The #EndSARS protests did not just happen without pre-meditating factors. There was a deep-rooted socio-political and economic background to it.
In a comprehensive eight-part work titled, “Nigeria at 59: Analysis and Commentary on her underdevelopment” which I dedicated to Nigeria on her 59th year as a country, I had identified eight reasons as being responsible for the socio-political, economic and infrastructural underdevelopment of the country.
I had classified these reasons under remote and immediate factors, pinning four factors each in the two classifications.
That work would form a good basis for the evaluation of #EndSARS campaign as a timely national audit of socio-political and economic underdevelopment of Nigeria as we will learn from it that bad governance, which obviously is the first major reason for the underdevelopment of Nigeria, was the background reason for the #EndSARS protest.
I therefore crave the indulgence of the reader to permit me to reproduce an edited portion of part 1 of that work which was published on page 26, of The Authority Newspaper (in the commentary section) of Wednesday, October, 16, 2019.
Here is the text of that work:
PROGNOSIS
As Nigeria moves into the 59th natal cycle of her existence, it becomes necessary to take a realistic approach in examining the factors which may have contributed to the stunted and dwarfed growth of the ‘giant of Africa’, referred to by the jingists as ‘giant in the sun’.
This work, an eight part series and my special birthday gift to Nigeria and Nigerians examines the probable factors that may have been responsible for the near asphyxiation of the giant, denying her the necessary oxygen for a normal growth all these long tortuous fifty- eight years.
Beforeembarking on this work, I understood that some people whose actions or non-actions during these years may be fingered in the work would opine that it was better to keep quiet. No, it is not better to keep quiet however ugly our past may be.
It is a valid statement of fact that one must first approach an ailment, especially the serious and concealed ones through an honest, sound and proper diagnosis before choosing the right therapeutic method suitable to ensure healing. As a matter of fact, on proper diagnosis rather than randomly -chosen therapeutic administration lies the chance of both survival and recovery from a terminal ailment such as Nigeria as an entity presently faced.
You must of necessity open up a wound and treat it for it to heal. This is my mindset in discussing an issue many Nigerians would prefer to downplay or pretend that it does not exist.
THE FACTORS
Eight factors are responsible for the socio-political and economic underdevelopment of Nigeria.
These factors fall into two sub-headings:
1. The Remote factors
2. The immediate factors
THE REMOTE FACTORS
The four remote factors contributory to the socio-political and economic underdevelopment of Nigeria are:
(a) Pseudo-ethno-religious- hegemony in Nigeria.
(b) The Nigeria civil war
(c) Indigenization decree of the Federal military government in the early seventies.
(d) Arbitrary changing and revaluation of the Nigeria medium of exchange from pound to naira.
THE IMMEDIATE FACTORS
The four immediate factors which account for the socio-political and economic underdevelopment; of Nigeria are:
(a) Mismanagement of Nigeria’s natural resources starting from the post civil war military government; and trailing down to consecutive governments.
(b) The civil service salary structure review popularly known as Udoji Award, and summary dismissal of civil servants during the Muritala Ramat Muhammed military regime.
(c) Structural adjustment programme of the IBB government.
(d) Consistent drop over a long period of time of international petroleum prices.
We shall discover as we peruse these eight factors that every other ills of the Nigerian socio-political and economic fabric including corruption and insecurity are incidental to these eight factors. These other ills are fallouts and manifestations in sundry ways from either peoples reaction to the vagaries of structural distortions caused by the eight factors and/or the snowballing economic chain reactions in the socio-political and economic fabric.
The purpose of this analysis is to take in unbiased and honest forensic examination of the eight factors with a view to proffering solutions that may be enlisted in future government policies that are sure to revamp the system.
In this eight part series dedicated to Nigeria and Nigerians, I shall start with the first and earliest manifesting of these eight factors, notably:
PSEUDO-ETHNO-RELIGIOUS HEGEMONY IN NIGERIA
INTRODUCTION
The trans-saharan expansionist window which was unsuccessfully explored in previous expeditions by people across the Sahara desert yielded positively to the daring efforts of an Islamist revivalist and Jihadist from western Sudan, Uthman Dan Fodio in 1804, and with it the religion of Islam got a resounding boost in the north eastern and north western parts of Nigeria, taking a further incursion into parts of what is today known as the north central area of Nigeria- the middle belt.
This incursion brought about the Fulani-Moslem uprisings which began in the same year from the Hausa-Moslem state of Gobir. It spread across other Hausa-Moslem city states including Kano, Rano, Katsina, Zaria, Daura, spreading east to Borno which was the oldest Hausa-Moslem state in Nigeria. History records that these uprisings were very bloody.
The conquest of the Hausa-Moslem city states by the Fulani-Moslem immigrants from western Sudan who came as Islamists revivalists or Jihadists was soon to show to have a socio-political and economic motive. In no time the conquerors established the caliphate based in Sokoto as a religious and spiritual authority with oversight functions in socio-political and economic matters. This was the condition of the caliphate by the time the northern and southern protectorates of the Niger area were amalgamated in 1914.
By independence in 1960, the caliphate had amassed such vast and robust powers subsuming the authority of the indigenes in the areas where its influence spread that it was in no way to be compared to the people of the southern protectorates where powers were held loosely by traditional chiefs and other heads of clans and districts.
The impunity which characterized the atavistic conquering inclination of the immigrant western Sudanese Fulani-Moslem stock was revealed after Nigeria’s independence when the Sultan through the auspices of his leadership of the two most important Moslem bodies in Nigeria, the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and Jamatul Nasril Islam -with the support of other Moslem bodies across Nigeria, pressed for and obtained the implementation of Islamist Sharia law in a constitutionally secular Nigeria. This obviously ran counter to the law, yet it went through unchallenged.
In time, this conquering inclination metamorphosed to a groundswell of advocacy for Islamic rule in the whole of Nigeria by a large section of the Nigerian Moslem community.
Three questions arise from this brief background story:
(I) Why did the caliphate’s political relevance survive British colonialism in Nigeria?
(II) Why did the caliphate’s political relevance survive military rule in Nigeria.
(III) Why is the caliphate’s political influence still having deep incursions into Nigerian democratic governments better and more than other surviving dynasties like the Oduduwa dynasty in Western Nigeria and the dynasties in ancient Bini kingdom, Opobo, old Oyo Empire, Onitsha and the neglected ancient dynasties of Kano, Borno all of which are older than the caliphate in Nigeria?
I have made efforts in my research to provide answers to these three questions in the respective order asked.
Correspondingly, (1b) provides the answer to (Ia); (IIb) to (IIa) and (IIIb) to (IIIa), viz:
(Ib) The British Colonialist policy of Rule by Association.
(IIb) The northernization policy of the first Republic by the Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir. Ahmadu Bello, the Sadauna of Sokoto.
(IIIb) Conquest by seduction as in political maneuvers (e.g) Coup d etats and vast and varied corruptive activities of government in forms of the ‘hand of Esau and the body of Jacob’.
Let us briefly discuss the answers to the three questions raised.
THE BRITISH COLONIALIST POLICY OF RULE BY ASSOCIATION
The Sokoto caliphate in Nigeria is the last surviving pre-colonial Fulani Islamist reformist groups of the 19th century western Sudan. Others have long been assimilated or dispersed.
Is this the reason why it seeks a permanent and own home state in Nigeria for her Fulani kits and kins scattered in other sub-saharan African countries?
Unknown to the British and to the detriment of Nigeria, the British imperialist policy of rule by association played a major role for this to happen. By the time the delegation of her imperial majesty arrived Nigeria, the Sultan was already in charge as the Amirul Munineen (Commander of the faithful) or Sarkin Muslumi of the predominantly northern Nigerian Muslims.
The existing strong feudalistic rulership of the caliphate was allowed by the British colonialist who retained much of the tradition, culture and norms of the native people. Having seen a thriving religion and a central governing authority through which to administer the people and pick their taxes, the colonialist masters decided not to tamper with it, as against the Southern part of Nigeria where egalitarianism, communalism and other traditional means of governance ran alongside Christianity which provided the platform for the administration of the people.
It was by the same reason of a guaranteed loyal and obedient people administered with the Sharia law by the Sultan that what is presently known to be the highly disciplined and formidable Nigerian army was formed in 1863 in northern Nigeria from the then Hausa constabulary of the British army under Lieutenant Glover. This origin of the Nigerian army always comes to my mind each time Nigerians complain about the lop-sided composition of the country’s security architecture. Perhaps, the ownership, vis-à-vis the leadership of the security agencies are believed in some quarters to reside in, as well as being the natural birthright of the ethnic nationality whose elements were used to form the first Nigerian military regiment. It is probably for this reason, too, that the most important defence infrastructure and facilities are cited in the northern part of Nigeria.
Mungo Park and the early Portuguese ‘explorers’, ‘discoverers’ and Irish missionaries came not displacing people. They were more interested in industrial fibre to feed the factories that emerged as a result of Europe’s industrial revolution than in religious conversion. To harness people’s loyalty, organize and tap resources was one reason for the introduction of Christianity in Nigeria – to “save souls” was the second reason. History records that the early Christian explorers bribed the chiefs with dry gin, gun powder and mirror, only using mild force where absolutely necessary. As a matter of fact, some of them like the Lander brothers who were interred in Asaba lost their lives through malaria attack, doing so.
It is as a result of the British colonial method of rule by association that the Fulani-Muslim immigrants who came to plunder and occupy was given a life line to exist in mutual association with the British government when the later established a colonial authority. Coincidentally in the same 1804, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) was on its way to Nigeria through Sierra Leon where it took origin with the freed of Afro America slaves just back after centuries of servitude. The Christian “inversion” of Nigeria which was initiated by Reverend Townsend and Bishop Ajayi Crowther was neither bloody nor occupative.
In comparison to the British colonial system of association, the French colonialist masters instituted their colonialism through assimilation. For example, the Tukulor empire which emerged from the upper Niger highlands of Futu Toro in a series of conquests which began much later in 1855 by Jihadi forces under the leadership of Al Hajj Umar Tall and incorporated the ancient city states of Masino, Timbuktu, Bambara, Segu and Hamdalahi, all succumbed to the French assimilation policy and were balkanized into three separate countries of the present Guinea, Senegal and Mali.
So it was that by the time the Union Jack was to be hosted in Nigeria at amalgamation, the socio-political and economic conditions of the different ethnic nationalities in Nigeria saw the Sokoto caliphate having subjected vast resources and the people in those geographical spaces under a centralized rulership through highly elaborate and functional government powered by the Islamic Sharia system.
In contrast, the customary laws in Southern Nigeria were localized and adopted models from the British statute. It was administered by the District Commissioners.
By the time the same Union Jack was lowered at independence (there are fake stories of the Union Jack within the caliphate not lowered at independence), there was much to celebrate by a new crop of northern political elites as there came an opportunity for them to share power with the caliphate, without losing sight of subordination to the first and superior political authority of the sultan, but not much to celebrate by commoners in Northern Nigeria who have been subjugated under a century-old feudalist arrangement. This mentality of admission of the higher political authority of the Sultan amongst northern political elites still subsist today even at the highest level of government in Nigeria, in spite of the fact that Nigeria practices the executive presidential system of democracy.
In contrast, and to the egalitarian South, the independence yielded both spontaneous and total dividends in wide economic investments. Human resources development sky- rocked in that part of the country, as Western education system thrived. Western Nigeria took the lead in this direction. These different strokes on the two amalgamated parts, obviously, is the reason why the northern part of Nigeria still trails the southern part in economic development while the southern part takes the second position in political organization and development.
THE NORTHERNISATION POLICY OF THE FIRST REPUBLIC
Dan Fodio’s expansionism in Nigeria was capped by what was popularly known as the nothernisation policy of the first republic instituted by the Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. Done in good faith to protect his region, religion and people by a man who understood that ‘charity begins at home’, the nothernization policy of the first republic took advantage of the closeness of the Premier with the Prime Minister of the Federal Republic, Sir (Alhaji) Tafawa Balewa, to tilt in favor of the Muslim Fulani’s, the structure and composition of both the Nigerian military, the Civil Service as well as groom future politicians from the northern extraction to take over Nigeria after independence from the British Colonial masters. Many of the personalities who have featured in both the Nigeria Military, the civil service, and in the political arena between the first republic and now were groomed within that period.
It surprises me that Nigerians are bothered about the certificates of some Northern Nigerian players presently active in politics. In a biological sketch of a former President of Nigeria, Alhaji Shehu Aliyu Shagari, I read that it took just a visit of the extremely brilliant Premier to the school where the former President supervised to offer the school supervisor, trained in Arabic studies, a ministerial apartment in Lagos in the First Republic. Young Aliyu dropped his white Raleigh Bicycle in the North and proceeded to Lagos to cruise on a Chevrolet as a Junior Minister of the Federal Republic.
The point I want to make here is that certification was not the issue at that point in time for the Premier, who, unmistakably was the most foresighted and political strategist that Nigeria has ever produced. It will be opening up the Pandora box if Nigerians were to look into the academic qualifications of our former military generals, retired top civil servants and politicians from Northern Nigeria. This is why we must ignore some of these things now and move on.
Nonetheless, the highly functional political machine established by the Premier of Northern Nigeria was a veritable source of uneasy calm in the socio-political landscape of Nigeria; because the preponderance of the Muslim Fulani’s in government overtime seem to have made governance in Nigeria their birthright. Truth is that they make no pretences about this born-to-rule attitude – they flaunt it!
The Nigerian Civil War was supposed to have taught the country a lesson. Among the things Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the traditional chiefs, easterners, and the eastern Nigerian government complained about was Hausa/Fulani hegemony. Fifty years after the war, a new definition has been revealed of this hegemony, as the collective Hausa/Fulani verbiage cannot exactly hold now because of the exclusion of the indigenous Hausa people, and the middle belters from the core activities of the group.
Peace management and conflict resolution teaches that alternative dispute resolution methods (apart from the formal legal procedures) include, but are not limited to mediation, conciliation, arbitration, evaluation, the hybrid process, etc, etc. Having not met any of the above conditions of alternative dispute resolution, the “no victor”, “no vanquished” post-war policy of General Yakubu Gowon (Rtd) was not practical. It was a deceit that placed a glass ceiling on the south east who was seen to have been vanquished the war.
Subsequent events showed that it was a grand deceit. The twenty pounds stipend for the monetary wealth of every ‘vanquished’ and the not-long-in-coming indigenization decree (we shall explore this item in the third sub-title of this eight-part serial) before the ‘vanquished’ was able to rehabilitate themselves and settle down to their businesses confirmed that the policy was a grand deceit aimed at permanently impoverishing the ‘vanquished’ in Nigeria. As a matter of fact, that policy was the exact opposite of conciliation which in international diplomacy is the most veritable and recognized instrument that would have tamed the minds of the parties that warred.
Any wonder that the issues which brought about the civil war still linger on, actually expanding in scope and size engulfing Nigeria and threatening to destroy her.
CONQUEST BY SEDUCTION
Seduction is a time-tested and valid instrument of conquest. Great priestesses of seduction like Semiramis, Dido, Helen of Troy, and Cleopatra VII made spectacular history in their unenviable passion. Many seductive conquerors in history never raised an army. Cleopatra VII, the notorious seducer of both Julius Caesar and Mc Antony in the last century BC only raised a stand-by naval fleet to assist Mc Antony, his heart-throb and she got in return more land masses to her Ptolemaic Dynasty during her reign than any war-hungry woman Head of Government ever garnered in history, as Mc Anthony happily ceded vast territories to her.
Tsun Tzu, the great Chinese General and war tactician wrote in the book, “The Art of War” that “The greatest art of war is the ability to conquer the enemy without putting up a fight”. A perfect art of war must of necessity, and always is ensured by both dissimulation and seduction. Dissimulation and seduction are veritable tactics in modern conquests because international diplomacy has out-lawed and made open aggression both suspicious, contentious, and unacceptable around the world.
Dissimulation and seduction has also brought to the fore a new method of silent and concealed tactic in aggression –“the body of Jacob with the hand of Esau” – around the world. This has effectively been used in Nigeria by the hegemonists.
With carrot-stick approaches to the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria, the pseudo-ethno-religious hegemonists that hitherto exercised a traditional rulership suzerainty over the northern part of the country succeeded in spreading its tentacles down the middle belt, pushing down these tentacles by means of “the body of Jacob with the hand of Esau” (which includes ‘settlement’ and other corruptive activities on their errand boys) from the east to the west, in an effort to “dip the Quran in the sea”. To achieve this aim, it did not matter that real development policies of Nigeria are either sacrificed on the altar of politicking or entirely absent as a result of the overbearing need to push and protect the interest of a master plan.
For example, it is good to prospect crude oil in parts of Nigeria even in the most unlikely terrains including the desert lands, but this must not be done at the expense of exploring and optimizing petroleum product value chain which includes cessation of gas flaring in the Niger Delta. Another example is this: neglecting and/or closing down seaports across the southern part of Nigeria while dry docks are generously invented and funded near the deserts where massive expanse of land may be used for agricultural investments are conflicting uneconomic decisions which may be difficult to understand by a rational mind.
It is eye-opening that the herdsmen menaces are more pronounced in that religion of Nigeria, the middle belt, where the Jihad and expansionism of Uthman Dan Fodio and Queen Amina were challenged and ended. This writer, after in-between-the-line researches has also observed through historical records that reasons for or against pseudo-ethno-religious agenda were the major factors behind coups d’ etects in Nigeria during the long period of military interregnum. It is difficult to understand that any of those military coups were executed for nationalistic reasons. Disagreements in the different accounts of the coup-plotters in their autobiographies and biographies revealed this shocking trend.
Now with the periodical sacking of their kits and kins and entire villages by the herdsmen in parts of the north central Nigeria, the retired military officers who participated in the coups and the beneficiary former senior civil servants from the middle belt will be amazed to observe the sinister unfolding phases of a ‘northernisation’ policy that paved the way for their successful careers. They and other Nigerians are learning from experiences.
Casual pronouncements of some of the living officers from the middle belt who participated in the reprisal military putsch of July 1966 as released to the public media space by the retired military officers themselves, suggest that the recent development in the north central region of Nigeria must be an anti-climax for them though they benefitted from a ‘northernisation’ policy of the first republic that was crafted, not for nationalistic or patriotic reasons to profit Nigeria, but to advance a pseudo-ethno-religious agenda.
These eminent personalities, some of whom are still living, must be reflecting on their past actions in those coup d etats which were acts of man’s inhumanity to man as in the sordid and gruesome murder of General Aguiyi Ironsi, the then Head of State. They will be both shocked and bemused with the nascent betrayal of their trust on the ‘northernisation’ policy – a betrayal that is reminiscent of the conquering, dissimulating and seductive tactics of one of Africa’s most beautiful, finest, and greatest warrior queens, the legendary Queen Amina, on the softly-defeated and Islamized royal majesties of that region. These personalities who had been part of the hunting crew have unenviably lost favour and their former position to be one of the hunted games.
A STITCH IN TIME
A veiled and repented former Chicago mafia boss and crime mastermind, Capo V., in his book “The Mafia Manager” wrote that “Nothing serves as a better deterrent to crime than the certain knowledge that swift and severe punishment will be meted out to the deviant”.
Government has treated the issue of the herdsmen and their unholy and disastrous exploits across Nigerian cities, towns and villages in a suspicious manner. The attempt by government to hoist the RUGA project on Nigerians was also viewed with suspicion across Nigeria. Like the introduction of the Islamic Sharia in a secular country, the land use act promulgated by another government suspected to be driven by the forces of hegemony, is an obnoxious piece of legislation that suggests neo-colonial occupation of Nigeria. Taken together, the Islamic Sharia, the Land Use Act and the so-called ‘suspended’ and controversial RUGA project suggest a longtime and on-going plan of ‘fulanization’ of Nigeria, to pick the exact words of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, a former Aviation Minister in Nigeria reacted through his Twitter handled to the 3rd August, 2019 deadline given to southerners living in the northern part of Nigeria to quit, by an organization who calls itself “Coalition for Northern Youths”, if the government failed to implement the RUGA project by a certain date. I doubt that the opinion of that group represented that of the Northern youths, some of whom I parley with.
Be that as it may, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode twitted “let the dance start now”. I have also tracked the subdued feud between some governments of the northern states with the indigenous Hausa people, who have suddenly discovered that they play the second fiddle in their ancestral homes. I am shocked on these developments, yet I must tarry before making conclusions.
Situations demanding peaceful resolution generally arise from the context of war. Such wars may be conventional, unconventional, cold, mild or active. There are other definitions of war already espoused by me in this medium.
The Prussian war theorist, Von Clausewitz believes that competition of all sorts – even in the market place where brands are built, promoted and destroyed, is a form of war that is fought silently without raising arms. It therefore takes a war strategist, an expert in defence of himself and his interests, to be a peace advocate. For this reason, Femi Fani-Kayode may not, after all, be wrong!
On balance of terror, Louis L’ Armor wrote that “Violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the man without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble”. People in both sides of the tussle should understand that aggression is a two-sided coin. When tossed, it may come down as conquest of the ‘aggressee’ by the aggressor or slavery of the aggressor by the ‘aggressee’.
It is dangerous for one ethnic nationality out of more than the two hundred and fifty of such autonomous tribal groups in Nigeria to be fingered in consistent acts of subterfuge concealed in lurid forms of banditry against Nigerians of diverse ethnic nationalities. My Late father, Alachedo Obiora, used to say that he that slaps many individuals at the same time unknowingly brings about a mob action against himself.
The government must do something now to stop the brigandage of a section of Nigeria’s citizenship before the country begins to burn, as certain hatred is already building up against the ethnic nationality being fingered in the subterfuge.
SUMMARY:
Meanwhile, my readers should isolate a religious interpretation from an analysis which discusses what seems to be the character of one ethnic nationality in contrast to other ethnic nationalities like the indigenous Hausa and Yoruba ethnic nationalities, who also adhere to the religion of Islam in Nigeria.
The persistent pattern of pseudo-ethno-religious hegemony in Nigeria is a non- conventional war levied on Nigerians.
As a result of the born-to-rule attitude of a section of Nigeria since independence there has been consistent emphasis more on who rules or has the right to rule Nigeria than the emphasis and attention paid to the quality of men who rule Nigeria. For this reason, pseudo-ethno-religious hegemony is the underlying factor at the base of the gross underdevelopment of Nigeria. This is in spite of the massive human and natural resources placed at the disposal of Nigeria by nature. As we go on in this eight-piece work, we shall discover that the seven other factors trailing this first factor are efforts in the wrong direction to get the first factor right.
For the avoidance of doubt, there were inter-tribal skirmishes between the neighboring ethnic nationalities before the advent of both the British and the Fulani Muslim immigrants of western Sudan. As a matter of fact, some of these skirmishes still persist till date. Yet, there was and still is some level of peace and development amongst them especially as these skirmishes were domestic in nature and were not meant for inordinate expansion and occupation. All the religious groups–animism, atheism, paganism, traditional worship, Christianity and Islam co-habited amongst themselves in pre-amalgamated Nigeria.
In passing, I think Nigerians with the excruciating pain of a distressed economy, needs some comedy – the type that was served them by the Chief of staff to the President, Abba Kyari, at the Presidential electoral tribunal. I am talking of his “revelation” that a part of Adamawa State, the ancestral home of the PDP Presidential contestant in 2019, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, belonged to the Cameroons before the treaty between Britain and France to balkanize the Cameroons was signed.
We already know that the Nigerian Fulanis migrated from western Sudan. The question political historians will provide an answer to is, ‘who puts better claim to the land, the immigrants or the indigenous people, the sons of the soil?’ Or is it a case of crying wolves where none existed? Or is it a holier than thou attitude of the kettle calling the pot black?
Nigerians are not all illiterates. Thank God for the written word which is always available to whosoever that cares to seek it. But the truth is that going by the universal brotherhood of man captured in the mythical story of Tower of Babel, every one of us including the so-called indigenous people came from somewhere sometime ago, either in the near or distant past.
A former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, was quoted to have said that another and more bloody civil war was imminent in Nigeria if government does nothing to reverse the suspected “fulanisation” of Nigeria. He is not far from the truth. Reason is that, talking from the perspective of history, it must take genocide and ethnic cleansing of a massive nature never before experienced in history to achieve such a day-dream in Nigeria, because of the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-interest composition of the country. I doubt that “fulanisation” will ever be possible in Nigeria as none of the ethnic nationalities will fold her hands and watch her people being annihilated. Secondly, Nigerians being widely travelled and in key positions around the world are too sophisticated to be tempted with this cheap option.
Listen to the interactive programmes in the radio and television stations around Nigeria and read the online comments of Nigerians both within and in the Diasporas and you will discover that there is a general consensus amongst Nigerians of the diverse ethnic nationalities that the government and the system has failed Nigerians. Wish there was a constitutional provision for a much-needed public referendum on the matter; there would have been no need for me to beg successive governments in Nigeria for close to thirty years to institute a people-oriented restructure of Nigeria.
The open wound of the amalgamation of northern and southern protectorates of the Niger area still remains unclosed lingering and itching this long period of one hundred and five years.
Getting back to the drawing board – to the pre-amalgamation Nigeria as already articulated in the National Conference Report will close this lingering and itching wound. Nigeria should start her journey of true rehabilitation and reconstruction with the implementation of the National Conference Report.
Signing and implementing the National Conference Report passed on to the present government by the government of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will exterminate executive incompetence and Nigerians will relate better with regional governments domiciled close to them and a central government where they are adequately represented.
Above all, corruption will be reduced to a manageable minimum as devolution of power will mean enhanced distribution of resources, increased revenue for the confederating partners, and corresponding manpower and infrastructural development in the grassroots.
The President of the Federal Republic should sign this document in his possession so that Nigeria can develop.
# Sign NCR/Now
(This is the end of that work published in THE AUTHORITY NEWSPAPER).