The Kalu-Uzodinma ‘Indigenisation Bill’ is not a path to unity, but a blueprint for Nigeria’s disintegration.
By Dr. Adedapo Adebajo
There are ghosts that haunt the Nigerian state. They are not spectres of myth or folklore, but the tangible, blood-soaked spectres of our own history. They whisper in the clamour of market disputes in Jos, they scream in the silence of abandoned homesteads in the Sahel, and they weep in the memory of the Asaba massacre. They are the ghosts of unresolved questions, of forced unions, of identities threatened and territories contested. To be a student of Nigerian history is to be a student of ghosts, and to learn, above all, that some doors are best left unopened, not because of what might come in, but because of what has never truly been laid to rest within.
It is with this chilling sense of historical déjà vu that one must view the proposed “Bill for an Act to alter the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 to redefine the concept of indigeneship.” Championed by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, and reportedly enjoying the backing of Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma, the bill presents itself as a vehicle for national unity. It proposes a deceptively simple idea: that any Nigerian who has resided in a community for a certain period can, by a simple legislative alchemy, be transformed into an ‘indigene’ of that place, with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto.
On the surface, in the sterile vacuum of a constitutional law lecture hall, this might sound like a progressive leap towards a detribalised nation. It speaks the language of modern statehood, of civic identity triumphing over ethnic affiliation. But Nigeria is not a sterile lecture hall. It is a vibrant, volatile, and deeply complex tapestry of ancient nations, kingdoms, and communities, each with a profound, almost spiritual, connection to their ancestral lands. To apply this bill to the Nigerian reality is not to pour a healing balm on our wounds; it is to pour petrol on a thousand smouldering fires.
Let us be brutally direct. This proposed legislation is one of the most dangerous, historically illiterate, and cynically provocative ideas to emerge from the National Assembly in recent memory. It is not a bill for unity; it is a charter for internal colonialism. It is not a path to peace; it is a declaration of demographic war. It isan act of state-sanctioned invasion, cloaked in the sanctimonious robes of progressivism. And coming from proponents who hail from the South-East, it is an act of hypocrisy so staggering it borders on the surreal.
The Echoes in the Amnesiac’s Hall
To understand the bill’s catastrophic potential, one must first exhume the ghosts our leaders seem so determined to ignore. Nigeria was not born of consensus. It was a 1914 business merger, a colonial contraption that welded disparate, often rival, peoples together for administrative convenience and economic exploitation. The British did not create a unified nation; they created a pressure cooker and screwed the lid on tight.
From that moment, the central, defining tension of the Nigerian experiment has been the conflict between ethnic identity and national identity, a conflict played out most fiercely over the control of land and resources. The pre-independence census crises were not about mere numbers; they were about establishing the demographic dominance required to control the political destiny and resources of the nation. The coups of 1966 and the subsequent pogroms that targeted the Igbo people in the North were not random acts of violence; they were the terrifying expression of a belief that a particular group had overstepped its bounds and was encroaching on the political and economic territory of another.
This historical powder keg exploded in the Nigerian Civil War. The war was many things, but at its heart, it was a brutal, existential conflict over the right to self-determination and the security of a people within a state that could no longer protect them. When the war ended, the ghosts did not vanish; they simply mutated. The cry of “abandoned properties” became a shorthand for the systemic dispossession of the vanquished. Igbo families returned to cities like Port Harcourt to find their homes and businesses seized, declared forfeit, and handed over to others under the guise of state policy. It was a searing lesson in the fragility of residency and the brutal primacy of indigeneship.
In the decades since, this tension has remained the nation’s bleeding ulcer. It has fuelled the unending carnage between farmers and herders across the Middle Belt, a conflict that is fundamentally about land, water, and the right to settlement. It was the driver of the bloody Ife-Modakeke wars, the Zangon-Kataf crisis, and the recurring political violence in cosmopolitan centres like Lagos and Kano, where so-called “settler” populations are perpetually reminded of their secondary status, especially during election cycles.
Every single one of these conflicts is rooted in the same primordial fear: the fear of displacement, of being culturally overwhelmed, economically marginalised, and politically neutered in one’s own ancestral homeland. This is the historical reality. It is a history written in blood, tears, and distrust. To introduce a bill that proposes to legislate this very fear into a national principle is an act of profound political malpractice. It ignores the fact that in Nigeria, land is not just an economic asset. It is an ancestral trust, a cultural signifier, a spiritual anchor, and the physical manifestation of a people’s history and identity.
The Anatomy of a Land Grab
Let us strip away the bill’s pretty language and examine its mechanics. It proposes to grant indigeneship—and with it, the right to vote, to be voted for, to own land without restriction, and potentially, to ascend to traditional leadership roles—to individuals based on residency. This is not integration; it is a mechanism for demographic replacement.
Imagine its application in Lagos. For decades, the city’s indigenous Yoruba population has grappled with the reality of being a demographic minority in their own state capital. This tension is managed, however imperfectly, by the constitutional recognition of their unique status as the original owners of the land. Traditional institutions, land ownership customs, and certain political privileges act as a bulwark against complete marginalisation.
Now, enact the Kalu-Uzodinma bill. Suddenly, millions of residents from across Nigeria, after a prescribed period, could declare themselves indigenes of Lagos. They could, by sheer weight of numbers, begin to vote in their own candidates for local government chairmanships in Ikeja or Ikorodu. They could challenge the authority of the Oba and the white-cap chiefs. They could lay claim to ancestral family lands in Isale Eko, citing their new constitutional rights. The ensuing chaos would make the current political tensions look like a garden party. It would ignite a firestorm of ethnic nationalism that would consume the city’s famed commercial dynamism.
Apply the same logic to the oil-rich Niger Delta. For decades, the peoples of the Delta have fought—often violently—for control over resources extracted from their soil, arguing that as the indigenes who suffer the environmental consequences, they deserve primary benefit. This bill would hand a constitutional weapon to settler populations, potentially backed by federal might or powerful business interests, to lay claim to that same land and its resources, not by conquest, but by the stroke of a pen. It would invalidate the entire philosophical basis of the Niger Delta struggle.
Consider Kano, where the relationship between the Hausa host community and the large, economically powerful Igbo settler community has always been a delicate dance, frequently punctuated by violence. The concept of the Sabon Gari (strangers’ quarter) was a practical, if imperfect, solution to manage these cultural distances. The bill would erase these distinctions, creating a direct contest for political and economic control of the ancient city. This is why the bill is inherently expansionist. It provides a legal framework for groups with greater numbers, economic power, or a cultural disposition towards migration to permanently alter the demographic and political landscape of other communities. It is an invasion by legislation, a conquest without guns. It turns every community in Nigeria into a frontier, every neighbour into a potential usurper, and every election into an existential battle for survival.
Perhaps the most bewildering aspect of this legislative monstrosity is its parentage. That Benjamin Kalu, a representative from Bende in Abia State, and Hope Uzodinma, the governor of Imo State, would champion this bill is an act of historical amnesia so profound it constitutes a betrayal of their own people’s history. The just demand of the Igbo has always been for a robust, federally enforced protection of civic rights for all Nigerians, everywhere. It has been a demand for a country where a man from Abia can run his business in Sokoto with the full protection of the law, just as a woman from Sokoto can trade in Onitsha in peace. This is a demand for a strengthened, detribalised federal compact.
The Kalu-Uzodinma bill does the opposite. Instead of strengthening the civic rights of a person from Abia living in Sokoto, it offers him the poisoned chalice of trying to become a Sokoto indigene. It doesn’t reinforce his right to be a secure and respected guest; it encourages him to attempt a hostile takeover of his host’s house. It swaps the noble fight for universal citizenship rights for a grubby, chaotic scramble for contested indigeneship.
Why would they do this? Why would leaders from a region that has everything to lose from the violent unravelling of the indigeneity question champion a bill that lights the fuse? One cannot peer into their hearts, but one can analyse the political landscape. Is it a naïve, utopian dream of unity? Unlikely. Is it a cynical attempt to trade away the long-term security of their own migratory people in exchange for a short-term political alliance? Is it a gambit to appear more “nationalist” than their peers, to curry favour at the centre in the endless chess game of presidential politics?
Whatever the motive, the hypocrisy is searing. They are taking the legitimate grievance of their people and twisting it into a national suicide pact. They seek to solve the problem of Igbo properties being declared “abandoned” in Port Harcourt by creating a framework where Yoruba ancestral lands in Eko could one day be declared “common property.” It is a solution so perverse, so counter-intuitive, it defies all rational political analysis. It is akin to a man who was once robbed arguing that the solution to crime is to abolish all doors and locks.
The Road to Ruin
If, by some catastrophic lapse in judgment, this bill were to pass, the consequences would be swift and devastating. The economy, already fragile, would be shattered. Who would make long-term investments in land or infrastructure in a community where a demographic shift in five years could lead to the expropriation of their assets? The bill would create a legal and constitutional quagmire, choking the courts with endless litigation over land ownership, Chief-taincy titles, and political rights. It would kill the very mobility and economic integration it claims to promote, as communities would become fiercely hostile and paranoid towards new arrivals, seeing them not as neighbours or customers, but as political fifth columnists. Socially, it would atomise the country. It would destroy the basis of inter-communal trust, replacing it with a zero-sum competition for land and power. Traditional institutions, which have acted as a crucial anchor of stability and social cohesion, would be delegitimised and thrown into chaos. We must call this bill what it is: a constitutional crisis waiting to happen. It is a cynical and dangerous piece of political theatre, performed by actors who have either forgotten their history or hold it in contempt.
The solution to Nigeria’s ethnic tensions is not to erase the identities of its founding peoples. It is not to pretend that ancestral lands do not matter. The solution lies in the difficult, unglamorous work of true federalism. It lies in guaranteeing the security and property of every Nigerian in every part of the country. It lies in a resource allocation formula that is just and equitable. It lies in a system of governance that allows for local autonomy, so that the people of Ihiala and the people of Gwoza can both feel secure in their identity and in control of their destiny, while remaining part of a larger, functional whole.
The National Assembly must summon its collective conscience and consign this bill to the dustbin of history where it belongs. Elder statesmen, traditional rulers, civil society, and every Nigerian who has read a history book must speak up with one voice. We cannot allow the ghosts of our past to be reawakened by the folly of the present. This bill is not a bridge to the future; it is a dynamite stick planted at the cracking foundations of our republic. We must not allow Messrs. Kalu and Uzodinma to light the fuse.
