THE conspiracy against Nigeria began as far back as the 16th century trans-Atlantic commerce in human souls. Perhaps as much as 80 per cent of the slaves that were transported to the New World were taken from the Gulf of Guinea. The coastal waters of Nigeria were the main source of the bulk of the slaves. While the Arabs and Fulanis were raiding the North and the Middle Belt for slaves, the Europeans were sponsoring wars and carnage in the South for same. As much as 10 million souls would have fallen victim to this rape and rapine. Glorious empires and kingdoms were weakened if not destroyed: Benin, Oyo, Kwararafa, Nok, Kanem-Borno and the Habe City States.
When slavery was no longer economically viable it was replaced with so-called ‘legitimate commerce’. Consent was manufactured through a combination of gunboat diplomacy, chicanery and cant. Lagos was annexed in August 1861 and before long the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria was established. In the North, the Sultanate established by Sheikh Usman Ibn Fodiyo barely a century earlier in 1804 was brought down. A British expeditionary force subdued Sokoto while Sultan Muhammadu Attahiru perished at the Battle of Burmi near Gombe in 1903.
The name “Nigeria” was invented by a woman of questionable virtue Flora Louise Shaw who later married the colonial administrator Frederick Lord Lugard. She was a well known journalist who dabbled in occultism. Although she supposedly coined the name from the River Niger, it rhymed more with the word “Nigger”, a derogatory reference to Africans throughout history. So Nigeria was meant to be the ‘Land of the Niggers’. It is no verbal accident that native German speakers and the Scandinavians tend to pronounce our country as “Niggeria”.
None of our people were consulted during the infamous “Amalgamation” of 1914. We have no record of any treaties signed between the King of England and our local chiefs on that score. The British did it at the eve of an international war to save administrative costs and to accumulate funds for the war effort. And at the time of independence in 1960, they left behind a federal structure of three regions in which the North occupied 70 percent of the land mass. Despite protestations by the peoples of the Middle Belt, the British subordinated the minorities under hegemony of the Caliphate. It was not only unfair and unjust; it was totally unconscionable. Dame Margery Perham, a noted authority on colonial administration, described the federal contraption as a “tripod” which was doomed to fail. Federalist theory since Sir Kenneth Wheare, Gladstone Professor of Government at Oxford, establishes that for a federation to be successful, none of the federating units should be so large as to overwhelm the others. The British, contrary to all the denials, wanted power to remain permanently in the North. It was their only guarantee of permanent influence.
From independence in 1960 to the present, world powers have always cultivated an undue interest on Nigeria. The whole world knows that we are a highly intelligent and enterprising people. Nigerian students consistently top their cohorts in Ivy League universities. We are a proud and self-confident people, with cultures that date back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the great Cushitic kingdoms of the Nile Valley. Like Archimedes the ancient Greek mathematicians, all that Nigerians need is a place to stand and they will move the world. World powers know that by 2050 our population would be somewhere around 410 million, just behind China and India. We have an embarrassment of natural wealth. Our land is fertile for agriculture and our climate is mild. In music, the arts, literature and the sciences, Nigerians play second fiddle to no one.
This is why world powers are very afraid. Through Global Apartheid, racist propaganda and their shadowy economic hit men, they do all they can to paint our country with a blanket black tar as a nation of thieves, crooks and scammers. There is a global complot to ostracise our country from the mainstream of world civilisation. Bechir Ben Yahmed, the Tunisian publisher of Jeune Afrique, a publication known for its links with the French intelligence services, once rigorously campaigned for Nigeria to be kept outside the international information highway. That is perhaps why our National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has had such an uphill task in getting Nigeria national .ng domain name fully registered internationally. With our economic size, natural resources and sheer potential, we ought to be among the frontline nations of international economic diplomacy. But we are nowhere. It is, of course, partly our own fault. We have never put our first 11 forward in anything of worth. We have always wallowed in mediocrity.
For the better part of a decade, American think tanks were annually prophesying that Nigeria will collapse. The magic year was 2015. That year came and went. They are now talking about 2023. Every year, I am told, an American military war college uses Nigeria as a model in its war games as Africom prepares itself for intervention in the failed states of Africa.
I have always believed that Barack Obama was one of the worst things that ever happened to Africa. Apart from hectoring whirlwind lectures in Accra and Cape Town, he did nothing for our continent. What Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have done for us is a world bigger. Few Nigerians know that during his time in office Obama blocked all sales of our oil on American shores, depriving us of more than 25 of our traditional market. And this he did at a time when our economy was facing one of its worst recessions ever. There is no doubt that he wanted to strangle our economy and bring our country down. The only thing his ugly wife ever did for Nigeria was putting on a fake ‘Bring Back our Girls sticker’. And each time State Department included the name of our country on his African safari, he would strike it out, we are told, with a read pen. They are a disgrace to our continent.
There are all sorts of evil manipulations going on against our country. Because of our stand against the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), most of our non-oil exports are not allowed into European markets. Oddly enough, when Nigerian palm oil and yams are taken to Ghana and repackaged they have free entry into EU markets. But never directly from Nigeria. Pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Nestlé have been indicted for involvement in sale of drugs that have led to the death of many. Nigeria has been among the worst hit. We believe that an international agent from Liberia was paid to fly all the way from Monrovia to infect millions of our people with the dreaded Ebola virus. He was only stopped by Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh and her heroic colleagues in an obscure clinic in Lagos where he was forcibly quarantined. They paid for it with their own lives. We will never forget them. I prophesy that this is not the end of it. Other wicked and more sinister ways will be found by our enemies to wage a viral population war against our country and people. But I am persuaded that the God that has sustained our continent for millenniums will continue to sustain us still.
Another way by which imperialism is fighting our country is through sponsoring all sorts of shadowy agents from inside. Unlike others, I would not be lachrymose about Moshood Abiola. He and his lieutenants were foreign agents. Some of those agents have even ruled Nigeria while others have occupied senior positions in the military and in the interior administration. Some of them are not even Nigerians. And none have ever had our national interests at heart. It is some of these people who are so hell-bent in keeping our borders open so that millions of illegal immigrants can come in with sophisticated weapons; indiscriminately killing women and children and elderly with no one to stop them.
Boko Haram started off innocently enough as a bunch of village thugs in Maiduguri. They then metamorphosed into a deadly terrorist group with networked to groups such as Al Qaida, ISIS and Al Shabbab. Together with the herdsmen militias, they are being sponsored by international interests to kill and maim and eventually bring our country to its knees. Most of them have air covers from satellites in outer space; with access to drone technology and logistical support by way of military helicopters and night vision equipment. The game plan is to foment a religious and ethnic war that would ultimately spell doom for our country.
Before we run amok and start killing one another, let us pose for a moment and pray!
and then