Open Letter to President Muhammadu Buhari: what are the benefits of being a Nigerian in the world? By Carlos Chinwendu

Dear President Buhari,

Mr President, I am not very comfortable with some of your recent comments on Nigeria. First, you were quoted as saying that the ‘unity’ of Nigeria is not negotiable. I have tried so hard to understand this statement but until now, I have not. My inability to grasp the contextual meaning of the statement is not just because I am hearing such statement the first time, I am not: many other Nigerian leaders have made similar statements. And let me be honest with you, most of us have come to agree that they are only insisting that Nigeria – which is evidently their mill ticket, must remain as it is so long as it continued to provide them tickets for expensive meals and medical tours abroad.

If you have not told us during your campaigns that you are very different from these other leaders, I would have placed your statement in same bracket and you in their category. I cannot do so now until I understand fully, what your own ‘the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable’ means.

While I wait Mr President, I will like to move on. I am just a young man and while I can boast of knowing the history of this country right from the colonial days to this moment, I may have missed lots of things. One of such things is the date the people of this area now known as Nigeria decided to be united as one country out of their self-will. The only unity I knew of was the one done by our ex colonial masters, the British. As a young man – and I believe most young men will like to know too, Mr president, will you be kind enough to remind me and other inquisitive ‘Nigerians’ of the day the inhabitants of this country now known as Nigeria came together and asked the British colonial masters to unite them? This is important, for I shall write yet another letter if my questions are not responded to.

Mr President, I love unity and have always preached about it. While I preach my unity, I also preach against unity by force. Once again, we have come to face the questions I asked earlier. The unity of Nigeria can either be real or unreal. It can be real when and if every constituent ethnic nation had come together and asked the British colonial government to unite them. On the other hand, it will be unreal – that is if the British colonial government forced the people together with the aim of assimilating them into British cultures.

Speaking from what I knew, most of the ethnic nationalities in Nigeria did not willingly decide to join Nigeria. They were forced into it against their will by the British colonial government. I knew much about the Ekumeku war by the western Igbo speaking people now located in Delta State. I knew also of the many resistant groups that sprang up in the east such as the Aro resistance, the Ezza resistance and so many others all for the purpose of resisting the forceful annexation of their lands into the country the British colonial invaders were creating. If they had enough firearms to match their resistance, I doubt if they would be in a Nigeria today. In the western part of this country and in the north also, I read about the resistance put forth by the natives against the annexation of their lands into the country the British were creating. What this means Mr President, is that these people are in what you and I now call Nigeria today because they were conquered by the superior firearms of the British colonial administration. This also means they were forced into it and therefore, did not decide to unite with their neighbors on their own. Mr President, this also mean we are all victims of the colonial trick and hooliganism that was birthed by the Berlin 1885 conference in which European nations had an agreement about how to share the territories in Africa without the consent of the inhabitants.

I am of the opinion that you are aware of these events Mr President and hence, I assume I am only refreshing your memory: that the unity of Nigeria was not originally done with the consent of the inhabitants of Nigeria; that the British forced these people into the Nigeria they were creating merely for their own economic gains. Mr President, this is a problem and gladly, one with a solution. Firstly, we do not solve problems of this kind by pretending they do not exist. We can only attempt to solve them by recognizing their existence. The unity of Nigeria was done by force. And I am open to change my opinion any moment someone comes up with the evidence that the people asked for this unity from the British colonial administration and did not resist it. There are no places in the world were unity is done by force.

Most people in government will want me to desist from this line of talking. Some will say I am heating up the polity while others who like to pretend will say I am only saying things that don’t matter. Mr President, this thing is the heart of the matter: it is the remote cause of why Nigeria is not working. This is fact. Come to think of it Mr President, I have to be honest to you, I do not wish to uphold a forced unity. By insisting that the way and manner these people in the North, East, South and West of Nigeria is not negotiable 57 years after their ‘independence’ from the power that held them, we are simply telling them that their fate had been sealed by the European invasion and they cannot reverse it. We are telling them that they cannot aspire to be anything above whatever the British colonial invaders had intended them to be. Mr President. If this is your stand – and I hope it wasn’t, then it is a bad stand. It is a stand that represents colonialism, tyranny and probably slavery. I will always stand with those who want to negotiate their position. Unity by force in my dictionary is not any inch away from slavery. I believe in the dignity of all humans – that every human is free to define their fate. Don’t you Mr President?

read full http://www.aekwe.com/2017/11/open-letter-to-president-buhari-what-are-the-benefits-of-being-a-nigerian-in-the-world-by-carlos-chinwendu/

Abeg make una keep una letter jare. Wetin una do when $26B turn debate.

lokobyforch:
Abeg make una keep una letter jare. Wetin una do when $26B turn debate.

If we were not in this mess, this letter won't be necessary nor would we be asking questions about any $26B, it would be the affected region that would answer that question.

I wish this writer had better money, he would have loaded his phone with plenty of airtime to call Sai Baba directly

Orobo2Lekpa:
I wish this writer had better money, he would have loaded his phone with plenty of airtime to call Sai Baba directly

Can you provide Mr President personal phone number?