More on the census

From all reports, it looks like there has been a mass exodus from Lagos in the past week as Igbos and Hausas return to their State of Origin. The population figures for Lagos will likely be a considerable underestimate of reality. The obvious question is why people feel they have to leave to their State of Origin? It seems to me there are three reasons why this has happened:

1. The State of Origin law (which originated in the 1970's), which defines one's indigeneity in terms of patriarchal provenance. One may never have lived in Anambra or Kano States, however, because one's father was 'from' there, one's identity is deemed to be Eastern or Northern. Of course, one's father may in fact be in the same unreal relationship to origin as oneself (he may never have lived in Anambra/Kano/etc, but his father did). In other words, the State of Origin law acts as a barrier against cosmopolitanism (and a robust concept of Nigerian citizenship). It is surprising to an outsider how much Nigerians now identify with their imagined or real homeland (but not surprising given the weight of legal and bureaucratic apparatus that enforces it).

2. Obvious political reasons: people want their State/village to have higher figures than the reality, in the hope that this will increase funds appropriated to their local government area (or perhaps increase the number of LGA's stated in the next iteration of the constitution).

3. However, the deepest reason why there has been the exodus is that there is little sense of an urban or cosmopolitan identiy attached to living in a town or city in Nigeria. People inhabit Nigerian cities as if they were a large collection of villages. You could say the same phenomenon happens anywhere in the world - London can be seen as such for instance. People tend to know only their neighbours and those who work in local shops and people who frequent local amenities - all of which helps to form a sense of the 'locale'. The difference is that the village mentality in Nigeria is not simply related to making a village out of one's immediate habitat (that is perhaps the universal phenomena). Rather, the village mentality relates one's being-in-a-place to an identity that is elsewhere. Someone from say Ohafia lives in Lagos as an Ohafian, and only secondarily as a Lagosian. The State of Origin law perpetuates this linkage; however it is a legal framework that articulates a preceding structuration of identity. Unlike the mass exodus to the cities in 19th century Europe, which saw the linkages between one's rural origin and one's newfound urban location being severed (leading to urban alienation, anomie but also just as importantly to new political movements and new forms of politics), this has not happened in Nigeria. Perhaps the break with the past happened in a much sharper fashion in the West because of the rise of the Factory and rapid industrialisation. Urban useage patterns were disrupted and disciplined by the factory clock; whereas in Nigeria, industrialisation on any appreciable scale has yet to begin.