By Obi Nwakanma
The fact that I have to write this, makes me retch. It turns my stomach because this is the 21st century, and there are still many among us who still think in this brutally savage way about other people, who they have to dehumanize in order to feel alive themselves. That I have to defend the Igbo, and being Igbo, makes me doubly conscious, and it is a feeling that compels one to reexamine once more, the contradictions of being Nigerian.
The new nations in Africa are creations of one of modernity’s most complex situations: colonialism. It brought many disparate cultural and political entities into filiations that in many cases have remained uncertain and fragile. That has always been one of the core criticisms of those who believe, and argue that Nigeria must end; divided, and each part pulling away towards its own sovereign goals. Nigeria was created formally in 1914, from the unification of three colonial administrations: the Southern and Northern protectorates and the colony of Lagos. But the history of the settling of Nigeria goes further back to the turn of the century when the Caliph of Sokoto was killed by the British in 1902, effectively bringing to the end, the Sokoto Caliphate.
