Goodbye Nigeria!

By Idowu Ohioze

Recent occurrences, many of which many Nigerians would identify with, have led me to reach an arguably inevitable conclusion: Nigeria is a country on an unarrestable decline.

*President Buhari 

You may or may not share my rather pessimistic opinion depending on your ethnic or political affiliation or religious persuasion since most Nigerians are easily given to assessing public policies and socio-political trends on destructively bias yardsticks namely –and in order of subjective preference - the ethnicity, religious or political origins of the principal protagonists.

My conclusion is the outcome of a deductive reasoning that is based on an analysis of the essentials that impede national progress or are known to have orchestrated the demise of known ancient empires and nation-states.

In the following short essays on a range of issues, I make, hopefully, a string of compelling arguments to support my hypothesis of a disappearing political construct.

The genie is out of the bottle. We just have to figure out how the demise of Nigeria will affect us as individuals

A Killing Field?

If you consider that the emergence of Boko Haram insurgency was sadly the failure of government at each level in Nigeria, you certainly should be alarmed that cattle rearers are wrecking havoc in parts of Nigeria unchallenged by the government.

Confrontations between landowners and heavily armed nomadic cattle rearers have resulted in numerous deaths in Benue, Enugu and other parts of Nigeria but the closest to a government response has been a tepid statement by Lai Mohammed, the federal minister of information.

Rumour of the presence, at the National Assembly, of a draft grazing bill with equally rumoured provisions for statutorily delineated grazing lands within states, has so far been denied by some legislators but the question of Nigerians’ age-long vulnerability within its borders has been brought to the forefront of the debate by the wanton destruction of lives and properties by individuals who are, disturbingly, above the law.

Some state governors have vowed to resist cattle rearers within their territories. In fact, in the south-east, a governor has hinted at resuscitating and re-arming the dreaded Bakassi boys in defence of the citizens of his state against terrorizing cattle herders. As it is commonly the level to which such matters of dire consequences degenerate to in Nigeria, some ethnicists – among them the influential Sultan of Sokoto and Senator Godswill Akpabio – promptly disclaim the erring cattle rearers as Nigerian Fulanis but foreigners from bordering countries.