freed

Despite the fascinating ethnic and religious tapestry that is Nigeria, the unity of the country has been consistently threatened by lingering ethnic conflicts, which continue to manifest in the form of hate speech and genocidal threats on social media, VICTOR AYENI writes

On August 28, a deeply unsettling TikTok livestream ignited a firestorm across Nigerian social media, sparking widespread anger and anxiety.

In the video, which quickly went viral and was seen by Saturday PUNCH, a woman using the handle Anyi_Anambra7, was heard boldly issuing a threat that sent shockwaves through the online community.

Her words, chilling in their precision, outlined a sinister plan to poison the food of Nigerians of Yoruba and Bini descent living in Canada.

The Yoruba, Nigeria’s second-largest ethnic group, and the Bini, an Edoid-speaking ethnic group indigenous to Edo State in the South-South geopolitical zone, suddenly found themselves at the heart of a malicious and dangerous online discourse.

The outburst stirred widespread fears, forcing many to confront the reality of rising ethnic hostilities that have leapt from localised tensions to international platforms, leaving the Nigerian diaspora on edge.

 “Record me very, very well. It’s time to start poisoning the Yoruba and the Bini. Put poison for all una food for work,” the woman could be heard saying in a husky tone that left no doubt about her boiling rage.

Speaking mostly in Pidgin English, the woman, who later identified as a Nigerian-Canadian citizen, Amaka Sonnberger, also threatened to poison the water taken by her ethnic rivals at her workplace with lethal insecticides.

“Put poison for una water, make una dey kpai (die) one by one. Una no go kpai one day o, una go sick, sick, sick. I go put otapiapia (insecticide) for inside una water and food. Una no go see better. This kind hate wey una get for una so, e go last forever.

“If I go work tomorrow, I go put am (rodenticides) for Yoruba people food. Go tell the government, oya e dey Canada, e dey Ontario. Hurry up, fast fast!” the 46-year old who hails from Anambra State dared her listeners.

Sonnberger, who is of Igbo extraction, assured her audience of over 100 listeners on TikTok that news of mass deaths among Yoruba and Bini people would soon spread widely.

Inciting her audience, she further stated in the clip, which has now been viewed by over two million X (formerly Twitter) users, “I want make Ndigbo get that heart of wickedness. Una too dey quiet. Una too dey cool. Enough is enough! If you have a means of kpaing them, kpai them! They are of no use to the society.”

Amid condemnations from public figures and social media influencers, many who listened to the disturbing recording expressed their horror and disbelief.

Just a few hours after the video went viral, the Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, took to her X account to identify Sonnberger by name and shared her photo.

Outrage and arrest

The House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Matters in a letter dated August 28, and jointly signed by its chairman, Tochukwu Okere, and the chairman of Nigeria-Canada Parliamentary Friendship Group, Biodun Omoleye, described Sonnberger’s remarks as “a direct threat to the lives and safety of millions of Nigerians.”

According to the lawmakers, the “incitement to violence and call for genocide through poisoning” are “deeply troubling and are a clear violation of international and Canadian laws such as national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence.”

The legislators demanded that an “immediate and thorough investigation” be conducted into Sonnberger’s actions by Canadian law enforcement and appropriate authorities.

In a post on his X page, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, condemned the woman’s hateful remarks and urged citizens to “unite and focus” on addressing shared challenges, “rather than allowing tribalism and hate to tear us apart.”

“I have consistently stood against the polarisation of our country along tribal, religious or political lines. We, as Nigerians, must live together in peace and love,” Obi added.

The President of the Yoruba Council Worldwide, Oladotun Hassan, also described Sonneberger’s remarks as “a terroristic comment” adding that she “may be a dangerous ambassador to the vulnerable people she works with being a Nigerian-Canadian.”

In the aftermath of the viral clip, on September 1, Sonnberger was arrested “in a suspected hate-motivated threatening investigation” and charged with “uttering threats,” according to the Toronto Police website.

However, Saturday PUNCH learned that Sonnberger was released from custody after being questioned and has since resumed her activities on social media.

‘I was responding to anti-Igbo hate’

In an audio interview posted on YouTube by BattaBox on September 5, Sonnberger, while opting not to show her face for security reasons, explained that her threats were a reaction to hateful comments directed at Igbos on TikTok.

The 46-year-old explained that when she joined TikTok a few months ago, she was bombarded with anti-Igbo rhetoric on her ‘For You Page’ recommendations.

She added, “Every FYP I saw was always people talking about Igbos and these were the Bini and Yoruba to be particular. They said so many things and I have these things on video.

“They talk about how (Chukwuemeka) Ojukwu stole £5,000 from the bank during the (civil) war. So I joined these platforms and found out that the majority of these people there aren’t educated because as I’m going right, they are going left.

“Sometimes, I tried to debunk some of what they were saying. There was a time when they even said Igbos eat humans. They changed our history totally. There was a time I had to come back home and begin to search about my history because they say things that if you are not strong, will make you depressed.”

Sonnberger revealed that the most inflammatory comments she encountered on TikTok were attributed to one Kingsley, a Nigerian of Edo descent based in Austria.

In an audio recording from a TikTok livestream heard by our correspondent, a male voice believed to be Kingsley’s could be heard saying, “You have to receive my curse. Are you listening to me? You and all your Igbo generation, the biafrauds you shall perish.”

Accusing his Igbo rivals of sponsoring an intended protest, Kingsley added, “You shall all die, yes, you shall die. That River Niger, we shall bury you in it. If you start that your protest, you people will see what will happen. You people will die and nothing will happen.”

Joining in the conversation, a female voice who spoke in the Yoruba language lauded the activity of street hoodlums in Lagos in attacking the Igbo, who she said insulted them.

“You already gave me the name ndi ofe mmanu (people of oily soups) and I accepted it, but be thankful that (Babatunde) Fashola is no more the governor, otherwise, what he would show you, you won’t be able to bear it,” the lady said.

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, called upon the Federal Government to take immediate action against Kingsley, “for making inflammatory and dangerous statements threatening mass killings of Nigerians of Igbo extraction.”

In an interview posted on September 4, on X Dailly, Dabiri-Erewa said Sonnberger’s utterances were a reflection of who she was and not her ethnic group.

“Let’s not give a colouration to it because you are from this or that tribe. It’s petty. I’m too mature, exposed, cosmopolitan and sophisticated to judge people based on tribe or religion, it shouldn’t be an issue.

“If you do anything it’s because of who you are, not because of the tribe you come from. I want to preach unity, and then let’s watch what we say, you never know what can happen. Let’s be united. Crime has no tribe,” she maintained.

Citizens divided

While many Nigerians called for swift action against Sonnberger over her inflammatory remarks, others defended the video as a reaction to ongoing ethnic tensions, sparking further debates about the underlying issues of tribalism in the country.

Speaking with our correspondent, a Lagos-based entrepreneur, Callistus Ugochukwu, admitted that while he agreed that Sonnberger should be punished, Yoruba individuals, who had made similar hateful utterances must be fished out and prosecuted.

He added, “The hate against the Igbos is everywhere in Nigeria and this woman is just saying enough is enough. During the 2023 presidential and gubernatorial elections in Lagos, Igbo people were being harassed and threatened not to come out to vote.

“Even other ethnic groups were put under the Igbo tag and disallowed from voting. Igbo were being insulted online and told to leave Lagos. It’s clear that Yorubas hate Igbos and vice versa.”

On his part, a business owner, Moshood Adebayo, blamed ethnic hate on the rhetoric which he said had built up over the years when the Igbo began uttering denigrating remarks about the Yoruba in Lagos.

“You can’t expect me to love people who insult our food, denigrate my culture, call us ‘dirty’ and ‘lazy’ and boast of taking over our lands which they said is ‘no man’s land.’

“This hate started before the 2023 elections. Go to Nairaland, Facebook and even X and read all the provocative things the Igbo have been writing about us, they even call us ‘Yariba’ or ‘Yorubastards,’ but when we respond, they start crying victim,” Adebayo told our correspondent.

Echoing a similar line of thought, Esther Osuntokun wrote on X, “I have seriously warned my son never to take any food or drink from Igbos. I don’t want to ignore all the signs. I won’t be able to forgive myself if anything were to happen to my children. He asked me why and I said, since Peter Obi lost, Igbos have become weird in Nigeria.”

In his reply, an X user, Eze Adigwe wrote, “Ever since (Bola) Tinubu entered the office, hunger want to kill Yariba (people) finish, the rate at which they cut head and eat human beings is because of hunger. I warned my children to avoid them like cow sh*ts. They need to be avoided completely. They have lost it totally.”

A Port-Harcourt-based oil and gas worker, Chukwudi Okoye, told our correspondent that Nigeria would progress if it were divided along major ethnic faultlines because its unity was, “a sham, and no amount of denial will change this.”

Commenting on the hateful diatribes between ethnic groups on social media, a retired civil servant, Mr Femi Babatunde, described the ethnic tensions in the country as a “dangerous territory” that should be defused to prevent another civil war.

“This was how the 1966 war started when people sitting abroad were making inflammatory statements. These people sitting abroad and stoking the flames of ethnic hate need to think about people on the ground in Nigeria, whose businesses will be destroyed and burnt to the ground in different parts of Nigeria when this gets out of hand,” he warned.

Also speaking to our correspondent, Mrs Victoria Udoh, a trader, lamented the fractured state of the country, adding that ethnic minorities also suffered from discrimination and negative stereotyping.

“It’s sad that Nigeria has degenerated into this level of becoming a country where people don’t like each other or want to be around each other. This is very appalling and sad,” she said.

History of ethnic conflicts

Although it has over 250 ethnic groups, Nigeria has a long history of ethnic conflicts involving the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Fulani, with the Igbo suffering a brutal pogrom in 1966, which ultimately led to the civil war.

Aside from the civil war, there have been several ethnic clashes and underlying tensions that continue to erupt into violence and threats of violence since 1966.

For instance, there have been clashes between the Hausa and Yoruba; Fulani and Hausa; Ogoni and Andonis; Zangon-Kataf; Ijaw and Itsekiri; Jukun and Tiv, among others.

Although the hatchets have been physically buried between some of these ethnic groups, there remains a core of smouldering internal resentments which spill out on social media in the form of hate speech, ethnic chauvinism, separatist agitations, and wholesale threats of violence against ethnic rivals.

Social media threats

Social media checks by our correspondent indicated that the X platform retains the highest number of ethnically hateful comments by users due to a sore lack of enforcement of its policies against hate and abusive speech.

Comparatively, Facebook and Instagram – two major social media platforms used by millions of Nigerians – have embedded certain internal censorship and signal systems that easily remove or limit the visibility of hateful comments.

For instance, an X account named Lagospedia, in a post dated July 27, 2024, called on the Igbo to vacate Lagos and the South-West region and brace up for a massive #IgboMustGo protest from August 20 to 30, 2024.

“They have one month from now to leave and relocate their businesses from all S’West states. We urge every Yoruba living in the S’East to return home,” the post partly read.

In his response, the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, distanced himself and the Lagos State Government from the “reckless, divisive, and dangerous rhetoric,” emphasising that Lagos remains a home to all Nigerian citizens regardless of their ethnic nationality.

On June 16, 2023, the Osun State Police Command arrested one Kehinde Adekusibe, a 28-year-old man, for “inciting ethnic violence” on X.

On May 18, Adekusibe, via his X handle @GideonAdekusibe, wrote, “Let’s kill all the Igbos. Let’s flush them out of Yoruba lands. I hate these people with passion. They are violent people. They are worst. They hate us. Let’s hate them without holding back.”

Similarly, on April 1, 2023, the Eze Ndigbo of Ajao Estate in Lagos, Frederick Nwajago, in a viral video, called on the militia arm of a separatist Indigenous People of Biafra pressure group to visit violence in the city.

He was later arrested and charged with an “attempt to do acts of terrorism, participation in terrorism, meeting to support a proscribed entity, attempt to finance an act of terrorism and preparation to commit an act of terrorism,” among others.

In 2019, the President of the Young Yoruba for Freedom, Adeyinka Shoyemi, was arrested by the Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Command, for allegedly “stirring racial discrimination” against the Igbo and Fulani ethnic groups and also “encouraging terrorism.”

Three years later, Shoyemi, popularly called Grandson, was jailed for four and half years by a United Kingdom court over his inflammatory social media posts.

 In July 2017, the Coalition of Northern Youth groups, in Kaduna, ordered Igbo residents in the North to relocate within three months, saying that the region was no longer disposed to coexist with them in Nigeria.

The leaders of IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu and Simon Ekpa, have also been known to make a series of posts and audio clips that propagate hate against the Yoruba and other ethnic groups in Nigeria, which they derisively call a “zoo.”

Amalgamation brought about mistrust – Sociologist

A lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Jos, Plateau State, Dr Janet Plang, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, explained that the amalgamation of Nigeria into one political entity in 1914, was not done with much consideration for the diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, which she noted leads to tensions.

While noting that the amalgamation had its positive gains, Plang described it as “a situation whereby heterogeneous groups were brought together and lumped as one entity devoid of their consultation and consent.”

She added, “One basic thing inculcated into man through socialisation is cultural identity ethnicity.

“The culture to protect and maintain your ethnic affiliation and land is a common practice and that’s probably why the amalgamation brought mistrust among these existing ethnic groups, especially since war had existed between them before amalgamation. So to combine a set of people who didn’t trust each other as one entity was probably faulty.”

Plang also blamed politicians, whom he noted often exploit ethnic divisions for personal gain, poverty and youth unemployment, which “can lead to feelings of marginalisation and competition between groups.”

“Nigeria is also deeply divided along religious lines, with a significant Muslim population in the north and a predominantly Christian population in the south.

“Religious differences often intersect with ethnic identities, further complicating intergroup relations and contributing to conflicts, particularly in regions where religious identities are politicised.

“Similarly, misunderstandings and prejudices between cultures can create social distance and distrust.  Limited interaction and negative stereotypes can lead to clashes over resources and traditions,” she added.

Social workers urge tackling roots of ethnic hate

In an interview with Saturday PUNCH, the chairperson of the Nigeria Association of Social Workers, Lagos State chapter, Ms Morayo Lamilisa, noted that the power of social media cannot be undermined in its ability to foment hate among ethnic groups.

“When we see this happening, as social workers we first find out the root causes and the effects and how we can manage the situation,” she stated.

Lamilisa added that social workers in the country hope to continually empower communities through different initiatives, sensitisation, conflict management, peacebuilding, “and reorientating the people to make them realise that ethnic hate should have no place and we shouldn’t cause problems for ourselves.”

“Unfortunately, Nigeria is still backward in terms of social work and welfare but we will get there. That is where we are advocating for reforms so that we can effectively address the ethnic tensions in communities across the country.”

Also speaking, a Lagos-based community development social worker, Mr Michael Shonubi, highlighted rhetorical devices, economic situation, political manipulations, social inequality, cultural differences, propaganda and misinformation as part of factors that play a huge role in ethnic tensions across the country.

“In this part of the world, the federal, state and local government, have not given social workers their rightful place and that is one of the reasons these issues are festering. Like the case of Sonnberger, if found guilty and sentenced to jail, social workers and psychologists will be told to work on her.

“By the time, she is released from there, she would be a better person, they would have detoxified that hatred that is in her. In the case of those saying some ethnic groups should leave Lagos, it’s also a case of hatred. These things can be tackled by social workers.

“We clarify the roots of mistrust that each side has against the other, and you can do that by bringing them together when there is an occasion and each party will resolve conflicts and social arbitration. They can through that vent their anger and gradually bring about love and harmony.”

Prejudice, anonymity fuel online hate – Mental health expert

Speaking with our correspondent, a mental health expert, Dr Goodness Eshiet, explained that social media anonymity brings out the ‘beasts’ in people.

“Being anonymous on social media frees a lot of people from being responsible or accountable, so one of the first things for these people to do is hide behind an anonymous account to give a voice to their inner hate.

“They freely write these mean-spirited things about other ethnic groups because they know they can’t say these about them or to them if they were to meet physically. So we should demand transparency in online engagements and stop giving faceless people a relevance that they don’t have,” Eshiet said.

She advised that multifaceted strategies be developed to tackle ethnic discrimination by individuals and institutions.

Eshiet health expert added, “We should encourage direct interaction and contact with other ethnic identities to break down negative stereotypes and prejudice.

“This can be done at the community level. Let there be inclusion and deliberate efforts to promote inter-ethnic respect, engagement and empathy. That way, people can work together, interact and let go of long-standing prejudice that they have nurtured about the other.”