When last year the Lagos State Government put some people considered destitute in a bus and dumped them somewhere at Onitsha (they sure love that town) in Anambra State, I found the action difficult to understand. But before intervening on the issue, I decided it was better to speak with those behind the policy to hear their justification for such internal displacement of Nigerians. After getting the contact of the Special Adviser to the Governor who superintends the programme, I sent him a mail to which he replied. However, on the same day, I got a call from the Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola, who took almost 30 minutes to explain the policy to me. Notwithstanding my misgivings about the whole idea, it was not an argument I could possibly win against a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.

As it would happen, in the days following my discussion with the Governor, I learnt more about the programme which has already created a social problem in some Igbomina towns in my own state of Kwara with the junkies that the Lagos State has been dumping there. I am also aware about other states within the South West and the North who have equally been receiving these unwanted guests. So while I consider the action of the Lagos State government to be morally indefensible, I fail to understand the basis for the hysteria that it is “another Yoruba agenda targeted against Igbo people”.

The way the whole issue is being presented and slanted in the media, you would think the Yoruba and Igbo people are at war and it is not helped by the fact that some political opportunists are capitalising on it to muddle the waters. The bigger tragedy is that from what is now coming out, this policy is being implemented not only by Lagos but by other states in the southern parts of the country and it is ethnic-blind since the authorities of some South-East states have also been sending “home” fellow Igbo. Whichever way one looks at it, this is an issue that poses great danger to citizenship in our country and we have to deal with it as such whenever the ethnic entrepreneurs are done with their political campaigns.

It is rather unfortunate that many otherwise respected people would always see ethnicity in every problem and that is why I hesitate to comment on this issue until the madness that is going on subsides. But I cannot agree more with Mr. Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim who wrote on Monday: “Our federation is threatened by this development because if every state begins to deport non-‘indigenes’ on one pretext or the other, the federation will unravel faster than anybody can say Jack!”

For those who can see clearly, what is going on today across the country is a more sinister implementation of the Settler/Indigene policy that is specifically targeted at the poor, the mentally ill, the homeless, the drug addicts and the unemployed of our society. In some cynical attempts at urban renewal, the political authorities in a few states are of the opinion that the Eldorado they want to create have no place for the poor. Even when we concede that we have a problem with urban migration because our rural areas have been abandoned by the government at practically all levels, there must be a better way for dealing with such social problems than taking people from the streets and putting them in a bus to dump under some bridges at an ungodly hour.

The fact that is being ignored by the states that are implementing this policy is that it is the responsibility of a compassionate society to protect (by providing safety nets for) the weak and the vulnerable and not add to their woes. But, as I stated earlier, this is a serious issue we will have to deal with another day.

•This piece by Adeniyi (shown in photo) originally appeared in his ThisDay column “The Verdict”, which was unavoidably absent yesterday as ThisDay was did not publish yesterday due to some challenges. Adeniyi can be reached via olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com

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