Odita Sunday 
By Dr Luke Okojie, The Biographer ✓
CEO, Accolade Communications Limited | Convener, African Role Model Award and Leadership Summit | Trustee, International Centre for Comparative Leadership for Africans and Blacks in the Diaspora
Africa is blessed with everything the world needs to prosper – human capital, mineral resources, arable land, and a youthful population. Yet, 60 years after independence, most African countries still struggle. Why? Because we have continued to run modern nation-states with primordial sentiments.
Primordial governance – the system where ethnicity, tribe, religion, clan, and nepotism become the primary basis for political appointment, resource allocation, and national decision-making – is the single greatest cancer militating against African development. It must stop if Africa must rise.
WHAT IS PRIMORDIAL LEADERSHIP?
It is when a leader sees himself first as an ethnic champion before a national leader. When competence is sacrificed on the altar of “he is my brother.” When national budgets are shared like family inheritance. This is not democracy. This is organized retrogression.
EMPIRICAL EXAMPLES ACROSS AFRICA:
1. NIGERIA – The Classic Case of Federal Character Abused:
Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, has institutionalized primordialism. Merit has been killed. Since 1960, appointments into sensitive national security and economic positions have often followed ethnic balancing instead of competence. The result? NNPC became a cesspool of corruption, our refineries collapsed despite billions spent on Turn Around Maintenance, and insecurity thrives because security appointments were once lopsided. When a president appoints only his kinsmen to head Customs, Immigration, Army, Police and DSS, what message does he send to other ethnic nationalities? Disunity. And disunity kills growth.
2. KENYA – The Kikuyu-Kalenjin-Luo Rotational Presidency:
Since independence, Kenya’s presidency has rotated among three dominant tribes. Elections in Kenya are not about ideology but about ethnic census. The 2007/2008 post-election violence that killed over 1,200 Kenyans was a direct product of primordial politics. Even today, the Gikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo political coalition determines who becomes president, not manifestos.
3. SOUTH SUDAN – The World’s Youngest Nation on the Brink:
South Sudan got independence in 2011 with high hopes. But immediately, Dinka vs Nuer primordial rivalry took over governance. President Salva Kiir (Dinka) and his deputy Riek Machar (Nuer) turned a national army into tribal militias. A civil war that killed over 400,000 people was not about development, it was about whose tribe controls oil revenue.
4. RWANDA – The Example of What Happens When Primordialism is Taken to Extreme and The Solution:
In 1994, Hutu vs Tutsi primordial hate led to genocide of 800,000 people in 100 days. But post-genocide, President Paul Kagame banned primordial identity in governance. He criminalized ethnic profiling, enforced meritocracy, and made Rwanda one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies. Rwanda proves that when primordialism stops, development starts.
5. ETHIOPIA – Tigray, Amhara, Oromo Struggle:
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) dominated Ethiopia for 27 years. Then came Abiy Ahmed and the Oromo-Amhara power play. The 2-year Tigray war that killed over 600,000 people was essentially a war of primordial hegemony – who controls the centre. While they fight, Ethiopia’s dam project, industries and youth employment suffer.
THE WAY FORWARD – FROM PRIMORDIALISM TO MERITOCRACY:
If we must end primordial governance, African leaders must:
a) Enforce Merit Over Mediocrity: Let the best brain handle the job, whether he is Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Kikuyu or Zulu.
b) De-ethnicize Political Parties: Political parties must be ideology-based, not ethnic vehicles for presidential ambition.
c) Criminalize Tribal Hate Speech:* Like Rwanda did. Any leader who uses tribe to seek votes must be sanctioned.
d) *Invest in National Identity:* Through education, national youth service, and inter-ethnic economic integration.
e) Celebrate Competence: This is why we instituted the African Role Model Award. To celebrate Africans who succeeded through merit, not through tribe.
The era where a contract is awarded because the contractor speaks the same language as the governor must stop. The era where a First Class graduate is denied employment because he is from the “wrong” state must stop.
America did not become great by asking whether Elon Musk is Yoruba or whether Bill Gates is Igbo. China does not check tribe before building factories. Africa must outgrow this primordial childishness.
The world is moving to Artificial Intelligence, while Africa is still stuck in “My Tribe vs Your Tribe” intelligence. This must stop.
Let Africa be run by ideas, not by tribe. By competence, not by clan. By vision, not by village.
God bless Africa. God bless Nigeria.
Dr Luke Okojie is a celebrated African Biographer, Pan Africanist without apology, and convener of the African Role Model Award and Leadership Summit. He writes from Lagos.
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