Democratic Governance and the Citizenship Question: All Nigerians Are Settlers

There has been a steady rise in communal tensions and conflicts since the introduction of the indigeneity clause into Nigerian public law through the 1979 Constitution. Since then, numerous cabals of local political elite have devoted considerable resources and time to defining themselves as indigenes, natives and autochthons while defining others in their communities as settlers, migrants and strangers. With the return of democratic rule in 1999, there has been an explosion rather than a reduction of political and religious conflicts. As the number of conflicts and the death toll and destruction of property increases, the strains on democratic governance and indeed political stability have been enormous.

On 19th May 2004 , the Nigerian Senate and House of Representatives voted massively to give validity to a state of emergency that had been declared by President Olusegun Obasanjo on Plateau State . The President had suspended the State Governor, Deputy Governor and House of Assembly for six-months citing the rights conferred on him to do so by section 305 of the Constitution. For the declaration to enter into force the President needed the support of at least two-thirds of the National Assembly and he got it.

The reasons the President gave for taking such a drastic action are the following. The breakdown of law and order in Plateau state and its ripple effects with violence or the threat of violence growing in neighbouring states such as Bauchi, Nassarawa, Taraba, Kano, Gombe, Kaduna and Benue. The President also cited the state governor’s lack of:

“Interest, desire, commitment, credibility and capacity to promote reconciliation, rehabilitation, forgiveness, peace, harmony and stability” (President Obasanjo’s Address to the Nation, 18/05/04 ).

The Plateau state governor, Joshua Dariye had indeed been making incendiary remarks questioning the citizenship of the Hausa-Fulani Muslim population in Plateau state, who he refers to as settlers, as the following quotes indicate:

“Jos, capital of Plateau state is owned by the natives. Simple. Every Hausa man in Jos is a settler whether he likes it or not.”

“Even if I spend 150 years in Bukuru, I cannot become an indigene of Du.”

“It is an Alqaeda agenda to bring down Plateau state… The ulama were chased out of Kaduna during the Babangida regime. If they were so good why were they sent out of Kaduna ? And they came to form their headquarters in Jos.”

(Quotes from “What Dariye Did Say” Weekly Trust, 15th May 2004 )

With this type of encouragement from their state Governor, the “indigenes/natives” of Plateau state, previously known as a haven of peace, have since 2001 been engaged in a series of bloody clashes against the Muslim Hausa-Fulani minority population, hundreds of whom were killed. While some of the Hausa-Fulani are relatively recent settlers with memories of their homeland, many have been in the Plateau for hundreds of years and have no memory of a home other than the Plateau.

Resolving the Dilemma of Citizenship and Rights in Nigeria

Nigeria is a multiethnic and multireligious country inhabited by about 470 ethnic groups. These groups are not only distinguished by language, customs and myth of origins, but they also vary in size, power and influence, making Nigeria a classic example of a country with unequal ethnic relations. The country is also marked by cultural, geographical and religious heterogeneity, and above all, by a long history of migrations which makes all Nigerians to be settlers. It is in recognition of this that the architects of modern Nigeria, especially the early nationalists settled for a federal system of government as a mechanism for coping with problems associated with the deep ethnic and religious divisions that exist.

Over the years, as part of the efforts to cope with the problems of a multi-ethnic society and to accommodate differences in the true spirit of “unity in diversity”, policy makers have adopted a number of measures.  Some of these measures include the creation of new states and local governments and the entrenchment of certain provisions in the constitution to guarantee fairness and equity such as the “federal character” principle enshrined in the 1979 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Consociational measures of this type which involve some elements of power sharing and a deliberate attempt to regulate competition and access to resources/opportunities as a means of protecting groups considered to be relatively disadvantaged are not alien to federal systems.

However, in the Nigerian context this has had a boomerang effect in the sense that problems, which they are meant to solve, are reinforced. Consociational measures or related policies that emphasise “ethnic arithmetic” are meant to moderate the divisive nature of ethnic and regional competition for power and opportunities. Unfortunately, in the Nigerian situation, especially due to the manner in which they have been implemented, the result is the heightening of ethnic tension and ill feelings. A good example of such measures which has created more problems than it was intended to solve is the provisions in the constitution regarding the implementation of the federal character principle which limits existing opportunities to those defined as “indigenes”.  

The consequence is that millions of Nigerians who find themselves in "effective" residency in places other than where they can claim ‘indigeneity' or where they are accepted as “indigenes” are labelled as "strangers and "settlers". Nigerians so defined are subjected to all kinds of exclusions and deprivations, which differentiate them from the “natives”, and members of the” host communities”.  What this does immediately is to place obstacles on the path of Nigerians who are so labelled from the enjoyment of their full citizenship rights, which are formally guaranteed in the elaborate provisions in the constitution regarding the Fundamental Rights of citizens. This outcome completely blocks possibilities of deepening civil and political rights of individuals and groups in the country as people stigmatised as settlers are perpetually denied their rights.

The Mamdani Principles: The Indigene/Settler Antipodes

Professor Mahmoud Mamdani of Columbia University is one of the leading African intellectuals that has closely examined the linked concept of indigene/settler and has enunciated a number of principles that are germanise to the Nigerian case. There are three main principles that can be derived from his numerous publications on the subject. The first principle is that the two categories are interdependent as one defines the other. Settlers exist because some people have succeeded in defining themselves as indigenes in order to exclude others who they have defined as settlers. Secondly, settlers are not defined by immigration, as virtually all African groups and peoples have migrated over time. The concept of settler is a political definition attributed on the basis of conquest, state power and law – customary and modern. Thirdly and most important, the settler can never become an indigene because the basis of the differentiation is the denial of civic citizenship through a political imposition of a permanent and exclusionary tribal or religious label. This means that the historical methods of gaining citizenship through migration, immersion in the language, culture and norms of the new community through time are excluded. The implication of these principles is that as long as we continue with the affirmation of the indigene/settler divide, our dreams of deepening democratic governance will remain elusive.

When we look at the most spectacular cases of indigene/settler conflicts in Nigeria in recent times, the negative effects of this politics of permanent exclusion becomes obvious. The longstanding fratricidal war between the Hausa and the Kataf (Atyab) in Zango-Kataf in southern Kaduna, the protracted Jukun/Tiv conflict in Wukari, and the Chamba and Kuteb conflict in Taraba, as well as the deadly confrontation in Nasarawa between the Bassa and Ebira, are all cases of this political decision to permanently deny citizenship to the other, defined as a settler. This is true even in situations where anthropological evidence suggests that the two groups are of the same ethnic origin as the examples of the Ife/Modakeke crisis and the Umuleri/Aguleri conflict have clearly shown.

The sheer weight of human tragedy that has accompanied these conflicts in terms of deaths of thousands of people, the destruction of property and the displacement of population draw attention, not only to the security threat they pose to the state, but the potential danger they pose to the country’s nascent democracy.

Although the basis of the crisis of citizenship is in Nigeria’s colonial and post-colonial history, and the conflicts arising from it had been there before the recent return to democratic rule, the general expectation is that democracy should provide the most congenial environment for finding lasting and enduring solutions to the problem. Surprisingly, this has not been the case as clearly borne out by the numerous examples of communal violence and ethno-religious conflicts that have appeared to exert enormous stress on the new democratic experiment in the country.

The 1999 Constitution, Citizenship and Rights

The provisions on Citizenship and Fundamental Rights in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are contained in chapters 3 and 4 respectively. The most salient provisions are as follows. Chapter 3 which focuses on Citizenship basically contains provisions relating to citizenship by birth, registration and naturalisation in addition to provisions relating to dual citizenship, renunciation and deprivation of citizenship. While chapter 4 provides a detailed checklist of the fundamental rights, which are the entitlements of Nigerian citizens. These include the right to life, right to the dignity of the human person, the right to personal liberty as well as the right to fair hearing and the right to family and private life. Others are: the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, right to freedom of expression and the press, the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to freedom of movement and the right to acquire and own immovable property.

As can be gleaned from the above, there is nothing to suggest that the enjoyment of these rights have discriminatory application. A reading of other relevant provisions of the constitution lends credence to the point that the promotion of the political objectives of national integration and cohesion are of central concern to the constitution. For instance, Chapter 2, Section 14 (3) provides as follows:

The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or any of its agencies.

Section 14 (4) calls on the states and local governments in the country to implement the federal character principle. Furthermore, Section 15 (3) of the same chapter states that: “For the purpose of promoting national integration, it shall be the duty of the state to (a) provide adequate facilities for and encourage free mobility of people, goods and services throughout the Federation; (b) secure full residence rights for every citizen in all parts of the Federation.”  It is also instructive to note that the Constitution allows anyone to contest election anywhere he/she wishes, as indigeneity is not a requirement for election into such bodies as the Senate, the Federal House of Representatives, or the State Houses of Assembly. The 1999 Constitution goes further to encourage “inter-marriage among persons from different places of origin, or of different religious, ethnic or linguistic associations or ties in Section 15 (3c).

What seem problematic however are the constitutional provisions regarding the implementation of the federal character principle? The issues of federal character and quota system have their origins in the recommendations of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) in 1976, which had reasoned that there was need to give every ethnic group in the country a sense of belonging. At the risk of repetition, Section 14 (3) of the 1979 Constitution which captures the reasoning of the CDC defined the objective of federal character as ensuring that the

"Composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies, and the conduct of its affairs, shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria, and the need to promote national unity, and also to command loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or form a few ethnic groups or other sectional groups in that government or any of its agencies".  

However, this provision has made it more convenient for the aspiring politicians and ambitious elite to hang on to birth and descent criteria to determine citizenship.

In this sense the most problematic aspect of the issue of citizenship derives from the way in which the `indigeneity' clause in the 1979 constitution has tended to legitimise discriminatory practices against Nigerians who reside within a state, which is "not their own". According to the constitution, “indigeneship” of a state is conferred on a person whose parents or grandparents were members of a community indigenous to a particular state. We shall return to the specific ways in which the issue of “indigenes” and “natives” have provided practical obstacles to the implementation of the rights conferred on Nigerians by their citizenship of the Nigerian state.

The 1999 Constitution apparently in recognition of the controversy generated by the “indigeneity” clause in the 1979 Constitution has no definitional clause. However, the Constitution still requires the implementation of the federal character principle. The interpretation of Section 147 regarding the appointment of Ministers shows clearly that the notion of “indigeneity” has not been expunged from the constitution. It states: “Provided that in giving effect to the provisions aforesaid the President shall appoint at least one Minister from each state, who shall be an indigene of such state. What this means in effect is that, Nigerians who cannot prove that they are indigenes of a state cannot be appointed into such positions no matter the length of their residence.

The implication is that a tension exists between the formal provisions in the constitution on citizenship and fundamental rights on the one hand, and the practical application of these rights because of the reality of difference introduced by the politically introduced dichotomy between elites seeking to increase their power by defining themselves as “indigenes” and “natives” through the definition of others as “settlers” and strangers. These categories have tended to undermine the very essence of Nigerian citizenship in the sense that one is not really a citizen of Nigeria , but only a citizen of the place to which he/she is indigenous. The result is that it has created a multi-layered system of citizenship as follows:  

       i.            Those most privileged are those who belong to the indigenous communities of the state in which they reside.  

     ii.            Those citizens who are indigenes of other states are less favoured.  

    iii.            The least favoured are those citizens who are unable to prove that they belong to a community indigenous to any state in Nigeria  

   iv.            Women who are married to men from states other their own are in a dilemma, as they can neither be accepted in their “states of origin” or that of their husbands.  

In addition to these, it is particularly difficult for migrants in rural locations to have access to farmlands because indigeneity implies membership of the local ethnic community. The system gives undue power to the traditional authorities and power brokers in regulating access to land understood as the collective, natural possession of the ethnic group. Next week, we shall analyse the specific ways in which the categories “indigenes” and “settlers” are at conflict with the idea and practice of national citizenship in Nigeria and how the political crisis being generated play into Nigeria ’s population dynamics.

As we argued last week, the categories of “indigenes”,  “settlers”, and “natives” are social and political constructions of the Nigerian power elite in their search for legitimacy within the local community/state and their quest for access to power and resources. In the ordinary meaning of the words, “indigenes” and “natives” simply refer to a region or country of birth - aborigines and autochthones. In countries such as the United States of America and Australia with a unique history of conquest of indigenous populations such as the native Indians ( United States ) and Aborigines ( Australia ), it may be more or less straightforward to use these categories to delineate between the natives and conquerors or settlers. Such usage does not make sense in Nigeria given the country’s peculiar history of state formation, constant migration of people and population shifts in the period prior to and after colonisation.

Indeed, a major study of our region – West African Long Term Perspective Study (1994) undertaken by the African Development Bank and the Club du Sahel revealed that West Africa was had become a region of migrants and settlers with two profound modes of migration that had completely transformed the population dynamics of the region. The first is movement from the Sahel to the middle belt and forest zones, which has produced profoundly cosmopolitan towns and cities. The second is movement from rural to urban areas, which has turned the region into an urban majority zone. By 1990, almost 50% of the people in Nigeria had moved from rural to urban settlements in the post independence period. When we factor in the precolonial migration patterns to current trends, it becomes clear that the great majority of Nigerians, and indeed West Africans are settlers, not indigenes of the places in which they live and work.

In spite of this fact, self-declared indigenes and natives are pitched against settlers in deadly confrontations over access to local power, resources and questions of identity. These labels have become potent instruments for the negative mobilisation of peoples’ sentiments and feelings in ways that undermine the national political objectives of integration and the evolution of a harmonious political community. Given the peculiar history of Nigeria just alluded to, every group resorts to history in order to prove its claim to the indigeneity of some specific local political space which is therefore, the major source of communal violence and ethno-religious conflicts in both urban and rural Nigeria .

Citizenship is applicable to a person endowed with full political and civil rights in a state. It defines the political, civil and social rights attributable to the individual as a member of a state. In the modern state, the acquisition of citizenship can be through birth (the law of blood), law of place, and through naturalisation. The notion of citizenship was developed in the context of the bourgeois revolution and the ascendancy of liberalism. The idea evolved with the collapse of feudalism and the medieval state, which limited the rights, and freedom of the individual. The rights and freedom, which were won and secured with the birth of the modern state therefore, transformed the individual from subject to citizen. Citizenship is thus defined in terms of the special status granted by the state to its members and expresses at the formal level, the equality of all before the state.

In the contemporary Nigerian context, the discourse on citizenship and the application of citizens’ rights often generate political tension and violence because it is intricately tied with the issue of ethnic identity, ethnicity and religion. This is the case in so far as indigeneity is tied to membership of a particular local ethnic community. There are three reasons why ethnicity is problematic in relation to the discourse on identity and citizenship:

Ethnic identity is not a fixed form of identity. Although it may appear as a natural community distinguished by a common language, ancestry and myth of origin as well as a common consciousness of being one in relation to others, it is not a static category.  It is therefore, subject to frequent reconstitution and redefinition. It is interesting to note for example, that from what the British colonialist identified as 90 ethnic groups in the early part of the last century, the number of ethnic groups in Nigeria has expanded to over 470. Ethnic identity has had a constant history redefinition, recomposition and reconstitution.

Nigeria is characterised by a state of unequal ethnic relations reflecting an intense unequal competition for state resources. The most important resource being state power itself, particularly its coercive and resource allocating elements. Finally, there were historical processes of integration and migrations of various communal groups that were in place before the intrusion of colonialism. This often makes it difficult to establish which group can claim the “native” or “indigenous” status of a place at the expense of others.

What all this means is that the ethnic category on which the definition of citizenship hinges is a very fluid category. It partly explains why the political disputations arising from contradictory notions of citizenship often leads to conflict and violence. In some instances, the groups at conflict over such claims are not necessarily from different ethnic groups. The groups at conflict may thus be sub-ethnic communities of the same ethnic groups as is the case of the recurrent Ife/Modakeke conflict.

What needs to be emphasised is the fact that after several decades of colonial capitalist development, and the tremendous expansion of infrastructure across the country as well as increasing cultural diffusion, Nigeria cannot simply be reduced to a mere geographical expression. These conflicts relate to the crisis of citizenship in the sense in which groups at conflict deploy or even twist history in the contestation of identity by using such to establish "indigeneity" over a particular political space which could be a state or a local government area. In most of the recorded cases located within semi-urban and rural locations, attempts are often made to establish `indigeneity' over a local government or any other local political and economic space.  A few illustrations will shed some light.

The use of history of migration, early patterns of settlement or local history about patterns of power and domination among the different ethnic groups in establishing "indigenous" claims are evident in virtually all the cases. On the Mambilla Plateau, the series of attacks in the early 1980s on the Banso and Kamba by the Mambilla is hinged on this conception of citizenship. The Mambilla who laid indigenous claim over the entire Mambilla Plateau do so precisely on the historical claim that their settlement predated the arrival of other ethnic groups such as the Fulani, Banso and Kamba. For the Banso and the Kamba whose presence on the Plateau is more or less recent, the bulk of them have arrived in the post-second world war period, it is a lot easier to label them as "aliens". It is in this context that one understands the basis of exclusion that the so-called indigenous group seeks to subject the stranger elements.

The situation in Zango-Kataf is fairly unique and more complex as centuries of interaction between the Hausa on the one hand, and the other communal groups such as Bajju and Kataf (Atyab) have failed to produce the basis of a more enduring harmonious community life. In this respect the situation differs from other cases where the adoption of Islamic religion and inter-marriages have attenuated the level of social and cultural distance between "immigrant" Hausa population and the "host" communities.  What one finds in the Zango-Kataf area of southern Kaduna is the tendency for ethnic boundaries to remain impervious to social and cultural exchanges such as marriages across ethnic and religious boundaries.

The representation made to the Cudjoe Commission by the Kataf following the violence of February 1992 is largely hinged on the claim that the land belonged to the Kataf who accommodated Hausa immigrants on generous terms. By the traditional system of land holding, the Kataf claim, such land in principle should revert to the original owners. However, this historical claim to indigeneity is contradicted by the position of the Hausa community who claimed centuries of effective residency.  

Similar claims by "indigenous" groups aimed at excluding "strangers" appear to be central in the communal conflicts between the Kuteb and Chamba in Takum Local Government Area of Taraba state and the unending circle of communal clashes in Nasarawa involving the Ebira, Bassa and Gbagyi.  These cases illustrate the enormous difficulty of resorting to history in the contest over identity. The difficulty arises from the fact that there can be no such a thing as eternal historical facts.  There is the tendency for facts to be either carefully selected or for the same set of facts to be subjected to conflicting interpretations.

Take the Kuteb/Chamba conflict for example. Although a number of ethnic groups such as Hausa, Jukun, Kuteb and Chamba are found in the Takum area, the major contest has been between the Kuteb and Chamba. From available historical evidence both Kuteb and Chamba had taken effective residency of the area around Takum prior to the colonial intervention.  However, in the present context of contestation over the "ownership" of Takum, each of the two communal groups has resorted to different accounts of history to bolster its claim. The Chamba account, which is strongly challenged by the Kuteb appeared to have been the version initially accepted by the colonial authorities, suggests the Chamba as a warrior group, conquered and displaced the more numerous Kuteb around 1830. The Kuteb on the other hand, who make a strong historical claim over the area in addition to being the most populous in Takum area refute the claim by the Chamba to have conquered them at any point in history, and even cite colonial records in support of their position. The Chamba whom they claim migrated from the Camerouns were given a place to settle by the Kuteb.

The rule of the Kuteb in Takum was later codified by the government of the Northern region in 1963.  The situation was however, reversed in 1975 when the Chamba, apparently using their influence in the military government that followed the collapse of the First Republic, got the then Benue Plateau state government to amend the 1963 law. The amendment ensured the eligibility of two Chamba families to contest and ascend to the Ukwe throne, increased the representation of the Chamba and Jukun on the Kings Selection Committee to three, while reducing that of the Kuteb to two thus ensuring advantage for the Chamba.  

In 1976, a riot broke out between the Chamba and Kuteb in Takum.  The cause of the riot was the alleged manipulation of electoral wards by the Secretary of Takum local government, a Chamba, to give electoral advantage to Chamba contestants. The victory of a Chamba candidate where the Kuteb constitute the majority was not acceptable to the latter. Some of the allegations were later confirmed by a government panel, which had been set up to investigate the communal disturbances.  However, renewed violence between the two communal groups has its roots in the process of democratising the local government, which commenced in 1987.  The numerical strength of the Kuteb had conferred on them electoral advantage in the elections that had been organised since then until the outbreak of violence in 1997.  Although it would appear on the surface as tension between democratisation and multi-ethnic existence, it has a deeper basis in contestation over identity and for control of local power and resources.

The crisis in Ife/Modakeke is fuelled by the same dynamics despite the fact that it pitches one sub-Yoruba group against another. The Modakeke who are believed to be refugees from the Yoruba wars that followed the breakdown of the Old Oyo empire are believed to have come from Oyo. Political tension and conflicts leading to the death of thousands of people had characterised the relationship between the two communal groups over the last two decades. The reasons for the conflict between the two communities seem to have been generated by disagreements over the creation of new local government areas. It goes to show that the question of access to local power is at the core of the unending conflict between the two communities.

In putting forward proposals for ensuring harmony and a just balance between constitutional provisions on citizenship and rights and their practical applications, three pertinent observations are necessary:

There is a clear dilemma between individual and group rights in Nigeria ’s constitutional history. The basic foundation of a liberal democratic order is the rights and freedom attached to the individual as a legal entity. Citizens’ rights are primarily conceived as individual rights. At the same time, given the existence of deep divisions in the society along ethnic, religious and regional lines giving rise to “minority” and “majority” identities, there is also need to provide constitutional guarantees for disadvantaged groups as the “federal character” and “quota” provisions have sought to do. But there appears to be a greater obsession with group rights to the detriment of individual rights in the Nigerian debate.

The notion of ‘indigeneity’ entrenched in the 1979 Constitution is at variance with the Nigerian public law tradition. It has seriously compromised the definition of citizenship in the Independence Constitution, which conferred citizenship on all those whose communities had been in the Nigerian territory by October 1 1960 .  The indigeneity struggle is now leading to the questioning of the citizenship of groups who have been in the Nigerian area even before the colonisation of the country in 1900.

The result is that a significant number of Nigerians are being excluded from access to certain rights and privileges conferred by public institutions. They include employment in the public service, government contracts, admission in schools, access to privileges such as scholarships, training opportunities, health facilities and even access to vital resources such as land and water (for farming, grazing and fishing). It is vital for the political health of the country that the constitutional provisions that have been used to buttress discrimination against other Nigerians be addressed with urgency.

Citizenship and Constitutional Reform Issues  

There is need for the political will to confront the issue of building a system of national citizenship in the country through a reform of the Nigerian Constitution. With specific reference to the provisions on citizenship, the following constitutional amendments would be necessary.

The concept of indigene should be completely deleted `from the Nigerian Constitution because it produces a majority of losers rather than winners. Since the majority of Nigerians are settlers, there is a need to address the issue of residency rights for Nigerian citizens in the places where they live and work. There should be a constitutional provision, which provides that a Nigerian citizen who has resided continuously for a period of five years in any state of the federation and performs his/her civic duties including paying taxes, shall be entitled to all the rights and privileges of the state. This will be in accord with the practice in most federations, and will strengthen efforts at national integration. When this provision is made, it would mean that anybody who has spend five years in a state can have any political appointment and access to all rights and privileges currently restricted to indigenes.

Given the numerous problems suffered by women who have married outside their states of origin, there is a need for specific protection. The Constitution should state in express terms that a woman married to any man from a state other than her own should have the rights to choose which of the states to claim as her own. Similarly, there is need to amend Section 26 (2) (a) such as to give foreign men married to Nigerians the opportunity to acquire citizenship, a right foreign women married to Nigerian men already have.

At a more general level, it would be useful to devise means for the promotion of social citizenship in the country. The provisions on social and economic rights, which are not justiciable should be made justiciable. This is important because poverty and the lack of access of most Nigerians to the basic means of livelihood is the primary cause of a lot of communal strife we have been having in Nigeria . Of course the Nigerian state does not currently have the capacity to provide all the needs of the population. What is being proposed is a constitutional devise similar to the one in the South African Constitution that would compel the government to provide for social needs to the extent of its capacity. The South African constitutional devise also involves the entrenchment of independent commissions to monitor the implementation of the said social and economic rights.