Divisive issues threatening Nigeria

When the late Libyan leader, Mu’ammar al-Gadaffi once prescribed that Nigeria should divide along ethnic lines like former Yugoslavia, as panacea to frequent ethnic bloodletting in Jos and other parts of the country, he was convinced that there were fundamental issues threatening the unity of the country, which could provide the springboard for a possible demise of Nigeria.
 
There is no smoke without a fire. Since then, the situation has got worse. There is no doubt that something is fundamentally wrong with Nigeria to make her be the object of such uncomplimentary attacks by external forces. Rather than dismissing the fingers pointing at Nigeria with a wave of the hand, the authorities should take a closer look at what is wrong with the country with a view to saving the situation.
 
It is about six years now since the American intelligence community also predicted that Nigeria would possibly break up by 2015. Those bad predictions were based on the woeful state of affairs in the country. Since then, rather than things getting better, and rather than the leadership re-examining itself to face up with what actually is a grave situation in the country on all fronts, the whole issues are being wished away. At the same time, there are ethnic groups across the country agitating for justice, equity and fairness. Some are threatening secession. But the truth is that these groups wouldn’t have germinated in the first place if the Nigerian system had been fair to all. That the ground is fertile for political discontent to blossom is not in doubt.

Consequently, the best a Nigerian could get from a state outside his or hers is a contract employment. The states in the north employ people from the south on contract basis. Strategic positions are never filled with non-indigenes. State creation has made Nigerians foreigners in their own country. Unfortunately, the state structure is presently a fraud without true federalism that would enable each state to use the resources within its domain to develop itself. Without a viable framework, Nigeria can never make headway and we run the risk of falling victim to the bad predictions on the country. That would be a self-inflicted injury.
 
The second factor, indigene/settler issue has its roots in state creation. It is, perhaps, only in Nigeria that people are classified as indigenes and the others as settlers or by extension “foreigners” in their own country. This issue has raised major controversy and it is the cause of most of the ethnic bloodletting that is ravaging parts of the country. In Nigeria, going by this discriminatory classification, there are no Nigerian citizens! Whereas the constitution clearly provides that every Nigerian is a citizen of the country wherever he or she may resides peacefully, that provision is openly discountenanced or abused with impunity. The norm, instead, is that what you get where you are depends on your ethnic roots.
 
Consequently, it doesn’t matter how long you have resided in any part of Nigeria; it doesn’t matter if you can’t trace your roots after being born and bred in a place and established in that place. Once you’re known to have your roots from a different ethnic group, you’re a “foreigner” in that place. You have no rights and privileges. But this is unlike what obtains in the United States of America where anybody born in America is a bona fide citizen of the United States irrespective of where the parents came from. It is that progressive system that produced the Barack Obamas of this world. If it were in Nigeria, Barack Obama would have been classified as settler because his father came from Kenya and he wouldn’t have had the privilege of aspiring to be American president.
Third in the list of divisive factors in Nigeria is federal character, which unfortunately is enshrined in the constitution. The federal character principle demands that positions to be filled at the federal level must reflect the federal character of the country. That simply put is saying that there must be fair representation from all the zones of the country, all the states of the country, and all the local governments of the country as the case may be. Today, this constitutional provision has been thrown overboard under President Muhammadu Buhari. There is mass discontent as virtually all the top positions in government are dominated by mainly Fulani/Hausa ethnic group.