and yet we are somewhat foolish when it comes to knowing our rights and demanding for what is right from the people that we have entrusted with leadership. Our Country is one of the hardest places to live in this world, with  over 70 percent of the population (150 million) living on less than a dollar a day, I do not need to say much about poverty and hardship. Perhaps it is this hardship that has turned the average Nigerian into a specie that adapts to anything life brings forth. It was no wonder  therefore that 'We the People' of Nigeria  were regarded as the happiest people in the world some years back because we move on with life regardless of the challenges that we face every day.  We have over the years developed very thick skin, such that nothing shocks us anymore.

The recent  Fuel subsidy probe exposed monumental theft of the country's wealth by a small group of people who have become overnight billionaires without doing any work, and who are responsible for most of the problems that the average Nigerian has. What did we do as a people? A small percentage of us who managed to read the report made so much noise about it in the different social media forums for some days and then forgot about it and moved on. Some newspapers carried the news in fragments, sold their papers for a few days and moved on to the next news. Meanwhile majority of us did not know or did not care or are too ignorant to know, in the sense that they can neither read, nor comprehend the gravity of what happened. This category of people rely solely on the NTA for information - which as we all know is just a medium for broadcasting Government propaganda. The Government on the other hand became silent, and 'we the people' of Nigeria moved on with life.

Before this scam, there was the pension scam, where an official was found with the sum of 2 billion Naira cash in his house. There was also the power projects scam and the capital market scam and the scam called the freest and fairest election, but was it enough to shock us? No. The scenario above now seems to always replay itself whenever scams like these are exposed to the public, and 'we the people' of Nigeria shrug and move on.

The only time 'we the people' of Nigeria came close to coming out of our trance was during the occupy Nigeria protests in January which almost paralyzed the country for a whole week. Sadly enough even that was short lived.

I sometimes wonder if there is someone out there who has bewitched or placed a curse on 'we the people' of Nigeria. We are a deeply religious people who claim to know  God more than anybody else in the world as going by the number of mosques and churches that we have, no one can dispute that.  We call on the Almighty all the time to help us come out of our predicament and He answered us by exposing some of the biggest thefts that could ever take place in the history of the world, thefts that could have brought other nations to their knees, thefts that could have made thousands of heads to roll; and yet what did we do? 'we the people' of Nigeria shrugged and moved on.

If the talk of stealing in trillions of Naira by the people who are meant to safeguard our national wealth is not enough to shock us as a people, let us move to the next subject.

On the 1st of October 2010 there was a bomb blast that killed several people and injured many. This one was new to us, it involved death, and we love life. We were gripped by the act for days, but  with the assurance from government  that perpetrators will be 'fished out and brought to book', we moved on. Even though the news that Terrorists are in our country spread quickly, we were not really concerned because the  killings were mostly taking place in faraway Maiduguri and they were mostly carried out in drive by shootings.

Then came the Police Headquarters bomb blast in the Federal Capital Territory, and we were stunned. This one was also new to us because it brought to light how incapable and unprepared and incompetent our Police Force is, and it involved a suicide bomber!.' We the people' of Nigeria could not imagine that one of us could actually blow himself to pieces because of a cause. We were absolutely shocked because we love to live life no matter what. After days of analyses in the media, the usual we-are-on-top-of-the-situation script read by the government,  we moved on.

There is now an established pattern in this country as I write this. Bomb explodes, people die, some get scarred for life, government condemns and vows, the dead are buried and  sadly 'we the people' shrug and move on.

True to our nature, 'we the people' of Nigeria are fast adapting to this dangerous way of life even though we have to struggle for the basic things in life. We have failed to stand up, to ask questions, to demand for accountability, to demand for our right to live and to be treated right by the people who should be looking after us,  instead, we complain, do nothing and  move on. We have completely surrendered our lives to the people who are some of our worst in the society and we expect them to govern us well. My prayer nowadays to God is no longer targeted towards our leaders,  it is rather targeted towards 'we the people' of Nigeria to have our eyes open, to look around us and see that the world has changed, to have enough fire in our bellies to drive us so that we can free ourselves from this bondage.