AMERICA last week shifted Nigeria’s terminal date forward by 15years. The new date is 2030. A former ambassador of that country had sometimes ago suggested that Nigeria would disintegrate in 2015. That magic date is now just three years away. Last week another American institution put forward a new theory suggesting the new date. So, if the prediction comes through who suffers? Who gains?

The whole institution called Nigeria is like a marriage. Even if it is a forced marriage, who suffers at the dissolution of the union? The husband, the wife or the children? One interesting thing about Nigeria is that even those who contribute nothing to the union threaten secession at the slightest feeling of pain.

One major issue Nigeria gained out of the last fuel subsidy crisis was the threat of secession by elements claiming to be owners of Nigeria’s oil. These threats came in several forms, sometime subtle, other times daring.

One of the funny paradoxes of the Nigerian nation is the new found confidence of we-can-do-it-alone of some people who just a few years ago regalled their bodies with the Green-White-Green. I watched one woman, hitherto a Nigerian “nationalist” and “social critic” suddenly transmuting into an ethnic champion. Then, there was another threatening all Nigerians with exclusion from benefitting from his land’s oil. He actually staged what he called “Occupy your resources” rally in Port Harcourt where he and those who believed in him asked the rest of us to beware of what we do and say otherwise the Niger Delta would go it alone.

Some others even placed newspaper advertorials insinuating that Yorubas were the greatest consumers of petrol and therefore they should be the ones to pay subsidy. They called it “pay as you consume” as if Lagos and Ibadan are inhabited solely by one ethnic group. And to think that these were elements whose battles Yoruba have always fought. Elements who were rescued, literally, from Biafra’s strangulation.

If Biafra had been allowed to exist, would these elements have been around to fart into our mouths as if we are begging them to co-habit with us like a reluctant wife? It is yet another irony that those with bare, toothless gums before now, are threatening their dentists with their improvised teeth!

It is sad that the way these people have carried on tend to warn the rest of us in this country to beware next time of infusing political eunuchs with potency. We have seen how these political eunuchs of yesterday, male and female, are threatening us with rape today.

If you are made a king, Yorubas would say, you do not start making money rituals except you want to become God. Today, the Niger Delta has one of its own as president of this country. Such divine favour ought to have made these elements humble and grateful to God almighty and to those God used to make it so. Chief Obafemi Awolowo with other pre-independence Yoruba leaders championed the battle for the ethnic minorities of Nigeria including those in the Niger Delta. They always maintained that we could not have a nation “where peace and justice reign” if minorities did not have equal access to power as the majority ethnic groups. Now, with the dream divinely sanctioned, what are we getting in return-threats and insults. Sad!

In the event of Nigeria’s break up, who really stands to lose? Is it the North (the far North and the Middle Belt) which has been feeding the nation all these years and which will certainly do “appropriate pricing” of its products? Or the Yorubas of the South West with their industry, resourcefulness and ingenuity? Can’t the drummers of war see what we all see? That having oil in an area is no guarantee for prosperity? Can’t they pause and ponder what would become of the Niger Delta in the event of that unprayed-for occurrence? Would the Niger Delta not make a mince meat of itself in the scramble for the “wealth” by the various ethnic groups that make up that sub-region?

Sometimes in the early seventies, a country with the name Pakistan disintegrated with its west retaining the old name of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and its east becoming the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh. That moment of disintegration was appropriately described, by a scholar as “the triumph of the politics of regionalism over the politics of consolidation and integration.” Today, can anyone describe either of the two as a success? And these were a people who chose to go alone from India at independence in 1947. May be one day, they will achieve fifty per cent of the feats of India of today.

I hope our own ethnic jingoists will let sleeping dogs lie peacefully because other people also have claims of benevolence to make over them.

One upon a time, there was a king with many strong, beautiful horses. Among these horses, the king had a favourite which he mounted on special occassions. On such special events, well-laid beautiful rug provided the canvass upon which the horse stepped. It always looked forward to such days of spendour and reverence. One day, the horse did the unusual: it left its stable all alone but at the threshold of the palace there was no rug to welcome it. Then it sighted some royal apparrel spread out to dry on the palace lawn. “May be these people thought I would take that route”, the horse convinced itself as it stepped on the apparel. Over a hundred whips descended on it as it ran back to where it belonged. Moral: The rug the horse usually stepped on was for the king who mounted it. The horse had no royalty outside the king’s.

For all us of whatever ethnic stock in Nigeria, the country is our shield and has always been, in difficult days. The sooner we know this the better for all of us.

Source: http://www.tribune.com.ng/index.php/columns/monday-lines/34702-who-really-owns-nigeria