The state of the country

Here, in Nigeria, the Boko Haram insurgents, who are opposed to people’s acquisition of western education in schools, have run amok killing people and sacking farming communities in the North-east, especially  in Borno. Can Nigeria achieve food sufficiency when farmers are on the run owing to insecurity of lives and property prevailing in the country? […]

Here, in Nigeria, the Boko Haram insurgents, who are opposed to people’s acquisition of western education in schools, have run amok killing people and sacking farming communities in the North-east, especially  in Borno. Can Nigeria achieve food sufficiency when farmers are on the run owing to insecurity of lives and property prevailing in the country?

But it is not only the Boko Haram insurgents, who dispatch people to their early graves in Nigeria. The Fulani cattle herders have dropped their sticks for juggernauts of death, with which they unleash mayhem on people in their host communities and cause needless fatalities. So, from Nimbo, Enugu to Taraba, and from Delta to Ondo, they had killed a great number of people. Some men of the cloth, especially Reverend Fathers, were killed by them, too. Today, Nigeria has become one flowing river of blood on account of the killings plotted and deftly executed by Boko Haram insurgents, bandits, and Fulani cattle herders.

The security challenges, which have gripped Nigeria, can spark off war here as our country is already polarized along ethnic and religious lines. Add this situation to the PDP –APC political rivalry, which has increased political tension in the country, then, you cannot controvert the fact that Nigeria is a tinder-box, which can explode. But if Nigeria is engulfed in a political conflagration, can it emerge from it not dismembered? Are we better-off as one country? Or should Nigeria disintegrate into many nation-states?

The incontestable fact is that Nigeria’s greatness lies in its ethnic and religious diversities, large landmass, huge population, and abundant natural resources. But successive governments in Nigeria (both civilian and military ones) have failed to harness our human and material resources to build a virile, cohesive, united, economically prosperous, and technologically advanced country. That is why Nigeria still brings up the rear on the global ladder of development, in spite of the fact that it has immense human and natural resources, equable climatic conditions, many waters, and large land mass.

Over the years, Nigeria has not been led by its best political leaders because the factors of religion and ethnicity have trumped and gained ascendancy over meritocracy when it comes to recruitment of political leaders in the country.

Chiedu Uche Okoye, Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra State