An excerpt from a poem by renowned poet Dike chukwumerije

...And still the government refuses to fight on the only front that really matters. You see? This is a young and populous country, half educated and jobless. And so it is impossible to police it by force. Unless you are willing to resort to the outright terrorism of Totalitarianism. And, even that, would require a certain level of efficiency in the State. But, handicapped as we are by tribalism and federal character, we are presently incapable of public sector efficiency.

So, I tell you, what we are witnessing here is not the result of increasing animosity between tribes. The fact that, over the last 20 years, severe unrest in one geo-political zone has become severe unrest in four. This is not the result of increasing animosity between faiths. No. It is the result of public sector inefficiency (a.k.a poor governance) not just in how we handle crisis, when it is still a fetus, but in how we tackle the root causes of all this insecurity in the first place.

You see? Instead of cleaning up the Niger Delta, we opened fire. Instead of putting measures in place to counter desertification, and taking a tough stance on politicians who arm thugs to rig elections, we sent in the Army. Instead of building bridges across the Niger, and connecting towns like Aba and Nnewi to the energy they need, instead of memorializing the victims of the War, and creating new narratives that allow us, as a nation, to come together and mourn, we shot live rounds into crowds of unarmed protesters. Instead of investing in the education of children in Zamfara, and the revival of agro-allied industries in the belt stretching from Kebbi to Taraba, we created new Divisions for the Nigerian Army, and bought fighter jets from abroad.
But we cannot shoot our way out of under development.

No. We can only build our way - and trade our way, and educate our way, and narrate our way, and manufacture our way - out of it. And yet every time the poor choices (or questionable character, or sheer incompetence) of our leaders slaps us with bad governance, we find the nearest Fulani herder, or Igbo trader, or Yoruba banker, or Ijaw militant, or Shi’ite protester, or non-indigene to slap back in anger. Like this, ethno-religious bias always has us chasing the monkey for the crimes of the baboon.

Imagine? That after all the suffering ahead, in 2023 we will again vote, not for functional health centers, but against a Northerner or a Southerner, a Christian or a Muslim, the Yoruba or the Igbo, the South-South or the North-West. Imagine? Like this, Tribalism – with its chess master logic and convoluted road maps – has us speeding round and round the roundabout.

So, me? I am not interested. If you like write an epistle in Arabic on the Naira note, oho, so long as the currency is stable with intrinsic value. You can Islamize or Evangelize, Yorubanize or Igbonize the whole place, no yawa, as long as your preferred world view comes with concrete solutions to the challenges of insecurity and unemployment in this land. You want to speak only Kanuri? No problem. And appoint all your special advisers from your mother’s village? Go on. But, while in that office, you must tame inflation and trigger industrialization with your Kanuri-speaking self.

Because we were poor and unemployed before the tribal wars. And, after the tribal wars, it will be the same. But whoever hooks us up to a reliable source of 24/7 power supply will have fired up the engines of a formidable machine.

And after that, you will see, that while the in-fighting between two impoverished neighbors tends to increase their poverty, the well-to-do quickly learn to wrestle in ways that leaves them still rich. This is the difference.

We are too deep in this religious/ethnic animosity to be redeemed sir. In line with your thoughts however, I'll narrow it all down to lack of integrity; we are simply not honest and lack strong moral values!

A leader with integrity will steal with restraint whether Yoruba, Hausa or Igbo, Christian, Muslim or traditionalist. When the citizenry lack integrity, we naturally produce leaders who have no sense of responsibility, afterall, the leaders are selected from the masses!

We are who we are until we look inwards and go through a kind of reorientation, learn the value of selfless service and learn to attach less importance to ephemeral things like flashy cars, extra large houses, expensive clothes and costumes...we need to realise that amassing wealth for our 10 generations to come simply means depriving the present generation of certain basic things!
I rest my case