Renegotiate or Divvy up!
Opinions from a frustrated Nigerian patriot
Applying all the known success metrics created by mankind for a nation’s performance, Nigeria is a failure - we suck at everything. GDP per capita, happiness index, unemployment rate etc. At this point, it makes no sense to patch up our problems, a complete overhaul is needed. We need to rethink our country from first principles and we should have started yesterday. A quick callout - the actors shouldn’t be the past generation, the so-called baby boomers. Why? They can’t see past the damages of colonization, military rule and a civil war, the most noble action they can take is to bow out.
Going forward, my recommendations are that the younger generations should take charge of the country.
From my perspective, there are two options we can take as a country:
Renegotiate the country.
Divide up geo-politically/regionally.
If we pick option one, we agree to remain “One-Nigeria” but the hard question to ask is: what does that mean? Do we want a complete meritocratic one Nigeria where the people that are qualified lead us or we continue to pander around with the useless system called federal character? Completely utilitarian that we enact policies that maximizes the economic pie only? Or we are still going to allow the imported religious values of our colonizers dictate our constitution? I don’t know the right answer but we must agree on what our principles are, the do’s, don’t and most importantly our non-negotiables.
Perhaps, that sounds too difficult, our second option is to divide. Let’s be frank, there’s nothing wrong having a small country with 5/6 states. The Soviet Union divided, there’s nothing stopping us too if we care about it. The proponents of this option might say that we’re different people and as such people with similar values should come together as a country, and I agree. I’m Yoruba and my culture shares little/no intrinsic attributes with the Ibo , Hausa or any other major tribe, our language syntax is different, food is different and slightly different values. The opposition might say that’s not true, our strength lies in our size, but no, our size just means more aid from the international community that will never trickle down to the poor masses, I must say that our size is only an advantage for our oppressors, it is a disadvantage to the masses.
I say all this as someone that has accepted that I will never see my country great even if I live more than 99 years.