When will we admit that we've been a little too intolerant?

The Mile 12 riots would become one of the most referred-to cases of violent upheaval for a decade or so (until new Mile 12 riots happened for the same reasons last year).

The riots inflamed from a small scuffle for power between the Yoruba leadership of the market and Hausa traders. Last year’s riot was a near repeat of 1999.

Walking through streets guarded by ethnic militia branded as the Oodua People's Congress much later, I saw the human cost of the intolerance that led families to leave the area for weeks.

Staring at bodies in the gutter as my family walked through an area protected by the OPC, it was hard to understand that, for a brief period, in a market possibly visited by every Nigerian tribe under God’s sun, Yoruba and Hausa just couldn’t see eye to eye.

You can say the same for just about any country if you look hard enough but it doesn’t change the fact that in Nigeria, we wear our intolerance on both sleeves.

Our society, either by culture, deliberate design or just sheer chance, is so fragmented that the average person is raised to gravitate towards a strong identity. Unwittingly though, in doing so, he absorbs and assumes the traditional biases tied to that identity with alarming ease.

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A good example; That Igbo people have numerous children and use up a lot of space, is a common tribalistic trope widely believed in many parts of South-Western Nigeria.

So, even though there’s no data to support this, Chubuike from Imo has no chance of getting the flat of his dreams from the old Yoruba landlord in Ebute-Metta, even though he can afford it.

In isolated instances like this, bigotry has become all too easy to sweep under the carpet, because who really cares what Mr. Dike feels about his Igbo Muslim neighbour as long as he doesn’t hurt anybody.

We insist on this attitude, a rare form of intentional obliviousness, a refusal to acknowledge a reality that we meander through on a daily basis, against all odds.

Power in Numbers

But very often, these divides and the intolerance they have festered manifest in the group, rather than the individual. The major difference here is that while the individual may not have the power to show that he hates the Igbo man; a group has the power in numbers to show it and act upon it.

It is in those times that our problems become prominent. It is also in those times, like the Mile 12 riots or the Shiites Riot in Abuja, that we get a small taste of what we might have unwittingly predisposed ourselves to and the small lines that separate us from a descent into anarchy.

Yesterday, on Monday, April 17, 2018, members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), a Shiite sect of Muslims, clashed with the Nigerian Police at the Unity Fountain in Abuja.

Ignoring the Police ban on protests in the area, the group gathered in the hundreds to protest the detention of its leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky who has been in custody for over two years.

According to Abuja residents and media reports, the protest had begun peacefully, but when things became rowdy, the Police intervened and made it rowdier.

Millions of naira were lost in damaged property.

The Police says that it arrested 115 of the sect’s members. The sect alleges that some of its members were killed by the police.

ALSO READ: Shiites protesters and Police clash in Abuja for a second day

We can do a 360 about the intricacies of the politics of Shi’a Muslims in a country where the President, along with over half of the population are Sunni Muslims.

What matters though is the sheer bigotry on display.

The Shiites are a minority in Nigeria, even among muslims, and in the North, it is a fact that is rubbed in their faces at every chance.

Two years ago, when the group admittedly erred by cordoning off a major road, soldiers fired on a large celebration killing many of the group’s members, including members of Zakzaky’s family.

The easy question would be What did the Shiites ever do to you?, but the more pertinent one is Why can’t we just leave them alone?

In a country whose sustenance is dependent on many strong cultures co-existing peacefully, the Shiites are the latest victim of our raw intolerance, the spectrum of hate that bubbles underneath the relationship between groups.

A history of bigotry

In 2000, it was the Christians of Kaduna, who were on both sides of two waves of violence after Sharia Law was introduced to the state by the state’s governor, Ahmed Maikarfi.

In 2001, it was the Christians and Muslims of Plateau State who let political and demographic tensions spill over into loss of life.

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Recently, it’s been the people of Nigeria’s North-East, murdered en masse by a terrorist group which wants to create a caliphate in the country, governed by ultra-Islamic ideals and principles.

What is perhaps most troubling is that there is a wide catchment area at the intersection between our deep-rooted tribalism and religious intolerance. The lines that divide us along tribal lines are also, for the most part, the lines that divide us on religious terms.

While one must acknowledge minority communities or towns like Yola where there is a large Christian population, the North is seen, and for good reason, as the Muslim part of the country. The south is the majority-Christian area.

Which means when disputes start in either region of the country, there are standing fissures waiting to be ignited into something much bigger.

It is why the Mile 12 riots of 1999 degenerated from a dispute between Hausa traders and their Yoruba Landlords into a full-on battle between every other tribe versus the Northerners.

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Few countries are in such a dicey situation. And just in case you were wondering where they are, they are in the Middle East and Africa; most of them like Sudan or the Central African Republic have become a by-word for the variety of civil unrest that people expect from African countries.

ALSO READ: Here's why protesters and Shiites clashed in Abuja

All these would be warnings to Nigeria, but as with all the lessons that time has tried to teach us, we’ve simply been busy with other things while in class.

Nigeria’s multi-religious, multi-ethnic culture is an inspiration to millions of black people across the world but at home, its people fight, each desperate to make sure that whatever group or belief they are affiliated with is not subsumed or derogated.

We can cry out like we did on social media when these blatant acts of bigotry spill over into our daily consciousness; but if Nigeria’s biggest divides will not tear it apart, we will have to stop pretending that bigotry is not something we live with and by on a daily basis.