WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com
We have put the integrity and sanctity of Nigeria to the test as a people and a generation. We have summoned the soul and spirit of the country to answer to atrocities we framed up to be unacceptable to us; right in conscience, Nigeria is to answer to the reasons why it should be blessed with a huge population of diverse nationalities and expected to take advantage of its blessedness like other nations have done.
Our diversity ought to be a blessing; an opportunity very rare and which ought to be fully taken by Nigeria and Nigerians; but unfortunately, Nigerians turned that rare opportunity at massive development into the most weaponized rod of the destruction of the country. China is today turning its massive estimated population of 1.4 billion into its first and most important resource for national development within a rather short period. America, over the century, has cleverly stimulated its diversity into a unified structure that has turned the United States of America into the powerhouse of the globe – defensively and economically.
Nigeria is a country massively blessed with over 200 million people, uniquely great and endowed ethnic nationalities, but we have all together failed to see the blessedness in our unique population and tribal diversity; rather, we have magnified the factors that divide and turn the units against one another, until the center could not hold and fractures.
Unity of purpose and direction is an ingredient every multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation cannot afford to lose grip of, if it wants to move forward. It was not only that the seed of regional separatism was created in Nigeria as an aftermath of the 1965 coup and the counter coup of 1966, but it has been fed and nurtured to maturity by everyone the nation has looked up to, at various times till now, to stand by it and speak for it. At all times, when it matters most to know who is on the side of Nigeria, we have all mostly come out standing behind ethnic, political and religious affiliations at the expense of the country. No wonder, all our attempts at unification of the country; all our deceitful pronouncements of patriotism, have broken down, each and every time there is a conflict of identification between who is a Nigeria and who is a Yoruba man, a Hausa man or an Ibo man for an obvious example. Pathetically, we will all for an umpteenth time pick our tribal, ethnic affiliations ahead of the nation, but yet desire a working system in the nation we all consider a mere secondary home.
Some years back, a prominent Yoruba elder declared publicly he was first a Yoruba man before being a Nigerian; and we all hailed him! By that utterance, he re-echoes the long term aberration, a trojan horse – intentionally or otherwise that has taken away the capacity of the country to develop at its natural propensity.
It is here in Nigeria, because of the polarisation we have created on all fronts that we select issues that are worth recognising and discussing only on the basis of affiliations to religion, ethnic and political biases; we close our eyes to issues that affect the sanctity and coherence of the country if there are tendencies that they would affect our internalised, adopted and cherished prejudices. I couldn’t imagine how the very vocal voices of the Sowores, Falanas, Omokiris and their other PDP elements would pretend not to be abreast of the news of the nation’s newly acquired war planes and renewed onslaughts against the evolving banditry and Boko Haram nor of the scores of earnest government efforts at addressing pressing challenges of the country, but would never hesitate to propagate with reckless abandon any unverified information be it remotely that would undermine any element of the ruling party, the Islamic religion, the North in general and the Fulani in particular.
The Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho cases are yet another eye opener for us as Nigerians. For years and months, the country was terrorised by the actions of these men; the Southeast, for instance, became a shadow of itself as precious lives were unnecessarily lost. The elders of the two regions were literally quiet, while watching IPOB devastating the region and setting the country on fire. Also, the leaders of the Southwest were no way better; they were either nudging acclaimed separationists or pretending not to care, until the arrest of the duo.
And now, it becomes clear that these elders, the traditional rulers, and politicians knew more than we all thought about the exploits of these two men; they saw nothing wrong in the utterances that heated upcountry, took away peace and unity from us, and tended to disintegrate the nation. They were okay with the Nnamdi Kanu’s order to his foot soldiers to attack military men, burn down police stations and other government institutions, and kill Igbos who do not buy his ideology.
When the Yoruba nation set up its high -powered delegation to secure the release of Sunday Igboho after his total disregard for the law of Nigeria and the atrocities against the constitutional order of the country, when he directed his followers to forcefully open the nation’s Idi-Iroko border to smugglers and actually confronted, overpowered and dispossessed the Custom officers, in their areas of assignment, of their arms, when he was boasting of stockpiling guns and ammunitions to fight the Nigeria security and boldly declared he was taking the region out of the country and there is nothing the Federal government could do about it, they tacitly sent us, the signal that the man was speaking for the entire Yoruba including them; the message that they are in support of a broken and balkanised Nigeria. It is so unfortunate seeing the caliber of personalities who chose to stand up for the man against the sanctity of the country, and it becomes more glaring that the one Nigeria agenda is more threatened than we could imagine.
They knew the same Igboho was a diehard PDP stalwart; the Igboho who saw nothing wrong with Nigeria during the Obasanjo regime, saw nothing wrong with the country while the economy of Nigeria was bastardised under Jonathan who shockingly told us that stealing was not corruption. The Igboho that didn’t see anything wrong and worth fighting for when the Jonathan administration totally alienated the Southwest, a concern that was well publicised in the media; the same man that was the arrow head of the Seyi Makinde election campaign and was busy dancing from Oyo to Kogi to Ondo to support the party (PDP) cause. They knew his current attack was political, yet they were with him in it all because they first see themselves as Yoruba before other considerations.
There are good works everywhere but they either don’t see them or pretend not to see them, but they see what is not working. They are Nigerians but never talk of the blooming investment in railway transportation across the country; they never make mention of the almost completed second Niger bridge; they would not see the huge investment in national security and counterinsurgency and the daily decimation of the ranks of the bandits and Boko Haram, but they would not miss out on propagating every single attack, killing and kidnapping. There has been tremendous improvement in electricity supply across the country over the last years, but the government would not get the applause it rightly deserves because they would pretend not to see it. They prefer to keep their bases in the dark, under-informed and resentful against the nation.
They would prefer the mischievous narrative that presents ‘pampered bandits and insurgents’ while the government is clamping down on ‘innocent Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho,’ while they ignore and prefer no one hears of the tons of bandits and insurgents that are wasted by the superior power of the Nigeria Army on daily basis. By the way, why would any sensible person compare two individuals who made themselves publicly known as enemies of the state with hundreds if not thousands of faceless bandits as if they are equal entities; besides mischief or sheer ignorance? One Nnamdi Kanu or Sunday Igboho is not the same as hundreds or thousands of faceless bandits!
This country, obviously is on trial and the elders of the land, those we look up to, to stand and defend the integrity and indivisibility of the nation have come out openly to tell us where they belong. Who is on the side of Nigeria now?
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!
