Now, Nigeria, for many of
its over 250 ethnic groups, is obviously not a nation in the sense that we
regard France, United Kingdom or South Africa as a nation. That is
why, as recently pointed out by Mr. Dan Nwayanwu, former chairman of the Labour
Party, during a programme organised by the Ondo State Government in Akure:
given an option, many of the ethnic groups in Nigeria
would prefer to opt out of Nigeria.
Already,
groups such as the Indigenous People of Biafra and the Niger Delta Avengers,
among others, have more or less shattered whatever illusions we may retain
regarding the Nigeria
that we are living in. While Nigeria
would obviously be better off remaining a nation, it is also true that a
surgical operation is required to take out the cancer of disintegration
currently ravaging the country on every side. And this is quite simply because Nigeria, as it
is presently operated, is not sustainable.
Nigeria is supposed to be a federal republic but it operates a
unitary constitution where the states, like children, simply go to Abuja at the end of every
month to collect food. They cannot even feed themselves. Is it not an utter
shame that the descendants of the Oyo empire, Kanem-Bornu empire, Benin empire,
and so on, have to go cap in hand to Abuja, collecting allocation that cannot
even pay workers’ salaries when the traditional system which guaranteed full
employment and a decent standard of living can be recreated through proper
federalism like we had in the First Republic?
In the USA, it was the
states that came together to form the central/federal government currently
headed by Barack Obama.
In Nigeria, it was
the Centre or Federal Government that created the states for political reasons
and to achieve what the eminent Igbo scholar, Chinweizu, referred to as
Caliphate Colonialism; a system whereby some people are born to rule. This is
quite simply an aberration, and our consideration of farmers/herdsmen’s clashes
must thus begin from this context.
If we have
a federal republic that is nothing but a sham, a big fraud, why then are we
surprised that a group of Boko Haram members masquerading as herdsmen have been
terrorising innocent farmers across the country? If, for instance, there is
state police, would the herdsmen have found it easy to attack farmers, rape
women and slaughter them afterwards, burn down entire villages, and even carry
out major robberies on major highways while the security agencies look the
other way?
