Your grandfather’s grave, your visa

Chief Olusegun Osoba’s father was buried three times. First in Osogbo, where he died. Then he was exhumed and reburied in the family compound at Ago Oba, Abeokuta, when questions started flying about his political legitimacy and whether he was a ‘true indigene.’

And finally, in 2012, his remains were moved again – this time to Osoba’s private residence in Ibara GRA – because a road expansion project under Governor Ibikunle Amosun threatened the resting place.

Think about that for a second. A corpse became a passport. A grave became a ballot paper. And this isn’t just an Osoba story. It’s the Nigerian story.

In our neck of the woods, the dead practically run for office. Sometimes, the most important document in a politician’s portfolio isn’t a birth certificate, a university degree, or even a voter’s card. It’s the exact GPS coordinates of their grandfather’s grave.

In our democracy, legitimacy has nothing to do with competence, what you’ve built, or how hard you’ve worked. It’s about ancestry. It’s about whose bones lie under the soil where you’re contesting.

Picture election day in 2023. Thugs set up roadblocks in Oshodi and other parts of Lagos, demanding that people “prove” they were Yoruba before stepping into a polling booth.

Imagine a man who pays his taxes on the dot in Bolade, whose kids were born at the Lagos Island Maternity Hospital, waking up to find out he is suddenly a foreigner in his own city.

EU and local election monitors didn’t just suspect ethnic profiling; they documented it. This is what state-level citizenship does to you: it turns your friendly neighbour into an illegal alien the moment a ballot box appears.

Yet, if you read our actual Constitution, it’s crystal clear. Section 25 defines citizenship by birth. Section 41 guarantees every Nigerian the right to move freely and live anywhere in the country. Section 42 strictly prohibits discrimination based on community, ethnic group, or place of origin.

So where did this word we worship – indigene – come from? The Constitution certainly didn’t invent it. We did.

With a simple certificate, we managed to slice one country into 36 different homelands – or, more accurately, 774 local homelands for over 450 ethnic groups. On paper, you’re a proud Nigerian. Politically? If your grandfather isn’t buried in the backyard, you’re a tenant.

Ironically, this obsession with bloodlines belongs in traditional monarchies, not modern democracies. When you’re choosing a king, lineage matters. People will rightfully ask, “Who born you?” But even traditional institutions have mellowed out over time.

Take the Oba of Lagos – custodian of vast Awori land – whose own royal roots trace all the way back to Benin.

In Ibadan, the Ali Iwo people were once viewed as settlers from Iwo, Osun State, and the Odugade clan tied to Ijebu, Ogun State. But Ibadan outgrew those petty divisions because of its cosmopolitan spirit.

Traditional rulers have figured out how to accommodate history and migration. So why does politics – supposedly the more “enlightened” arena – cling to ancestry like a bad habit or undying phoenix?

Democracy should be about what you can do, not who your great-grandfather was. Instead, we’ve turned elections into coronations, and an indigene certificate has become the crown jewel.

No nation can build a stable future on a never-ending ancestral beauty contest.

Look at Ireti Kingibe’s victory in the 2023 Senate race for the Federal Capital Territory. Born in Kano in 1954, her background is a textbook definition of a plural Nigeria: her father, Abdulkadir Lanval, had Fulani and Egba Yoruba roots, her mother was connected to Asaba and Bonny, and her sister Ajoke was married to former Head of State General Murtala Muhammed. To top it all off, Ireti is married to Baba Gana Kingibe, a Kanuri statesman.

In a system obsessed with state-of-origin paperwork, her family tree is an invitation to an endless interrogation. Is she Egba enough for Abeokuta? Fulani enough for Kano? Kanuri enough for Borno? Gbagyi enough for Abuja?

Yet, in 2023, the people of the FCT didn’t care. They looked past the noise and elected her senator on the Labour Party platform, defeating Philip Aduda – a long-serving incumbent often called the “landlord” of the Senate. Why? Because Ireti had lived there, built a career as a civil engineer and businesswoman, and actually contributed to the city’s daily life, living and livelihood.

Her win proves the obvious truth: democracy thrives on residency and contribution, not on where your grandfather’s bones are interred. It’s about the confidence of the voters, not a genealogy chart.

If you want to see the dangerous lie of “blood and soil” in action, just look at Jos. Founded in the early 1900s as a tin-mining camp, it was built by strangers meeting in one place.

The Berom, Anaguta, and Afizere claim to be the original sons of the soil. The Hausa-Fulani community points out that they built the city when tin was king. Both sides have a point; both sides also miss the point. But political entrepreneurs needed a fight.

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When Ibrahim Babangida created Jos North in 1991, he inadvertently opened Pandora’s box. Who owns Jos North? Who is an indigene? Who is a settler? That twin question has cost thousands of lives.

Travel down south to the ancient hills of Ife. Same language, same Orisa, same Yoruba people. Yet Ife and Modakeke have been shedding blood over land disputes for generations.

For over a century, we couldn’t even agree on whether a Yoruba man could be a “settler” in Yorubaland.

Come to Ogun State – cosmopolitan on the surface, but deeply captive to primordial politics. Questions about who “owns” the land, where your grandfather was buried, and who brought your family to town still dictate who wins governorship and legislative seats.

It’s everywhere. In Kano, Igbo traders and Lebanese-descended families in Sabon Gari are still called bako (strangers). In Port Harcourt, the Ikwerre and Okrika fight over who truly belongs. In Enugu, Tiv settlers are routinely denied land titles.

The script is the same nationwide: you can live, work, and pay your taxes somewhere for decades, but God forbid you run for office unless your ancestors’ graves are within the vicinity.

Between 1999 and 2015, observer groups linked over 10,000 deaths to indigene-settler clashes across Nigeria. Plateau alone lost thousands in recurrent crises.

In Benue, Tiv-Jukun clashes displaced hundreds of thousands more, long before Boko Haram arrived in Nigeria.

Every single one of these conflicts had the exact same trigger: Who belongs, and who doesn’t?

To be fair, someone actually tried to break the chain. Nasir el-Rufai – love him or loathe him – announced on Twitter in April 2019: “In Kaduna State, the indigene/settler dichotomy has been abolished. Every person resident in Kaduna State will be accorded all rights as citizens and indigenes…”

Live there, pay taxes there, send your kids to school there – you are Kaduna. But the initiative ultimately stalled because the State House of Assembly refused to give it legal teeth.

Why does this nonsense survive? Because it’s profitable. It lets politicians play ethnic champions rather than public servants. It keeps politics localised and tribal, and keeps citizens divided.

This has bred a bizarre national psychosis. Nigerian politicians are so obsessed with this mindset that even in death, their bodies must be flown home so their children can use their graves as political visas. Every weekend, we’re flying corpses across state lines, wrapped in political theatre.

Ironically, for all their sins, the military era was often more “Nigerian” than our modern civilian democracy. A military governor didn’t care where your grandfather was buried. When you were posted to a state, you governed it.

Some of the finest governance this country has ever seen came from “strangers.” Take Buba Marwa: born in Kaduna, ancestrally tied to Borno (or Adamawa, depending on who you ask).

He governed Lagos from 1996 to 1999, fixed the roads, launched Operation Sweep, and touched the lives of the poor in Maroko and the rich in Ikoyi with the exact same hand. Nobody walked around asking if he was a true son of Lagos.

The legal experts have settled this argument even if the politicians refuse to. Justice Chukwudifu Akunne Oputa warned long ago that justice wrapped in tribalism is no justice at all. Justice Kayode Eso, a titan of the Supreme Court, cautioned that federalism without a common citizenship is just feudalism by another name. Yet our politics feeds on the exact opposite.

Other nations have stared this demon in the face and won. India abolished domicile discrimination. South Africa tore down apartheid’s artificial homelands. America declared its Constitution colour-blind. Nigeria has to find the courage to make its democracy tribe-blind.

Until we do, we’re just running 36 tribal fiefdoms pretending to be a country. We will keep flying our dead bodies home so the living can win elections – and in doing so, we will keep burying the very idea of Nigeria and Nigerianness.

Democracy isn’t a graveyard for ancestors. It’s a contract for the living.

Ask Barack Obama, an American president born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father. His right to lead rested on the U.S. Constitution, not on where his grandfather’s bones were buried. The only question that should matter in Nigeria is simple: Does this candidate follow the law, and do they have the trust of the people?

Your grandfather’s grave tells the story of where you came from. It shouldn’t dictate how far you can go in life.