A Yugoslavia-Nigeria parallel is instructive.
The final trigger for the break-up of Yugoslavia was Serbian ultra-nationalism.
Now comes Nigeria’s season of ethnic ultra-nationalism: Oduduwa and MASSOB’s Biafra (active: because they push carving Nigeria into new countries) and the North (passive: because it insists on the failing status quo).
On Josip Broz Tito’s defunct country, Wikipedia writes: “Yugoslavia was a country in South East Europe during most of the 20th century. It came into existence after World War I in 1918 …” It broke up in 1991, after 73 years.
Lord Frederick Lugard amalgamated northern and southern Nigeria in 1914. Though Nigeria hit its centenary this year, 2014, there is no guarantee, with the escalating tension, Wikipedia would not write on Nigeria in the past tense, as it does on Yugoslavia now.
Yugoslavia’s World War II (1939-1945) dead was around one million. Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans fought the (guerrilla) war to secure Yugoslavia’s integrity against carve-up threats from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy).
Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970) casualty tally was also around one million dead. Nigeria fought the war to thwart the Igbo attempt to break away.
According to Wikipedia, the rise of nationalism, coupled with religious differences between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks prompted the collapse of Yugoslavia.
Nigeria now appears locked in religious antipathy, aside from the Boko Haram mass slaughter; and ethnic nationalism is on the upswing.
A “Croatian spring” protest in the 1970s, which condemned Yugoslavia as a Serb hegemony, led to Yugoslavia’s 1974 constitution. It slightly watered down Serb influence by granting federating republics more autonomy.
But the Serbs (self-proclaimed special breed) resented that constitution’s “threat to national unity” (read Serb dominance). Much later, Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian communist leader, attempted to cancel the 1974 reforms and re-impose Serbian sovereignty over other ethnic nationalities, particularly Croats (who incidentally were the late Tito’s people, though he lived and died a Yugoslav national icon; and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo). That move proved fatal for Yugoslavia.
Nigeria’s status quo ensemble has a ready cant: “Nigerian unity is non-negotiable”; as it tries to block campaigns by ethnic nationalities and other lobbies to restructure the country.
But remember: agitations by “ethnic nationalities” were fair reactions to Nigeria as a northern hegemony. Like Serbia, the North fancies itself a special power breed, with near-divine right to rule. Add the merry-go-round national conferences (Abacha 1994-95, Obasanjo 2005 and now Jonathan, 2014), just to buy time, and what you see is intransigence.
If such intransigence proved fatal for Yugoslavia, could it prove any less for Nigeria?
Even a more eerie parallel: “In 1986” Wikipedia wrote, “the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts drafted a memorandum addressing some burning issues, concerning position of Serbs as the most numerous people in Yugoslavia.” Six years later, Yugoslavia was history.
In 2014, a northern think-tank collective authored the North’s position paper to the ongoing National Conference (NC).
The paper told “Northern Nigeria, the backbone and strength of Nigeria” to use its “extremely understated” population to maintain the status quo, and even roll back to five per cent, the 13 per cent paid to Niger Delta as oil derivation!
Was this a virtual chapter from the Serbian Academy paper? And, in six years’ time, would Nigeria stand strong and united, guaranteed by a northern spine, as the northern elite hope or, like Yugoslavia, have fallen to pieces, as the Serbian elite perhaps now rue? Nobody knows.
What is clear is that since that Northern NC document was made public, Nigeria has been gripped by virulent ultra-nationalism, reminiscent of the last days of Yugoslavia.
First, Femi Fani-Kayode, the gentleman who never does things in half-measure, has gone dramatically poetic on Yoruba ultra-nationalism: “Give me Oduduwa or let me die”, he thundered in a now famous article, trending on the social media.
Another set of Yoruba groups, at the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park, Ojota, Lagos, declared with no less finality: “Regional autonomy … or nothing”. But the groups said while they had no intention to impose their will on others, they would resist the imposition of others’ will.
Across the Niger, the Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in Owerri, Imo State, led by Ralph Uwazurike, wanted Nigeria split into six republics, along the present geo-political zones.
Chief Uwazurike talked of “deep-rooted hatred among major ethnic nationalities in Nigeria”, the mistake of 1914’s Lugard amalgamation, “irreconcilable disdain existing between Islam and Christianity” and “a failed state called Nigeria”. He also dismissed Igbo mainstream politicians as parasites who mouth “one Nigeria” because Nigeria is their corrupt “cash cow”.
And drama of dramas: Uwazurike not only donned, with matching ceremonial cap, a blue outfit his supporters called “the navy blue Biafran uniform”, he also came accompanied with two MASSOB representatives in UK and Europe!
The Yoruba and Igbo groups were also devastating in their politics of memory. MASSOB hailed May 30, the day in 1967 Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declared the ill-fated Biafra Republic, as a “watershed” that boldly questioned the “mistake” of Lugard’s amalgamation, but remained the true path to Igbo liberation even 47 years after.
The Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) also thumbed down May 29, Nigeria’s official national Democracy Day, as a date of infamy. First, May 29, 1962: date phony emergency rule was imposed on the old Western Region, marking the beginning of the end for the First Republic. May 29, 1999: the Army Arrangement (apologies to late Fela), that sold (un)civil rule as Democracy. And — ARG did not cite this one — May 29, 1966: anti-Igbo pogroms started in the North.
Meanwhile, from up North came dire news: Boko Haram had killed an emir and sent two other scuttling into the bush for dear lives! The symbolism is scary: the creeping collapse of the northern community where the emir was something of a demigod? Now, if the North cannot secure its own spine, how can it be a backbone for a failing Nigeria?
Even from the South West, some dissonance. The Yoruba declared “regional autonomy or nothing” in Lagos. Yet, Lagos, at the NC rejected regionalism and upheld the artificiality of Nigeria’s current 36-state structure!
And that comic piece about creating Ijebu State as trade-off to guaranteed Igbo security nationwide! Champions of regionalism still hankering after Ijebu State? Comic confusion indeed, in the Yoruba camp!
Ethnic nationalists giving up on Nigeria can be excused. Its unsustainable structure is unravelling fast.
But the Lagos NC rebellion shows it’s no use being gung-ho about Nigeria’s collapse. If and when it happens, the balkanisation might just be total — as Serbia and Montenegro’s failure to keep Yugoslavia’s name on the map has shown — and no single geo-political zone might be sure to stay as one.
That is why the North must moderate its empty conceit on “national unity” and the opposing camps, their delirium on Nigeria’s collapse.
Genuine restructuring, on productive federal lines, remains the best option.
Otherwise, Nigerians might just be fated to Niger-nostalgia (when recalling former Nigeria) and maybe The Economist would coin Nigersphere (as it has coined Yugosphere), to refer to the space Nigeria now occupies.
