“The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity – that it’s this or maybe that – you have just one large statement; It is this.”
-Chinua Achebe

“Culture is a true stronghold in Nigeria,” my colleague told me in response to my concerns that professionalism is lacking in many offices in Nigeria. I noticed that people’s cultural backgrounds and tribalism in general, sometimes seeps into the office space and wreaks havoc on poor, unsuspecting Professionalism. On occasion I see that a professional line is being crossed and the personal is violently breached but no one else seems to see it as a problem. I am often fascinated by how difficult it is for many to recognise the fundamental mutual exclusiveness between the personal and professional. I honestly believe that culture, traditions and worse, tribalism, have NO place in a working environment.

I’ve always thought of myself as liberal, a free thinker when it comes to ethnicity. I am proudly Rivers, mistakenly label me Igbo and watch the pride in my culture rear its vicious head. But that’s really the extent of it. I may joke about other cultures but at the core, I see one tribe; Nigeria.

However, since I began working at a predominantly Yoruba firm, I have had cause to examine my hardcore cultural liberalist stance. This is very curious to me particularly because I have always been surrounded by Yorubas and I honestly never saw the members of that tribe or indeed any other, as particularly different ; inferior or superior, more interesting or less. I mean, tribe is a no-issue, I just don’t reason in tribe and that is perhaps my mistake. If I was brought up to see people’s ethnic background as an indication of their personality, perhaps I may have been better prepared for Nigeria upon my return. I remember being incredibly fascinated in law school when people would ask me, sometimes even before asking my name, “What state are you from?” I often retorted with a genuine, “Does it matter?”

I imagined that in the working environment, there would be no real need to ever bring up culture or ethnic background. It is an office, after all; “except for encouraging divisiveness, what is the purpose of introducing varied cultures here?” I wondered. Apparently there is a purpose! Some people forget to leave ethnicity in the parking lot, no, no, they come into work with it! Seriously, I was rather surprised to discover how prevalent speaking in vernacular is even in offices. I reasonably assumed that as the only common language in a Nigerian office is likely to be English, everyone would speak only English. When I first started work, I would be quite disturbed when jokes were cracked in Yoruba or explanations I would like to understand were made in Yoruba to others, in my presence. Suffice to say, malicious or not, there is no greater way to ostracize a person than speak in a language they do not understand.

But I have gotten used to these things and understand that often, not always, the parties mean no harm…they are simply better able to articulate what they want to say in their language. I think. There are few times though, where the effect of culture at work is pervasive and dangerous. I think the first time I really realized that culture could exercise a negative effect, was when my background and home training were questioned. I did something that a senior perceived as wrong and to my surprise instead of telling me off based on my person and the action, he said in précis “What is your name again? Wendelyn, right? You see, it’s not your fault! A Yoruba girl would never do what you did!” And all I could think was “Someone PLEASE get this man a glass of chilled water…he must be tired from running around the world meeting all the Yoruba girls!” That said, I slowly found myself morphing into this perverse and dangerous way of thinking; categorising people based on tribe. I caught myself uttering frighteningly ignorant statements like, “…that’s such a Yoruba thing to do!” and I’d remind myself, “No Wendy, that’s a Tinufe thing to do, certainly not a thing the Yorubas in their entirety might do!”

I understand that at the core, tribalism stems essentially from pride in one’s culture, which is in itself excellent. The problem is such pride escalating and magnifying to become a superiority complex. No tribe is more superior to another. Why? Simply because there is no generic index for determining ranks in cultures. All cultures have good and bad bits, all cultures have produced excellent and depraved individuals. So what then is the standard for measurement used to determine that my culture is better than yours? Years of existence? Number of indigenes? Number of educated elite? There is no standard, so why can’t we just respect all cultures and think in nation instead of in tribe? We need that Marx-recommended Volksgeist* to stimulate the national consciousness.

In all fairness, I am well aware that we South-Southerners are perhaps the worst of the lot when it comes to the superiority complex tribes tend to harbor. My parents for instance, would much prefer to support “our own” over any other tribe to get a position, a contract, an education, money…indeed, any opportunity. However, I must point out a caveat. Their support only goes as far as the individual’s capacity can take it. Meaning that, in the event that there are two persons jostling for an opportunity, a man from the South-South (spanning a wide collection of multifarious tribes including Ikwerre, Kalabari, Ogoni, Ijaw, Okrika and so on), they would only support the choice of a kinsman in the event that both parties equally merit the position. What tips the scale as it were is the individual’s indigenousness, but only as a last resort not as the initial determinant.

So, from them I learn to see merit first and tribe after, if ever. Even this tribalism of my parents is a recent thing resulting from the Niger-Delta entering the limelight for negativity in the last few years; militancy, presidency, e.t.c. I think that that spurred them to a more ethnic consciousness. Can’t be sure. Our cultural identity as anything other than Nigerians from Rivers state certainly had no bearing when we were growing up. It was almost taken for granted in the way you don’t really understand your identity as separate or different from the larger whole until you are an alien. You know how you don’t really understand that you’re black until you go abroad? Yeah, that. Until you leave Nigeria, you are Wendy X or Ade Y…then you travel abroad and you’re ‘adjectivised’; the black girl Wendy X, Wendy X she’s African, Wendy X the Nigerian girl.

I guess tribalism is endemic in our country. At the larger political sphere, the same issue is played out with men and women dividing themselves along ethnic lines. Worst of all is that they claim to act on behalf of their clans yet only truly represent their personal greed and ravenous ambition in their consistent struggle for the national pastry. We need a collective spirit of the age, Volksgeist, to arise in this nation so that we can truly understand that the things that separate us are nothing compared to the things we share, those things that unite us. This brings to mind actually, one of my favourite pieces of Shakespearean writing, Shylock’s infamous speech in the Merchant of Venice.

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in therest, we will resemble you in that.”

-Shylock (The Merchant Of Venice Act 3, scene 1, 58–68)

*Volksgeist is a German loanword (literally meaning “spirit of the people” or “National character”) for a unique “spirit” possessed collectively by each people or nation. The idea has its origins in the Romantic era and was proposed by Johann Gottfried Herder as a way of encouraging German-speaking peoples to forge a national and cultural identity.

(Read more here: http://www.jahsonic.com/Volksgeist.html and get a basic definition from Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksgeist ).