State-Sponsored Bigotry Is a Precursor to Catastrophe.

When an officer of state power amplifies hate speech, she does not merely join the mob; she licenses it. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), has, for nearly a decade, held a position that ought to embody fairness, bridge-building, and dignity for every Nigerian abroad. Yet, by lending her voice to a vile post that referred to fellow Nigerian citizens as “monkeys” and “gorillas,” she crossed a red line that history warns us must never be normalized.

This is not a gaffe. It is not harmless banter. It is not politics as usual. Words carry weight, and when those words emanate from the seat of government, they carry lethal consequences. In Nazi Germany, Jews were first dehumanized as “rats” and “vermin” before they were herded into gas chambers. In Rwanda, the Tutsi were called “inyenzi” (cockroaches) before the machetes began their gruesome work. In Darfur, entire villages were destroyed after years of Arabs painting Black African groups as “slaves.” The trail from derogatory epithets to genocidal action is not theoretical. It is bloody fact.

That is why Mrs. Dabiri-Erewa’s action is not a minor lapse. It is an endorsement of bigotry with echoes of historical calamity. It is particularly grotesque because it comes from a public officer tasked with protecting Nigerians from prejudice in foreign lands, even as she normalizes prejudice against them at home. How can she champion the dignity of Nigerians abroad while trampling on the dignity of millions at home?

Let us be clear: there can be no hierarchy of citizenship in Nigeria. There are no second-class Nigerians; they are no “others” to be mocked or maligned. We are sons and daughters of this republic, bound by the same constitution, entitled to the same respect. When officials forget this, they do more than inflame old wounds, they imperil national unity itself.

To every official who harbors bigotry in their heart and lets it spill into public life, this must be your reminder: words can kill. The Nigerian civil war is still within living memory; millions perished not only because of bullets but because propaganda painted a section of this nation as less than human. If you have forgotten that lesson, you are unfit for the offices you hold.

Mrs. Dabiri-Erewa owes the nation an unreserved apology, not a mealy-mouthed justification, not a half-hearted clarification. An apology. More than that, the Nigerian government must take this as a chance to make clear, once and for all, that ethnic bigotry will not be tolerated from its officials. Silence is complicity, and complicity in hate speech is complicity in potential atrocity.

Nigeria cannot afford leaders who play with the matches of ethnic hatred in a country already drenched in the gasoline of division. History has taught us, in the starkest possible terms, where such recklessness leads. We ignore those lessons at our peril.

And while at that, is Mrs Dabiri-Erewa a lifetime DG of NIDCOM?

Dr. EK Gwuru wites form Nkolo Ikembe.