These days, I am often profoundly puzzled whenever I look at Nigeria. From all significant indications, Nigeria is gradually deconstructing. Commonly, what held together fairly well only yesterday is today markedly disintegrating.
And the most troubling part of it all is that nobody – no Nigerian of note – seems to be aware or care. The politicians go about their nebulous games of politics with their usual crookedness and vicious manipulations while the country they lead or hope to lead crumbles inexorably. These days, when one sees pictures of Nigerian leaders or rulers in any gathering, it is as if one is watching people in a funeral event.
Nigeria is disintegrating. Our very best ploys at self-deception have become too fragile to hide that fact. This past Monday, July 14, TV stations worldwide carried scenes in which Boko Haram hoodlums – really looking like the worst of hoodlums – mocked the “Bring Back Our Girls” demonstrations by the rest of us Nigerians. Watching that sickening satyr, no self-respecting person would wish to be counted among Nigerians. A friend who watched the news in faraway California grabbed his telephone and called me and asked, “Listen, is there no government left in your country?”
No, there is nothing substantial left in Nigeria, except, of course, the royalties and rents from the oil of the Niger Delta. Those fees are now the totality of what we call Nigeria. If they were to disappear, or even seriously diminish, Nigeria would vanish immediately. Participation in politics, all of governance, service on the judiciary, the police, the other regulatory agencies, and most of what we call business – all are underpinned and motivated by the sharing of bounties and grafts from the oil revenues. A real country no longer exists here.
About three months ago, we were elated when our president inaugurated a National Conference. Many of us hoped that a National Conference would sort out many of our deadlocks and tangles. It is not happening. Nothing so constructive is possible in Nigeria. After bruising its path through some decisions that seemed fairly valuable, the conference has now capped everything with an overwhelmingly disastrous decision – namely, the decision to increase the number of states in the Nigerian federation from 36 to 54. Yes, 54 states!
For years now, there has been no doubt that having as many as 36 states has been hurting our country. It resulted in small weak states that the federal establishment has easily been able to roll over and subdue; states incapable of developing their resources or resisting poverty among their citizens. This has distorted out federation, increased poverty among our people, and generated widening insecurity and conflicts. In spite of these experiences, our National Conference has now decided to increase the number of states. And we all know why. Most of the persons gathered in the conference are politicians or aspiring politicians whose only serious desire is to create more opportunities for themselves to become state governors, deputy governors, commissioners, advisers, contractors, etc. It is about creating more outlets for sharing the oil money. Nigeria’s well-being is not a consideration – because, of course, Nigeria and the citizens of Nigeria do not exist as far as most of our politicians are concerned.
Naturally, a lot of informed Nigerians are speaking out – and most of them are proposing that the mirage called Nigeria be terminated, in the interest of all concerned. Among such statements by prominent Nigerians, I am looking at a few right now.
Some days ago, one of our most prominent citizens, former vice-chancellor of one of our leading universities, Professor Ango Abdullahi, granted a public interview. From his chosen angle in Nigeria’s political life, Professor Abdullahi has been undoubtedly one of our most successful politicians. But, in the bruising tensions and conflicts of the politics of a Nigeria that has no core of values, no generally accepted game rules, and no commonly shared goal, he is becoming exasperated. It is therefore not surprising that he is now saying that he would gladly accept the breaking up of Nigeria – in fact, that the Hausa-Fulani leadership of the Arewa North would gladly subscribe to the dissolution of Nigeria, if that is what others want.
As things stand today, I don’t think that there is much doubt about the wish of Nigerians. If Nigerians were asked today about their wish concerning Nigeria’s future, most are likely to agree that the failed experiment of Nigeria should now be given up (peacefully), and that the brutalized and suffering peoples of Nigeria should be given a chance to re-discover hope for themselves in smaller countries of their own. We have come that far.
I also have before me a piece written by another Nigerian intellectual who writes: “It is high time we dissolved this big beast called a country”. He adds that Chief Awolowo and his contemporaries “believed a big, strong and prosperous Nigeria like the emerging United States would take its rightful place on the world stage and be the pride of Africa and the black world. Instead ever since, Nigeria has stubbornly refused to be anything other than a global disgrace. Now is the time to split the country…We want a good-bye-to-all referendum now. And the National Conference sitting in Abuja should make itself useful by setting a date for one. Enough is enough”.
However, there are two big questions about our parting. One concerns the sharing of the huge oil revenues; and the other concerns the fact that large numbers of citizens now live beyond their ethnic homelands. Professor Abdullahi touches upon the first, and his position is that the oil does not belong to any one section of Nigeria, but to Nigeria as a whole. Significant Northern leaders have said repeatedly that it was Nigerian money that developed the Delta oil industry, and that they will go to war rather than lose the oil.
The bottom line to the oil situation, therefore, is that if we are to be able to part peacefully, we must find a generally acceptable solution to the sharing of the oil revenues. Two years ago, a Nigerian scientist resident in the United States offered a constructive solution to this problem. His proposal is that Nigeria’s parting settlement should include a clause providing for continued sharing of the oil revenues among the new countries for an agreed number of years (five or ten years) after the parting. Each new country would thus have an assured amount of oil revenue for a number of years as it strives to take off. For the implementation of this, an international commission, participated in by the United Nations, will be charged with the revenue receiving and sharing, for the agreed number of years. Among the pluses of this arrangement, it will bring peace to the Niger Delta oil industry – peace that it has lacked for decades.
For the second question, the solution will have to be a cast-iron agreement for the protection of folks where they live and choose to remain in the new countries. According to countless intellectuals who have explored this subject, no non-Yoruba folks have any reason to fear in the new Yoruba country. The other countries will need to follow suit.
