The country named Yugoslavia in south-eastern Europe broke up in 1990, after 72 years of existence. While it existed, it was similar to Nigeria of today in many ways. Like Nigeria, Yugoslavia consisted of many different nationalities – the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Albanians, etc. Britain had thoughtlessly pushed many nationalities together to create Nigeria in 1914; Britain and France also thoughtlessly pushed many nationalities together to create Yugoslavia in 1918.
Like Nigerian leaders, Yugoslav leaders were never able to manage their inter-ethnic relationships amicably. Like Nigeria therefore, Yugoslavia was always unstable, always about to break into massive inter-ethnic conflicts, always seeming about to collapse. One of the nationalities, the Serbs, were always obsessed with the ambition to dominate the other nationalities and the whole country, and that ambition led them into actions that frequently threatened Yugoslavia with disruption.
During the Second World War, 1939-45, Yugoslavia, like most of Europe, suffered under German Nazi conquest and domination. A resistance movement of Yugoslav people developed to liberate Yugoslavia, and adopted communism. When the war ended, this communist group, under a leader named Joseph Tito, became the rulers of Yugoslavia. Tito and his communists ruled until 1980.
The communist rulers hated the inter-ethnic troubles and adopted many tough measures to keep them under control. Until Tito died in 1980, therefore, the world heard very little about the Yugoslav inter-ethnic troubles.
But, in reality, the inter-ethnic divisions did not go away. It is almost impossible to make inter-ethnic divisions in a multi-nation country go away. Each nationality took thousands of years to develop as one people, with one culture, one national image, and one national pride. If it happens that some nationalities find themselves combined as one country, the only successful approach is that each of the nationalities should be carefully respected, and that each be given some autonomy to manage its own unique concerns in the country. The only sustainable structure for the country therefore has to be a federal structure, and the federating units have to be, as much as possible, based on the nationalities. We see this in the Union of India, in Switzerland, and even in Britain – the country that created Nigeria. Wherever attempts are made to force the nationalities to surrender their individuality and integrity in order to unify the country, disharmony, hostility, violence, and ultimate collapse are usually the outcome.
After Tito’s death, most of Yugoslavia’s ethnic leaders did try to save the country. Throughout the 1980s, they held national conferences to find a settlement. But the Serbs (the largest of the nationalities, though not a majority in the country) foiled all the attempts. The Serbs would not accept any agreement that did not guarantee their dominance. The country slipped gradually on – until it finally exploded in 1990.
The explosion started when two of the nationalities, the Croats and the Slovenes, announced secession and proclaimed themselves as separate sovereign countries. The Serbs mobilized a large army and tried to suppress them, but more nationalities then followed and announced secession. Yugoslavia descended into a horrendous conflagration.
The lesson here is clear. When different nationalities, each living in its own homeland, different in culture and religion, are forced together into one country, and the leaders of the various nationalities cannot agree on how to manage their country equitably and harmoniously, dark forces of rivalry, envy, fear, ill-will, hatred and domination, are often generated in the hearts of the nationalities against one another. That is what happened in Yugoslavia. It has happened in many Black African countries too.
Signs of these dark forces have been gradually growing in Nigeria, especially since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. Sure, many of us Nigerians do desire that Nigeria should become harmonious and peaceful, continue to exist, and become a prosperous and powerful country. But, there exists the perpetual fact that the political elites of Nigeria’s various peoples do not know, and have never known, what it takes to make a country like Nigeria work. One of the largest of the nationalities, the Hausa-Fulani, because they were seriously behind the rest in education at independence, harbour the belief that the only way they can be anything in Nigeria is to hold perpetually to federal power and dominate all the other peoples of Nigeria. In the context of efforts to sustain this ambition, Nigeria has descended steadily into decline, a culture of electoral fraud and violence, and of mind-boggling corruption. Of course, most of the elite of the various peoples of Nigeria, eager to benefit personally or collectively from this confusion, have delved down into it – with the result that Nigeria’s problems have become essentially insoluble.
In the vortex of this horrible situation, many attendant evils have grown. For instance, it has become widely acceptable for citizens of various nationalities to vent very disrespectful attitudes at one another. Those who, taking advantage of Nigeria, migrate to other peoples’ homelands and choose to live there and take advantage of the opportunities there, now think that the proper kind of behaviour is to be viciously disrespectful of their hosts, and to indulge in aggressive and unruly claims and insults against their hosts.
Anybody who makes a habit of reading what Nigerians write on the internet against each other’s nationalities would wonder why Nigerians are claiming to be citizens of the same country. The Nigerian filthy kind of mind now regularly produces persons who give much time, energy, and intellectual effort to writing whole treatises to fabricate falsehood about one or other nationality, and to assert that cultural achievements known to belong to that nationality do not, in fact, belong to that nationality – or, even, do not exist in human experience.
But these kinds of behaviour are not limited to the lowest fringes of Nigerian society, they also feature even in very high levels of Nigerian society. Under the Abacha and Abdulsalami military dictatorships and the Obasanjo civilian dictatorship, there arose a spirited effort to persuade Nigerians that their various nationalities do not exist or should not exist, that such nationalities are essentially myths – myths that are dangerous to the identity and progress of Nigeria, and that deserve to be suppressed out of existence. In those years some persons working for, or under the auspices of, the Nigerian Federal Government favoured Nigeria with serious writings which informed Nigerians that it is backward and perverse to include any consideration for our nationalities in any plans for Nigeria’s future, and that the nationalities are no more than myths. Even today, some prominent citizens still think that it is their patriotic duty to Nigeria to remind Nigeria of these things.
It is therefore not strange that these adversarial patterns of relationship are today producing some actions and trends that may soon push Nigeria to its demise. A few years past, the frightful news began to surface that persons belonging to one Nigerian nationality were from time to time bursting upon peaceful villages belonging to other nationalities in the Nigerian Middle Belt, wantonly killing the villagers, destroying the villages, and occupying the land. Continued year in year out, this development has now assumed the stature of genocide.
And this terrible outrage has now spread beyond the Middle Belt to the Southern regions of Nigeria. In most parts of Nigeria today, the outcry is up about armed and murderous Fulani cattle herders who lead their cattle to destroy farms, and who then attack farmers who protest, kill farmers and their families, and wipe out whole villages.
By and by, Nigerians are getting to know more and more about these killers. We now know that some of them are Nigerians and many others are non-Nigerians. Of the non-Nigerians, Nigeria is now hearing from some official sources that these are in fact not cattle herders but militiamen from Libya – the ones that Ghadafi trained as his private army who, after the fall of Ghadafi, fled southwards to West Africa. The question is now agitating Nigeria as to how these trained terrorists have invaded Nigeria without the Federal Government doing anything to stop them – and even without the government alerting Nigerians that Nigeria has been invaded. Many are asking, is it possible that some influential Nigerians, intent on conquering and subduing the rest of Nigeria, have hired Libyan militiamen and added them to the Fulanis who have been massacring various peoples of Nigeria?
Some days ago, President Buhari lamented that many Nigerians want Nigeria to be dissolved. Happily, he added that he would do everything to keep Nigeria together. But, in the light of the mutually hostile trends in Nigeria, is it surprising that more and more Nigerians peoples would wish to cease being part of Nigeria? This is an example of how countries fail and fall apart.
