“Can you tell a man’s tribe by the way he farts?
Since the first and most famous carpet-crossing of 1951 which saw many South-West members of NCNC,the party with overall majority in the Regional House of Assembly, decamping to Action Group in response to a lobby spearheaded by Chief Obafemi Awolowo to stop Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe from becoming the Premier of Western Region, Nigerian Politics has been played along ethnic/religious lines with politicians exploiting these differences to garner political support before and after elections.
The ‘dangerous’ precedent, according to Olaolu Opadere and Julius Agbana, both lecturers at the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University,Ile-Ife, set the tone for the development of Nigerian politics built around ethnic and regional rivalry and the crisis and instability that followed after.
However, observers of the polity agree that never has been the country been so divided along these ethnic/religious faultlines as under the current dispensation of President Mohammed Buhari with tension rising to boiling point.
They point at cacophony of strident calls by various interest groups representing various ethnic groups or regions for either secession or restructuring as symptomic of the divisiveness that has trailed the administration since its early days in 2015.
On daily basis, almost every incident or news item of national relevance, including sports and entertainment which hitherto were the only unifying factors, are received and interpreted by Nigerians across board from ethnic or religious prism, fueling suspicion, mistrust and divisiveness amongst Nigerians including erstwhile friends and business associates.
Worried that ethnic mistrust, hate speeches and political tension have made the country’s rich diversity of over 250 ethnic nationalities its Achilles’ heel, the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria(AAAN), the umbrella body of advertising practitioners in Nigeria, has waded in with an advocacy campaign that aimed at promoting Nigeria’s unity.
The advocacy campaign which has been deployed on various platforms; television, radio and print and online since October 1, 2017 , plays on the shared humanity of all peoples irrespective of ethnic group, tribe or race.
Some of the messages that run through the campaign include: “Can you tell a person’s tribe by looking at the palm of his hands? “Can you tell a person’s tribe by the way he farts?” Can you tell the tribe of a footballer by the way he plays” Or from the way he coughs, sneezes or laughs. These human functions that speak to the shared commonality of humanity across races, tribes,and ethnic groups are the atrributes that the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria(AAAN) seeks to emphasise in the new campaign.
Tagged, #Strongertogether,the campaign, according to the president of the association, Kayode Oluwasona,is to stress that national development could only be achieved through unity.
“We are aware of the discord and suspicion along ethnic and religious lines. We believe a transformed political and economic system in Nigeria requires the full participation and commitment of citizens that put the principles of trust, relationship-building, love for one another and unity, first and above everything else.
“This campaign reinforces and writes a new philosophy in the hearts of Nigerians that in spite of our differences, we are truly better together and there is no limit to what we can achieve when we lay aside our differences and reach out to one another.”
The Publicity Secretary of the association, Steve Babaeko, who revealed that the campaign is a product of synergy of different advertising agencies within the association, believed the campaign would help the organisation engage Nigerians to begin to identify those things that unite Nigerians across cultures and ethnic groups.
In recent times, Nigeria has been in the throes of socio-political tension with strident calls by various various ethnic groups or regions calling for either restructuring or secession.
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