There is so much going on in Nigeria right now, what with the dogged determination of the President to remove fuel subsidy, causing instant heartache across the nation. however, this is just another blow in a long series of batterings to the hopes of a people so forgiving and easy to rule it's a shame things are the way they are. Let's take a moment to examine the truth as viewed from the streets. Most publications have avoided pointing accusing fingers at any one group of people, or at any one tribe, but the fact is that the problem of Nigeria cannot be seperated from tribalism and Ethnic selfishness (strangely referred to as 'Self-determination' here). Patriotism is a very rare thing to find in the country. People prefer to only support and relate with members of their ethnic groups instead of freely living within the borders of the nation. They often do this whilst acknowledging that the ones they support may not be the best for the country. Still, they continue to discriminate.
There may be outrage in some quarters about this blog post, but the fact remains that the litany of ills besetting our beloved nation is mainly a long story of aggression by a certain set of people, usually a known group of citizens. You may feel like silencing me, but for every one of me who decries the unacceptability of the status quo, there are millions more who simmer dangerously beneath the surface, under the radar of scrutiny. For those unscrupulous politicians who believe that the instrument of violence, Islamic (No Holy War has yet been fought here in the name of Jesus) and ethnic bloodshed is the Holy Grail of political supremacy, these are the facts that your great grand children will read in the abused, blood-stained pages of Nigerian history:
1. That of the 200+ tribes who now call Nigeria home, only a handful are aborigines, that is, the true indegenes and original owners of the land.
2. Politicians who do not like being out-maneuvered by their 'friends' and colleagues often resort to employing, funding, galvanizing and otherwise inducing 'Broken Arrows' (men with no respectable family ties, no strong desire to live to old age, and who regularly survive on about 1$ a day, e.g. The Almajiri's of the North) to causing mayhem in the land, sometimes to the willing loss of the perpetrators' lives. These broken arrows are led to believe that when they die they will go to heaven and indulge in all the pleasures they have been deprived of on the Earth. They never wonder why their benefactors cling to these 'inferior' and earthly pleasures instead of embracing the path of the martyr. They never ask why these masterminds never lead by example.
3. Most of the upheavals and violence in the country occur mostly in the north, and sans retaliation attacks, the victims of such massacres are usually innocents from every other ethnic group in the country except Hausas.
4. That the country has been over-abused to the point where the average man on the streets does not believe she will survive after President Jonathan. The future is easy to see: Every successive leader avoids tackling the issue of a Sovereign National Conference, so some ethnic groups believe they are entitled to vieing for and retaining the 'crown'. The Hausas threaten violence if someone from their ethnic group fails to become the next president, the oil-rich southerners are tired of being robbed of oil to the benefit of the north, periodically taking up arms in protest, the Igbos want to have their own nation and are silently waiting for an opportunity to raise the flags of the Soveriegn State of Biafra, and the Yorubas are over-stretched trying to hold it all together. One day the dam of order will burst, because it has been in need of repairs for decades without reprieve.
6. The media has been used to try to poison the minds of Nigerians by making us believe that Boko Haram is made up of many other ethnic groups. Nobody knows where the apprehended non-hausa members are. It is obvious that the announcement was a ploy to calm the restive waters of a nation tired of the excesses of the nomadic Fulani and the monolithic Hausa. The only religious dogma that regularly encourages self-destruction in honour of a deity is Islam. And there is only one ethnic group where death in this world is preferable to life. The agitators for Biafra would only sponsor ethnic strife in the hope that they can break away during the ensuing bloodshed.
7. If Nigeria were to disintegrate, nobody would want to accomodate the Hausa/Fulani in the creation of a new nation. The average Hausa believes they are the best in the terms of pureness of religion, richness of culture and claim to rulership. They do not question the motives behind actions of men in positions of authority, and they listen only to voices in their ethnic dialect. In reality, a hausa nation excluded from the rest of Nigeria would suffer from all kinds of maladies: underdevelopment, illiteracy, rule by an elite few over uneducated and impoverished millions, and ad nauseum.
This last point brings me to my main statement, which is that it is foolish and counter-productive to keep trying to destabilize or destroy a system that would be in your best interest to protect. And that means the masterminds behind extremist groups like Boko Haram are only using the poverty-ridden, misguided members to perpetuate costly scare tactics in the hope that the country will yield to their desires in fear. Those masterminds do not really want to rule over a one-tribe nation. People will die, true, because Boko Haram keeps trying for authenticity and killing certain people might buy them that, but logic points to the fact that they can't overdo it. The reason: The sponsors and masterminds behind them seek power over the whole country, and they won't get it if the rest of our nation turn their back on them. They need for the whole country to submit in fear, to believe that once granted supremacy and ruler-ship, there would no longer be pain and suffering. This technique is one of the oldest in the rule-books of war and domination. And it ultimately spawns cycles of discontent and revolution. This is even more likely in the case of Nigeria because it is very difficult to perpetually make over 200 different cultures and traditions agree on collective suffering.
Once it becomes clear to them that terrorism is just another political tool, the under-privileged and the down-trodden of society will slowly begin to boil. Communal entropy will escalate. Signs of tiredness will begin to show in random acts of hostility against institutions of state and government. Policemen and, eventually, soldiers will be used to attempt control and order. The people will start fighting back, and another wave of revolution will be born.
This is a picture painted specially for those who think they can buy the crown with the blood of innocents. History will not forget. And revolution is mindless. All the wealth shored up in foreign accounts will be lost in devastating waves of chaos. The leverage that political saboteurs think they have will vanish. Rich and poor, slave or free will try equally for survival, and all will be forced to find a new beginning. The best way is to abandon these politically suicidal techniques and use that leverage now, while there is still relative calm, to champion the cause for a progressive country. This way they will become the heroes of the era of change and emancipation, of exponential development and a superior civilization. This way they may boldly, confidently contest for leadership of the most important republic in Africa. Or be retired as brave elders who put the future of their children in front of riding the fleeting, temporary wave of selfish fame and power.
{NOTE: Everything expressed in this post is entirely my personal opinion. I did not receive any inducement to do this}
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