NIGERIA IS NOT WORKING

The country needs a new beginning and direction, contends Tola Adeniyi

This has nothing to do with Buhari’s administration, and it is not about the craziness of our foreign exchange policies and the shameful murder of the naira. The problem with the contraption called Nigeria predates all the symptoms that are now showing their faces. And unfortunately rather than squarely address the root causes of our problems our thieving ‘leaders’ are busy tackling the symptoms, albeit half-heartedly. After 102 years in darkness it is now obvious that Nigeria is not working and it is unworkable. We have a country of 192 million people crammed majorly in unplanned urban centres where quality of life is just slightly higher than that of lower animals. We have a country where law and order has virtually broken down and we are drifting fast towards malicious anarchy and yet those who imposed themselves on us as ‘leaders’ are busy looting the country. We have a country where all facilities that should aid modern living have virtually disappeared and yet all we hear and see is unbridled selfishness of those supposed to right wrongs.

We are living in a country where a very tiny section of the populace has taken it upon themselves to crudely lord it over the rest of the country whether-you-like-it-or-not through unabashed terrorism and shameless gluttony. Or how do you explain how ALL commanding positions of security, intelligence, immigration, customs, defence and police are concentrated in the hands of less than 10 per cent of the entire federating units, and you deceive yourselves that you are running a federal system of government?

There is much tension and unease in the land. There is so much injustice, glaring and choking injustice that makes everybody grumbling day in day out. All complaints and appeals over the years have persistently fallen on deaf ears or at best treated with derision and condescension.

The supremacists Fulani who number less than five per cent of the country’s population have turned themselves into the super masters of all the ethnic nationalities in the country. Since they conquered and brutalised the Hausa in the early 1800s and followed the conquest with diminishing all the minority nationalities in the Northern section of Nigeria, they have come to regard the larger nationalities south of the Niger and Benue as conquered territories that must be exploited to the keel. Let me quickly salute the Fulani for their political sagacity, their expertise in divide-and-rule culture, their superb mastery of Machiavelli principles and practice and for their cold bloodedness. They inherited the art of trickery from their Arab cousins and compounded it with the taciturn diplomacy of the Anglo-Saxons. For the Fulani, power is everything. And of course political power is the next thing to God. Secure political power other things like position, patronage and privilege will be automatically added to it. The Fulani, like the legendary Chairman Mao know that power flows from the barrels of gun powder, a lesson they learnt and imbibed also from the British colonisers who gave them a head start in Nigeria during the notorious and fraudulent Amalgamation.

But then, even the Italian princes fell and were routed out. The British Empire collapsed ignominiously, first in North America and in other hitherto exploited colonies. It is the arrogance of power and the disregardful exercise of same plus archaic nepotism and parochialism that have now reopened old wounds which compel other nationalities in the country to cry for justice and an end to arrant domination.

Nigeria is not working. India was not working; that was what led to Pakistan breaking away. Pakistan was not working; that was what gave room to Bangladesh to break away. The Sudan upon which Lugard modelled Nigeria did not work for decades even with bloodletting, she too crumbled and Southern Sudan gave herself life.

The Fulani herdsmen classified by the United Nations as the fourth most terrible terrorist group in the world are busy plundering, maiming, murdering, and recklessly uprooting and occupying other people’s lands with impunity and immunity and some bad mouth would say all is well with Nigeria?

Plateau people cry foul every day with most of their farm lands stolen and occupied; Benue people are about to be completely annihilated; the Christians of Southern Kaduna are about to become history in the wake of recurrent deadly attacks on their land. Thousands have been murdered in recent years in a calculated and systemic mode of pogrom.

Almost all sections of the country except the Caliphate have come under the rampaging brutalisation by the Fulani herdsmen. And yet someone in a remote corner would dare suggest that life should continue as usual.

Solutions to all the problems plaguing the contraption called Nigeria are there for all sincere and patriotic people to see: Go back to regionalism and let all regions develop at their pace; constitute a Confederate form of government and kill the friction and the choking domination from the Centre; free the country from the stranglehold of the Fulanicontrolled military establishment, with regionalism and confederation community, local, state, and confederal police will emerge.

Abuja is too congested. The practice of governors of very unviable and military created mushroom states going cap-in-hand to Abuja every month is CERTAINLY contrary to the spirit and letter of a federal system of government.

Local governments anywhere in the world are not subject to the control of the federal government at the centre except in Nigeria with its fraudulent political structure.

Our infrastructure, our education, our health care delivery facilities, our industries, our refineries, our cherished traditions and cultures have ALL collapsed because Nigeria is unworkable and NOT working.

We have said it several times and we shall say it again that if a system is not working it is better to jettison it and try another model. The fraudulent Amalgamation has not worked. The internal colonialism has not worked. The arrant and arrogant domination has not worked. The unitary form of government has not worked. The corruption-laden presidential system has not worked and is not working. The politically motivated creation of mushroom states has not worked and is not working. The fraudulent creation of 774 local governments has not worked and is not working. Every ethnic nationality is crying for freedom from the yoke of internal domination. Most of the confederating nationalities are crying for secession and justifiably so. There is no peace in the land. There is no unity and the country is rife with mutual suspicion and acrimonies. One last chance: Let the so-called leaders resolve to give Nigeria a new beginning and direction. Let us resolve all the obvious problems and give SANITY a chance or PERISH.

WE HAVE A COUNTRY WHERE ALL FACILITIES THAT SHOULD AID MODERN LIVING HAVE VIRTUALLY DISAPPEARED AND YET ALL WE HEAR AND SEE IS UNBRIDLED SELFISHNESS OF THOSE SUPPOSED TO RIGHT WRONGS