This House has not fallen

But Nigeria is neither at war with itself nor anyone for that matter. Ever since the end of the civil war in 1970, it has continued to enjoy the sort of relative peace any country could have wished for, which has enabled its people the opportunity to seek their fortunes wherever they please. Now, it […]

But Nigeria is neither at war with itself nor anyone for that matter. Ever since the end of the civil war in 1970, it has continued to enjoy the sort of relative peace any country could have wished for, which has enabled its people the opportunity to seek their fortunes wherever they please. Now, it is true that Nigeria has continued to be plagued by more than its fair share of ethnicreligious conflicts ( Jos; Boko Haram), armed militancy (Niger Delta), armed robbery (for long confined to cities in the South but now a daily occurance everywhere), kidnappings etc:- whose destructive impact could be chilling and gruesome to contemplate.

Yet without seeking to diminish their revolting impact, it would be safe to say they are all mere manifestations of a deeply troubled entity. The fact that President Goodluck Jonathan had to devote time during his maiden presidential chat to tell Nigerians that from his vantage position as the president he does not see anything untoward that points to the likelihood that Nigeria was going to unravel and disintegrate underscores a certain preoccupation with the issue in Nigeria. To show how deep seated the preoccupation has become, the president referred to This House Has Fallen –   a book full of dire foreboding about Nigeria by Karl Meier, one of the many journalists who are in the habit of making  whistle- stop visits and proceed to pronounce themselves authorities on Nigeria upon which they base their doomsday predictions.

It is a fixation, indeed a wish they have that Nigeria is an edifice waiting to crumble. But Goodluck Jonathan rightly told Nigerians that he does not believe nor indeed wish to superintend a Nigeria which is about to crumble, stating that there had been moments in our history when events had veered dangerously towards the precipice—Adaka Boro’s republic of Niger Delta and the ill- fated Biafra Republic but, according to him the worst did not happen. The sentiment is well taken, it will reassure Nigerians that contrary to popular notion Nigeria is not about to unravel. I happen to be of the mind that the president needn’t have answered that question on Nigeria. He should have simply passed the question by urging the journalists to ask another question. It is otiose.

By answering the question, he was wittingly or unwittingly feeding into the trap set by those who would rather the issue retained its unnecessary currency thereby making it an issue to be discussed even when objective situation does not exist to do so. What leader allows himself to be drawn into a discussion about the breakup of his country?  Now having said this, one is not unmindful of the fact that there are any number of calls for a sovereign conference or any other conference for that matter, to discuss how best Nigeria should be organised. To my mind that is fair enough; there is nothing wrong in seeking to ensure the Nigeria entity becomes better organised for optimum performance. After all its 36 states and Abuja, a far cry from the erstwhile four regions, are the outcome of such agitations aimed at ensuring that development peculate down to the people. Indeed similar calls exist even in well developed countries—the issue of devolution is still raging in the United Kingdom, with Scotland clamouring for more powers to govern itself. But there has been no brazen conclusions that the Scots, the English and their Welsh cousins are about to go their separate ways, as have been made about Nigeria.

One reason this is so is that as a people we take our country for granted. We are ever ready to parrot any doomsday view once it issues forth from the mouth of some indolent diplomat and take seriously any trashy document based on some pseudo-intellectual attempt at denigrating the good work that has been done to keep the Nigerian project- warts and all- going. Yes, corruption abound aplenty in official circles and despite official pronouncements of making effort to curb it, it is still galloping ahead with reckless abandon making Nigeria bleed badly; yes, there are all kinds of dangerous agitations eating away at the vitality of the polity and distracting it from  paying the needed attention to those things that make for greatness. But while it is alright to document them, it is also simply dishonest, unhelpful and mischievous to conclude that because of them Nigeria will cease to exist.

It is the duty of government to ensure such dangerous apocalyptic notions are dispelled with every fibre it has, through putting out its own position why Nigeria is still a strong, and viable entity facing the challenges of nation building as best it could. This need not be propaganda, there are many of such already circulating; but a detailed contemporary socio-economic exposition of the polity as it is and what government is doing to make it what it ought to be. But this should not end with putting out printed materials to disabuse peoples’ minds on what has been read about Nigeria. It has a lot to do with what is being done or has to be done to win over those who only see apocalyptic visages of calamities and dissolutions to, as it were, see correctly.

To sum up, it bears noting that had Nigeria lived up to its promise there would not have been so much negative ideas about its survival as a nation. It is not enough not to want to rule over an unravelling state; this good attitude should be backed up with concrete soul elevating achievements.