EXAMINING THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ANYIAM-OSIGWE’S GROUP MIND PRINCIPLE
Part 3 of a 6-part scholarly examination by Tetsekela Michelle Anyiam-Osigwe of the Igbo condition in Nigeria from the perspective of her grandfather’s (Sage Philosopher Chief Emmanuel Onyechere Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe) Group Mind Principle.
Post-Amalgamation: Accommodating Nationhood and Ethnic Identity
In Anyiam-Osigwe’s view, ethnic conflicts largely derive from the fact that the state only finds marginal expression in the consciousness of the populace. He avers that in Nigeria, for instance, all evidence would suggest that the loyalty of the Nigerian is first to his ethnic stock either as an Igbo, a Hausa, Fulani, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Yoruba or Tiv among others. His relationship with the Nigerian state is less than filial, and at best, a matter of convenience and expediency.
Drawing from the pogrom of the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda, the
Nigerian civil war, the wars in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, to mention but a few, Anyiam-Osigwe identifies the inability of these amalgamated post-independent African states to evolve a “National Group Mind” as the root cause of the conflicts and wars which account for the loss of millions of human lives and the endemic poverty that afflicts the continent. He also notes that the myriad of coups that have been witnessed in nearly all the post-independent African states draw immensely from the same reality. He opines that this reality is not an African peculiarity but has been the underpinning of every social setting in which the Group Mind is absent.