“After fifty-eight years, we have broader roads but narrower viewpoints, more degrees but less sense, more experts yet more problems.”
In less than 5 minutes, I got schooled on the power of unity by my father. Growing up, my father’s house was a battle-ground. My twin brothers and I, although great friends to this day, literally fought to the finish virtually every day. My Dad, who must have been sick and tired of the fights, called me into the living-room one morning, and asked me to get a broom from the kitchen.
When I brought the broom to him, he instructed me to pick out a broom-stick and bend it. Unsurprising it broke in two. I was asked to repeat the process two more times and each time I got the same result. Finally, he asked me to bend the whole broom and break it, but no matter how much I tried I could not.
Seeing I was defeated, he looked at me squarely in the face and said “There is strength in unity. Without your brothers, you are nothing more than an individual that can be destroyed with a sleight of hand; unite with your brothers and you all are unbeatable and unstoppable. Enough with the fights, my house is not a battle-field.”
The Battle-Field
Our fatherland Nigeria is one large battle-field. Pick up a newspaper, turn on the radio or the television, log on to the internet, and you will be bombarded with tales of sorrow, tears and blood. Across the country, brothers are turning against one another and taking up arms against ourselves. A day does not go by without news of attacks and retaliatory attacks on Nigerians by Nigerians claiming many lives, rendering thousands hopeless, displaced and destitute.
Although tension between the various ethnic nationalities in Nigeria is almost as old as the nation itself, and has been exacerbating over the years, never in the history of Nigeria have we witnessed the level of animosity, distrust and dangerous rhetoric, bloodletting, and destruction amongst various nationalities that make up the country.
Violence and threats of violence now seem to be strategic weapons of choice for resolving conflicts rather than dialogue.
A Divided House
The diversity of ethnic identities across the entire nation, our enviable heritage and one of its strengths, is becoming its Achilles heel; with regional, ethnic, tribal, and religious identities taking center-stage at the expense of national identity.
Nigerians no more speak as one voice. Ask the Yoruba and they will tell you they are first Yoruba before Nigerians. Ask the Igbo and a section of them will tell you Biafra or nothing else. Ask the Hausa, and they will tell you they are born to rule and every other Nigerian is their subject. Ask the Fulani and they will tell you their cows come first before any human being. Ask the Ijaw and they will tell you resource control before anything else.
It is sad that almost fifty-eight years after independence, rather than a unified great country, we have more ethnic jingoists and fewer Nigerians, taller buildings but shorter tempers, broader roads but narrower viewpoints, more degrees but less sense, more knowledge but less judgment, more experts yet more problems.
With the government seemingly helpless and ill-equipped to secure lives and properties, various groups are arming themselves as they see and hear fellow-compatriots being short-changed, oppressed, and targeted for elimination, with others outrightly calling for self-actualization and dismemberment of the country.
What the proponents of the cacophony of voices have failed to grasp is that we are much stronger together than apart. Nigeria without the Igbo, the Yoruba, the Hausa, the Fulani, the Tiv, the Kalabari, or any tribe for that matter, will be a much poorer country
Without our numbers and size, we would be nothing more than an insignificant African country, or group of countries. Dismember Nigeria and there can no longer be any black country in the world that can possibly attain the status of a major power in the world. Dismember Nigeria and our much-vaunted potentials disappear like the early morning mist.
Untenable Excuses
I have read many a commentator lay the blame for the problems mitigating against Nigeria’s true nationhood squarely on Lord Lugard and the British colonial masters. However, if the truth must be told, the country is the way it is, not necessarily because of the past mistakes of the British colonialists, but rather as a result of the unwillingness of the present-day generation of Nigerian leaders to do the right thing and correct the mistakes of the past.
We simply cannot afford to keep complaining about a union which was consummated more than a hundred years ago. Chief Obafemi Awolowo recognized this when he stated that “it is incontestable that the British not only made Nigeria but also handed it to us whole on their surrender of power. But the Nigeria which they handed over to us had in it forces of its own disintegration. It is up to contemporary Nigerian leaders to neutralize these forces, preserve the Nigeria inheritance and make all our people free forward–looking and prosperous”.
He is absolutely right. A new and stronger Nigeria is wholly dependent on us. We can either choose to change the narrative or to whine and complain while lives continue to be lost. Countries like the United States of America and Singapore were once colonies of the British, but rather than blaming the British for their woes, the peoples and their leaders rolled their sleeves and got to work building great nations.
Nations just don’t happen by historical accident. On the contrary, they are built by men and women with vision and resolve, using tangible and intangible threads that bind the political entity together through conscious statecraft, not happenstance or meaningless complaints.
Agenda for Action
Over the years, successive governments have re-echoed Gowon’s slogan “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done”. Unfortunately, they attempted to forge nationhood, unity and cohesion by using coercion and intimidation, and unwittingly polarized the nation even further with over 10 million lives lost, when we factor in lives lost to the Biafra war and subsequent skirmishes in Kaduna, Odi, Zaki Biam, Plateau, Niger Delta, Bauchi, Benue etc. over the years.
If Nigeria is truly ready to become a united great nation, we must do things differently. We must stop the insanity of doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We must rebuild our foundations by coming together on the table of brotherhood to discuss and choose the way forward.
We must take the building of common citizenship, grounded in the concepts of equity and equality, fairness, social and racial justice seriously.
We must insist that all Nigerians are treated well, regardless of one’s ethnicity, religion, social status, and physiological condition.
A country is not judged by how it treats its most affluent citizens but by how it treats the average citizen. Therefore, all lives must be equally-valuable, preserved and secure. Those who take the lives of fellow Nigerians must be punished. The presence of justice in our society will bring about a sense of security in the citizenry, promoting what is right and deterring what is wrong.
We must put meeting the needs of the disadvantaged as a key objective of public policy and prevent ‘social exclusion’ or the exclusion of significant segments of the population from enjoying basic social and economic rights and also develop a system that rewards and encourages productivity, where those who produce are allowed to keep disproportionately what they produce.
We need to invest in contemporary youthful leaders who will champion a new Nigeria. Let’s say no to divisive politics and yes to inclusive governance. Nigeria needs all of us. We need you, you need us, we need each other.
Benzak Uzuegbu, an Estate Surveyor and Valuer, writes from Lagos.