In the past weeks, I have been thinking aloud about citizenship and belonging in Nigeria in my columns here. I have not found answers to all the questions I raised and so we will consider again the trouble with indigeneship in framing citizenship in Nigeria. Next Tuesday, I will give you the magic wand with which to drastically control unemployment and restore the dignity of labour.
Happily, Justice Jombo-Ofor has taken her oath of office and is already on to work. Yet as I looked back over what is now the Jombo-Ofor ‘saga’ and all that has been said about it [and a lot has been said], I decided I got a few more words to add. I first heard of the ‘saga’ when one of my friends shared a post by a Plateau State lawmaker on the issue on Facebook. Apparently, the lawmaker was in a hurry to show that Plateau State is not the only place where ethnicity and indigeneship affect governance. Here is summary of the saga from Chidi Odinkalu
“Ifeoma Jombo-Ofor, a 58-year old married grandmother was born in the former Eastern Region of Nigeria in 1954. By the time she got married 33 years ago in 1979, her parental origins had become Anambra State but her husband was from Imo. In 1981, she was appointed a Magistrate in Anambra State. In 1991, when Abia State was created, her husband’s state became Abia. In 1998, the Abia State Government appointed Ifeoma Jombo-Ofor a Judge of the High Court of Abia State. She has served in this capacity since then”.
After 14 years of service in the Abia State judiciary, Justice Jombo-Ofor was nominated by the Abia State Government to serve as a Justice of the Court of Appeal. But she was initially denied the oath of office because her indigenship had been questioned in a petition. To say the truth, there is some merit in the concerns raised by the petition: does one cease to become an indigene of Anambra State upon marriage to a person from Abia state? In his piece, Jide Ojo has shown that indeed women have been able to have successful careers in their husband’s states.
The question I ask of Aloma Mukhtar the Chief Justice of Nigeria who initially denied Jombo-Ofor the oath of office and also to those who wrote the petition is this: did Justice Jombo-Ofor cease to be a bona fide indigene of Abia State because (or when) she was nominated to become a Justice of the Appeal Court? Or was it that she had served as a judge in Abia for 14 years without indigeneship?
Although the ‘saga’ has ended, to me, a host of questions remain unanswered. For one, if identity, indigeneity and citizenship are constructed upon marriage, what happens in the case of divorce and remarriage? Do married women in Nigeria hold dual indigeneship that they could use interchangeably or are they forced to choose one? Now that Justice Jombo-Ofor has been sworn in as coming from Abia State, is it concluded that she is no longer from Anambra State and could not, for example, seek election there in future?
If you thought the controversy was resolved with Justice Jombo-Ofor taking her oath, you are wrong. When Mrs. Sarah Ochekpe was nominated to become the Minister of Water Resources, Governor Jang of Plateau State was criticized on 2 fronts. There were those who faulted him for nominating Ochekpe from his Berom ethnic group to serve as a Minister. Then there were those who complained that Ochekpe is married to a man from Benue State and all the “benefits” of her appointment would go to Benue State instead. So what exactly are the career options available for a woman married to a man from a different state? And, should I find a good wife, or just a woman from my state of origin? Even if I find a woman from my state, what if the states are split in the future?
But, away from the citizenship of women, I wonder, could I as a man make any claims in the state from where I find a wife? If yes what sort of claims? If no, is that not discriminatory and unconstitutional? Chidi Odinkalu also wrote of a Lagos High Court Judge Bunmi Oyewole who was said to have been denied elevation to serve in the Court of Appeal [from Lagos State in 2009] because of his Osun State origin (I wonder where his wife is from). Fine, let’s ask Osun State Government to nominate him? No way, according to Odinkalu, in October 2012, “the NJC reportedly declined to support his nomination as Chief Judge of Osun State because he is a judge of the Lagos State High Court”. So what should the man do, resign?
So what exactly is the issue? It was not the gender of Jombo-Ofor that was questioned or her “second class citizenship” as a woman. How could anyone say to Jombo-Ofor after 33 years of marriage that she does not belong in Abia? Still, it was the construction of citizenship on indigeneship (rather than residency) that was really up for debate. When framed this way, it becomes clear that we are all victims.
In the news we hear of the Jombo-Ofor denied oath of office and the Oyewole refused elevation as well as the Ochekpe criticized. But what you don’t hear about is the young person denied admission for being from the wrong “catchment area” as well as the ones paying exorbitant and discriminatory fees as non-indigenes in state-owned institutions.
I think the number of those excluded at the lower levels is likely to be more than those we read about in the media. So the question I really wanted to ask is this: Am I a Nigerian citizen (an individual entitled to rights of citizenship and fundamental human rights) or am I a Nigerian ethnie (the ‘official’ representative of my ethnic group on whose behalf I seek claims of group rights)? If we are citizens then we have to urgently delete the word and sense of ‘indigene’ from our laws (yes, let identical twins be elected as President and Vice President of Nigeria). If we are both citizens and ethnics, then I am eager to learn how we can balance both claims in the constitution of a democratic federal republic.
Second question, until we have removed the indigeneity principle from the law, should there be any difference between the rights of citizenship of males and females in Nigeria? I am guessing your answer is a ‘no’, so we need to work hard to remove the discriminations. Clearly, the indigeneship principle could be interpreted in ways that discriminate against both male and female citizens, we need to prevent that! Last week I read here that the National Assembly is considering substituting “indigene” with “resident” in the new constitution. Good move, I concur. But if we no longer have indigenes, what becomes of our chiefs, can I claim Obahood in your village if I live there long enough? We still have a lot more thinking to do!
Daniel Nengak
Nengak Daniel Gondyi is presently a post-graduate student in International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö Högskola in Sweden. He is also a Senior Programme Officer of the Abuja based Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD. He holds a Bachelors’ in International Studies from the Ahmadu Bello University. Read his full profile here
