Executive Secretary of the Centre for Peacebuilding and Socio-Economic Resources Development, Ayokunle Fagbemi, has warned that attempts to scrap indigeneity and elevate residency as a basis for citizenship risk undermining Nigeria’s historical foundations and obstructing genuine national integration.
Speaking in an interview with ARISE News on Tuesday, Fagbemi said: “Anyone who is attempting to discourage us from keeping the indigeneity classes the way they currently are is not ready to help us achieve what is called integrated national development.”
Fagbemi stressed that identity remains central to national cohesion.
“A citizen has rights, duties and obligations but you as a citizen must have a root. You must have a base. You must have evolved from somewhere,”he said.
According to him, the push by some groups to erase indigeneity is misguided and disconnected from Nigeria’s lived realities.
“For you to achieve any of the sustainable development goals, you need to understand that human relationships are key. These human relationships demand that I accept I have an identity, you have your own identity, and I must mutually respect you as I engage and interact with you,”he argued.
He added that “your rights, duties and obligations end where mine begin,”noting that any discussion of citizenship and residency rights must be “citizens-led and rooted in the historicity of that geopolitical space.”
Fagbemi maintained that Nigeria cannot resolve its citizenship challenges without confronting the instruments of the 1914 Amalgamation.
“Everything about the 1914 proclamation of amalgamation must be abolished. We must have legal instruments passed by the National Assembly indicating that,”he declared.
He explained that the various treaties and pacts entered into separately by the British colonial government with the Benin Kingdom, Kanem-Bornu Empire, Ife, Ibadan, Ekiti, Egba and others were never repealed, leaving Nigeria with unresolved identity fissures.
“By the time we were being fused together in 1914, none of those instruments had been abrogated. None have been repealed till date, and that is why you keep having these incursions that distort us and will not allow us to evolve,” he said.
Drawing from personal experience, Fagbemi noted that inter-ethnic marriages and decades of internal migration are already reshaping Nigerian identity — a reality, he said, that must be acknowledged without erasing origins.
“Some of us are products of third-generation cross-cultural marriages. My Yoruba-ness and that of my children is already being lost. I married an Igbo woman for 35 years; my father, an Ekiti man, married an Ibadan woman, and I have lived in Abuja for 37 years,”he said.
Responding to concerns that indigeneity has denied Nigerians opportunities — including a recent case where applicants were rejected by a northern state for not being indigenous — Fagbemi said the focus should shift to competence.
“It’s no longer about that. What we need to start talking about is merit and inclusion regardless of where you come from. You are first and foremost a Nigerian,” he said.
However, he cautioned against reforms that could inadvertently open the door to foreign incursions.
“People should not, because of wanting to spite ourselves for intra-Nigerian migrations, open a window that will allow for extra-Nigerian migrants to come and distort us. That is what we are currently experiencing since 2009 with security breaches,”he warned.
As the interview wrapped up, Fagbemi emphasised that Nigeria’s complex identities should be seen as an asset rather than a burden.
“Those are the things that ideally we should be celebrating,”he said.
He reaffirmed that resolving citizenship questions must begin with confronting Nigeria’s unresolved legal and historical roots, not by erasing indigeneity.
Boluwatife Enome
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