[katampe]

The idea that blacks, American, should be ceded some slack to allow them catch up with the rest of the races in America, or specifically the white race, was based on the notion of past injustices to the blacks. Each member of the white race, even when not in agreement with the historical tragedies visited on the black race by its community, or a few select criminals amongst them, passed a majority vote to allow blacks some room to catch up using policies such as affirmative action.

It is not for nothing that you have such phrases as white guilt, and unusual accommodation of black interests like representative black businesses and magazines against unacceptable white representative businesses.Like the white have majority in America, so also the northerners have majority in Nigeria (even when it is contestable).Democracy is a game of numbers, Nigeria is no exception and the north has come to power based on its supposed numbers.If being a member of the white race made each member culpable because benefits accrued to members in large measures, why not in Nigeria. At least we know benefits are not only material, they are equally psychological.

Yet, historical texts have it that the courage of a few within the white race, through moral conviction and the search for ideal decided to end the historical tragedies visited on the black man. So, in a sense, it was an intra -racial decision to end the centuries of injustice to the black man.

If we examine your essay based on this perspective, your appeal to individual culpability does not wash because you derive your definition and your humanity from the values and attitudes of your ethnic group and you can't claim its benefits and reject its detriments.I think it is being clever by half.If within your ethnicity, you have world billionaires who made rich,when they are interpreted within the Nigerian space, they are regarded as Hausa-Fulani world billionaire, so also if you have within your ethnicity past rulers of the country, they are regarded as Hausa-Fulani head of states. So there must be obvious psychological benefits, something akin to goodwill that cannot be classified.

For example, and until recently an African American kid could not aspire or dream to be president of America.In that sense, he made life choices early in life that had a far reaching impact on his career and his life outcome. In the same sense, he was psychologically sired by environment and reality to lower his expectations.Not sure the white kid had to go through a torturing psychological journey to make good.They aspired to be presidents while blacks aspired to be rap artists. In Nigeria, we know southerners can hardly aspire to be presidents in their own country.It is our reality.

Yes, someone comes along and bucks the trend. Yet, it never came with ease. It came with damaged psyches and countless body bags.When street urchins are killing southerners in the north, it was not a few criminal elements carrying out the killings, it is a dominant but hardly spoken bias and hate that emanates from a culture, something that acquired its own social institution of hate. Not only that foreigners are discriminated against and kept on the fringes of the northern towns and cities, and resisted from mixing/living amongst northern natives. Do we explain this away too to a few criminal elements?

So, Abubakar while you wrote a piece that might sound appealing, it makes for superficial treatment for discerning observers. You must confront the negative attributes within your culture that has made other Nigerians hateful of products from the north. If you must come to equity then you must come with cleans , chikena!

If you can write a persuasive piece as this, then you owe your southern brothers the idea that charity begins at home. You are more positioned within your culture to start making change than a frustrated outsider that has very little understanding of the nuances of your culture. Call it ethnic introspection, fair is game!