Recently, I stumbled on the speech Vice President Yemi Osinbajo delivered in 2017 at the forum, “Biafra: 50 years after”, which held at the Shehu Musa Y’aradua Centre, Abuja on Thursday. “We are Greater together than Apart” was the caption. Osinbajo must have meant it when he inferred that there are many advantages of Nigeria staying together as one indivisible nation. He believes that Nigerian ethnic groups and regions have the potential of becoming great together. Unfortunately, there are many in and outside of Nigeria who don’t share the same hope. A balkanised Nigeria is their yearning. And the reasons are not far-fetched.
Over the years, many Nigerians have suggested that Lord Lugard and his co-British brutish slave masters must have been sick in the head when they fused Northern and Southern protectorates of Nigeria together in an unholy marriage. What the British betrothed has provoked many questions to which there have been no answers till today. If the fusion of Nigeria was an experiment, it has failed in the laboratory of nation-building. The original intention was garnitured in dubiety and insincerity. According to the Amalgamation reports addressed to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, The Right Honourable A. Bonar Law, the Governor General, wrote immediately after the fusion; “…the year 1914 will ever be a memorable one in the annals of Nigeria, in that it opened with the amalgamation of the two separate administrations of northern and southern Nigeria into a single government of Nigeria… as an outlying part of the British empire in its trade and its revenue….”
It is obvious from this above submission that the rabid raison d’être for the jarring together of the northern and southern protectorates was about territorial control, expansionism, and revenue-garnering adventure for the British.
Ask ordinary Northerners, they’ll tell you that there is nothing wrong with severing their entire region from Nigeria. Ask the same question in the South-West, its people are just waiting for a signal to leave the fold and flag off an Oduduwa Republic. Take a trip to the South-South and conduct an opinion poll within its people, they feel cheated and robbed by Nigeria, and they prefer to stay independent steering their own crude-oil ship. There is no breathing being in the world that does not know where the South-East stands. The Igbo consider Nigeria an entrapment and a starkly unfair and unjust overlord. They want out of the contraption like yesterday; and they’ve once dared it in a civil war that unfortunately claimed millions of lives. A majority of Nigerians believe that the fusion of Nigeria has led to confusion and it is far from being a marriage-made-from-heaven.
I am not sure if the billionaire moneybags among us are aware of what many Nigerians think about the lousy lullaby: “One Nigeria”. In the ears of many, it is a song of deception; hollow in expression and shallow in its intended meaning. Many would have loved ‘One Nigeria’ bound in freedom, peace, and unity; but their lives and destinies are withering off before their eyes. Their children are hungry and many are dying of strange diseases because the healthcare system is decrepit. And those who have accesses and connections to power and money are throwing their affluence and influence around in deliberate oppression and suppression of the people. Ethnicity rules Nigeria. Some government agencies are like ethnic clans. Government meetings are conducted in ethnic languages; and officials of the same agency who don’t speak the same language are sidelined in discussions that are supposed to build One Nigeria. Appointments into many parastatals are skewed in a particular ethnic direction depending who is in power. There is no reverential consideration for what you know; but only who comes from your tribal block that you know. If there are clamours by some groups for severing from Nigeria, the reasons aren’t far-fetched. The stubborn refusal to embrace true federalism in Nigeria by an egregious elite is a perpetration of violent fraud on Nigeria. It is an ignominious daylight robbery that is now being gradually resisted by millions of Nigerians. That stubborn and delusional refusal is causing Nigeria internal haemorrhage and heated polity.
The present structural and political arrangement is not working for the ordinary citizen whether they are from the North or the South. It is true they may jump up for joy when their kinsman becomes president, or when their village people reign as heads in the NNPC and Customs with oversight rulership in finance ministry. But their joy is short-lived when they are shoved aside in benefits like good schools for their children, a bubbling economy to help feed their family, equipped and functional hospitals to treat simple malaria; among other malaises bedevilling the country. The true beneficiaries of Nigeria’s milk-and-honey are the same cycle of cohort criminals who daily scoop up cash in stacks with endless joy ride to Dubai today and Europe tomorrow.
Friends, men sucking up Nigeria’s blood are one band. They do not care about the ordinary man on the street; and because of them, Nigerians’ suffering remains untold.
It is true that power is responsibility. What this means, among many other things, is that anyone with power is expected to act responsibly. Leaders ought to be stewards not scavenging slave masters. Leaders endeavour to challenge the present and enrich the future by working for the public good. Leadership is service to humanity; it’s a selfless exercise that helps release the people out of the cocoon of despair and destitution. Positive leadership builds a nation. Where are the leaders who will help bring an end to the scourge ravaging Nigeria? Who stands out as the captain of a victorious chariot leading us into the land of our dreams? Who among our leaders can stand for Nigeria as Mahatma Gandhi stood up for India, and as Madiba Mandela stood up for Black South Africans? Where are the assuaging sages among us who will champion common sense causes to revamp the stench called Nigeria? Where are fathers of the nation and hefty pastoral representatives of heaven? Where are the royal daddies and their submissive crowned queens? Where are the tellers of truth who ought to shine a bright light on the beastly bites in a nation that’s not working? They are among us. They are in their comfy closets. Do they care about the little man or woman in Imesi-Ile or in Ohaji? Do they give a hoot about the famished families in Bukuru or Bayelsa? I don’t know. But if they do, should Nigeria be in this sorry state after 60 years of Independence?
Nigeria with its vast resources was brisk business for Britain. But now the British are gone, and Lugard is dead, we and our children’s children are the ones now living a lie. The fathers ate sour grapes and children’s teeth are set on edge. Can we reassess, confront the truth, and do something different from what has been routine? Natural resources and human talents of a nation largely determine her speed towards progress. Nigeria has both and much more. But the nation is still sitting at the back of the bus of progress and development. Nigeria has talents and able men and women. But they don’t have a fighting chance to be enthroned in power in a system riddled with blatant corruption, and systemic ineptitude. Power, truly, is responsibility. But when the responsibilities of power are in the hands of the recalcitrant irresponsible, what you get are irresponsible results. Is a united Nigeria possible? You bet; it is. But, how many people with power and authority are able to talk the talk and walk the walk? Is a united Nigeria possible? Yes. But if that is our self-Promised Land, it will be a long, rough road getting there.
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