Re-Examining the Question of Citizenship and Indigeneity in Modern Nigeria by Bala J. Takaya

Our country Nigeria is, technically speaking, still a federation of unequal strangers. It is a country composed of a plurality of variegated nationalities. The nationalities, themselves, being entities of imbalanced sizes and strengths; all embedded and hemmed into one federating Nigerian political unit by force of a 20 th Century British colonial policy. In deed, to borrow one of Professor Ali Mazrui’s conceptual models, Nigeria may be seen as an emerging national society, the would-be components still being at the Threshold of Discovery about, and cautious of, each other.

In consequence the Nigerian state is, today, battling with a nightmare; the recurring decimal of inter-ethnic, inter-faith and inter-regional quarrels engendering avoidable disorder and wanton violence in different community locations. Though the fundamental basis of the quarrels may easily be traced to issues of political economy and, therefore, continued rivalry among Nigeria’s ethnic majors, the causal explanations for each occurrence is usually more or less pedestrian and come in various colorations (religious, ethnic, or political) none of which, taken in isolation, addresses other than symptoms rather than the roots.

The issue becomes more absurd when such quarrels are made to camouflage as disputes between indigenes and “settlers” of a place; a clear fallacy in all its ramifications, especially when any area of the peace-loving Middlebeltan community is involved. As such (and granting that the latter statement is an important topic for another discourse), we here endorse the view, for reasons other than the aforesaid inter-regional/inter-ethnic quarrels among Nigeria’s majority tribes, that the need to definitively determine the status and rights of internal immigrants, the so-called “settlers”, is an important issue for deliberation and policy resolution on its own right. That is to say, whether or not citizenship and indigeneship can be treated as synonyms is a fundamental question that must be resolved, through public policy processes, even if in the light of escalating communal disorders that sometimes camouflage around the issue in various parts of the country.

Our view here is that, for the sake of a more adequate, fair and socially just Constitution of the Federal Republic, and to obviate a state of affairs aptly described by a Hausa adage as kitso a kan kwarkwata (i.e. problem rebounds), it is highly desirable that policymakers should now sagaciously address some apparently simple but fundamental questions, viz:

Sagacity is called for lest the heat, sentiments and emotions of the day over-take reason and statesmanship in a manner that will beget regrets for our tomorrow.

To begin with, it is worth noting that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, like those of other nation-states, provides sufficiently clear definitions and provisions concerning citizenship. It lays down specific guidelines on how citizenship naturally accrues, how it is acquired or retained and how a non-national can acquire that status. In fact the whole of Chapter III (section 25-32) of that document is devoted to definitions and qualifications relating to citizenship by birth; citizenship by registration; citizenship by naturalization; the question of dual citizenship; and renunciation and deprivation of citizenship. Not so in respect of rights of indigeneship, apart from the passing reference to it at section 147(3).

While citizenship refers to the rights and privileges of belonging to a nation-state as nationals of a wider sovereign polity at the macropolical level, indigeneship, on the other hand, refers to the individual or family identity of constituents at the local, microcosmic, communal levels. While citizenship refers to a wider, societal affinity that is at once political in nature, indigeneship regresses towards ancestral identification with patriarchy; almost always tinged with a myth of origin, evolution or advent.

It is a universal truth that the feeling of indigeneship is a natural phenomenon. It derives from the territoriality instinct for area control which is innate to all living things. Thus, it is no gainsaying that even animals, birds, insects and reptiles have apparently been coded with territorial ownership and control instincts by mother nature, such that a natural law based on the principle of “first-to-arrive, first-to-posses” seem to be invoked to claim their occupancy rights. For instance, a dog, even of a pint-sized breed, would vehemently assert and defend his territory against any encroachment by any other dogs; even dogs of the large size breeds.

Similarly, the loud and seemingly beautiful songs by birds on a tree top are, in most cases, territorial war songs to warn trespassers. Also true, the next time a bee or a wasp gives you a nasty sting near his hive, it is a warning that you are intruding into his territory. In deed even snakes do not make it a habit to bite just anybody or anything other than violators of their territorial or hunting environments!

As such, it ought to be understood that, even in legal terms, one’s formal Right of Ownership over a piece of property is no more natural or just than a community’s rights of indigeneship claim over a piece of territory they call their homeland. These arguments only suggest that we cannot wish away any community’s territorial claims of special rights and privileges over local territories on which they are autochthons.

We should also beware of another potent but often over-looked factor: any indigeneity claim by any community is not just a claim for territorial control per se. Almost invariably, it is an issue of political economy – i. e. it is usually inspired and fired by a natural struggle for access to, or control over, economic activities or means of survival in a given locality. In other circumstances, the incidence of this may also be seen from a reverse perspective, i.e. as an internal resistance or reaction by a weaker segment of a community against what sociologists refer to as relative deprivation or its concomitant economic disempowerment. All told, it rolls into one fundamental factor: the right to be. It is part of the survival instinct; the right to physically secure, socially reproduce and materially feed oneself, economy-wise, in a place.

At a point, the Obasanjo Administration’s National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) was to take a decision on the question whether or not to extend full indigeneship status to every citizen wherever they chose to reside, irrespective of their areas of origin and nativity. In fact what was interesting to note at that moment was that, in the build up towards the would-be decision, media survey showed that, for the first time in their relationship, all three of the more mobile and dominant major ethnic groups (Hausa-fulani, Igbo and Yoruba) were united over an issue. Their common position was that there should be no distinction in status between the two; that a citizen should be regarded as an indigene and be accorded all indigeneity rights wherever he (both gender implied) finds himself or chooses to reside and they wanted to see that position adopted as a government policy; in fact inscribed into the constitution.

The NPRC did not resolve the controversy before they folded up. But the matter still rages as a national controversy today. In retrospect, what would it imply if the proposal were to carry as a policy? In a nutshell it means that any Nigerian citizen of any origin – Igbo, Hausa-fulani or Yoruba - residing in, for instance Kagoro, Langtang, Numan, Gboko, Okene, Jos, etc., should also see themselves as indigenes of such areas whether or not they understood the customs and traditions of their local surroundings.

This raises myriads of questions. Does it also mean that when the native traditional rulership stools of these places next fall vacant, those new arrivals (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, etc.) are, automatically, equally entitled to vie for and accede to the thrones? In considering the constitutional appointment quotas due to the peoples indigenous to these places [section 147(3)], does it mean that the new comers (usually referred to as “settlers”) may also produce the next set of members of the state and national executive councils as ministers, ambassadors, commissioners, local government chairmen, or board chairmen, etc to represent the peoples of their new communities of settlement?

Assuming similar opportunities may be open to the peoples of minority backgrounds who have migrated to say Kano, Enugu or Ibadan, it would then remain to be answered whether inter-ethnic equity would thereby be achieved and guaranteed to all ethnic nationalities in the light of their respective relative mobility or lack of it. Have all of Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities come to the same level of development for all to equally benefit from a policy of free-for-all competitive access to socio-economic opportunities of the land and in every locality? We must also bear in mind that if this state of affairs obtained ab initio in the new states of Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the USA, it was because all their citizens were considered immigrant settlers. And, if today the old advanced states could admit one or two settler immigrants to contest into their local or national legislative houses (thanks to their economic policy of encouraging brain-drain), it is only because they believe they are in such an absolute control of their socio-economic environments as not to worry about inconsequential handfuls of minorities gaining access into their policymaking arena – the resurgent agitations of skin-head whites and the kkk of America, Britain’s anti-colour National Front movement or even the indirect agitations against the Islamic bourqa in France, notwithstanding.

In the Nigerian case in point, on the other hand, it is noteworthy that the settlers hold the key to commerce and other key economic activities. Above all, economic activities by members of the settler communities are closed family affairs in as much as their entrepreneurial experiences do not rob off positively on the natives. For, almost invariably, the former hardly recruit labour locally. Instead, they mostly go back to their homes of origin to import apprentices, interns or journeymen to the exclusion of idle local hands.

We observed at the outset that the frequency of social disorder, taking the forms of strained inter-ethnic and inter-faith relationship among Nigerian nationalities, has become very worrisome. From academic perspectives, the occurrences suggest a need for a more analytical approach on a holistic, pan-Nigeria, basis for a better understanding of the phenomenon. It is only through such an approach that appropriate solution templates, capable of providing lasting policy responses to the malaise, may also be generated.

With this in mind, how may we understand the roots of the disturbances in the country and, in particular Northern states, Plateau state variants inclusive?

At the risk of being mistaken for prejudice against a section of the community by pointing this out, a global profile of the national malaise suggests that most of the major happenings are triggered off by, or involve, Nigerian citizens of the Hausa-fulani nationality whether or not in their native home environments or in “diaspora”. Unfortunately, because they (Hausa-fulani) are predominantly muslim by faith, such occurrences are almost always misinterpreted as inter-religious disputes and, secondarily, as a product of inter-ethnic intolerance or even hatred.

The true factors need to be pinpointed before they become confused and impossible to separate let alone handle and resolve. Towards this end, and from a nation-building perspective, therefore, the Hausa-fulani nationality’s plight needs to be understood with sympathy - the seeming inconsiderateness of some of their responses to their situation and the resultant pains and anguish such responses cause others in their bid to ameliorate those plights notwithstanding. Since the Kano riots of 1953, following a dispute over the date for self-government moved by Chief Anthony Enahoro, Hausa-fulani dominated cities of Northern Nigeria have been flash-points of ethno-regional conflicts and social disorder. Among these are the araba (pogrom?) of 1966, which resulted in a 3 year civil war, the Kafanchan crisis of 1987, the 1991 Sokoto Qur’an desecration crisis which led to the gruesome beheading (and staking of the head) of an Igbo trader, Gideon Akaluka, the Zangon-Kataf communal crisis of 1992, the year 2000 Kaduna sharia law crisis, the 2006 Maiduguri Mohammed Cartoon crisis and mayhem over a Danish newspaper cartoon said to have ‘ridiculed’ the Prophet of Islam in far away Denmark, the 2009 Borno Boko-haram crisis against modernism, the 2009 Bauchi Kala-Kato Islamist uprising against governmental authorities and institutions, and the endemic Jos crises of 2001, 2004, 2008 and 2010.

The question that needs asking is why the Hausa-fulani have been in ferment against their fellow Nigerian nationalities since independence and up to now, such that they are usually at logger-heads with their fellow citizens whether in their native areas as hosts or even where they are in other people’s native territories as “settlers”?

A preponderant majority of the non-elite Hausa-fulani, though traditionally a predominantly urban commercial community, have found it rather difficult to cut into the modern economy. The Hausa trading skills once exclusively controlled all markets in the entire Northern Nigerian landscape and, in deed, dominated commerce in virtually the whole of the West African region. But since the advent of British Colonialism, they have been getting systematically edged out and becoming more and more marginalized in modern trade and commerce. In Nigeria, the new masters of trade and commerce are the Igbo and the Yoruba nationalities from the South. Like the Hausa before them, the Southern traders, industrialists and artisans have gradually and systematically enforced their presence and are found in control of trade and commerce in all but the non-essential commodities in every conceivable village market in the North. Herein lies the first problem. For as a fact, our study and analyses tend to show that equitable access to economic activities is the hidden kernel at the basis of the numerous inter-communal disputes between the Hausa-fulani and their southern rivals – whether or not the quarrels manifest as undue expression of regionalism, ethnicism or religious fanaticism - across the North. To buttress these facts, consider the following analytical scenarios just from the commercial perspective:

a. Scenario 1: Shortly before and during most of the colonial period, Hausa-fulani traders totally monopolised inter-communal trade in Nigeria’s Northern Region. Almost invariably, natives of the various localities had no access to, let alone control over, the movement of commodities of trade even in their own local village markets. It was not necessarily by the choice of the local natives that consumer items like textile and garments, salt, soap, mirrors, needles, wool, etc. were exclusively supplied to them through itinerant Hausa-fulani traders (yan-koli) who moved from one village market to another in exchange for the natives’ local agricultural commodities like sorghum, cotton, groundnuts, ginger, fowls, goats, cows, and myriads of other agricultural commodities. Rather, it was the visiting Hausa traders who, not only fixed the prices both ways but, also handled the outward transportation of these commodities. The surpluses from these real-term trade exchanges gave the Hausa–fulani their first capital base and a virtually close-ended control over access to commerce; such that though the itinerant Hausa-fulani traders would collect their imported trading commodities on (sale-or-return) credit basis from their kinsmen in urban commercial centres like Kano, no non-Hausa-fulani indigene of any other community could be granted such favours. In deed it was generally feared that even if such a person ventured into it on a cash-and-carrt basis, his Hausa-fulani rivals would ensure that he lost his fortunes either to robbers on the highway or becomes a victim of some deliberate accident, like a fire disaster.

b. Scenario 2: After the consolidation of British colonial control over Nigeria, the Northern markets became freely accessible to the equally very enterprising Igbo and Yoruba traders from the South. The latter two were not only more enterprising but, with the added advantage of their proximity to the sea ports, they also served as de facto middlemen to European merchants. Later, they even mastered the secrets and processes of importing commodities directly from European manufacturers overseas. This led to the situation in which, up to the moment, trade in all imported commodities of importance like pharmaceuticals, motor spare parts, building materials, textile materials, enamel wares and utensils, electronic goods, cosmetics, chemicals, wines and spirits - are all in the hands of either Igbo or Yoruba southerners who not only import these directly from abroad but also control their distribution and retails right into the Northern village outlets.

c. Scenario 3: The natural outcome of the foregoing two scenarios is that, like the Hausa–fulani cut off the local natives from gaining access to commerce, they (the Hausa-fulani) have in turn, now become virtually marginalised out of both international and local trade in almost all but the less important traditional goods. As they now progressively lose access to modern trading commodities, so is their access to the capital-empowering surpluses narrowing. This development severely impinges on the ability of Hausa-fulani traders to favourably compete in the nation’s modern political economy. As such the only possible way out is to physically force the southerners (especially the Igbo) out of the entire Northern commercial space, by taking advantages of any local skirmishes to burn and loot Igbo shops, their residences, their beer parlours and their churches (even if a dispute did not involve a Southerner.

All these go to explain the fact that the now usual communal disorders leading to burning of churches and even near pogroms in Northern cities of Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi or Maiduguri are really not religious as often interpreted but an aspect of inter-ethnic/inter-regional struggle for the control of political economy between the now jealous (because commercially marginalized) Hausa-fulani of the North and their rival Southern commercial class.

What is sad about it, from the standpoint of autochthonous Middle-beltan communities is that when it happens in ethnic minority cities like Jos, the ethnic minorities remain the net losers whichever way the quarrels resolve for the simple reason that, peace loving and excellent hosts though the natives are, they still remain deprived. For, not only does the region’s development get retarded by such repetitive destructions but the indigenes continue to suffer under a double ration of marginalization since the control of access to trade and commerce either by the Southern elements or the Hausa-Fulani here also means the host autochthons will never gain any control over the means of economic empowerment in their own land. This, talk less of the fact that they, the autochthons, also become part of the grass that get hurt when the Northern Hausa-Fulani define their enemies by their religious affiliation – most of the indigenes and the Southern traders being Christian. Thus the fortunes and predicaments of these indigenes become more compounded when the Hausa-fulani elements employ the mobilization power of Islamic religion as the vehicle of violence against their mostly non-muslim Southern rivals as, in the process, the hausa-fulani foot-soldiers would invariably define the local indigenes (being mostly Christian) as part of the “enemy” by virtue of the latter’s religious affiliations.

It is more or less a double misfortune for the Hausa-fulani citizen that, as he loses control over his traditional trading space to his Southern competitors, so is the vagaries of nature incipiently robbing him of his agricultural potentials.

The Hausa-fulani, by origin, is native to the drier Sahel Savannah belt at the extreme far North of Nigeria. It is an area currently under severe challenge by the rapidly encroaching Sahara Desert from North of Africa. A very significant proportion of the area is becoming progressively parched and unsuitable for meaningful agriculture. In fact rain-fed agriculture can be practiced here for less than three months in the year – usually between late July and early October. Very few crops survive such an arid zone. In fact, except in the few river valleys where dry season crops are cultivated under irrigation culture, the only staple crops that the territory comprising most of Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, Yobe and Borno belt can support well is the rapid maturing dwarf variety of millet known as maiwa. As such, and like Senator Kanti Bello once lamented, the land is now virtually incapable of supporting the heavy population it once used to. The solution adopted by the peasant class is to migrate to any area in Nigeria where the indigenes of the area are friendly enough to grant them permission to co-till the land.

Unfortunately, this is where, in the long run, the question of citizenship vis-a-vis indigeneship springs up into play. Sociologically, the Hausa-fulani are poor mixers. Reinforced by the needs of their Islamic religious practices, they normally settle huddled together, respecting only the authority of their own ethnic leadership, in distinct sectors of their hosts’ townships or as new settlements in separate community enclaves, i.e. in quarters they usually nick-name assabon gari, zango, tudun wada, yelwa, or sabon gida. Being physically set apart from the natives, they hardly inter-marry with their hosts; especially when such hosts are non-muslim. Moreover being a proud, if not arrogant, people by nature, they would always strive to claim, dominate and possess the environment wherever they find themselves in any significant size. This is what usually leads to loggerheads or bloody conflicts with their (until then) very hospitable hosts. This explains some of the individual incidents in their relationships, with some of their hosts the ethnic Middle-belt areas of Zangon-kataf, Yelwan Shendam, Wase, Bokkos, Kafanchan, Seyawa, Tingno, Waduku, Dumne Song, etc.

Perhaps because of its recurring nature, the Jos Plateau phenomenon is usually misconstrued as a unique case on its own. It is not. The only difference is that the Jos incidents are brought about by the coincidental interplay of the two factors analysed in the foregoing paragraphs.

In the first place, the Jasawa (Hausa-fulani community of urban Jos) already regard and claim Jos as their home land since they began to serially settle here at the start of the tin mining industry about 80 years ago. No doubt they were dominant in petty trade in the land until the Southern traders outpaced them commercially.

Secondly, they felt very uneasy with the sudden and heavy influx of non Hausa-fulani businesses into Jos since 2000 AD. The businesses are mostly owned by Igbo and other Southern traders fleeing Kaduna, Sokoto, Kano, Borno and Bauchi states as a result of actual and foreseen disturbances in these states following their adoption of the sharia form of government. Even though Southerners and other non-muslim traders had hitherto always survived ethno-religious disturbances affecting them in those Hausa-fulani states before now, or were able to regroup and revive their businesses after such attacks, they interpreted the adoption of the sharia system of government in these states as a legalization of violence against the interests of non-muslims and, therefore may not be afforded any form of legal protection in these areas any more.

Joyfully, the economy of Jos Plateau correspondingly began to boom suddenly. But this became a short-lived joy. In July 2001, the Jos ultra-modern market, the only one of its kind in West Africa, which had brimmed to capacity by the arrival of fleeing traders of Southern origin from Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Bauchi, etc who were relocating their businesses to Jos, was bombed and destroyed. It was such a colossal loss to both Government and traders. This was followed by the most grisly ethnic violence of its kind two months later. Since then Jos, which prided itself as the most peaceful and accommodating city in Nigeria, knew no peace any more.

In the foregoing analyses, we have referred to one innate characteristic of the Hausa-fulani nationality as being a proud people with a penchant for dominating their environment even when they are the ones at the begging end.

Good as these nationality traits are for a pure-type, uni-lingual, unicultural nations (it is the kind of stuff that best befit new and emergent states like Israel and the rising Asiatics) they hardly fit into the social construct of a plural nation like Nigeria. In fact, like the Jews of Israel, the Hausa-fulani may not be aware that one of the traits that sometimes alienate them from other nationalities when part of a plural society is their excessive loyalty to their own culture and the reluctance to see issues from other peoples’ cultural or environmental perspectives no matter how apt.

As stated above, however, what the Hausa-fulani need is sympathy rather than condemnation. But as it is naturally difficult to look oneself in the mirror and do thorough self-assessment, they need to be educated about the culture of modern statehood and all-inclusive nationhood; about peaceful integration (on individual person basis) into one’s community of residence rather than an imposition of group particularisms or cultural ways upon others to whom those cultural ways are as alien. Above all, they need to be rescued from the apparent strangle-hold upon them by their own backward-looking and selfish leadership elite.

If nothing else, the foregoing discourse makes it obvious that the threat of deprivation of indigenes from access to modern trade, commerce and industry is itself an issue that policy makers must urgently address in specific terms as sure seeds of future dissension in the polity. For, except and unless visionary leaders who understand and sympathize with the plight of the autochthons, devise viable means of protecting the local peoples’ interests in ways that would benefit all sides of the equation and the Nigerian economy in general (like Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, did for his then industrially weak Northern constituency), ethnic minorities will be out of reckoning in matters of citizen rights and economic wellbeing sooner than later.

Otherwise, and given the fact that local autochthons are economically deprived and that wealth now determines electoral fortunes in Nigeria’s electoral democracy, what chances do minor ethnic groups, whether or not as hosts, stand in a free-for-all contest for political offices - from local government council positions to that of the office of the President of the Federation especially when they are deprived of exclusive indigeneity rights over their ancestral lands? In our own limited understanding, a policy of that import would not only consign the peoples of smaller ethnic nationalities into mere “hewers of wood and drawers of water” on their own very territories but, given just a few decades, they would have gone extinct; at best they would replicate the lives of Europe’s gypsies or that of the surviving moors of the Middle East!

Comparative political history tells us that it is in the light of the latter reality, coupled with pangs of national conscience, that other nations like the United States of America and, to a certain extent, Australia and New Zeeland, were led to belatedly enact policies which led to the creation of exclusive ethnic nationality homelands for their dispossessed and deprived autochthons, viz the American Indian reserves, the Australian aborigines reserves and the special protections which returned and guaranteed their basic native rights to the Maoris under the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand.

The current ethnic conflicts notwithstanding, need Nigeria slip down the precipice the American or Australian way before awakening to the possible consequences in the bitter examples of those nations? Certainly, the agony of the Ogonis in the South-South, the Kafanchan communal crisis of 1987 and the Zangon-Kataf bloodshed of 1992, as well as the recent crises in Yelwa-Shendam and Jos in Plateau State point towards caution in this respect.

Coming back to the topic of discourse, history does not show us that it is possible to legislate indigeneity. Instead, there are only three possible ways of acquiring indigeneship of a place, viz;

(a) By outright conquest of one community by another. In this case, the conquering community occupies the territory of the conquered and either reduces the latter into a dominated status as subjects or forces them to evacuate and flee the territory. This is hardly an option to contemplate by or for any community in modern Nigeria.

(b) By syncretisation. In this respect, a conquering and colonizing community may, although militarily strong, be numerically too inferior to expel the host. As such, the dominating minority co-habits their new territory with their subjects but gradually lose their culture in favour of that of the conquered host. A case in point is that of the post-jihad Fulani vis-à-vis their Hausa-habe hosts. Again, this option clearly belongs to political history.

(c) By individual assimilation. In this more versatile and still likely type, waves of immigrants may not only arrive and settle peacefully within their host communities but also get individually acculturated and absorbed as indistinguishable members of the host community - marrying into and dropping their own native customs/tradition and picking up the language, habits and other cultural characteristics of the host, including religious practices. It is a model based on natural respect by new comers to their hosts. It has worked and still works the world over and in all cultures. It may be argued that this, in a way, is what produced the Barrack Obamas of our time in the United States of America.

A fourth, but unsuccessful model may yet be mentioned and cautioned against: this concerns Indigeneship by Social Disorder or inter-ethnic revolution. It is a reverse variant of the foregoing (individual assimilation) model. In this case, a large number of immigrants of the same ethno-cultural or religious characteristics might have moved into and settled among their host communities individually or in waves of small bands of migrants. After several decades or even centuries of such piece-meal arrivals, the largeness or cumulative size of the settler components may begin to tempt the settlers into upstaging the leadership of their host.

Almost invariably, however, this insurrectional model is a clear recipe for a perpetual state of internal upheavals and social disorder – especially when the cleavage between the settlers and the host is reinforced by antagonistic or rival religious identity. Needless to add, it is obvious that such attempts only breed mutual distrust, inter-ethnic hatred and internecine disorders. Besides the Plateau variants, many a case application of this model may be cited even in contemporary Nigeria. In history, could the Jews have been singled out and subjected to a severe form of collective slavery as a punishment for this sort of attempted insurrection from their Goshen settlement against their Egyptian hosts in Biblical history? What is clear also is that it is hardly possible to grow a nation under this type of circumstance. The state of affairs in the current Palestine, extraneously induced as it might have been, may also be seen as modern case in point.

All told, it is not possible to legislate indigeneship into being. As such, there should be no confusion over the concepts of citizenship and indigeneship. It may therefore be helpful to specify the facts of the matter in a summarized form as follows, that:-

-indigeneity is a status that can be acquired over time through holistic assimilation into one’s community of choice.

Indigeneity and territorial control is a fact of life even among animals, nay, all living things. As things stand in Nigeria today, the 1999 constitution guarantees the rights of citizenship to all Nigerians no matter where they migrate to and settle. But it fails to provide similar guarantees in respect of indigeneity rights for the clearly more vulnerable components of the polity - the autochthons!

It is here suggested, therefore, that as a matter of necessity, there should be a clear policy distinction between citizenship and indigeneship statuses by a deliberate policy enactment that guarantees the unprotected natural rights of indigenes as well as well-defined access to economic and political empowerment beyond the palliatives Americans conceded their Indian reserves, rather than the suggested reverse idea of granting and enforcing indigeneship on setters by legislation.

In other words, there is a need for an unambiguous constitutional provision in respect of indigeneity rights; such that any settler community in any place knows their limits vis-à-vis their native hosts . This is underscored even by the very fact that to migrate and settle outside one’s place of origin presupposes ability to outgrow one’s own local obstacles and an added ability, on the part of the migrant, to compete for national resources and opportunities on his own elsewhere.