Nigeria: Gradually Going Down The Drain
By ABIDEMI WILLIAMS
The Nigerian state was created out of economic necessity and it’s for the British administration for ‘effective control of the area under her jurisdiction and power. Since the independence period from the 1960s till date, Nigeria has had fault lines in the relationship between and among the peoples who reside, dwell in the nation as the territory that denotes the Nigerian state today.
The nation has undergone a lot in its history as an independent since the 1960s especially she had to embark on a civil war just six years after she attained independence from the British colonial government who also played a major role in the laying of a faulty foundation that has engulfed the nation in recent times without recourse to the future that would the lot of the nation.
After the Civil war which was before the five majors struck the nation with their infantile idea of a utopian nation where there would Justice and egalitarianism would be the order of the society like in a plural system that we run in the nation, the forces of conservatism rose with the help of the west and east in the global scene to help quell the resultant effects of the chaos generated by the actions of the mutineers and later, as the civil war was fought, won by the federal forces using British, Soviets arms to subjugate their brothers in a fratricidal war, the last is yet to be heard of the debacle.
If the fall of Biafra on the battlefield heralded the end of the civil war, the bind that held Nigerians together became so loose that the centre could not hold again as the way it was during the era of the British colonial government who made sure that the state was what it should be like during their period of administration. Several kinds of literature have decried the ‘evil’ that was done to the nation through the amalgamation of diverse peoples who hardly have a lot in common.
Chinua Achebe in his book, “The Trouble with Nigeria explains the rot that has become the lot of the country in the late 1970s. Max Soillum’s What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule. The nation has been tottering on the edge of disintegration most especially during the period after the civil war and also in 1993 after Bashorun Moshood Abiola won the controversial election that led to his death in 1998.
Why are we going through these histories you may ask? It is because when people fail to learn from history, they will repeat past mistakes.
The Buhari administration which came on board in 2015 and was re-elected in 2018 has shown Nigerians that the nation is really not one because if a look is taken at government policies, the nation is at a loss on where it is heading because of the primitive policies that the government is churning out by the day. Issues bordering on herdsmen attacks, kidnapping, rape, and others, Boko Haram is on the front burner whereas, the government of the day is not even interested in making any moves towards taking prompt action on these issues. Instead, people who are calling for secession, after seeing the carnage that has become the lot of Nigerians are being hounded, sent to prison, and hunted by the forces of the state. Nnamdi Kanu of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was captured outside the shores of the nation bring back memories of the Umaru Dikko fracas of the 1980s in a Gestapo style international kidnapping. Sunday Igboho was declared wanted after his house was attacked by the State Security Service (SSS) where two people were shot dead in allege gun duel. All these were carried out by a government that came into power through a democratic process but later turned itself into a dictatorship.
As if it isn’t enough, #Endsars is now Nigeria’s own Tiananmen square of China in the 1980s while the fault line that has been existing in the nation, it is very visible now in the scheme of things. It is glaring that the centre can no longer hold and the Falcon cannot hear the voice of the Falconer. So what could be done in these instances? Especially as the north, south of Nigeria has become a slaughter grounds for terrorists, killers, kidnappers, armed robbers, and other forms of criminalities? The answer is simple, we need to go back to restructuring which was what the All Progressive Congress used in wooing Nigerians to support Major General Muhammed Buhari (apologies to The Punch Newspapers) when he was canvassing for votes from the country.
Without any jot of doubt, at the epicenter of Nigeria as a problem is the question of whether Nigeria, as amalgamated in 1914 or as united with the independence Constitution or the 1999 Constitution is indissoluble and indivisible. And true enough, if a Constitution provides for indissolubility and indivisibility of the country and the people, as a required constituent of a modern nation-state, complains that the Constitution that provides for indissolubility or indivisibility is fraudulent, why should the Constitution not be set aside to pave way for a people-driven constitution? PMB says complainants should address their problems through the National Assembly (NASS), which is considered by the complainants as a resultant of a fraudulent military Constitution. This is one reason why PMB is a problem and an obstacle to the making of a truly united and vibrant Nigeria, which is currently also a problem unto herself.
Nigeria as a Problematic
The foundation of Nigeria as a problem is not only the vision and wishes of Sir Ahmadu Bello, as published in The Parrot newspaper on 12 October 1960 but also the misperception of Nigeria in his mind. In the words of Sir Ahmadu Bello, ‘the new nation, called Nigeria, should be an estate of our great grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future.’
This statement is problematic because of its many operational words of concern: ruthlessness of action to be taken in preventing others from ruling the North; the whole of Nigeria as an estate or as property; and southern Nigeria as a conquered territory or subservient people. The problematic questions are not far-fetched: why should the North be considered as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory? This question is necessary because Nigeria has already been partitioned into two in the statement. The division is intrinsic in the statement by the mere fact that the North of willing minorities will be the tools, the South of conquered or enslaved people are to be political subjects.
More importantly, why the need to ensure the permanency of Fulani rule? Is it not because of the need to maintain the status quo or to prevent a change of power that electoral fraud has remained a desideratum or that Fulani power is also considered indefinite in terms of timing? Without gainsaying, this statement of Sir Bello has sent different signals to people in the southern part of Nigeria and the signals have also compelled the perception of Northerners, particularly the Fulani, of domineering slave masters who must now be resisted. The period from 1960 until now is seen as the period of tolerance, which has also reached its crescendo. In the words of Dr. Sina Okanlomo, the Secretary-General of the Yoruba One Voice (YOV) in Johannesburg, South Africa, ‘the clamour for the Yoruba Nation became imperative amid various imbalances in the administrative structure and employment, the amalgamation treaty, continuous violation of human rights, nepotism, corruption, corruption, injustice, insecurity, and terrorism under President Buhari’s watch.’
And perhaps most notably, Dr Okanlomo said ‘Yoruba independence is not negotiable. We cannot attain our full potential within a contraption called Nigeria. As long as we remain in the geographical boundary created by the British, we are not free people, but slaves. How can we accept Fulani domination as an alternative to British colonisation? This is shameful, it must be rejected by all and sundry at all cost’ (vide Daily Sun, Wednesday, June 16, 2021, p.28). This perspective is popular among Yoruba in Diaspora and the majority of Yoruba at home.
Second, probably based on the belief that Nigeria is an estate of Uthman Dan Fodio, the Fulani wrongly believe that there is terra nullius in Nigeria. For instance, the National President of the Miyetti Allah Kauta Hore, Mr. Abdullahi Bello Bodejo, strongly believes that ‘any forest in Nigeria is for every Nigerian, that it does not belong to an individual or a community.’ This is a dangerous problem that directly challenges the Land Use Decree No. 6 of 29th March 1978, which was not only re-enacted by the National Assembly of Nigeria into a subsisting Act under Section 315(5)(d) of the 1999 Constitution but also still vested the right of land ownership and control on State Governors, who hold it in trust on behalf of their people. It is this wrong belief by some Northern leaders that land does not have any individual legal title, that largely explains the imbroglio between herdsmen and farmers. How do we explain PMB’s archaic suggestion of a return to the old grazing routes of the First Republic? Where is PMB’s modernity in this case? Where is his wittiness?
Buhari is simply taking Nigeria back to the primitive era and the political and economic elites are watching without shouting out due to fear of a Gestapo like visit in the middle of the night.
