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By Innoh Obiorah
Nigeria will not cease to amaze and dismay me. The people that inhabit the country must be special species of human beings, otherwise, here is one of the most conflicting, contradicting, complex and dysfunctional countries in the world,yet you find people living by the day like life is normal; no power, no fuel, no water, no security, no leadership. This is a country where nothing works. No day passes without tens and hundreds of people being murdered. The best you can think is how to get out of it, yet you find people crazy enough to pay N100 million to buy nomination forms to contest for an election. At the last count, they included nearly 35 people, out of which 10 are serving cabinet members of the current government, and the serving governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. The managing directing of the country’s Security and Minting Company is also running for public office. The CBN governor even had the audacity to approach the court to restrict the party and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from disqualifying him from running for the election while still serving as the CBN governor. Nigeria has beaten all known records of democratic shenanigans. What is left is for the chairman of the INEC himself to throw his hat into the ring and run for the Number One job. I will not be shocked if he does because Nigeria’s current leadership has broken all known records and in eight years accomplished what no other leadership has accomplished in the country’s over 60 years of independence.
But why would any self-respecting sane man be running to be Nigeria’s President? In a civilized country, no one would show interest to apply for a job programmed to fail by the Constitution and poor governance structure.
The nation has been at war with itself for the past 12 years. Boko Haram formed, in 2002 when Mohammed Yusuf, a well-known proselytizer of the Izala sect of Islam in the Maiduguri region of Nigeria, began to radicalize his discourse to reject all secular aspects of Nigerian society. Then, recently, the Islamic State in West Africa joined the Boko Haram and now dominate the North-East, North-West and North-Central of Nigeria. Different fractions have different demands, some saying the government promised them something and later reneged and others claiming that they are poor in a rich country and the government should take care of them and their families. Then, in Benue and Plateau states, the Fulani are killing the indigenous people and burning their buildings in a bid to forcefully take their land.
At the time of writing this, some Muslims in Sokoto were killing Christians, looting their shops and destroying their properties. The mob invaded the home of the outspoken Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, a virulent critic of the mis-governance of the government, Bishop Matthew Kukah, and set his house and the church on fire. The safety and whereabouts of the bishop remain unknown.
In the South-East, unknown gunmen are killing the police and the civilians at will. The youths are hurting all business activities and enforcing sit-at-home on certain days. In the West, the state governments are using local vigilante to enforce no-open-grazing. All parts of Nigeria are on fire. No place is safe as kidnappers are on rampage, kidnapping children at schools and women in the farms.
Why would somebody want to be President of a nation that is in turmoil, that has defied solution? What is the benefit of being a President of a country where more than 85 per cent of the people are disgruntled and are struggling to survive daily? There is no work, there is no food and the few available commodities are beyond the reach of the common man.
Most prayer houses are not helping either, except our old traditional churches and mosques. The new prayer houses have taken the already poor masses to the cleaners and some committing fraud, bluntly asking people to sow seeds even though they know they are promising false hope. They are selling hopes to people who their government already failed them. God’s business has become good church business and yet the race for President is crowded.
Every part of the nation wants to be President and they have their own argument while avoiding the issue of justice, equity and fairness. The South-East says it has been shortchanged in Nigeria’s political arrangement; the South-West says it helped the government in power to emerge and so it will be their turn to replace President Buhari, and the North says they will replace the President to meet 12 years the southerners led in Nigeria.
Nigerian leaders are reckless and the people have been pushed to the wall and all that is left is a match to set it on fire. The youths are frustrated that the country has no plan and future for them.
Life in Nigeria is unbearable. It is unbearable to live on salaries. The paycheck is not a living wage. The salaries of those who have work are not enough and there is nothing given to those who are not working, and even those who are working for the government for barely N30,000 are not getting paid. Where does Nigeria go from here? Picking a President from any region will not solve the problem Nigeria is facing today.
Nigeria has reached a saturation point, where no individual or group can alter its trajectory. The solution is to go back to the first agreement on which Nigeria was established. You cannot run 210 million people on a single, monolithic government. Nigeria would not have been if Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe did not negotiate how they would govern and how they would live together. It took them years to arrive at a common agreement that was accepted by them before they signed to be given independent by the British colonialists. Today, none of these candidates contesting can save Nigeria without going back to our original agreement. Strangling Nigeria from Abuja will only lead to its collapse and ultimately dismembering into fractional states.
Nigeria and Nigerians must be left to be and each state or each of the six regions will determine their resources, support their people and develop at their pace. Each region or state could pay their workers what they could afford. There is no need holding everyone down in one basket.
Those regions that like education can set the standard curriculum that suits them. Others can set any standard they deem fit that will help them. Regions who wish to build their own power stations should do so. Putting everybody and having few men and women telling states how to run their security and what they can do or not do cannot continue. Even as children, there is a time they will not listen to what their parents want. Nigeria has reached that stage and all these concurrent and non-concurrent items in the 1999 Constitution must be changed to a people’s constitution, whereby the people will make their decisions for issues that are important to them.
The way our founding fathers signed the 1963 Constitution for each region, the six regions should have their own constitution in addition to National Nigerian constitution. Centralising everything in Abuja, whereby each state is asking as a favour what they could do, what they could not do in their respective state is a call for disaster. This means some states are favoured and others discriminated against. Nigeria has fought a bitter civil war; another one will bring the most populated African people to her knees. As we look for any candidate from North to South, let us remember that only candidate that can reorganize Nigeria so that Nigeria will be a place that she was as she did in the 1960s. We need the leader that can unify the country, crweate labour, productivity and jobs. The tribal war going on in the North can only be solved by Northerners and the uprising going on the South can only be solved by the Southerners. We can, if we are honest, build back Nigeria and take over our homeland.
•Obiorah wrote from New
Jersey, USA; [email protected]
