The Nation Newspaper

Category: Banji Akintoye

  • Southwest: Time to applaud our governors

    Southwest: Time to applaud our governors

    Last Thursday, December 7, newspapers carried the news of a meeting by the six governors of the South-west – a meeting at which the governors agreed unanimously to “adopt a common position” on amendments being proposed by the National Assembly to the Nigerian constitution. Sure, in the light of today’s realities and needs of Nigeria, the amendments being pursued by the National Assembly to the Nigerian constitution do not amount to anything important. Earlier proposals that the National Assembly should include the issue of devolution of powers from the federal centre to the federating units had been shunted aside by the National Assembly. After that, what was left in their amendment   package was a jumble of proposals concerning matters that, in serious essence, can be regarded as, altogether, inconsequential.

    But, as I see these things, agreeing to adopt a common position on those inconsequential constitution amendment proposals was not the core of the governors’ decision in that meeting. For me and, I believe, for the whole Yoruba nation in Nigeria, the governors’ core decision was to agree to “adopt a common position” in recognition of, and obedience to, the truth that, according to Governor Akeredolu who spoke for the six, “Yoruba is one with the same destiny”, and that “hence, party politics would not be allowed to divide them… “. “As you can see”, Akeredolu explained further on behalf of the six governors, “all of us are one from Oduduwa. All of us, being brothers, are presenting the same position on matters that are of common interest of all of us, and we are doing it together”. Governor Akeredolu made it clear that the issue of constitutional amendments was only one of the issues that the governors’ meeting considered. “There are many things that we have endorsed…”

    These are excellent sentiments towards the good and wellbeing of the Yoruba nation.  They bode well for us Yoruba. And our governors deserve to be applauded by us all.

    The experience of the Yoruba nation in Nigeria in these times has been one of lack of contact with elected Yoruba public officials, leading to a feeling that we Yoruba are abandoned by Yoruba leaders who hold offices in the governance of Nigeria. It is not that the governors of our six states have been totally failing to do and achieve some modicum of development and progress. Given the Nigerian structure whereby states have to depend on federal doles for everything, whereby states are impotent beggars for federal favours, whereby federal fixation on revenues from only one resource bedevils the Nigerian economy, whereby the federal authority itself is overburdened, chaotic and hopelessly incompetent, and whereby federal infrastructures and services strangulate development and progress all over Nigeria,  we have to acknowledge that our six state governments have not been doing too badly on the whole in the provision of public services and facilities. In fact, there are many of us who would point to the fact that our six state governments still rank among the leading achievers among the 36 state governments of Nigeria.  Our Lagos State, blessed with much internally generated revenues of its own and with much stability in governance, leads Nigeria in development, progress, services and facilities; and our Ogun State follows proudly closely.

    But provision, or lack of provision, of governmental services and facilities, is not the crux of our feeling of being abandoned by our elected public officials. For decades now, we have watched in dismay as our state governments have operated in almost total separation from one another – as if we Yoruba are no longer a nation, a people, “with one destiny”, in the world. We have watched helplessly as this separation has gradually weakened our nation’s well-known development capability. And we have watched in utter shock as our elected officials – our elected legislators in the federal and states legislatures and most of our governors – have kept mute over developments that undoubtedly threaten our well-being and our future as a nation. In an unbroken chain for over three years, Fulani herdsmen have brought herds of cattle into our farmlands, destroyed our farmers’ crops, and killed our farmers who dare to protest. Not even our most highly placed citizens who choose to engage in farming have been spared. The Fulani herdsmen’s terrorism is threatening to destroy the foundations of our economic life and, as one writer on the social media put it, threatening to turn our people into beggars in the streets. More and more, the evidence mounts that these outrages against our farming population are not random or ignorant acts, but that they are organized and purposeful. If any situation has demanded united and firm action by the governors and other elected public officials of the Yoruba nation in recent times, this one is it. Thank God for our one governor (Fayose of Ekiti State) who immediately put up serious resistance; and thank God for others who have more or less followed suit. But what would have met our expectations as a people would have been some very affirmative joint action by all our six state governments, supported by our federal legislators, our Houses of Assembly, and by masses of our nation’s leaders, to show definitively that we Yoruba will not surrender to this invasion of our homeland, and that we will not yield to any federal pressure for space in our homeland for primitive cattle rearing.

    Most Yoruba who understand what a restructuring of the Nigerian federation would mean to development and socio-economic progress in our homeland, as well as in all other regions of Nigeria, have also been surprised that Yoruba elected public officials have tended to abstain from the widespread demands among Yoruba people, as well as in other parts of Nigeria, for restructuring. Of course, we Yoruba are very grateful to those of our leaders and civic organizations that have been spearheading this demand for restructuring. We are very grateful to the organizers of the recent Yoruba Summit on Restructuring, and to the thousands of Yoruba people who turned out to make the summit the stunning success that it was. Also, we are very grateful to all our six governors for supporting the summit in various ways – and again to Fayose for personally attending and delivering a message. But, why do we not have regular and consistent leadership of our governors in this matter? Would we not have succeeded much more than we have done if the world has seen our governors standing resolutely with us and in front of us? Isn’t it their duty to stand by us in all our legitimate desires and endeavours as a people?

    We Yoruba need desperately that our elected leaders should change these attitudes of theirs concerning our strivings, our wellbeing, and our future. And that is why I think we should show them that we are especially grateful now that they have chosen to “adopt a common position” in recognition of, and obedience to, the truth that “Yoruba is one with the same destiny…(that) party politics would not be allowed to divide us…”, that “all of us are one from Oduduwa…all of us, being brothers, are presenting the same position on matters that are of common interest of all of us”. Filled with gratitude, we shall all look forward to seeing this new dispensation as it manifests regularly from now on in all aspects of the life of our Yoruba nation in Nigeria.

    The fact and reality of the Nigerian situation is that we Yoruba must jointly find and follow ways to take care of our own wellbeing – just as other Nigerian nations must take care of theirs too – material and secutity-wise. That, after all, is the meaning of federalism. A nation that fails to learn that exposes itself to avoidable suffering.

  • Nigeria leading the world in extreme poverty?

    Nigeria leading the world in extreme poverty?

    I woke up two days ago and accessed my emails as usual, and was confronted by a story emailed to me by a young friend, a story concerning our country, Nigeria. The story was so shocking that I immediately went into a serious act of prayer for Nigeria. The story says that “According to the World Poverty Clock…Nigeria will by February 2018 (be) the country with the most people in extreme poverty (in the world). Currently, 82 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty, which is 42.4 percent of Nigeria’s population”.

    The story explains that the World Poverty Clock was created by the World Data Lab to track poverty estimates in about 99.7 percent of the countries in the world, using data obtained from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, and the governments of the countries themselves. Using all these data, the Poverty Clock estimates the rate at which poverty is being reduced globally, and also how many more people are becoming extremely poor in the countries of the world.

    The story further explains that living in extreme poverty is defined by the World Bank as living with under $1.90 per day. “People living in extreme poverty are unable to meet their minimal needs for survival”. To reverse the trend towards more and more extreme poverty, and to be able to eliminate extreme poverty completely by 2030 (as the United Nations hopes for all countries), Nigeria needs to have 11.9 people rising above extreme poverty every minute right now. But instead, Nigeria presently has 6.8 people falling into extreme poverty every minute.

    Various factors are, according to the story, responsible for this constant growth of extreme poverty in Nigeria. One major factor is rapid population growth. “Nigeria’s population is growing faster than its economy. Between 1990 and 2013, Nigeria’s population increased by 81 percent. By 2050, going by the speed of its present population growth rate, Nigeria will be the third most populous country in the world. By passing the 400 million mark, it will be taking over from the U.S.A. (as the world’s third largest country) and be only behind China and India”. Another factor is the decline in Nigeria’s oil revenues in recent times, oil being the main pillar of the Nigerian economy. The decline led to a recession recently, and after the recession passed, the economy has been growing only slowly.

    Yet another factor is Nigeria’s deeply unfair wealth distribution. More of Nigeria’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the elite – politicians, public office holders, civil servants, crony capitalists, and various kinds of rogue millionaires. Most of this concentration of wealth in the hands of only a minority of Nigerians has been attained through a culture of rampant corruption.

    The outcomes of all these failings are the lack of basic social amenities for the vast majority of Nigerians, poor and worsening infrastructures, serious difficulties in doing business in Nigeria, high and rising levels of unemployment, and massive hopelessness.

    As a result, concludes the story, “Nigeria’s rising extreme poverty numbers isn’t unexpected. Instead, it’s a direct result of years of negligent and ineffective government policies… dependence on oil for years and an inability to generate non-oil revenue. Even now, Nigeria’s 2018 record budget is running on a deficit and will be funded by much borrowing with government debts also on the rise. The solution to this problem would be the formation of a credible policy aimed at eradicating poverty. The clock is ticking”.

    What all these mean is that the Buhari presidency is pushing or pulling our country towards something truly frightening. What this will be if he continues unchanged, only God knows at this point. But President Buhari does not have to continue unchanged. There are many other options that he can choose now to guide our country away from the present perpetual decline into extreme poverty. In the interest of our country, and in the interest of the nearly 200 million of us Nigerians, he must stop, look around, and consider other options.

    First, one very important option is that Nigeria must liberate the inherent energies of each section of Nigeria, empower each section, and thereby allow for many centres of potent development initiatives. In short, let many centres across our country have the capability to make serious contributions to development and socio-economic growth. This is one major reason why many leading Nigerians have been demanding the restructuring of our federation. Removing much of the powers and resources which the federal government controls now, and vesting them in strong federating units, will create the situation whereby resource development and wealth production will no longer be given to one large and ponderous federal centre, but will be given to a number of competing centres. What this means is that every section of Nigeria will be able develop its own homeland in its own way and make its own kind of contribution to the overall progress and prosperity of Nigeria. That means, we need to restructure our federation rationally. The capricious structure given gradually to the Nigerian federation since the 1960s, the massing of all power and resource control and development in the hands of the federal government, and the use of 36 states that are essentially impotent, dependent on federal fund allocations, and grossly expensive, has not worked and it can never work. It is a path to the economic and, ultimately, political death of Nigeria. And it needs to be changed expeditiously.

    Secondly, Nigeria must begin to invest heavily in our youths in all corners of our country.  I mean in quality education, in modern job skills training, in entrepreneurial skills training, in job ethics and business ethics training, in leadership development programmes, in business support programmes, etc. All of these should be a mandated agenda in all our states, and should be strongly shielded from infestation with partisan political germs and viruses. The objective must be that our men and women will soon rank among the world’s best modern workers, best managers, best chief executives of companies, most prolific inventors and business starters, most professional and dignified civil servants, etc.

    Thirdly, we must definitively crack the naughty problem of our infrastructures. In particular, we must zero in on electricity, and make partial, haphazard and spasmodic supply of electricity a thing of the past in all parts of our country. This will serve as an incentive to draw countless Nigerians out to scramble for, and push, a modern economic and industrial culture in our country. Centralization of electricity supply has failed our country; we need to diversify in various ways.

    Fourthly, we must create various incentive policies to encourage investment – investments by Nigerians and by foreigners, in all facets of our economy (industrial, commercial, service, agricultural, research and development, tourism, social services, real estate, etc). We must devise ways and means to attract Nigerians scattered all over the world to be part of this investment movement. And we must establish various incentives to encourage businesses in Nigeria to pursue an aggressive export orientation – to produce high quality products that can easily penetrate the most sophisticated markets in the world, and to evolve superior and efficient export management practices.

    Fifthly, we must de-emphasize politics as a means of livelihood among our ambitious citizens. We must drastically reduce the emoluments and perquisites earned in politics and public offices, shut down the unrestricted and uncontrolled access of public officials to public money, revive the public service rules and regulations that guided the handling of public money during the 1950s (rules and regulations that were destroyed by the military regimes in 1966-99), and institute enforceable limitations and controls over political and electoral expenses.

    All these will deal a heavy blow at public corruption in our country – in addition to whatever other methods the Buhari presidency may choose to use to fight corruption. To crush public corruption effectively and abidingly, we need to reform or change the pubic structures, institutions and practices that uphold public corruption in our country. Merely striking at the manifestations and culprits of public corruption at the top cannot really eliminate corruption. If it subdues corruption to some extent now, it cannot ensure that corruption will not return.

    We do not deserve to live in poverty. Our country is naturally rich in resources, and our people are ambitious, creative and pushful. The poor organization of our country, and the consequent inefficient and wasteful management of our country’s assets, and the greed and corruption that these generate among the elite of our country, are the things wrecking our country. We can change all these.

  • Great Lagos

    The veteran legal luminary, political and community leader, and national elder, Chief Femi Okunnu, intervened during the past week in the sometimes puzzling debate on the origins, history and status of Lagos. He was reported to have said that Lagos is a Yoruba city, and that no amount of mouthing of history can change that fact. Of course, that fact is fact; but, in the circumstances of these days, it helps that a Lagosian of Chief Okunnu’s caliber affirms it with such authority.

    Personally, the foremost thing that I keep saying about Lagos is that Lagos is a phenomenally great city – a city meant by God to be great. I like our youths calling it the “megalopolis”. It is the greatest city on the African continent, one of the greatest cities in the world, and as it is growing today, a city with limitless promise.

    In a mood of intense admiration for Lagos many years ago, I sat down one morning in a faraway country and wrote a short poem for Lagos – a poem with lines such as “Africa’s jewel of the coasts”, “School of life and wisdom”, “Drinks full of small lagoon and large ocean”, “Equips to cope with the shifting sands”, “Springhouse of fashion”, “Wiggles her waist like none else can do”, “Merchant queen of all”, “Bestrides the continents and seas”, “Gathers great wealth from far and near”, “Bestows rich fortunes with her gilded hand”.

    Much of the roots of the perpetually growing greatness of Lagos is its gorgeous cosmopolitanism. Lagos is home to large numbers of folks from all the countless Yoruba subgroups with their countless dialects of the Yoruba language. Lagos is also home to people from virtually all the nations of Nigeria, almost all the nations of the West African sub-continent, and people from more of the nations of Africa than one would find in any other city on the African continent. Lagos is also home to folks from all continents of the earth.

    Lagos simply loves to welcome and include more and more people, more and more cultures, more and more variety. From what our historians tell us about the history of this wonderful city, the love of welcoming and including people from all directions was in its character from its very beginning. It is a character trait that it shares from the Yoruba ethnic nation to which it belongs. European colonialism hid the true characters of Black Africa’s ethnic nations from the world; but the world is now discovering that a Black African nation called the Yoruba are one of the most welcoming, one of the most hospitable, one of the best places to come and prosper, in the world. Of the hundreds of Yoruba cities and towns, there is not a single one that does not boast of significant families, lineages or chieftaincy holders with origins traceable to other parts of Yorubaland, or other nations of Nigeria, or even other nations of Africa. Some trace even their kings likewise.

    The earliest ancestors of the Yoruba people somehow discovered the truth that a land that is open and hospitable to all comers attracts prosperity towards itself. In the ancient compendium of Yoruba knowledge and wisdom, the long corpus known as Odu-Ifa, rendered in 400,000 poetic verses, this truth is stated emphatically in one of the verses. The verse says, “A stranger or foreigner is coming. There are benefits coming with the stranger or foreigner. Receive and take good care of the stranger or foreigner, lest the benefits be missed and lost”. An obvious corollary to this fundamental philosophy of Yoruba community and national life is that, if one’s ancestry happens to contain some foreign strand, one must wisely harmonize it with the whole community and nation in ways that beautify and glorify the whole; one loses much by seeking to cause offence with it. In my understanding, that is what Chief Okunnu was saying this past week.

    Chief Okunnu is also supported by the history. Here is some outline on the history. Among the videos in my archives, there is a recent one in which the narrator makes the statement that “Lagos was founded in the 16th century by the Edo”. It is obvious right away that this statement was made with little or no knowledge or thinking behind it. What does this narrator mean by “founded”? Does he mean founded as a human settlement, or founded as a kingdom?

    We know definitively (thanks to studies by archaeologists, scholars of historical linguistics, and historians) that Lagos was one of the early primitive settlements created by the Yoruba people in very ancient times. The evolution of agriculture in about 10,000 BC in the Middle Niger territory made it possible for humans to cease wandering for food and begin to live as settlers. Settling resulted in the gradual evolution of groups with languages and ethnic cultures – such as the Nupe, Yoruba, Igala, Igbo, Edo, Gbagyi, etc.

    The Yoruba started off as a group with many subgroup dialects, and spread roughly westwards and southwards. Between 2000 BC and 1000 BC, their southernmost thrust had reached the Atlantic coast, with their Awori subgroup in the forests and islands which are now Lagos, Iseri, Otta, etc; the coastal Ijebu further to the east; the Ilaje further still to the east; and the Isekiri in the easternmost coastal reaches. The Edo group (a non-Yoruba group) settled in the forests to the east of Yorubaland, the Igbo group east of the Lower Niger, etc.

    Millennia later, in about 900 AD, a very major change began in the political life of the Yoruba people. It began when the small settlements in the Ife forest area in central Yorubaland, after many years of conflicts among them, finally coalesced together to become a single town, Ile-Ife, under one single crowned head known as an Oba. (The idea of a crowned ruler known as an Oba was simply adopted from the political practices which the old small settlements had evolved). In the six centuries following that event, having kingdoms like the Ife kingdom and towns like Ile-Ife became somehow very popular among Yoruba people. A brave and adventurous prince from Ife would go into the Yoruba forests, find a clump of different settlements in a location, and proceed to make them coalesce and become one town like Ile-Ife, with himself as the Oba. From some of the kingdoms founded like that, adventurers went out in later years and founded kingdoms too. The Yoruba thus became a people living much in large towns – an urbanized people, indeed the most urbanized people in all of Black Africa. According to some Edo and Yoruba traditions, a warrior prince went from Ife in the same era and helped the Edo to create a kingdom of their own in the Edo forests. In the Awori forest, an adventurer said to be from Ife came to Otta and founded the Otta kingdom; and another came soon after to Iseri on the Ogun River and founded the Iseri kingdom.

    Centuries later, in about the 1470s, European explorers came to the coast of West Africa. Trade between Europeans and Africans developed along the coasts. On the Awori coast, the islands slowly became important in the trade with the Europeans. To share in the trade, the rulers of the Iseri kingdom moved the centre of their kingdom nearer to the coast – first to Ebute Meta, then to Ido Island, and finally to Lagos Island, welcomed by the pre-existing Awori settlers. A kingdom of the Awori thus emerged here. Over time, it became known as Eko among some traders, and as Lagos among the European traders.

    By about 1600, both the Lagos kingdom and the Edo kingdom of Benin had become very important centres of trade with the Europeans. The Benin kingdom had become rich and powerful.  Lagos was also rich and regularly flooded by Ijebu, Benin, Ilaje, Ijaw and Adja traders trading with the Europeans and with one another.

    In a political development whose details still remain unclear, the Edo became involved in conflicts in the politics of the Lagos kingdom in about 1602. Some traditions seem to indicate that this was probably a succession dispute between Awori princes, a dispute in which one of the parties won the support of the Edo trading community. In any case, part of the outcome seems to be a Lagos king with some Edo blood – or with Edo endorsement and support. This happened in about 1602 – based partly on Edo and Lagos traditions, and partly on what a German trader in Lagos wrote in 1603. In the 1800s, Lagos was blessed with streams of returnees from Sierra Leone and the Americas.

    Yes, Lagos is part of the Yoruba nation – as ethnic subgroup, early settlement, kingdom. And yes, Lagos encapsulates the world. Both ways, Lagos is a great beauty in our lives – a great beauty deserving responsible conduct by all concerned. Lots of thanks again to Chief Okunnu.

  • Tragedy in the Sahara and Mediterranean

    Countless Nigerians are dying almost daily in the Sahara Desert beyond Nigeria’s northern borders and in the Mediterranean Sea north of the desert. These are part of the large numbers of Nigerians who, in total desperation, are attempting these days to flee to Europe from the hopelessness of Nigeria. Many are those who have become tired of standing on line fruitlessly and endlessly for visas at foreign visa offices, or those who are downright unable to put together even the little money needed for application for any visas, or those who hear of some other persons who have made it to Europe through this enormously dangerous route and who believe that they too will be lucky, or those who are influenced by equally desperate and ignorant friends to jump at what they believe to be a viable option but is essentially a jump into the hands of death.

    The news of this disaster that is consuming countless citizens of our country never fails to come these days. Stories of groups of Nigerians and other Africans getting stranded in some small oases in the desert are common. So are stories of groups perishing on the desert sand, or in poor, out-of-the-way and isolated oasis. Quite commonly, guides who contract to take groups across the desert are not as informed about the desert conditions as they claim to be; and, in such cases, the groups are simply defrauded of the money they collect among them to pay the guides. It is not uncommon for parents at home in Nigeria to suddenly receive telephone calls from unknown persons from some strange place in the desert, with demands for more money for their son or daughter who is said to need more money to get on further beyond a point in the desert.

    Some months ago, members of a family in my large extended family suddenly called me in the night to tell me, in great agony, that their daughter was in the Sahara Desert somewhere, and that they had not known until a telephone call from the desert that she had left Lagos where she had been living. It was a sad and scary development. Through a long chain of connections, we managed to contact the office of a Nigerian agency that was handling such matters. By and by, we learnt of a Nigerian woman who is located in the said agency abroad, and who has been doing very excellent work in finding and extricating some of the Nigerians who get themselves enmeshed in this terrible, and potentially deadly, mess.

    But only a very few ever get so lucky as to be successfully traced, retrieved, and sent back home to Nigeria. As for the rest, a few do make it to Europe – there to find themselves in a life with countless, and mostly harrowing, possibilities; many never make it to Europe, but perish in the desert or in the sea.

    A few days ago, the Nigerian media reported on the same day two stories in this tragedy. One story was about some 140 Nigerians who were rescued in the deserts of Libya and brought back home to Nigeria. These 140 are part of the minority who, from time to time, get lucky. The other story on the same day was about 26 young Nigerian women whose dead bodies were delivered to Italian authorities by a boat that had crossed the Mediterranean Sea from the North African coast.

    The instances are not infrequent of large numbers of people dying on boats that do make it across the Mediterranean Sea. In such cases, no information is usually available about the circumstances leading to the mass deaths. There is no information available about the mass deaths of the 26 Nigerian women of a few days ago.

    Much larger numbers of people are known to be dying by drowning in the Mediterranean. The causes of the drowning are fairly easy to tell. The boats that carry the desperate immigrants across the sea are smugglers’ boats. Most of these boats are poor in condition, and also poor in the quality of their crews.  And, for the voyage across the sea, they are almost always grossly overloaded – because very many immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and even parts of the Middle East are desperate and rushing to reach Europe, while the smugglers are eager to collect as much in fares as possible. The boats therefore often run into trouble, or sometimes even break up or capsize, on the high sea, resulting in the drowning of many people.

    There have been reports of smugglers packing people in the holds meant for cargo, holds where no humans are supposed to be carried. And there have been reports of people suffocating and dying in such holds. Could it be that this is what happened to the 26 Nigerian women whose dead bodies arrived in Italy a few days ago on a Spanish war boat? Were the officials of the war boat engaging in some share of the human smuggling business, or had they merely offered the good service of collecting dead and living immigrants from distressed boats on the high sea and bringing them to the nearest port in Italy?

    It was reported that the boat brought the dead bodies of the Nigerian women in its refrigerated holds, and that there were as many as 375 smuggled immigrants abroad the boat. Italian officials are reported to have promised a thorough investigation of this horrid story, and there have been indications of suspicion that the women might have been sexually abused and then killed on the voyage across the Mediterranean Sea. However, as has commonly happened in the past, the world is likely to hear no more about this whole incident.

    The Nigerian media reported this past Tuesday that the federal government intends to evolve policy to curb illegal migration of Nigerians to other countries. Naturally, every patriotic Nigerian would welcome even this bare intention, in the hope that some welcome direction will soon emerge in this situation. The development involving continual deaths of large numbers of Nigerians in the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea has long deserved the most serious attention of our federal government. It dehumanizes countless Nigerians on a regular basis, and it casts deep aspersions on our country’s image – and even on our country’s presumption of itself as a viable country in the word.

    So, we look eagerly to see our federal government’s policy. We Nigerians must all hope that it will not take the form that our federal government’s policies have tended to take in recent years in response to serious social situations – the direction of resorting to authoritarianism, of calling out the military, and of supporting all these with grand statements of threats, of drawing red lines in the sand – and of ludicrously claiming that change had been thus achieved.

    No. Such directions will not work. What we have here is a very serious socio-economic and ethical malaise, with very deep roots not only in the poverty that our rulers have foisted upon us as a country, but also in the pattern of relationships that predominates over our country. The tap root of it is the poverty – deep and hopeless poverty. But the general atmosphere of mutual hostility and hatred among Nigerian peoples is a major strand of the roots. Large numbers of our youths cannot see how they belong in this country. Many psychologically regret being born in Nigeria, and are prepared to take even the most manifestly dangerous steps to get out. Many of these young people do hear the stories of the frequent death and ruin on the Saharan and Mediterranean path out of Nigeria, but that does not deter them from trying that route. A wise country would not threaten such people or set up measures for constraining or coercing them. Fundamental changes are needed to convince these people that their country and the rulers of their country love all its citizens and all its peoples, that the topmost government of their country is not there by conquest but by love, that such love holds out some hope of general change and improvement, and that, even though the poverty is yielding only slowly, Nigeria is nevertheless a home and a heritage worthy to hold on to. For Nigeria to have any chance of making it in the world, this kind of new direction must plainly begin to evolve.

  • Restructuring has become irresistible

    To most Nigerians, the need to restructure the federation is now a critically important and pressing need. For instance in the Yoruba South-west, restructuring is virtually a universal demand. The recent Yoruba Summit on restructuring held in Ibadan easily drew a crowd of over 6000 Yoruba people, representing most Yoruba organizations. Then, Yoruba responses to the ongoing Public Hearing on Restructuring by the APC, Nigeria’s ruling party, have been massive. At every seating of the public hearing in the South-west, large crowds attended and many groups made presentations. At the seating in the Yoruba central city of Ibadan, not less than 3000 people attended, almost all of them members of the APC. At that Ibadan seating, one of the highest fathers of the Yoruba nation, the Alaafin of Oyo, put a very informed seal of authority on the voice of the Yoruba people over the matter – to the loud and grateful applause of the huge audience. Many other fathers of the Yoruba nation, including significantly the Ooni of Ife, have at other times added their great voices to the voices of their Yoruba people on this matter.

    Yoruba leaders and members of every political party that has members in the Yoruba South-west have publicly committed themselves to the Yoruba position on restructuring. All Yoruba persons of note who have taken time to speak or write on the subject have strongly supported the Yoruba people’s demand for restructuring – including politicians, professionals, religious leaders, countless civic organizations, women and youth organizations, academics, labour leaders, yoruba men and women who have held high-level positions in the Nigerian federal government, former and current governors of Yoruba states, countless Yoruba legislators, etc. Yoruba governors of all parties have, at a meeting, spoken up for restructuring. The Yoruba are well known for their respect for the freedom of speech and choice; but today, any leader of any party or organization who says that he rejects the massive Yoruba position on restructuring could easily doom himself and his party or group to political oblivion.

    The same level of intensity about restructuring is common to most other parts of Nigeria too. Virtually all notable citizens of the South-east and South-south have spoken up strongly and fearlessly for restructuring, and the masses of citizens support their position. More or less the same is now true of most leaders and citizens of the Middle Belt too.

    Most elder statesmen of the South-west, South-east, South-south and Middle Belt have stepped bravely and patriotically forward together and founded a Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum to promote orderly and peaceful restructuring of their country. This is the first ever in Nigeria’s history.

    Even most of the avowedly secessionist movements in the South-east and South-south have said, at various times, that restructuring would satisfy their demands. It is only because the rulers of our country don’t listen carefully that we don’t hear these youth organizations when they say these things.

    Moreover, even in the North-west where many leaders have been opposing restructuring determinedly, some very important leaders already understand the benefits of restructuring and have turned to expressing strong support for it. More and more are adding their voices.

    Many citizens in most parts of Nigeria are now saying that restructuring is an idea whose time has come – an idea that has become irresistible. They are manifestly right.

    Naturally, there are people among us who might not immediately understand what restructuring means and what it can do for all peoples and sections of Nigeria. The answer is that we who have been speaking loudly for restructuring must simply keep trying harder and harder to explain to all. Every single person in all regions of Nigeria is important and deserves to be assisted to understand this crucial matter.

    Some leading citizens in the North-west think that we southern peoples stand to gain something exclusively from restructuring – and they therefore oppose restructuring. No, southerners do not stand to gain anything that north-westerners do not stand to gain. Restructuring will release every section of Nigeria to develop its God-given resources, and that will promote prosperity and eliminate poverty all over Nigeria.

    Some members of the political elite of the North-west also think that their region is benefiting much from the present structure of Nigeria, and they therefore oppose restructuring. We who advocate restructuring must continue to explain to them too with respect, patience and brotherly love. The real truth is that no section of Nigeria has gained, or is gaining, anything on the aggregate from the present situation. There is much more poverty today than before 1966 in every region of our country. Whatever gain any region of Nigeria can claim is small compared to what that region could have achieved if Nigeria had continued to be structured and managed as she was before military rule began in 1966.

    The undeniable truth is that Nigeria has been declining since the late 1960s, and she is declining even more sharply today. The over-centralization imposed by the military regimes is wrecking our country.  Education is the root of all development; but our schools, even our universities, have become very weak centres of teaching and learning, and our children and youths are not learning as effectively as they should. Poor education is weakening our country and jeopardizing our country’s future.

    We entered into independence with a fairly strong economic foundation based on the development of our natural resources – agricultural crops like groundnuts in the North, cocoa in the West, and palm produce in the East, plus some mining of solid minerals in every region. The agricultural successes were all achieved by our regions, not by any federal government – and they were achieved through various programs of friendly assistance to our farmers by our regional governments. And these achievements served as the base from which we then began to improve upon our infrastructures and social services and diversify into other economic areas – in every region. Altogether, these regional achievements were advancing the over-all progress of our country and building a country of hopeful people. We Nigerians were not yet a rich people, but hope was growing among us – and definitely, there was no possibility of our becoming the enormously and hopelessly poor people that we are today.

    The source of the problem is, I say again, military rule, 1966- 99. Finding themselves as rulers, the military embarked upon seizing control of everything – schools and universities (including schools belonging to private proprietors, and the great universities established by the regional authorities), the export agricultural products, roads and highways, ultimately everything of importance. And everything went to the direct control of the central military command, with regional military governors becoming subordinates directed by, and answerable to, the central commander.  As petroleum became a big source of revenue in the 1970s, our military rulers thought that ultimate wealth had come to Nigeria. And they gradually abandoned the old sources of wealth. Regional authorities lost all sense of control and competence, and all local development initiative. The federal establishment itself became overloaded, confused, inefficient, wasteful and horridly corrupt. Inevitably, the corruption and loss of interest in the welfare of citizens spread to state and local governments. And social services and infrastructures are perishing all over Nigeria.

    Our farmers lost the assistance programmes that had used to help them to be efficient producers. Most cocoa farmers gave up; the few still producing cocoa quietly smuggled their cocoa to Benin Republic where they could get better attention and higher prices. Nigeria ceased being a serious exporter of cocoa. Similar fates befell Nigeria’s groundnut and palm-produce exports. Then, repeated droughts descended on our Northern Region and wiped out much of our farming there – with no competent and concerned regional or state authorities to help. With all these massive losses of income, Nigerians became a hopelessly poor people. No region has been exempt. Northern leaders who think that their region is benefiting from today’s condition need to reassess the situation very seriously, and very realistically. The real truth is that the North has been impacted more harshly than other regions.

    The final source of our country’s trouble now is that, when the last military dictator prepared to leave in 1998, he put all the over-centralization that the military had achieved since 1966 together in a constitution. Unwisely, we accepted his constitution – and we have been trying to govern our country with it. It has proved a near-total disaster. What most Nigerians are saying is that we need to toss out this military constitution and write a new civilian federal constitution under which we can have conditions similar to those of the years before 1966. That is the surest way to return to having governments that care about the people and about local resources. It is the only way to revive our productivity and prosperity – and to save our country from breaking up. Most Nigerians know this.

  • Yoruba Summit: Triumph of Yoruba character

    Like most citizens of the Yoruba nation of south-western Nigeria, I am still thrilled by the huge success of the Yoruba Summit which was held in the city of Ibadan a fortnight ago, on Thursday September 7. That was a wonderful triumph of true Yoruba character, and I cannot resist revisiting it.

    To the heated debate going on concerning the restructuring of the federation, the summit was a powerfully positive contribution – a guide to how we all, the many nationalities of Nigeria, should conduct even the most contentious arguments concerning our common country of Nigeria. It was a very effective demonstration of the Yoruba nation’s understanding of how citizens should behave in situations in which their society is divided, in which their country is agonizing to find agreement or consensus over critically important issues.

    Countless Nigerians, young and old, as individuals and as groups or nationalities, are answering the call of duty by speaking up in this all-important debate. With the Yoruba Summit, the Yoruba nation stepped forward with the strongest national action yet.

    Over 6000 Yoruba citizens gathered at the Lekan Salami Stadium for the summit. It was the most representative assembly of Yoruba people in modern times. Tens of Yoruba civic organizations sent members to attend. Representatives of some youth organizations arrived with the kinds of fanfare that only youths can whip up – and earned the loud applause of the entire stadium. Representatives of various women organizations added colour to the gathering. Hundreds of the people in the large assembly were members of the Yoruba elite and intelligentsia – lawyers, doctors, owners or CEOs of leading Nigerian businesses, religious leaders (Muslim, Christian and traditional), university lecturers and professors and other educators, leading Yoruba politicians of all political parties including elected public officials, former governors, legislators, federal ministers and state commissioners, etc. Every one of the current governors of the six states of the South-west sent representatives. One of the governors, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, also came in person, to the great applause of the assembly. Masses of Yoruba people streamed in from all directions. Many Yoruba Obas, including the Ooni of Ife, came to add enormous dignity and gravity to the assembly.

    Also, very importantly, leading non-Yoruba Nigerians from other regions of Nigeria – leaders of the prestigious Ohanaeze Ndigbo of the Igbo people of the South-east, and leaders of PANDEF of the Delta peoples of the South-south – came to grace this great summit of the Yoruba people. Naturally, their arrival added much to the mounting excitement preceding the opening of the summit. No known national assemblage of any Nigerian nationality has ever been so honoured by other Nigerian nationalities. This was a first in Nigeria.

    Very many who attended the summit had travelled from distant parts of Yorubaland, including the Yoruba parts of Kwara, Kogi and Delta states. A torrential rain suddenly broke out as the summit was about to open, and threatened for some minutes to cause serious disruption. But it ended quickly (or, as we Yoruba would say, and are now saying, it was made to end quickly) – and it was not able to do any harm at all to the summit arrangements.

    All the wonderful success of the summit arrangements was the outcome of very detailed and careful planning over months, handled for the Yoruba nation by a competent Summit Planning Committee. The committee in its ultimate form comprised tens of members from different Yoruba organizations, with no one organization having more than one or two members on it. Every governor of the Yoruba South-west also sent a representative to serve on it.  Its over-all chairman and the chairmen of its various sub-committees were, deliberately, chosen from different Yoruba organizations. The Summit Planning Committee and its Contacts Sub-committee did all the heavy work of mobilizing the Yoruba people, leaders of all organizations, Yoruba leaders of political parties, Yoruba elected public officials, Yoruba traditional rulers, etc., to come to the summit. To maximize this mobilization effort, they used, not only personal contacts and letters, but also radio and television messages and jingles. Knowing that they had succeeded in rousing large numbers of people, they chose a stadium as venue. In this summit, the Yoruba put up the most emphatic show of Yoruba national unity in recent times.

    At the summit, a high-tech Summit Administrative Centre (with computers, printers and other communication gadgets) was set up, under highly qualified persons. This centre helped speakers who brought speeches and wanted their speeches reproduced for circulation. More importantly, it monitored all the speeches and ultimately digested them to produce the two important documents resulting from the summit – namely, the ‘Summit Communique’ and the ‘Ibadan Declaration’.

    The Summit Planning Committee handled the speaking on the raised platform with impressive discipline, allowing each speaker only a few minutes, and thereby making it possible for very many people to speak. Nobody who wanted to speak was denied, although particular recognition was given to representatives of organizations, youth organizations and women organizations, to persons who brought messages from the governors, to traditional rulers, religious leaders, etc. The opening speech by the chairman of the day – the legal luminary Aare Afe Babalola, founder of Afe Babalola University – set the tone for most other speeches of the day. The speech was powerfully reinforced by the speech of the chairman of the Summit Planning Committee, the eminent medical practitioner Chief Kunle Olajide.

    The core message from all the speeches was essentially the same, although each speaker rendered it in his or her own way and supplied his or her own details. That core message was a resounding call by the Yoruba nation for an urgent restructuring of the Nigerian federation. It was a serious warning that the over-concentration of power and resource control at the federal centre, an over-centralization which had been forced upon Nigeria by successive military dictatorships from 1966 to 1999, was grossly unsuitable for a country like Nigeria with hundreds of nationalities, that it had hurt Nigeria disastrously, that it is still hurting Nigeria, and that it now threatens the outright break-up of Nigeria. Every speaker pointed out some of the painfully destructive effects of this over-centralization on the Yoruba nation.

    The message sent by Governor Aregbesola of Osun State offered the most details of the proposed restructuring process. The speeches by Governor Ayo Fayose and Lawyer Femi Fani-Kayode (former Federal Minister of Aviation), excited the youths most and therefore generated enormous applause. Very loud applause also went to speakers who urged that the Yoruba nation should continue to give its well-known support to the existence and progress of Nigeria, but that if the restructuring of the Nigerian federation continues to be delayed, the Yoruba nation must begin expeditiously and peacefully to seek to have its own Oduduwa Republic separate from Nigeria. The august guests from the South-east and South-south were allowed time to speak, and they expressed their admiration for the summit, and the strong support of their nations for the same thing that the Yoruba nation desired – namely, a restructuring of the Nigerian federation without delay. The speeches ended with the greetings, thanks and blessings by the Ooni of Ife, voice of Oduduwa, the father of the Yoruba nation.

    The summit then ended by reading and loudly adopting the two documents – the ‘Summit Communique’ and the ‘Ibadan Declaration’. The motion to adopt this document was moved by the eminent Yoruba lawyer, Chief Niyi Akintola and seconded by another eminent lawyer, Chief Kehinde Sofola. The Yoruba nation thus created the documentary materials for the continued collective Yoruba contribution to the struggle of an increasing majority of Nigerians, for the restructuring of Nigeria – for the continued existence of Nigeria on the basis of an appropriate federal structure, thereby on the basis of equity and justice, and thereby towards progress and prosperity for Nigeria and expanded and expanding opportunities for all Nigerians.

    The summit at Ibadan was a possession of all Yoruba people of all religious and political persuasions and socio-economic pursuits and statuses. We Yoruba organized it to demonstrate our strong desire to see the Nigerian federation restructured without delay, so that Nigeria may survive the current serious threats to its existence, and so that Nigeria may become an orderly, harmonious, productive and prosperous country, a place of bouncing opportunities for us Yoruba and for all other peoples of Nigeria. We offer the Yoruba Summit as a powerful and patriotic step, hopefully worthy of emulation by other Nigerian peoples. In the swirling controversy over the restructuring of Nigeria, it is our potent answer to the call of duty as we know it.

  • How to process restructuring

    In the statements emanating from the Buhari presidency soon after the president returned home a couple of weeks ago, Nigerians were told that, in effect, the president was not sure how restructuring should be processed – especially who was to do what? The National Assembly, it was said, has the duty of undertaking amendments to the constitution; and the National Assembly and the National Council of State were the two institutions in which national discourses should be conducted. It was also said that this president, being an elected president in a democracy, could not possibly decree restructuring like a military ruler. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, the presidency made the process of restructuring look confused, tangled, and even intractable. In reality, it is not. If a president recognizes that it is his duty to lead his country through the kind of mammoth national debate that Nigeria is now going through concerning restructuring, he would not, and should not, give in to any confusion – he would do his duty. We Nigerians expect President Buhari to step forth and do his duty. We have the right to demand it.

    Yes, it is time for President Buhari to get into action. The time of debate over whether we should or should not restructure our federation is over. Of the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, virtually all Nigerians of note from the South-west, South-east, South-south and North-central support and demand restructuring. From the North-west, some of the topmost notables support and demand it – including one of the most experienced citizens in the governing of Nigeria under our present constitution, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and, very significantly, the Sultan of Sokoto. The Sultan has given his huge voice to some of the key points that the proponents of restructuring have been repeating – first, that restructuring does not divide or break up Nigeria, and second, that restructuring will redress the power and wealth imbalance that threaten Nigeria with conflict and disintegration. It is by no means presumptuous to claim that the proponents of restructuring have won this debate resoundingly. Repeat: It is time for President Buhari to embark on the process of leading us through the process of restructuring our country, in the best interest of our country, and in the best interest of all of us Nigerians.

    Since the president has said that he is in doubt about how to work on this important project, any Nigerians who may have any idea to suggest to him should now suggest it. I hereby offer a suggestion, and it is a suggestion from my knowledge of how a country similar to Nigeria once handled the task of restructuring its federation. I refer to India – the Union of India.

    India is similar to Nigeria in important particulars. Like Nigeria, India is made up of very many nationalities. Like Nigeria, India needed to restructure its federation after independence (in 1947); the nationalities were demanding self-determination and some measure of autonomy. Religious differences added to the tension. As no response to the self-determination agitations were forthcoming, the northern, predominantly Muslim, provinces seceded and became Pakistan and, soon after, Pakistan broke up into Pakistan and Bangladesh. What remained of India was still very large – it is the largest country in territory in the world today, and it has over 2000 nationalities. Increasingly in the country, demands began to be voiced for restructuring, so as to let different sections manage their affairs and development in their own ways. Most of the foremost politicians, including Prime Minister Nehru, opposed restructuring, for fear that it would result in the breaking up of India. In fact, Nehru threatened that if it was decided to restructure, he would resign as Prime Minister. But that did not reduce the demand. The demand kept escalating. At last, the Prime Minister and most of the big politicians surrendered to the wish of their people, and the road became clear to restructuring.

    Therefore, in 1953, Nehru’s government set up a States Reorganization Commission charged with the task of charting the process of restructuring. The commission started with the principle that the nationalities (called the linguistic nations) of India were the fundamental component entities of India, and therefore the real makers of the Indian Federation – which they ultimately named the Indian Union (Union of the nationalities of India). On that basis, they established the further principle that the structure of the Indian Union, as well as the governance of it, would respect the integrity and culture of the nationalities.

    To delineate the federating units (that is, the states) of the Indian Union, the commission decided that each large nationality would be one state, and that small contiguous nationalities in other parts of India would join hands together to form states. Also, no small nationality would be split by any state boundaries, and each nationality would be intact and undivided in the state to which it belonged. Furthermore, no small nationality would be forced to join any particular state; each would be free to choose the state it wanted to join. On the basis of all these criteria, 28 states were formed. Each was a viable state, capable of competently managing its own affairs. Even in the states comprising different nationalities, respect for the integrity and culture of each nationality was to be the way of life, politics and governance.

    The commission then dealt with the very important issue of the sharing of power and resource control in the Union. Most of the powers and resource control that had belonged to the central government were taken away from it and given to the state governments. In any sharing of funds between the Union Government and the State Governments, the State Governments (plus their Local Governments) were to receive a much larger percentage than the Union Government. (Now, the proportion is 85% for the states and 15% for the Union).  Indian scholars call these changes a copious exercise in power devolution.

    As a result of these changes, India quickly settled down and became a progressively stable country. For such a large country with so many ethnic or linguistic nationalities, India is doing very well indeed. Gradually, the various nationalities became contented to be part of India, and India is widely recognized as the world’s largest democracy today. Also, the states of India became progressively powerful and dynamic centres and agencies of socio-economic development. Up to the early 1950s, India was a frightfully poor country, and garish pictures of countless beggars in the streets of Indian towns regularly shocked the world. Today, all of that has changed. India is becoming one of the world’s economic super powers.

    Nigeria is by no means naturally less endowed than India. In fact, in some respects, Nigeria is naturally more endowed than India. The imposition of a unitary structure on Nigeria, Nigeria’s rigid system of central control, the consequent impunity, corruption and confusion characteristic of Nigeria’s system of governance, the inevitable hostilities characteristic of Nigeria’s inter-ethnic relations and the input of tenacious religious pressure by some nations on others – all these not only make Nigeria’s leadership strangely primitive, they make Nigeria’s image grossly incompatible with the image of countries in the modern world. As long as these last, Nigeria will not only continue to fail to make serious progress in the world, she is very likely to continue to generate more and more poverty, more and more deprivation, and more and more conflicts for her citizens, and she is very likely to continue to stumble until she disintegrates. President Muhammadu Buhari holds the decisive key today. I do not insist that he should take Nigeria through exactly the process that Pandit Nehru took India in 1953. All I ask as a Nigerian is that he should take some dutiful action as Nehru did in 1953 to guide his country out of a dark night of impending implosion to the light of survival and revival. He can do it. Will he do it?

     

  • Nigeria: Caution! Caution!!

    Thoughtful Nigerians are raising alarms about the escalating threat of massive disorder in our country. Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, eminent elder statesmen like Edwin Clark and Ayo Adebanjo and others, traditional rulers, top religious leaders (Christian and Muslim alike) – all are shouting for a change of direction. One of the latest to do so, our former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, in response to the terroristic threats flying all over our land, warned that “an eye for an eye will leave Nigeria blind”.

    More and more nations among the hundreds of nations of our country are saying more and more loudly that they do not want to continue to live in the horrific fears that Nigeria now represents – in the threat to their existence as peoples – in the poverty – in the marginalization – in the culture of violence and mass murders – in the crookedness, impunity and failure. Some are also saying that they do not want to continue to share in Nigeria’s burden of guilt for its crowded crimes against humanity. Thus, secessionist agitations have escalated in the Igbo South-east (where, apparently, most citizens now support the demand for a separate country of Biafra), and in the South-south (where various youth groups are blowing up oil installations and demanding a separate Delta country). In the South-west, many self-determination youth groups have come together to issue a very impressive demand for a separate Oodua country. Self-determination movements are becoming active even in the Middle Belt. In the predominantly Kanuri North-east, Boko Haram, apart from its Islamic fundamentalist agenda, is increasingly manifesting as, and gaining support from, Kanuri nationalism and separatism – and obviously reviving its murderous and destructive capabilities. In an obverse development, many strong Hausa-Fulani youth groups have joined hands and announced that they do not want their Hausa-Fulani nation to continue to live with the Igbo nation in the same country, have issued an ultimatum to all Igbo to leave the North, have advised all northerners resident in the South to return to the North, and have demanded the dissolution of Nigeria. From some of these Arewa youth sources, hate songs and terroristic threats are being circulated against the Igbo as a people.

    The Hausa-Fulani youth agitators in the North-west, in spite of their pungent and persistent threats against the Igbo people, seem to enjoy a privileged status that protects them from any kind of sanctions by Nigerian authorities. In contrast, in response to the agitations in the Igbo South-east, the Delta South-south, the Yoruba South-west, and the Middle Belt, the federal government is hurrying to beef up Nigeria’s military muscle. The police and military have been constantly active in the South-east against pro-Biafra agitators, with serious consequences in human fatalities and injuries. The military are also busy against the agitators in the South-south, and threatening much more massive operations there. To maximize power for these ends, the Buhari administration is busy shopping for arms around the world – and reportedly committing enormous amounts of money in spite of the depressed conditions of the Nigerian economy. Nigeria is reportedly negotiating for purchases of advanced weapons from some leading Western countries. The Buhari administration has also recently announced that Nigeria has reached agreements with Sudan and Pakistan for joint development and production of weapons, and has effected actual purchases of military aircraft from Pakistan. These are very ominous developments since Sudan has been the conduit pipe for most funds funnelled from the Arab world to Nigeria for jihadist purposes; and Pakistan has been the place where many Nigerian youths have been trained in Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

    Meanwhile, the Fulani herdsmen terrorists are observed to be upgrading their attacks in many Southern and Middle Belt states. Terrorist attacks by herdsmen bringing hundreds of cows are, for the first time, being directed against school premises in some states, chasing young students out of their classrooms, and occupying the classrooms with cows. Also, herdsmen’s settlements are observed to be springing up in hundreds of locations in the Middle Belt and the South.

    Informed Nigerians believe that this intense new phase in the herdsmen’s terror campaigns, coupled with the military preparations at high levels of Nigeria’s government, is a sign that some well-prepared horror is about to burst across the length and breadth of the Nigerian South and Middle Belt. Some others believe that it is all part of preparations by the controllers of federal power to enforce their will more brutally and more irresistibly.

    Fear and resolve to resist are growing exponentially. The leadership of the elders of the Yoruba nation of the South-west, while intensifying their demands for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation, are, for the first time ever, warning that any genocidal attacks on the Igbo people this time around would be responded to by the Yoruba as an attack on the Yoruba. The leadership of the elders of the Delta have risen to work with the Yoruba and Igbo elders. Also, many significant elder citizens of the Middle Belt have stepped forth to collaborate with the growing southern resistance. From the Arewa North, various youth groups are issuing more and more terroristic threats against the Igbo. And from all parts of the South and, to some extent   the Middle Belt, youth groups are responding with intensified demands for secession and with terroristic threats against Hausa-Fulani folks.

    In the background to all these, poverty, deprivation and hardship are wracking the lives of most Nigerians and setting the stage for massive civic troubles. According to Nigeria’s Bureau of Statistics, by 2014 about 60.9% of all Nigerians lived in “absolute poverty”, and by 2016, the number had risen to 67% and was still rising. Today, starvation and destitution are massively and painfully visible across the face of Nigeria. Among all classes of Nigerians, desperation, moral collapse, crookedness, brigandage, violent crimes, and suicides are rampant. Various international agencies classify Nigerians among the world’s poorest in access to electricity, potable water, safe transportation, quality healthcare delivery, dependable public administrative services, public security, etc. Violent crimes have turned Nigeria into one of the most unsafe places in peace time in the world. Drastically poor support for education is resulting in teachers not getting their salaries paid for months in most states, and in poor conditions of learning in schools and in colleges and universities. By 2015, virtually all of Nigeria’s states were heavily burdened with debts and near bankruptcy, and not less than 27 state governments are still unable to pay the salaries of public employees and public school teachers when due. Huge numbers of Nigeria’s unemployed educated youths are regularly finding ways to flee to other countries from Nigeria’s crushing poverty and hopelessness. Businesses and investments are failing or are relocating away from Nigeria. A recent United Nations report describes Nigeria as “one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world”.

    Thus, today, the dark clouds hanging over Nigeria are growing frighteningly darker. If the pressure on the peoples who are poised to resist coercion or terrorism should be stepped up with all the accumulated capacity of federal coercive power, plus the aggression of the armed Fulani herdsmen who have heavily infiltrated the Middle Belt and the South, destruction of life, of property and of means of livelihood, as well as human rights brutalities, already widespread in Nigeria, could quickly reach earth-shaking proportions.

    It is therefore time to defer to the many Nigerians who are pleading for caution. Those who are threatening others and bristling for violent action need to think again. Those in charge of public policy need to turn around and choose ways and means that will ensure the   sustenance of Nigeria on the basis of mutual love and mutual respect. This country cannot be built by threatening or intimidating. We live in times when it is impossible for any group or agency to command a monopoly of violence. Sure, we Nigerians disagree over a whole lot of important things. But it is not true that crushing or subduing opponents is the only way to settle matters. Learning to settle matters on the basis of fairness and long-term interest of Nigeria is a better way. What Winston Churchill said is true for us today – it is “better to jaw-jaw than to war-war”.

  • Nigerian leaders need to listen

    Nigerian youths are speaking – and speaking emphatically, incessantly and increasingly trenchantly essentially the same things. We their elders need to heed what they are saying.

    In totality, Nigerian youths from separate areas of Nigeria are saying profound and fundamental things. I don’t have to agree with them before I try to understand what they are saying. My profession as a historian conditions my mind to peruse what people communicate, what people say or write or do, and to seek to discern meanings and trends in them.

    Various groups and associations of Nigerian youths are questioning the validity, the value, and the existence of Nigeria as a country. The rest of us need to stop, listen and ponder.  In particular, those whom God has elevated to the position of prominent citizens, leaders and rulers among us must stop, listen and ponder – and then try to respond appropriately and with the best intention to produce the best results therefrom.  We are taking grave risks by ignoring or trivializing the noises emanating from the ranks of our youths.  If we laugh off these noises in the belief that they will peter off and vanish, we may be making mistakes that could prove to be of cataclysmic consequences.  No, we cannot afford to miss the message in these noises. They do not look as if they will go away. I repeat: we need to listen.

    For years now, various youth groups among the Igbo nation, one of the largest of our nations, have been clamouring for the separation of the Igbo nation from Nigeria in order to create a new sovereign country of Biafra. Some have come as Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, others as Biafra Zionist Movement, and yet others as Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Their ways of doing things may differ, but their messages are the same – separation of the Igbo nation into a new country of Biafra. And today, that message has caught on considerably among the Igbo nation. In Igbo city after Igbo city, we are seeing countless thousands of Igbo youths (and older citizens) come out to the streets to hear and cheer the youth who leads IPOB.

    Historically older than the noises of Biafra, the noise among the youths of the Delta has been going on virtually from the moment of Nigeria’s independence in 1960. Started soon after independence by no bigger a person than a university student, it has been sustained in waves after waves since then. Today, in the hands of considerably larger crowds of educated youths, the noise for a separate sovereign country of the Ijaw nation (our fourth largest nation) has grown wider into a call for a sovereign Delta country. And these youths of the many nations of the Delta have found very effective ways to make their noise loud – by inflicting repeated damages on the oil production facilities on which the Nigerian economy depends.

    Among the large Yoruba nation of the Nigerian South-west, our second largest nation (after the Hausa-Fulani nation), and our most successful nation in socio-economic development and modernization, youth noises for separation and for a sovereign Odua Republic have grown gradually through several “self-determination” groups. Those noises have now become very loud indeed. A few days ago, many of the “self-determination” groups came together, jointly proclaimed the formation of a Yoruba Liberation Command, and issued a very masterful statement inaugurating what they claimed to be the beginning of the final struggle for the sovereign republic of Odua. In ways characteristic of their Yoruba nation, they stretched out a hand of fellowship to the Biafra struggle among the Igbo, the sovereignty struggle among the Delta youths, and even the sovereignty demands of the youths of the Hausa-Fulani nation (otherwise known as Arewa North), and urged all for future cooperation among the separate countries that are now seeking to be born.

    I am sure that many of my readers today would be surprised to read here that there are sovereignty demands among the youths of Arewa North too. Yes, there are. In 2014, an Arewa Youth Development Front, led by highly educated youths, organized various demonstrations in Arewa cities, visited highly placed Arewa citizens, demanded that southerners resident in the North should relocate back to the south within two weeks, that northerners resident in the south should return to the North, and that, without delay, the “failed experiment of Nigeria should be terminated”. Then, some weeks ago, a large combination of Arewa youth groups issued a very major statement to Nigeria and the world, giving an ultimatum to the Igbo people resident in the north to quit the north not later than October 1, advising northerners resident in the south to start returning to the north, and – yes – demanding the dissolution of Nigeria. Not only did they say that they did not want to have Igbo people living in their Arewa homeland any longer; they also added that they did not want their nation to continue to live in the same country with the Igbo nation, and urged the United Nations to help organize a referendum that would enable the Igbo people to vote to go away from Nigeria and become the sovereign country of Biafra which Igbo youths have been clamouring for – in short, that Nigeria as we know it be broken up.

    Thus, we have masses of the youths of our four largest nations – Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo and Delta – demanding the separation of their nations from Nigeria and the dissolution of Nigeria. And, the fact that these crowds are “youths” must not mislead us into under-assessing their strength. The four nations they represent amount to about 165 million out of Nigeria’s total population of about 200 million. In each of these four nations, these youths constitute the majority of the population. They also constitute, far and away, the most educated generation, the most literate, the most skilled in modern things, and the most exposed worldwide. Whatever these people say about our country is enormously important – far too important to be taken lightly.

    Therefore, we need to make great efforts to understand why various large groups in this very important generation are seeking separation of their nations from Nigeria and the breaking up of Nigeria, and why their messages are growing popular in their nations. Those reasons are, for the most part, not difficult to see. The major one is that the generation above these youths, the generation that controls the commanding positions in Nigeria’s political and economic life, have senselessly appropriated to themselves all the benefits of Nigeria’s existence. They have put iron-clad holds on Nigeria’s common heritage, excluded the youths that are coming up from behind them, and seek seriously to provide virtually nothing for succeeding generations.

    The youths, highly educated, highly informed and world-wise, can only look from their conditions of deprivation at their elders who have established a system that enables them (the elders) to engross and steal all the resources of the country – money, urban land and estates, shares in public establishments, etc. They can see the children of this small older generation being thrust into all the best jobs and business opportunities, while the overwhelming majority of youths walk the streets jobless for years after graduation, unable to settle down and organize their lives. The youths are aware that the controllers of power in their country have slashed far down the provisions for education, that the quality of education in Nigeria has declined and is declining, and that Nigerian youth’s competitiveness in the world is declining. Most of these youths would flee abroad if they could. Countless thousands of them are lined up in front of foreign embassies daily. Each knows friends and former classmates who have, in desperation, joined other youths audaciously trying to reach Europe through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea, and who have perished thereby. Many know bright girl classmates who have ended up in enforced prostitution or sex slavery abroad. The overwhelming majority of our youths are surrounded by horrible realities and memories.

    In different ways, they all blame Nigeria. Universally, they dream that in smaller and ethnically compact separate countries of their own ethnic nations, there will be a good chance for new socio-economic orders, and more empathic governance. To them, Nigeria has become a monster that must be disbanded. All their separatist statements rant against Nigeria – and against Nigeria’s ruling class. Even the Arewa youths who are hitting at the Igbo are also hitting at the Arewa ruling class. If nothing changes, this intrinsically powerful generation will soon break up Nigeria.

  • Restructuring in simple details

    Why do we need to restructure our federation? Nigeria is not one nation but a country of many different nations, each of which, whether large or small, possesses its own ancestral homeland, its own culture and language and its own ethical norms, its own desires and expectations, cherishes its own existence and pride, and wants to be respected. Nigeria’s most fundamental need therefore is to organize itself, and to manage its affairs, in such ways as to ensure that these many nations, large and small, shall feel belonging, safe and respected in Nigeria.

    If we continue to organize and run Nigeria (as we do now) in such a way that some of our nations feel disrespected, marginalized, ignored or neglected, robbed, discriminated against, suppressed, threatened, or fearful for their future, it will be impossible to keep Nigeria together. No amount of military force, propaganda, threats, deception, promises, prayers, bribing of prominent citizens, patriotic admonitions or appeals for unity, will suffice to keep Nigeria together harmoniously.  The only way forward is to organize Nigeria as a true federation in which each federating unit shall control and manage most of its unique needs and concerns, control and develop its God-given resources for the benefit of its own people, control its own security, employ its culture and ethical norms to uphold orderliness and sanity among its own leaders and people, and be able to make its own kind of contributions to the progress and prosperity of Nigeria. The federal government must be a coordinator only, responsible for managing relations among the states of the federation, for defence, foreign relations, financial policy, international commerce, immigration, etc.

    So, creating a federation like that is restructuring? Yes. The federation we had before independence and up to 1966 was like that. As part of Nigeria’s preparation in 1946-9 for independence, the British founders and colonial rulers of Nigeria determined that a federation was the best for Nigeria. But they did not care enough for our well-being, and so they simply split Nigeria into three large regions for the federation. Our founding fathers (led by Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Azikiwe) had to work with the three regions; but in the course of the 1950s, in conference after conference, they set out the details of the organization for the three-region federation. Under this arrangement, each region wrote its own constitution, and had the power to control and develop its resources. This proved very good for our country. Our three regions rivalled one another for development, our country experienced a lot of progress and wealth creation, and Nigerians generally lived in hope.

    We should have had some more regions, to spread out the progress a little more. To that end, some local groups of our smaller nations (the group of small nations in each of the three regions) demanded their own regions. The British did not grant their demands; but it was generally understood that such regions would be created after independence, without changing the power sharing between regions and the centre. We entered into independence in 1960 under that constitution. In 1963, Nigeria created a fourth region, the Midwest Region, for the minorities of the Western Region.

    But, unfortunately, immediately after independence, we began to lose this spirit of true federation. The reason for that was that the people in control of our federal government wanted to control the regions. They started by disrupting and taking control of the Western Region in 1962. Their further efforts along this line soon led to resistance, chaos, and ultimately to a military coup and a civil war. All of these only established the military as the rulers of Nigeria. Under successive military dictatorships between 1966 and 1999, power and resource control and development were relentlessly pulled together into the hands of the central government – until what we now have is essentially a unitary system of government. Under this unitary system, our federating units are impotent entities depending on the federal government for almost everything; the federal government is messily overburdened, chaotically scrambling around for more power and control, often mischievously dabbling in religious propagation and thereby generating fears and hostility, and hideously inefficient and corrupt. As a result, poverty holds sway over our country and people, and inter-ethnic and religious conflicts are ravaging our country.  For stability, peace and progress to return to our country, we must return to the 1960 spirit of true federation, and we must now make our nations the basis of federating units in our federation. That is what we mean by restructuring.

    Does this mean we should make every one of our 300 nations a federating unit or state? No. We cannot afford to have too many states. India, which is very similar to our Nigeria, and which has over a billion population and about 2000 nations, structured its federation into only 28 states. In what I write below, I am borrowing some wisdom from the Indian experience.

    To restructure, what steps should we take? There are two steps – one, to restore the balance of powers (between the centre and the federating units) that Nigeria had at independence, and make the federating units again the dynamic and vital agencies of development; and two, to determine and delimit our federating units.

    The first step is the easier one, because we know how power and resources were shared between our federal and regional governments by 1960. All we need to do is to restore that balance of sharing of power and resource-control. That arrangement served our country wonderfully; it was when we started to corrupt it after independence that we began to pollute our country and its political and economic life. And then the military dictatorships came from 1966 to turn the trend into a whole disaster.

    So, how should we determine our federating units? We have different options. One option is to simply adopt our present 36 states, with some adjustments – like adding one more state in Igboland, and making some changes in the Middle Belt in order to give relief to nations that are being brutalized there by aggressive neighbours.

    A better option is to adopt our six zones (North-west, North-east, North-central, South-west, South-east and South-south), and make each a region or federating unit. Each region shall be a regional federation in itself, with the present states in it (or states created by it) as its federating units.  Again, in the North-central Region (the Middle Belt), we will need to adjust state boundaries and/or regional boundaries, for the relief of some endangered nations there. In fact, this may mean that we shall split the North-central into two regions – to make a total of seven regions in our federation.

    We usually read that our restructured federation must be protected with certain important principles. What are those principles? First, no one federating unit shall be able to dominate, or to force its will on, our whole federation. In 1960-66, the Northern Region alone was larger than the Eastern and Western Regions together, and it often sought to dominate the whole federation.  With the creation of more and more states from 1967, that danger passed – even though the leaders of the Arewa part of the then Northern Region still desire to dominate the federation today – and that is why they are still insisting that all power and resource control must belong to the federal government. In our restructured federation, there must be no residue of that danger left.

    A second principle is that we must diligently ensure respect for every one of our nations, large or small. For instance, we must ensure that, as much as possible, no nation shall be split across regional or state boundaries – that is, that each nation shall be intact together in one region, and in one state in its region.

    Thirdly, each federating unit shall have slightly more than the kind of autonomy that the regions had until 1966. Each shall write its own constitution – including formulating its own states and local governments; control and develop its own resources; manage its own development and progress for its people; manage its own security; and pay to the federal government the taxes and subventions constitutionally due from the regions to our federation. Local governments shall be empowered and structured in their regions’ constitutions to perform their tasks as frontline agencies of development. No region may be interfered with – in the way that the federal government was able to interfere with the Western Region in 1962. Under no circumstance may the federal government shut down and take over a region’s elected government, or seize any asset of a region. And the federal government shall not promote any religion whatsoever. We can make a success of this country.