THE President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), returned recently to the grating fiction of a mythical Nigerian “unity” that is not...
As it has become his sing-song, Buhari boasted in a speech
delivered on his behalf at the 72nd Foundation Day and Convocation of the
University of Ibadan, “The corporate existence of Nigeria is not negotiable.
Hence, efforts should be made to protect our dear country as a single entity.”
He added that all divisions, conflicts and violent clashes should be condemned
without offering any concrete plan of how to end these.
It bears repeating that there is no political union in the
world, nor has there ever been one, that is not negotiable. Second, unity
cannot be legislated, forced or preached into existence while the underlying
causes of disunity are completely ignored. “Unity without verity,” said John
Trapp, an English philosopher, “is no better than conspiracy.” The country’s
current political structure as embodied in the 1999 Constitution is a sectional
and elite conspiracy and must be dismantled.
Nigeria’s three major ethnic groups and about 250 other
ethnic groups are not united and have never been because of the present and
past pretensions of power holders. Describing it as a “mere geographical expression,”
the late Obafemi Awolowo said over 70 years ago, “Nigeria is not a nation in
the same way that Germans or English are,” but a natural federation of diverse
nationalities that can prosper only when properly organised as such. Indeed,
the country was not amalgamated for “unity,” but for Britain’s economic
convenience. But the gradual movement to federal principles in the early 1950s
that saw the defunct regions, having considerable autonomy, ran sub-national
political and economic entities arrested that. The rapid building of roads in
the Eastern Region is still remarked today. The Northern Region was famed for
its groundnut pyramids; groundnut was Nigeria’s single most valuable export
between 1956 and 1967, according to the International Crops Research Institute.
The Western Region set the pace in education, industrialisation and
infrastructure, building a civil service acclaimed to be comparable to the
United Kingdom’s.
Today, the country is worse than the Lugardian contraption
in 1914 as it is not structured for justice, social cohesion and economic
growth. Britannica rightly says, “The political principles that animate federal
systems emphasise the primacy of bargaining and negotiated coordination among
several power centres; they stress the virtues of dispersed power centres as a
means for safeguarding individual and local liberties.” Lack of autonomy has
reduced the 36 states to beggarly liabilities, created 774 skewed and
resource-draining local governments and nurtured a monstrous centre that appropriates
most resources.
The results are terrible. The government has lost control of
parts of the country to bandits and terrorist insurgents. It is arguably the
only country in the world not at war where soldiers are keeping the peace in 33
out of its 36 states. Figures by Amnesty International that 1,126 persons were
killed and 380 others abducted by bandits from January to June are regarded as
understated. In many Northern states, even the governors cannot travel safely
on the highways. Insurgents and bandits ambush, kill and abduct police officers
and soldiers. Apart from hosting three of the world’s five most deadly
terrorist groups – Boko Haram, ISWAP and Fulani militants – insecurity, in the
form of kidnapping, armed robbery, cult and gang violence, piracy, rape and
drug abuse, has created food insecurity and 2.5 million refugees, over 200,000
of whom are taking refuge in neighbouring countries.
Through it all, the Buhari regime resists the clamour for
state policing, insisting on the single policing system that has failed so
abysmally.
Deprived of control over resources in their domains, the
states have become mere administrative centres instead of drivers of economic
development. This has created a disarticulated economy, with inflation at 14.23
per cent, unemployment and underemployment at 55 per cent and dependence on oil
revenues for all to share at the expense of inclusive, poverty-reducing
productive economic activities.
It is a supreme irony that Buhari, who preaches unity and
non-negotiation, epitomises the dysfunction, disunity and futility of this
ghastly contraption. He runs the most divisive, most sectional and most
exclusionary government in Nigeria’s history. He does not believe in the unity
he preaches. Prior to the 2015 election, anticipating a fourth time defeat, he
notoriously prepped his base for battle, “the dog and the baboon will be soaked
in blood,” he reportedly said on a BBC Hausa Service programme. He took office
with the vow that those who gave him fewer votes would not be treated like
those who gave him 95 per cent support. And truly, he has been working that
discriminative talk, favouring his North-East/North-West base in appointments,
funding and federal support. Under him, the hollowness of the “unity in
diversity” slogan is laid bare. Calls for separation, once a fringe activity,
have moved into the mainstream.
Yet, Buhari is holding the country down through fear,
harassment and threats. He and his group will soon become irrelevant as the
restructuring train gathers momentum. Pressure for reform is rising. Every day,
inflation, economic recession, poverty and unemployment, political stasis,
public corruption and a stifled, censored public space are becoming more
intolerable. These are obvious signs of systemic failures.
Countries once professed to be non-negotiable are today sad
historical footnotes. Yugoslavia splintered violently, mighty Soviet Union
collapsed violently, Eritrea emerged from Ethiopia and South Sudan from Sudan.
Singapore separated from Malaysia to become a model of economic dexterity.
Under wiser leaders, Czechoslovakia peacefully divided into thriving Czech
Republic and Slovakia.
Definitely, Buhari’s dictatorship will end one day. Advocacy
for a just, economically viable and politically stable federation should not
waver. No individual or group should be allowed to act like a metaphoric dog in
the manger. Like every other country, Nigeria, to survive, must remain
work-in-progress. A series of negotiations and restructuring have featured
since England and Scotland merged to form the UK in 1707. The four nations in
the union are still negotiating and a majority of Scots seek separation.
Belgium’s constitution has been amended 29 times since 1994 to reflect the
aspirations of its diverse ethnic and language groups and 104 times in India
since 1947.
Even countries that are not contending with multiple fault
lines are rewriting their constitutions. For instance, Chile is leaving behind
the constitution of Augusto Pinochet and his entourage. After prolonged
protests across Chile, the President, Sebastian Piñera, agreed in November 2019
to hold a referendum. More than 78 per cent voted in favour of a new
constitution and 79 per cent also voted in favour of the new constitution to be
drawn up by a body, which will be 100
per cent elected by a popular vote rather than one which would have been made
up by 50 per cent of members of Congress. On April 11, 2021, the people will
finally choose 155 citizens that will draw up an entirely new constitution.
This is the only viable option to defend Nigeria’s corporate
existence; not a worn out intimidation and threat. There is no such thing as a
united Nigeria that anyone can justly and morally defend. Unless he changes his
course and acts courageously and patriotically like his Chilean counterpart has
done, the path Buhari and his cohorts are leading Nigeria to may end in
destruction.
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