Why Nigeria Needs To Split

(A hypothetical thought)

By Johnson Uzuegbu
The country Nigeria is quite an unusual one and so is its dilemma. The bad thing with the Nigerian situation isnt really just its hopelessness but the resistance of its political class to any solution at all. The question that beats me, however, is why anyone would spend so much effort sustaining a system that refused to work. Is it out of shear wickedness or a bad taste of humour, certainly love for fatherland doesnt come as an option considering the mess the Nigerian populace found themselves. With a population of over 140 million (or is it 150, 160, 170? Ive grown so mistrustful of figures the government spits out) Nigeria prides itself as the giant of Africa and thats just all about it. All it can boast of is a pretty sizeable number of human beings roaming the earth. An honest look at the present Nigerian situation would show that there is absolutely nothing the average Nigerian gains from the government as it has failed in virtually everything a government is expected to deliver to its people and I challenge anyone who disagrees to come tell the world just one thing Nigerians should be grateful to their government for. Whether in areas of security, economy, education, national unity the story remains unchanged. Bottom line the Nigerian government cannot honestly justify its existence hence my opinion about it. There are those who would blame the current Nigerian situation on the long period of military rule those who would like us to believe that the current Nigerian democratic government is still at a nascent stage. Personally I dont see the present political process as nascent but again I dont see it as democratic either. The idea that the Nigerian government is going through a learning process might be tempting but also dangerous; Nigeria isnt learning anything it is falling apart. The truth is our leaders never learn. Study the present political class and how they think, compare them with past politicians then youll understand what I mean. I like to think of the origin of our problem as lying with the current democratic process or the military coup leaders but with the founding fathers of this nation; the Azikiwe, Awolowo, Sarduana, and their peers. Though there are some who adore these guys and would go any length to defend their actions (especially There tribes people) I am definitely not one of them. These guys are the very reason Nigeria got off on the wrong foot, because of the bad blood that runs between them there was a coup. Many of them are dead now and we cannot keep brooding their bad decisions. If there is any political process that needs to be corrected it is the present and not the past. But as it is now the Nigerian situation is hopeless. Its not that there is no solution to a united Nigeria but that what Nigeria faces are practically impossible solutions. As it were it seems like it would take a miracle to save this country. When the international community labels Nigeria as corrupt they are right but its kind of hard to grasp what corruption means when speaking of Nigeria. Basically we are inclined to think of a few individuals enriching themselves at the expense of the populace. Nigeria isnt the only the only corrupt nation and I doubt if it is the most corrupt. There are governments in this world accused of corruption yet making significant developmental progress. Nigeria however have developed a structure that produces a corrupt system, hence it is not the system in place but the structure that produces it that is the problem. Roll the dice, form a new government and what you get is likely to be corrupt. To paraphrase former president

Olusegun Obasanjo (though in a different context) even Jesus Christ himself might find it impossible to correct Nigeria hence even with a miracle there is no guarantee Nigeria would be really fixed. It is not that Nigerians are naturally bad. No, not at all! Nigerians are like everyday humans you encounter (assuming youre somewhere else). They feel love, hate, anger, greed, sympathy to the same degree normal humans do. But like I said they got off the wrong foot. The truth (and I am not going to put it nicely) is that Nigerians hate each other. They hate each other not because they have a natural tendency towards hatred but because our leaders discovered early enough they could cache on hatred to manipulate their people. In other words they feast on the peoples emotions especially the pains of historic wrong doing they inflicted themselves hence fuelling the hatred they use to their advantage. Of course they only get to point out the wrongs the other politicians have done to their region and not the wrongs they did themselves, and every single time the Nigerian public falls for them like a pack of card. This really works like a perfect science. For this reason when you bring up an Ibo man and a Yoruba man to stand for election and what you will certainly get is an election between the Ibos and the Yorubas, there is no asking who the good guy is. Here in lies the structure that will, without fail, give rise to a flawed system. Because Nigerians are prone to bad choices and are easily manipulated it is not surprising we get mediocre leaders for our efforts. These mediocre leaders benefit from our bad choices while the rest of Nigerians dont and hence it is not in our best interest to stick together. Our leaders are really mediocre in every sense of the word. Its usually hard to notice when they are doing nothing, normally this is when we get to see them on screen making speeches we dont get to count as something or make those decisions that wouldnt make us cry yet. There are times, however, at their moment of madness when they get to make those speeches or decisions that have us bump our heads repeatedly against the wall knowing what mess we are in. Whats even worse is that this mediocrity cuts across all political and ethnic divide. Consider for instance the president, Goodluck Jonathan. He was once a popular figure among the people especially of the southern divide and really won their admiration with his shoe stories during his first true contest as a key candidate. A series of anti-people policies threw all these into the dustbin. Now those who publicly defend Jonathans policies are either sycophants or his tribesmen. If Jonathan were to win reelection based on the reputation hes built for himself it certainly wouldnt be because the people voted for him, he simply rigged it. Among the many decisions that exposes Jonathans mediocrity include his decisions to pardon his former boss Depreiye Alamieyeseigha who impoverished his home state even as jobless youths cry out to government and even lose their lives agitating for social justice. I singled this particular case out not that Jonathan acted outside his constitutional power, it certainly looked like he acted constitutionally. Jonathans mediocrity shows not in the pardon he granted but in the reason he and his cabinet gave to Nigerians for the pardon: that Alamieyeseigha has suffered enough! Nigerians suffer untold hardship from the reckless decisions its leaders make and sometimes in the hands of agencies that are supposed to protect them. Alamieyeseigha on the other hand feeds well, walks among the free people despite his crimes, has no intentions of going back to the UK where he jumped bail to face justice, yet the best argument that could be put forth for pardoning a felon is that he has suffered enough. Does the president require a brain surgeon to understand that when public funds are embezzled it is the public whose resources and hard earned income are stolen that gets wronged and not the president or even the government? Therefore issuing a pardon without regards to how the people would feel about it does indeed expose his mediocrity.

Another set of brain-dead politicians Id like to consider are the Northern Elders / Arewa forum and the sympathizers to their cause. These are people who openly declare themselves villains of the Nigerian nation. Their primary concern as far as anyone not within their inner caucus can tell is how power can URGENTLY return to the north. Every region in Nigeria wants power to be controlled by them but the northern elders want it the most and are out to make that happen at whatever cost even if means burning down the nation or making it ungovernable like they suggested. For this reason they never hesitate to issue open statements that threaten the existence of this nation and are always there when needed to protect their terrorist arm the Boko Haram. Over the past few years the Boko Haram have killed and seriously inflicted serious injuries to many innocent Nigerians rendering many of their surviving victims completely incapacitated, in a country already plagued by an extraordinarily high unemployment rate under the guise of Islamizing Nigeria. The northern elders have a simple explanation for this madness: high rate of poverty and illiteracy. Its appalling how the northern elders view their region as the least privileged considering how long Nigeria was ruled by northern military generals. The entire nation is plagued with poverty and if theirs is unusually high who can they blame but themselves. They encouraged the Alma Jiri system and it was under the watch of their generals that Nigeria degenerated to this unsalvageable condition. By the way the name of the terror group already suggests the rejection of western education which no doubt must have been widely preached by clerics in the north. Funny enough they also have a surprisingly simple solution too: amnesty for the terrorists! However, amnesty in the Nigerian sense is really hard to find in any standard dictionary. The last amnesty programme initiated by the then president Umar Musa Yaradua (of the northern extraction) offered to the Niger Delta militants required they give up their arms and renounce violence, and in return would receive some form of rehabilitation, or should I say settlement. It might be unfair to call it settlement considering the level of damage done to this region, seriously the government wouldnt want to initiate a settlement programme considering what it would cost but amnesty in this case was grossly misrepresented. I recall a certain scenario where some acclaimed ex-militant staged a demonstration disrupting public activities in protest against their exclusion from the amnesty programme. Im no expert in the English language but a dictionary look up of the word amnesty does not include monetary inducement. It seems weve now come to understand amnesty as involving some sort of welfare package. The Niger Delta case is different though, what was needed was far beyond what the amnesty programme offered. The idea of amnesty to the Boko Haram terror group, however, is simply ridiculous. The truth is the Nigerian government is weak and Boko Haram does not require amnesty. Should they decide to renounce violence it is unlikely the government will keep hunting for them. Those clamouring for amnesty, besides calling for the release of suspected terrorists, are simply asking for a welfare programme for the terror group. Among those clamoring for amnesty is the former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) Mallam Nuhu Ribadu. In a radio interview he featured in Kaduna Ribadu criticized the president for calling Boko Haram faceless threatening war if amnesty is not granted to the terror group. My question to the northern elders however is, if Boko Haram gets an amnesty package for their many senseless killings what exactly do their innocent victims get, an apology? Nuhu Ribadu was one among the few Nigerian elite I thought were capable of reasoning, I was wrong. This brings me to the question, is there anyone in the Nigerian political sphere capable of thinking straight? Our lawmakers can hardly make useful laws without revealing their idiocy (imagine proposing the death penalty for kidnapping, none for terror groups and immunity for corrupt executives), Our judiciary find it hard to make a simple reasonable judgement call (evident in the undemocratic enthronement of Governor

Chibuike Amaechi in a supposedly democratic setting by some group of supreme court judges) and the executive just cant see how a progressive Nigeria benefits them. Our leaders senselessness we can endure, we always have, but most worrisome is the openness of northern elders to war and the willingness of their people to resort the use of violence. I am not one of the many Nigerians who would say to them Bring it on, were ready for you! Does the idea of another civil war scare me? Of course it does and the way Nigeria is headed it seems unavoidable. But why go down this dreadful path? In whos interest is it? Why dont we just identify the major faults in our geopolitical structure and split the country into manageable chunks without bloodshed? I ask again in whos interest is the unity of Nigeria? Ask the Ijaw man what he has gained from the Nigerian project so far and what you get are not exactly benefits but years neglect and environment degradation, ask the Igbo man what he gains and you get years of repression having suffered a brutal defeat in their futile secession quest. The Yorubas are one group not so keen at clamouring for a separate state yet considers themselves self-sufficient especially economically. They really have no need holding on to a country on the path of war. The Hausa/Fulani group, the boogeymen of present Nigeria breathing fire and brimstone if their demands are not met would tell you they dont need Nigeria to survive, already part of the demands of their terror group [Boko Haram] is having an Islamic state. If Nigeria is split maybe they wont have to Islamize the entire country to achieve that. Saying that one region or the other would suffer from the splitting due to lack of resources is absurd as generally speaking there is hardly a single thing Nigerians can claim to benefit from the government. There is not a single responsibility the government is living up to. Virtually all infrastructure the government is responsible for are dilapidated, security is non-existent, poverty and illiteracy are on the high and currently the only manna I can think of coming from the government is subsidy on petrol which ironically happens to be part of the abundant resources of this nation. Every day we live in fear as we watch events unfold knowing that one day this country might rupture and there would be no hiding place for the mostly unprepared Nigerians. Actually there might be advantages to a peaceful disintegration of Nigeria. There could for instance be a healthy competition to develop the dividing units, trade relations could be maintained something difficult to achieve if they split forcefully, people can actually hold their leaders responsible notwithstanding the tribe he belongs, regions without oil can actually work to create wealth without depending on federal budget and, who knows, politicians incapable of creating wealth might just go find themselves some real jobs in the open market. While the split might not solve the problem of mediocrity it would spare us from the troubles of a needless war. Dont get me wrong, I myself, was a fan of a united Nigeria the Giant of Africa but lets face it with Nigeria gone Africa would get itself another giant (assuming population count for achievement) and hopefully it would be a worthy one. This way we wont have to shed our blood protecting an unworthy cause.