In resuming the Series with the above title, which I put on hold due to Christmas, let me refresh your memories with the way the last bit ended. It went like this:
Before I proceed to reflect on some of the anxious and instructive responses to the movements in the South-East (BIM, IPOB, etc,) by critical leaders of opinions in other parts of the country, namely, the north, the south-west and the north-central, it is important to emphasize that the issue in this country has never and should never be whether there will be freedom of self-expression or rights of difference. What is of utmost importance is whether this country can afford a descent into those dark and abysmal days of carnage and blood-letting on account of issues over which debates and dialogue can subtend and triumph. The raging protests out there and the responses to them are quite ominous and foreboding. They should worry discerning minds as well as nation-builders.
This is why the reactions of leaders of thought and opinions from the other parts of the country should be brought into bold relief as we admonish us all of the danger of fiddling with the tenuous and tender status of our national sovereignty. As I have said in the last stint, many serious philosophers and historians have warned nations on the danger of embarking on two civil wars in a generation. They have cautioned that hardly, if at all, can any nation survive two civil was in a lifetime. This is not to say, as some of my angry respondents seem to misconstrue, that groups and sub-nations if you like, cannot agitate for national restructuring or even self determination, if restructuring fails in the end.
Far from me to canvass ineptitude or docility on the part of people who feel aggrieved or alienated by the present arrangement of our nation-state. And the government at the centre must not bring a sledge-harmer, under the guise of rule of engagement, to smash those who cry for freedom. It should dawn on us that the upsurge of uprising or revolt spells the need for a national debate leading to a referendum to determine, once and for all, the nature and character of our togetherness as a nation. Those who agitate now, and press a rebellion must be sensitive to measures and counter-measures that others may take in reaction to their own agitation. In the end, extremities of reactions from the various sub-national and ethnic nationalities may further endanger the coherence of our nation-state in ominous and untoward ways. Let me now refer to some of the reactions of other groups to the agitations from the South-east to buttress my inkling on this matter.
First here is a variety of the South-West Afenifere, the Afenifere Renewal Group. Its leader and chairman, Olawale Oshun, gave a thought-provoking and presaging perception of the Boko Haram insurgency and the Niger Delta militancy and surmised that they are not the last ‘agitations that would arise.’ He remarked that Boko Haram is a ‘cry from within that they would like to rule themselves according to their own terms, according to their own beliefs, according to their own values’—that the anti-Western education campaign is ‘facetious,’ and is only a cover for deeper motivations. He perceived their agitation propaganda and ‘radicalization process; their proficient deployment of homemade bombs, internet and electronic media’ as belying their surface phobia for Western education, whose instrument has been deployed to build bombs and radicalize their followers.
He perceived the Biafra Independent Movement as a ‘cry from within—of self rule according to their own terms and their own values’; an expression that it is through the revival of the Biafra notion and framework that they can attain the best for themselves as Igbos. With regard to the Yoruba, the situation is pre-insurgent. All the agitations and articulated protestations against the central system by the Yoruba remain at the level of restructuring, not insurrection nor insurgency. What they have asked for so far is a ‘mode of government that is consistent with ‘ their ‘welfarist principle’… through a ‘loose federation where each federating unit can go back to the drawing table to define its own need, define its governance and then rule its people in a way that is acceptable to them.’
The Yoruba, he avers, are satisfied to function in an autonomous federating unit with the Nigerian federation which ‘protects our territorial integrity, defines our monetary policy, and defines our diplomatic policy’. He says Yoruba reject the on-going funding through a federation account. In this perception, the Yoruba are ‘the last port of agitation.’ They are not at the verge of insurrection. In order to prevent the Yoruba from getting to the level of insurrection, like Boko Haram, Biafra, or militancy like the South-south’s Militants, the federating units must ‘lay down the terms of coming together’ through dialogue and possibly a referendum. They will not opt for the use of force in recognition of the nation’s existing federalism. And it will not accept a unitary system which Ironsi proposed in 1966, and which the north opposed ‘then and now uphold.’
Now, what is the nature of the reaction by the ‘north?’ The position canvassed by Junaid Mohammed—Convener of the Coalition of Northern Politicians, Academics, Professionals and Businessmen, has been considered in some circles, especially among the Massob or/and its reincarnation, as the dominant northern perception of the situation. This position has been simplified for convenience as unequivocal in its denunciation of the pro-Biafra movement for a Biafra nation. Junaid is quoted widely as cavalier or indeed indifferent to the decision of Biafra movements to go their separate ways—for secession and total self determination. He is alleged to have advised the Nigerian government to grant Biafra its right to self-govern themselves or peacefully opt out of the Nigerian federation and that Biafra needed Nigeria more than Nigeria needed her.
He was alleged to have described the Igbo as ‘persons who could not be trusted with power’ on account of the alleged nepotic disbursement of power and position by a few elements of the Igbo extraction who converted the platform of authority entrusted to them to the near-total advantage of their Igbo kinsmen to the detriment of other ethnic nationalities. I have not read a counter to this representation neither have I seen a confirmation of these allegations by Dr. Junaid. If these were true, it would be provocative, vexatious and insensitive to the nation’s aspirations for a coherent, united, indivisible nation.
If we can find ways around issues of inequity, marginalization and injustice—issues that are not totally ethnically determined, there is no basis for separation or claim of self-sufficiency by any segment of this diverse, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation. Junaid and those who have responded to him with similar vitriolic and vexed enragement must drop the gauntlet and join the leadership of this country to seek solution to the issues that lead people to desire insurgency and insurrection.
I am aware that Junaid has also recognized the Nigerian project as fundamental to the continental project of greatness of Africa and we can ill-afford another fratricide and carnage of 1967-70 as well as the ill-motivated Boko Haram and even the eruption of violence occasioned by the clash between the Shiite Islamic movement and the military. You don’t need to be a leftist to diagnose the problem of this nation as being beyond physically suppressing agitators, separatists, rebels and terrorists. There is an urgent need for economic reconstruction to end poverty, inequity, and unemployment, which compel the squalid existence of the masses of our people across the country.
In this regard, very positive and conciliatory responses such as the one made by Paul Unongo— Deputy Leader, Northern Elders’ Forum is salutary when he declared that the nation-hood of this nation as irrevocable and that ‘talks about breaking up Nigeria is ‘tantamount to spitting on the graves of the hundreds of thousands of young women who paid the supreme sacrifice in that destructive and painful war of unity.’ We must add that that war of unity is still on in the battle to decisively terminate the Boko Haram terrorism and any other forces that threaten the oneness of Nigeria—be it secession, poverty, hunger, insecurity and religious manipulation and intolerance.
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