Follow Us on Google
I had a challenge choosing the title for this discourse. So many things ran through the mind as one sat down severally to digest the development critically. Then this long lasting matter suddenly gained new traction. The small but powerful issues in the matter, our reaction including that from the government and political players; the most important implications of the development and what it portends for our people, national peace,growth and stability. It is definitely a development with multi-faceted angles to it. It forebodes big danger.
All these came through in the mind and so choosing a representative title that would encapsulate all there is about it became a tug of “war”. I am certain you too the reader is in the same dilemma even with various analyses you have been privileged to hear and read. It is no easy matter when the leader of a global power rises and points a finger at your country and accusing it of infringement, abdication of core responsibility, administrative negligence and threatening to take direct measures to strengthen the “crooked path” in another sovereign state. This obviously is more trouble. So how do you cast the headline to catch the readers’ buy-in and to reflect the fears that are palpable too?
Can America get enmeshed in our internal affairs? To the uninitiated nothing like that ever happens and can’t happen. Ignorance I have been taught recently, “isn’t about an uneducated person, it is more about what one should know which he hasn’t known.” Many citizens just wake up and walk the space very oblivious of the forces at play and which to a large extent shape the outcome of what they do daily. Nations fight unseen wars against themselves.
Each wants to control affairs in the other. Scholars in the universities especially in social science classes have what they call the “world of imperialism.” It is strong and potent. When you see the British king moving from one location to another or President Donald Trump of America or Putin of Russia jumping from one country to another they are into this world fighting first by other means rather than weapons of death. Great nations interfere in the workings of lesser countries. Nigeria is no exception. The interjections become public such as we are seeing when “matters come to a head.” The soul of Nigeria has been a subject of contestation since after independence. The Nigeria the departing British colonialists coupled together just like they did with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh which they amalgamated into a single country was to serve their political, economic and social interest. Nigeria has remained a “sphere of influence” for the British till now even though the ” struggle for influence” has been a three corner fight, Britain, America and the Arabian conclave add to the last Morocco and Turkey. France is a very late entry, their visibility in the veiled fight flows from President Bola Tinubu’s history with America which somehow spills over to Britain.
Tinubu’s antecedents and the search for new friends is the immediate cause, the remote would be the west becoming aware they are about losing a strategic country like Nigeria to Arab Islamic control then France and China imperial influence. These are at the heart of the matter. Now a careful review of the history and development of India and even Bangladesh with the same colonial experiences with us will show we opened ourselves to the “termites” about to eat us up.
India has far larger population than we have. It is like us a multi-racial and religious society. It even had a “caste system”. Its political trajectory isn’t without turbulence. They had their fair share at a time it was like every president of India was placed on the slab to be slaughtered. Rather than fold their hands to wait for time to effect changes, they opted to take their destiny in their hands.
Contrary to what many won’t let us have in Nigeria, leaders in India sat down to fashion what they wanted the modern India to look like and how competitive the country would be in world affairs. The picture they got they wrote down of course credible electoral process was part of the bargain. They resolved to follow the prescriptions religiously.
Bangladesh and Pakistan that broke away from India followed the Indian example to a great extent, and they are among the leading lights in middle income nations. India is almost at the verge of becoming a first world nation. They are everywhere in management of big businesses all over the world. In the digital sector, they are in control. Add medical tourism to it and you won’t be wrong. It is not about discriminating acts any longer.
Other News
In our country those who speak and make so much issue of unity not being negotiable act in ways that tend to pull at the bonds that hold the different components together. Hold a national conference to correct visible wrongs a section that got the advantage through military foray into governance say no. They forget that any entity without a common shared vision would be rudderless. Nigeria is rudderless.
Now rather than work to promote right ideals, a section is engaged pursuing supremacist ideals in line with what the Arabs want but won’t practice in their own countries. Rich Arab countries are Muslim but very liberal. They try to exert influence in our country urging for the the complete take over and islamization of the entire space even when Christianity may have the higher population if we had a credible census in the country. This is the root cause of the big crisis setting us for the breakage some said was impossible.
Nigeria is secular. This is the prescription in the Constitution but in practice it is near a Muslim state. It is one secular state with two jurisprudence systems: one common law and the other Shari’a law all in operation in the same country. Isn’t this crazy and funny? We must begin to tell ourselves the truth else silence would mean being guilty of complicity.
I like what Noam Chomsky said: “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” Courage to speak the truth and its absence has become like a huge albatross on every citizen’s neck. Our constitution – a supposed secular document – mentions Shari’a and Islam severally. In the conference General Sani Abacha organized we were told how he insisted Shari’a must be included and there were allegations that government funds were deployed to have a sectional wish met.
Not long ago incumbent Governor of Bauchi State disclosed on public television that Fulani in Nigeria have decided that the country will become the traditional home to people of the tribe across Africa. What a thinking and what a plan! Those who think it is a joke should explain how come we woke up to find Fulani people in large numbers in every local government across the country. How did they come in, how did they make choices of where to stay? Every day we observe government buses and company trailers ferrying foreigners to different locations outside the North into very far remote corners, many of them coming very equipped with motorcycles and sewing machines etc. Who is responsible for such massive exodus of persons? Today many of these guys who admit they are not Nigerians have ceased to wear the traditional northern flowing gowns. They walk about in groups of three or four wearing T-shirts and trousers. Isn’t it instructive? Doesn’t it tell us that all isn’t well?
Finally, there is genocidal fight going on in the country. This is a fact. We are recording more deaths in a month than Russia and Ukraine are doing who are engaged in a full conventional war. Why is it that the captured Islamic terrorists are “reformed” and thrown back into society? Who developed such a policy?
What has the captured told interrogators about what they actually want? What actually do Islamic terrorists want? Why do we pour money into this challenge and never see the end? Trump wants to help. If we don’t sit up and act sensible, Nigeria would be history and the black race would be the loser for it. The signals don’t look cheery. It forebodes evil.
