THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND NIGERIA’S SECURITY SITUATION



(1) Heightened activities of insurgents and other related terrorists otherwise characterized by the Buhari Regime as bandits as well as continuous attempts at suppressing opposing views through the State Security Service is a confirmation not only of the unworkability of a Unitarist/Centralist security architecture in a Multi-National /Multi-Cultural society, but also the essence of the Nigerian Post-Colonial State as the negation of the sovereignty and individuality of Ethnic Nationalities within the country.

(2) Notwithstanding the pretentious declarations of this regime and previous ones of commitment to democracy, security and liberty of the various Peoples that make up Nigeria, the abiding reality has always been the relentless subversion of the democratic right to Self-Determination of the various Nationalities in this Prison House of Nations by the Post-Colonial State.

(3) This Nigerian Post-Colonial State, Legitimizing itself by a fraudulent Constitution since 1979, wrapped around the fallacy of its being the product of the Peoples of Nigeria, having created an electoral system based on false Census figures, became the playground for Hegemonic power politics, utilizing a sustained withering away of the National Existentialism of the Peoples of Nigeria; the continuous corruption of their social values and the brazenness of enforcing a dominant Hegemony on all the Peoples of Nigeria achieved, first by military adventurism, and now through their periodic electoral cycles.

(4) Their modus operandi is based on turning up the heat in the security situation in the run-up to any Presidential elections, usually engineered by the ruling political party in order to create, for itself, a conducive atmosphere for retaining power by which the various social formations and socio-cultural groups outside of the political parties are sucked in, each under the assumption of pursuing fundamental transformation of the Nigerian Post-Colonial State but always ending up as pawns in Hegemonic power politics.

(5) The electoral history since 1999 bears testimony; from the disorganized retreat of the military in 1999 enabling the electoral manifestation of the country in its pre-1966 reality; with dominant political parties roughly corresponding to the Regional dominance of the AD in the West mirroring the AG and the PDP following on the footsteps of the NPC/NCNC Alliance in the rest of the country; crossing over to the post-1966 reality of creating a Supra-National State where all Ethno-National centers of power are neutralized and replaced by an emerging and dominant Hegemony, achieved partly through the creation of alternative and/or new power bases through the instrumentality of presidential patronage, based on a vision of Nigeria crafted by the colonially-inspired military and security forces.

(6) Its political economy is driven by continuous centralization of political power through dependence on the center, now evidenced by making the State Houses of Assembly dependent on the center for their funding, just as the State governments are dependent on allocations from the center; the continuous attempts at centralizing control of water resources; now leading to the attempt by the north to disrupt the rotation of Hegemonic power by making its own allies the superintending political power all over the country including the utilization of its near-absolute control of the security apparatus in order to ensure its permanent political dominance.

(7) Within this matrix, the socio-cultural and civil society groups were and are active participants in all previous efforts at addressing the Hegemonic power plays; evidenced by their active opposition to the malfeasance of the Post-Colonial State as we experienced with Afenifere, then led by the late Abraham Adesanya and all of the Oodua Self-Determination Organizations being the main platforms for the anti-military, anti-Abacha struggles in Yorubaland between 1994 and 1999; to the emergence of the coalition to ensure the follow-through of even the defective 1999 Constitutional order by sundry formations including the “Save Nigeria Group” upon the demise of President Umar Yar A’dua, towards ensuring Goodluck Jonathan’s ascension to the Presidency all the way to interventions of various civil society organizations in the protests that eventually led to the collapse of the Jonathan Regime and the coming to power of the Buhari Regime.

( Their involvement in all previous efforts at “negotiating” a new Nigeria always end at the conclusion of such “negotiations”. These negotiations, through “public debates” or “public sittings” - IMF debates, Political Bureau, Niki Tobi's Constitutional review, Abubakar's consultations, Obasanjo’s All-Parties Technical Review Committee, Jonathan’s Conference, various National Assembly Retreats on the Constitution, ended up in the dustbin of history.

(9) In none of these instances were the aims and objectives of the civil society organizations situated within the context of the National Question, but on having high expectations of the Nigerian Post-Colonial State to exhibit a character it was not designed for, hence becoming vehicles for the sustenance of the State, normalizing the political parties’ route to political power thereby effectively turning Nigeria into a ping-pong game between only two rival political parties and whose apparatchiks change roles between and within the parties at will, mandating a necessary review of previous praxis, otherwise, the situation will be akin to doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result.

(10) It is a proven reality that the Nigerian Post-Colonial State is the anti-thesis to People’s Sovereignty and therefore cannot and should not be expected to resolve any issues we are confronted with, security inclusive; our political and moral high ground derives from of our being excluded from the creation of the Nigeria’s Grundnorm, while claiming our acquiescence. “We, the People” did not make the Nigerian Constitution under which the Nigerian Post-Colonial State legitimizes itself.

(11) It is within the above context that the Yoruba Referendum Committee is proposing a change of direction to all the Nationalities in Nigeria by reviewing our pathways towards regaining our Sovereignty, which is the antidote to any security challenges that may arise. It is therefore incumbent on all the Peoples and Nationalities in Nigeria to embark on their own Constitution making processes, preferably via their own Referendums, as the way to re-establish their Sovereignties.

(12) Culminating in a new Nigeria where the Central Power will be based on "A Federal Nigeria, through a Federal Constitution, to be known as The Union of Nigerian Constituent Nationalities, with a Federal Presidential Council, whose members will be selected or elected from each of the Nationalities as Federating Units and from whom a Head of State will be selected or elected as the primus-inter-pares with an agreed term”, and this, becoming the mandate for all Nationalities upon which all of their political/electoral issues rest.

We will get there and not a soul will be lost. Yorubas are the only hope Nigeria has in having a better future for it's citizens cos our elites won't just sit down and fold hands while the region is in disarray.