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Written by Uche Egboluche
Saturday, 18 February 2012
If you say it, they hush you.
If you complain, they shout you down.
If you dare write it, they threaten life out of you.
But if you keep quiet, they laugh and see you as mere remnant of poverty stricken naggers and antagonists.
Nigeria, like most other African countries, which are essentially artificial creations, is a product of colonialism. It has no history beyond 1914, when the controversial amalgamation brought together a nation that has become conditioned and bedevilled by the problems of accommodating several diversities that touch ethnic, linguistic, geopolitical and religious lines. These in various ways have proven to be the deepening cleavage between Christians and Muslims as divided alongside the popular north and south dichotomy. These differences create centrifugal forces that reverberate tension, which often stretch the bounds of unity to a potentially snapping point.
That is why Nigeria has spent greater number of the more than 50 years of its independence debating on its survival as one indissoluble and indivisible entity. At no particular time has any of the 250 ethnic groups reposed enough faith in the nation’s survival as a unit. Serial political and religious absurdities have at every instance reminded some people how they have increasingly become strangers in an entity they call their country.
The political system we operate makes government solely a business with the powerful centre being where people scramble to congregate to partition the common patrimony; the source of which has been reduced to oil alone. It is as if certain parts of Nigeria would have preferred to be in a common country with people of other countries, perhaps because they speak the same language or share cultural values. Some even trace their origin to the Arabs or Jews among others, while others claim their brothers are in Togo, Niger, Chad, Benin, and Cameroun, and either threaten to reunite with them while leaving Nigeria, or drag them into the country to maim others. To these people found across the divides, there is no basis coexisting with people they share nothing in common with except mere nomenclature foisted on them by colonialists. They live in another world carved in Nigeria. Exposing further how bad it has become, the governor of Niger State, Alhaji Babangida Aliyu recently queried why his people would easily incorporate a Nigerien or Chadian, who may even be socio-economic burden as a brother but always remind the southerner born and bred there that he/she is a foreigner. In the south, it is just a case of write-off for Northerners especially those of different religions. Though they may not interfere in their lives but they will as well not consider them worthy on real friendship. It is purely suspicion. The oil discovery has not helped matter as it makes the man from the south to feel his stay in Nigeria is a privilege to the north?
No wonder, there is an increasing secessionist consciousness among Nigerians either because we have not really at any point lived as brothers or we have perpetually hoped that our union would be dissolved someday.
The consequent of this is that Nigeria may have spent over 80 percent of what it has made as a nation trying to force the centre to hold groups that had signed divorce papers in principle no sooner than they were wedded by the colonialists, without their consent. But beyond material resources, it has been blood, which is purely life that has cemented the country together. There is no need arguing who among the various federating units have contributed the larger quantity of this blood or those who have used sword under whatever guise against those that take them as brothers. The truth is sacrosanct and the facts are sacred for all to see.
Unfortunate but needful to state, it is the blood of Igbos, one of the three major ethnic groups in the country that have majorly been used to gum the loose unity. Today, the killings have become restless, and no one is spared. Though the southerners and Christians are targets, but the brothers of the killers are no longer immune from the problem. And because they live more outside their home, and because of their enterprise that often goes with subtleness that make them more progressive than their hosts no sooner had they settled down, Igbos constitute larger number of those killed. It is such that as you are reading this, some people may be under the sharp edge of the sword from the Boko Haram or any other of such groups or persons everywhere but especially in the northern part of the country. Even those alive may in the words of the poet, JP Clarke, in his famous poem, ‘The Casualty,’ be “awaiting death by instalment,” as occasioned by the anguish of burying their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in thousands every week, and every month.
Although we often blame religion, but it is thus a naked truth that the blood of men and women shed under the guise of religion is really politically motivated. Religion and politics is quite inseparable, and that is Nigeria’s albatross. Developed nations have crossed a line between the duo by really creating a secular society. It would not be totally foolish to argue that Igbo man’s predicament was caused by the coup alleged to have been masterminded by few military officers from this region, but it would be stupid to say the hatred had not been their ever before the independence.
No matter our illusion about development, the mind of average Nigerian politician is crude and he mixes the sacred and profane in his quest for power. Our religious leaders are not helping matter as they provide the platform for that. A study of the pattern and dimension of violence in Nigeria simply defends the truth that it is not religion but politics that is the architect of our predicament. When you hear of Christians being killed in Nigeria as they are always, it is not really out of ideology but real political war. It is a politician, who will tell the young and innocent Almajiri that God said what actually is not in any holy book, just to score cheap political point. In fact, in Nigeria, politicians literally declare war on behalf of God. In the east, the politicians will prey on the denomination of their opponent. Some even join some churches when election approaches.
If you consider the rancour and bitterness that follows elections in Nigeria, especially the presidential elections, whereby some even say they are born to rule, and only them or no one else will occupy the Aso Rock or they make Nigeria ungovernable, you will know the enormity of the problem our systemic and structural imbalance has foisted on us. I wonder if some people had not promised the insecurity we are witnessing. The 2015 drum is already sounding. The president wants tenure extension; the Igbos want power for the first time, but the north wants it returned to them. That is to say that what we are seeing now may be a tip of the ice berg.
A careful look at the whole scenario will tell any informed person that for the first time Nigeria needs to sit down and talk. Sincerely, disastrously pretentious and pious political preaching, posturing and exhortations, and the use of governmental power of brute force to contain the mounting insurgencies will only lead to disintegration of Nigeria and not the Sovereign National Conference that people need. It is power; the struggle to control the petrodollars and not religion that is Nigeria’s problem. The Sovereign National Conference is an opportunity to call a spade a spade and not a forum to discuss disintegration of Nigeria. Nigeria is on a fragile foundation which will be torn apart by pretentious piety that says all is well. If we don't, we have to expect the catastrophic consequences to the very existence of the country and its horrible effects on the black race, Black Africa and the world at large. This is the truth but the so-called elder statesmen live in spite of it. Like the English William Blake said: “When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.”
This is merely to defend the clamour of millions of Nigeria both those alive and dead, who are really patriotic, that we need to argue on how best to live together, and not depend on the ill arrangement of the exploitative colonialists or the dictates of neo-colonialists. Don’t think the federal legislators and others holding political offices in the federal level will admire this suggestion as their fear of losing out of the equation abounds. They will want the momentary enjoyment of national wealth and may only join the bandwagon of advocates of Sovereign National Conference only when they have been booted out of office. And let it be clear; No body or region should think we are congregating to disintegrate. Hence there will be no need for retired generals to dust their khakis in readiness for war to keep Nigeria one as many of them have promised, forgetting they did absolutely nothing to save the nation when they held sway.
But if the conference is not hold, as long as it is deferred, then we must continue to live in fear and manage forced union. And if eventually we cave in to the various forces trying our union and part ways, those shying away from the path of dialogue, even if they were ready to fight to keep Nigeria one even in their 90s, should die with the blame.
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