The tragedy of Nigeria is that, in spite of a history that has lasted more than a century of amalgamation, it is still strongly divided along the major ethnic lines, while religion still plays an important role in its politics. This is so because Nigeria is not a product of natural evolution, but the imagination of some people outside the African continent.
Sadly, this imagination has forced Nigeria into a spiral along the cyclone of backwardness, underdevelopment and State failure, due to the country’s failure to adopt one of the finest laws of nature which ensures that the cells of liver can only form the organ called liver and that of the kidney can only form the kidney to prevent cellular chaos. At best, these organs, along with other cellular organizations, can now come together to form sustainable systems and ultimately an organism. This process is called organisation; a process that once defined Nigeria’s political and economic structure before the destructive coup d’etat that struck the country twice in 1966.
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Today’s Nigeria is a country that can be likened to a scenario of amalgamated Japan, Korea and China with French as their lingua franca. As a country, these three distinct nations will never take a step forward; they would continue to be at loggerheads and continue to look for an escape out of such unholy union. It would be an amalgamation that would be cancerous in nature and essence, for the cells of kidney would been inoculated with those of liver which will continually be at war with one another until they die out; leaving no room for cooperation, survival, growth and productivity. This would be a consequence of the failure of these different cells to agree, to cooperate and to survive, and it is when they are able to survive that they would grow and ultimately produce.
Thus, cooperation, survival, growth and productivity will cease to exist in any society that has failed to organise itself based on this natural law. Hence, there is almost a zero possibility that the Yorùbá nation, Igbo nation and Hausa/Fulani nation can be eternally forced together with a language that was never theirs. This is so because we are a people of different cultures, traditions and languages with the Yorùbá having over a thousand years of history which makes it a union that is bound to fail. It is to prevent this failure that the British government, our colonial masters, gifted to us the regional government which birthed the post-colonial golden era of the Yorùbá before some Igbo military officers destroyed this good political and economic structure through military coup. The latter then allowed the Hausa/Fulani this unacceptable domination through a counter military coup that put an end to the ruling of the first military coup plotters.
However, we cannot allow these dark events that have shaped our destiny, post-1966 till date, to continue to do so for the sake of our collective peace, unity, prosperity and security.
Therefore, we must restructure this country in accordance with the 1960 arrangement, and if we fail at this sacred duty, one nation or the other will be forced into divorce from this unholy union. It is either regional autonomy with territories based on the 1958 recognition or the invoking of rights to self determination as guaranteed by the United Nations (UN) chatter by the Yorùbá. It is not sustainable to be generating revenue in Yorùbáland to fund the lives of the Hausa/Fulani or the extravagance of our political elite, most of them being Hausa/Fulani. Gone are the days we worked hard only for the fruits of our labour to be shipped to London, and we must not allow the Northern part of this country to continue to replace that London.
One knows it will not be easy because the Hausa/Fulani have total control of the Nigerian State, either directly or through proxies, but we must rise to the occasion and save the future of our children from the domination of Hausa/Fulani; a people not as sophisticated as the Yorùbá. The Yorùbá youth get educated to acquire skills so as to be qualified to work in relevant capacities, yet, those capacities are not created. And where they exist, only the privileged enjoy such opportunities, while the cost of education remains on the rise, with little or no use at all for the certificate that is acquired in the end.
Majority of us do not know what prosperity is anymore, but only sees it in the lives of those that are either thieves or corrupt public servants and this comes with great consequences that endanger our values and development as a people. The society does not value earning with dignity anymore, integrity is abandoned and vices are what that are now dignified by our people, because the Yorùbá leadership has failed to provide direction that will ensure the needed continuous growth of ability and capacity to drive development, provide jobs, ensure security and prosperity of our people.
Unlike many of us that would want to believe that there is nothing we can do to change the tides of things, except we wait on God, I say to you; the future of man rest in his hands and God would neither come down to remove corruption from our minds nor to save us from bad leadership and the apathy we show towards governance. God would only make use of men that are ready and willing to save the day and it is up to us whose culture, traditions and regional development are being threatened and undermined by a Hausa/Fulani dominated Nigeria to rise up to this righteous work. We must do this for ourselves; we must do this for our children and ultimately, we must do this for a prosperous, peaceful and secured Yorùbáland.
- Akintunde, a political commentator based in Ìbàdàn, writes via paulakintunde@gmail.com
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