No Nigerian Is a Second-Class Citizen’ — Retired Jurist Liman Challenges Ombugadu

 

Dr Frank Peter Ombugadu,

With due respect, your lengthy “Indigenous Voices, Silenced” piece is not a defence of indigeneity. It is a textbook case of mischaracterisation, selective historical amnesia, and the very discrimination you claim to reject.

You accuse others of gaslighting and hate speech while twisting arguments that demand fairness, constitutional rights, and an end to the toxic “landlord vs intruder” rhetoric that has scarred Nasarawa North and the entire Middle Belt for decades.

Let me be crystal clear, as my original response to Zarmo Paul Auta’s post was crystal clear: no one is denying the rich cultural heritage, history, or legitimate pride of the Eggon, Mada, Kantana, Arum, Buh, Rindre and other Plateau peoples. 

Their contributions, resilience, and deep roots in the land are undeniable. What was, and remains,  rejected is the weaponisation of that heritage to brand long-settled, intermarried, born-and-bred Nigerians as “invaders, settlers, grabbers, and impersonators” unfit to represent Nasarawa North simply because their paternal surname does not fit a narrow ethnic script.

You repeatedly claim that questioning the rigid indigene-settler dichotomy equals “erasing Indigenous identities,” “forcing assimilation into a dominant culture,” or “colonialism.” 

This is a gross distortion. My post never called for anyone to abandon their language, culture, or history. It calls out the dangerous fiction that only certain paternal bloodlines qualify as “sons of the soil”. 

In contrast, others, many with maternal mitochondrial DNA tracing directly to the same communities, centuries of intermarriage, birth in Gudi or Akwanga, and lifelong contribution, must forever remain second-class “settlers.”

You yourself admit “intermarriages and cultural exchange are a natural part of our history.” Exactly. 

That very reality demolishes any claim of ethnic purity or first-comer exclusivity. Yet you still demand that only “Vulon, Andakpo, Wuna” need apply while sneering at “Chinedu from Anambra, Olayemi from Oyo, or Abdullahi from Yobe.” This is not recognition of identity — it is blood-purity gatekeeping dressed up as justice.

You assert that the Eggon, Mada and other Plateau peoples have a history “predating the 1804 jihad of Usman dan Fodio” as though this makes them eternal first-comers with divine title deeds. Oral traditions, accepted across scholarly and community sources, are unequivocal: the Eggon trace their origins to Ngazargamu in present-day Borno State, migrating as part of the Kwararafa confederacy, crossing the Benue, and eventually settling the Eggon hills. 

The Mada and related groups share similar migratory roots within the broader central Nigerian complex. No group in Nasarawa North “sprang fully formed from the soil.” 

The land has always been a crossroads. Pretending otherwise is not history; it is political mythology designed to exclude.

You decry “erasure” while erasing the very migratory reality of the groups you champion. That is the real gaslighting.

Your piece repeatedly frames the indigene-settler divide as benign “recognition” while painting critics as anti-indigenous or pro-assimilation. 

The truth is simpler and more painful: in practice, this dichotomy has turned fellow Nigerians who were born here, schooled here, married here, buried parents here, and contributed here into perpetual outsiders. It violates the spirit (and often the letter) of Sections 41 and 42 of the 1999 Constitution, freedom of movement, residence, and non-discrimination.

You ask why “only one religion” occupies the governorship and key positions. Governor Abdullahi Sule is from Gudi in Akwanga LGA,  right in Nasarawa North, and has deep local roots. If the complaint is about broader representation, the solution is not to entrench ethnic or religious fiefdoms but to demand competence, broad-based support, and inclusive politics. 

Weaponising “indigeneity” to exclude qualified citizens does not correct imbalances; it deepens them and risks the very ethno-religious violence Nasarawa has sadly witnessed before.

You claim your demand is “never to shift settlers off” but merely for “voices to be heard.” Yet the language you defend,  “landlords,” “jealous protection against intruders and impersonators,” “Chinedu from Anambra”,  does exactly the opposite. It creates second-class citizens in their own country. That is discrimination, plain and simple.

Nasarawa North’s strength has never been imaginary ethnic homelands or paternal blood tests for office. It lies in the “messy, interconnected history of migration and mixing” you dismiss. 

The brightest minds you rightly celebrate emerged from that mixing, not from ethnic silos. The Constitution does not recognise “settlers” as lesser; it recognises every Nigerian citizen’s right to aspire, contest, and serve where they qualify.

Dr Ombugadu, acknowledges that indigeneity is not the same as rejecting it. But turning it into a tool for exclusion, while accusing critics of hate speech and colonialism, is the real provocation. 

Justice A.M. Liman’s piece (which you rebut) simply restated what history and the Constitution already show: the imported indigene-settler dichotomy breeds division, not justice.

Let us have the mature conversation you claim to want. Pride in heritage? Yes. Pride that excuses discrimination against integrated fellow citizens? No. Nasarawa North is big enough for all her children, not just those whose surnames pass an ancestral gatekeeper’s test.

The land knows its true children by their sweat, their service, their maternal and paternal threads, and their commitment,  not by the narrow, exclusionary yardstick you defend.

We can disagree without being disagreeable. But we cannot build a just society on selective history and second-class citizenship.

The floor is open for genuine dialogue,  not gaslighting.

In the spirit of truth, fairness, and one indivisible Nigeria