NIGERIA IS DISEASED ENOUGH FOR DEMOLITION

COPIED

On October 1, 1960, in the pomp and circumstance of Independence celebration, the question on every lip in the newly free country – “Where do you see Nigeria in the next fifty years?” – exuded boisterous confidence in the majestic strides of those who asked it. It followed the natural sequence of events and prognostications inherent to such supposed breaking of “a new dawn.” In the fifty-seven years that have elapsed since Independence, however, that question has acquired a notably hopeless and increasingly grim intonation. The Anglicized accent of flamboyance with which it was once asked has dwindled to a dubious drawl. Its invigorating verve has whittled down to a nervous shrug. That is because five decades and a half of self-government have been recklessly squandered, and the country ruthlessly vandalized, by a patently irresponsible fraternity of vermin masquerading as leaders. Yet, Nigerians, natural-born pretenders with a particularly potent propensity to delusions, blissfully celebrate an annual reminder of a dispiriting progression, the woeful failure of the architecture of statecraft. And they do so with an ever larger supply of pretense.


So, in any direction you turn across Nigeria, there is pretense everywhere. We are the most pretentious people on God’s green earth. There is the pretense about being – as the Constitution romantically puts it in its ambitious assumption – “a united, indivisible, indissoluble nation.” Nigeria's qualification for nationhood, however, is tattered on all sides, shredded by the amusement of its exorbitant ambition. Nations are typically notorious for their formidable sense of community, which continuously escalates to a passionately shared feeling of commonality, regardless of ethno-tribal, creedal or religious dichotomies. There is the promiscuously large pretense about “unity in diversity,” which is shorn of any ingredient of truth and credibility. Despite exultant jubilations by the political establishment about ethno-tribal cohesion – which lies behind the beautified façade of “living together in peace and harmony” - inter- or even intra-tribal resentment simmers beneath a veil of robust assumptions about “oneness.” Such bulbous arrogations are amputated at the shoulder by the serrated edge of their own fallacy.
Or the Igbo and the Yoruba would sleep comfortably together in the same bed, not snipe at each other from hearts and minds beating frantically with mutual disdain. And the Hausa-Fulani would discard their hegemonic mindset and perpetual aspiration to political dominance, hence encourage the pursuit of harmonious ethno-tribal relationships. Worsened by the tragic dismemberment of multilateral federalist structures, and their replacement by a quasi-Unitarian unilateralism of political authority, inter-tribal relationships are drained of the mutual trust that encourages the harmonious atmosphere of national community.


Biafra, that resurgent disclaimer of our communal pretensions recently exhumed from its temporary entombment by the messianic opportunism of Nnamdi Kanu, has come back to haunt us. In 1970, at the end of the civil war, a triumphant Yakubu Gowon, attempting to disguise his triumphalist jubilation, famously declared a “no victor, no vanquished” proclamation. It was evidently intended to suture the injury to the Igbo’s sense of ethnic pride. It was mere post-war patronage, however, but, more significantly, it was an illustration of the axiom that you can’t just paper over your deepest flaws. Today’s feverish secessionist zest for Biafra – now being quelled by the barbaric brutality of “federal might” – should remind us of the fragility of our feeble coexistence.


Nigerians can’t go on pretending much longer, however. Numerous secessionist agitations – whether openly expressed or cautiously suppressed – are revealing the falsity of our falsified coexistence. Among the numerous causes of this fakery is the idea that there is “still” something to salvage and save from the sprawling sociological wreckage of “One Nigeria.” That slogan is, actually, a deceptive refrain often ceremoniously invoked for the convenience of the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy, primarily the Sokoto caliphate, which assumes incorrectly that Nigeria is its pre-ordained possession. The caliphate's perfidious sense of entitlement unleashes groveling penury on places such as the Niger Delta, which is under intense human and environmental assault from oil prospectors. The consequence is a country crawling on all fours, unable to clamber up the ladder of development and cohesive ethno-tribal relationships. It’s a cerebrospinal disease that is progressively weakening the superstructure of the sociopolitical and economic architecture, and it’s incurable. A rocking building is only fit for demolition.