The cab driver, a guy from Edo state, mistook me for a Ghanaian. I don’t mind it and I proudly embrace my assumed Ghanaian-ness seeing as the Ghanaians are currently beating Nigerian in every indicator of human progress. But come on, Edo guy, I can tell Ghanaians from Nigerians eight out of ten times; Senegalese from other West Africans most of the time, etc. the trouble I have is in distinguishing Guineans from Malians sometimes. Our Sahelian brothers and sisters do share many physical features.

Mistaking me for a Ghanaian was the cab driver’s least “offense.” When I told him that I was from Benue state, he said “ahh, Boko Haram has destroyed your state.” When I quipped that he must have Benue confused for Borno, he acknowledged my correction and then proceeded to utter the most offensive and insensitive statement yet. He said he doesn’t understand why the people of Borno would not simply relocate to other parts of the country instead of “allowing themselves to be slaughtered by Boko Haram.” The guy’s insensitivity is matched by his ignorance of notions of ancestral homeland.

When I pointed out to him that the majority of people in the state do not have relatives in other parts of the country and that even if they did relocation would be an incredibly difficult emotional and logistical challenge for people in crisis areas, he shrugged, unfazed, and said if he were them he would locate a relative in other parts of the country.

Which brings me to the two main points of this update. The first is the crass insensitivity and emotional distance we Nigerians exhibit toward the suffering and adversity of compatriots of other ethnicities, regions, and religions. The cab driver embodies this aloofness.

The second is a much deeper malaise–ignorance of Nigeria’s basic geographical and ethnic cartographies. This ignorance is mutual between North and South, but in my opinion Southerners are the worst offenders. Imagine how the cab driver would have felt or reacted if I had told him that the destruction of oil installations by militants was happening in his Edo state and that the ongoing operation Crocodile Smile must be very difficult for his kith and kin back home. I doubt he would have corrected me as politely as I did him.

Many Southerners expect others to know the geopolitical and ethnic complexities in the south but they do not feel obliged to do the same for the deeper, arguably more intense differentiations in the Lugardian North. For them Kano and Sokoto are interchangeable, as are Bauchi and Taraba, and Katsina and Kebbi. If you tell them that Benue is in the Northcentral zone and that Borno is in the Northeast they will say it doesn’t matter, they are all the same. When I told one Edo friend who asked if Sports Minister, Dalung, is from Benue that he is from Plateau, he shrugged and said, are they not the same?

The same fellow would probably be offended if I told him that Edo and Delta, sister states like Benue and Pleateau, are the same. I know that many northerners, too, do not bother with the distinctions among southerners, especially among people from the old southeastern states, which is now the southeast and the south-south. For many of my Southwestern acquaintances, anyone from south of Ondo State is an Omo Ibo.

This mutual ignorance is deeper among our youths, but it is quite common even among older generations. NYSC has failed to cure us of it. And now it has been compounded by the excision of history and serious civic-cultural education from our secondary school curriculum.

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Moses E. Ochonu is Professor of African History at Vanderbilt University, US