SIR: Nigeria is a country of many a memory –some good, others bad, others really long. In a country of close to 200 million people, there are many actors and agitations to keep the memories’ catalogues occupied daily. Unfortunately, these very catalogues now stand on the precipice of being crushed by their many unsavoury occupiers as such prodigious retention has yet to translate to the fruits of national prosperity. The provenance is, indeed, a long and arduous one.
Since 1999, the Nigerian ship has charted democratic waters with mixed navigation and determination. On more occasions than can be numbered, dissident and disgruntled co-travellers have threatened to wreck the ship. Fortunately, that day of doom is yet to arrive so far, thus staying the many messages of doom that have become both staple and spectre to ordinary Nigerians. But for how long can the destiny of the Nigerian nation hold out against the forces which seek to tear it apart¯with sound reasons, as some argue? The answer would seem too close to be ignored in the face of recent events.
A focal reference is the recent ultimatum given by a section of overzealous northern youths to all Igbos living in the North to leave before a particular date. Although, Nigeria has bruising stories of bad news to tell especially when the Nigerian Civil war is interrogated, the latest ultimatum shines a particularly ugly light on the very fickle thread that tie the Nigerian nation together. This light does not gain in any extra darkness because it is a particular ethnic group ¯ in this case, the Igbos ¯that is the focus of its grotesque glare. It would have reflected just as badly on any ethnic group asked to evacuate a part of the country in a country that flaunts its unity in diversity. That this ultimatum so flagrantly came must send the alarm bells chiming about the storms gathering for the forced marriage that is Nigeria which predated its historic 1960 independence. Day by day, the bedrock of this rocky marriage disintegrates further and the marriage seems destined for the rocks.
Though, it cannot be objectively said that this so-called coalition of Northern Youth groups spoke the minds of the entire northern Nigeria, the ultimatum would seem to find resonance in the recent agitation by a section of Igbos for Biafra and the not-too-distant clamour for autonomy which shook the Niger Delta where a peace of the graveyard currently pervades. Thus, with these recent disturbances which congeal into a most toxic brew when blended with the Boko Haram insurgence and rampaging Fulani herdsmen, it seems that the time has final come for Nigeria‘s drawing board to be revisited and its negotiating table reoccupied.
There have been conferences aimed at discussing the soul of Nigeria, but the recommendations of those conferences have always found particularly short shrift from those forces determined to keep Nigeria together at all costs even at the cost of innocent blood. Yet, there is no shame in correcting mistakes, especially when such mistakes come into the light of time.
There should be no shame in correcting the historic mistake called Nigeria for the sake of unborn posterity. In fact, unborn posterity would reserve a place of great honour to those courageous enough to serve the fatherland in this capacity.
- Kenechukwu Obiezu Esq,
Abuja.