Tribalism

Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s most revered writers, published The Trouble with Nigeria in 1983 as a blistering critique of the country’s shortcomings, particularly its failure to deliver what he believed Nigerians deserved in an independent postcolonial state. In the second chapter, Tribalism, he lays bare how ethnic divisions have been politically weaponised, hindering true unity and progress. Achebe recounts pivotal moments in history—such as the 1951 Western House of Assembly crisis—that shattered the dream of a pan-Nigerian identity. He argues that, despite official efforts to downplay tribalism, it remains deeply entrenched within Nigeria’s institutions, from education to employment. Ultimately, Achebe calls for the rejection of ethnic bias in governance, cautioning that no modern nation can advance while perpetuating discrimination. We have republished the essay below as part of our broader endeavour to make the most impactful ideas and articles accessible to the readers of Geeska. 

Nothing in Nigeria’s political history captures her problem of national integration more graphically than the chequered fortune of the word tribe in her vocabulary. Tribe has been accepted at one time as a friend, rejected as an enemy at another, and finally smuggled in through the back-door as an accomplice.  

In the life-time of many Nigerians who still enjoy an active public career, Nigeria was called “a mere geographical expression” not only by the British who had an interest in keeping it so, but even by our “‘nationalists’’ when it suited them to retreat into tribe to check their more successful rivals from other parts of the country. As a student in Ibadan I was an eye-witness to that momentous occasion when Chief Obafemi Awolowo “‘stole”’ the leadership of Western Nigeria from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in broad daylight on the floor of the Western House of Assembly and sent the great Zik scampering back to the Niger “whence [he] came.”  

Someday when we shall have outgrown tribal politics, or when our children shall have done so, sober historians of the Nigerian nation will see that event as the abortion of pan-Nigerian vision which, however ineptly, the NCNC tried to have and to hold. No matter how anyone attempts to explain away that event in retrospect it was the death of a dream-Nigeria in which a citizen could live and work in a place of his choice anywhere, and pursue any legitimate goal open to his fellows; a Nigeria in which an Easterner might aspire to be premier in the West and a Northerner become Mayor of Enugu. That dream-Nigeria suffered a death-blow from Awolowo’s “success’’ in the Western House of Assembly in 1951. Perhaps it was an unrealistic dream at the best of times, but some young, educated men and women of my generation did dream it.  

And though it died, it never fully faded from our consciousness. You could always find idealistic people from every part of Nigeria who were prepared to do battle if anyone (especially European or American) should ask them: What is your tribe? ‘‘I am a Nigerian,” they would say haughtily, drawing themselves to their fullest height. Though alive and well tribe had an embarrassing odour.  

Then a strange thing happened at our independence in 1960. Our national anthem, our very hymn of deliverance from British colonial bondage, was written for us by a British woman who unfortunately had not been properly briefed on the current awkwardness of the word tribe. So we found ourselves on independence morning rolling our tongues around the very same trickster godling:  

Though tribe and tongue may differ 

In brotherhood we stand!  

It was a most ominous beginning. And not surprisingly we did not stand too long in brotherhood. Within six years we were standing or sprawling on a soil soaked in fratricidal blood. When it finally ceased to flow, we were ready for a new anthem written this time by ourselves. And we took care to expunge the jinxed word tribe, And to be absolutely certain we buried the alien anthem in its own somnolent evangelical hymn juice (concocted incidentally by another British woman, the third in a remarkable line, the first being Lugard’s girl-friend who christened us Nigeria) and invoked the natural dance rhythm of our highlife to mark our national rebirth. 

But all this self-conscious wish to banish tribe has proved largely futile because a word will stay around as long as there is work for it to do. Nigeria, in spite of our protestations, there is plenty of work for tribe. Our threatening gestures against it have been premature, half-hearted or plain deceitful.