Let’s live together as brothers

Across all borderlines today, disorderliness has become the order of the day; we need to be remembered of how dependent we are on each other’s wealth and resources. Our diversity and our unity would only give us a greater Nigeria of our dreams.

For this writing, I will not place too much emphasis on the economic importance of each of the six geopolitical zones of the federation, I will rather write on what is more physical and accessible to the thinking of an average Nigerian.

Imagine if the Niger-Delta oil rich region stops oil exploration, have we thought of the cost implication to the economy of the country and the daily activities of her people? All fuel stations nationwide would be closed due to shortage or no supply of petroleum products, these would lead to no fuel for cooking stoves and cylinders, none for cars, generators and all other utilities that demand the use of oil and gas, and transportation and power would be abysmally disrupted. In fact most of our daily activities would be hard nuts to crack.

I’m concerned no one is willing to be Sowore’s surety ― Judge

What if the people of Niger State disrupts the operations of the Kainji Dam, then we should expect shortage of Electricity, invariably the whole country would be in darkness and all our domestic and public activities will be truncated and we will be losing millions of Naira every second.

Funny enough, we don’t even have enough solar powered equipment, which means if Electricity alone is not available then there will be serious communications problems and most of our activities including social media would stopped.

I can remember sometimes ago in the old Kosofe Local Government Area of Lagos State when there was a minor ethnic clash in Mile 12 market, for those few days of disturbances, there was complete shortage in the supply and availability  of market goods and commodities like cow meat, pepper, tomatos, onions, ginger, watermelon, cucumber etc, even the little that were available were sold at exorbitant prices, as these are products mainly from the Northern Nigeria.

Today most of the international and modern markets all across the country are thriving because of the presence of the very industrious people of the Southeast Nigeria. What the Southeast contributes to the economy of other regions of the federation are never in no small measures. Today the Southeast Nigeria is a major contributor to Made in Nigeria Products.

We should as well take time to check lists of other popular agricultural products, which are exported from Nigeria such as Cocoa, Cassava, Rubber, Wool, Cotton, Wood logs, Groundnuts, Cashew, etc, all of which are predominantly gotten from the Southwest Nigeria.

This simple analysis should be able to make us know how to accept our diversity as a complementary blessing instead of seeing ourselves as contradictory and separate people.

A friend of mine, who is of the Bahutu ethnicity of Rwanda, while I was asking about him, his culture and how many ethnics have they in their country, emphatically answered me that they have just ONE ETHNIC called «Rwandan»,  I pressed further because I know Rwanda is never an homogenous State, he then told me the Rwandan genocide war of 1994 has taught them never to live as Bahutu or Batsiti nor the Twa›s but to live together as Rwandan.

Therefore, if we have to learn from the bitter experience of the Biafran war, then we should also learn from Rwandan genocide experience.

Let us learn to live beyond our ethno-religious differences and sentiments. Else we might not be able to dance to the drums and beats of war that we are playing, most of which are political and propagated by uncultured media that has never promoted the collective interests of Nigeria.

Awosusi wrote from Osun State.