by Austin J. Otah, Notary.

In my first advent on this topic, I took time to identify certain events and symptoms on our socio-political landscape that seem historically obvious, resolvable and yet mystifyingly repetitious defying solution. This led me to ask what should be an obvious question:

“Why have successive Nigerian Governments since ‘Independence’, failed to address, tackle but ignored this artificial situation, which has not improved one bit but is steadily getting worse?”

It is wisdom that this matter be tackled beneficially for everyone. As American Civil Rights proponent, Martin Luther King Jr., pondering over these type of issues in an Alabama jail back in the 1960s, said –

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

This issue affects all Nigerian Citizens directly.

We cannot afford to play the Ostrich and proverbially bury our collective heads in the sand concerning this matter. Should there not be a Convention for the determination of the original rights, entitlements and powers of the locals [now indigenous Nigerians] in the core Northern States – whose Lands and Political/Traditional powers were forcefully seized by the Colonial [Jihadist] Fulanis – convened to deal with the consequences of Fulani Jihadism and colonisation?

Where are the guaranteed fundamental human rights of those Fulani-conquered Peoples in the North – our fellow Nigerian Citizens? In light of the recent terrorist activities and breakdown of security and the inability of our security forces to handle the menace of terrorism, can we say that the drive to ‘colonise’ the Peoples of the North percolating to indigenous Nigerians across the Nigerian Space is over? It will be observed that these lands and territories of the North were particularly targeted by what eventually became known as ‘Fulani herdsmen’, terrorists that pillaged almost wantonly across Nigeria during the reign of General Muhammadu Buhari [Rtd.], President of the Republic of Nigeria – a Fulani.

His term in Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria [POTFRN] was marked with noticeable difficulty to deal decisively with the terrorism challenge and lack of empathy for the victims [indigenous Nigerians] of the gruesome and heinous attacks of the terrorists. It marked the worst period in the history of Nigeria in which her Citizens were routinely attacked and murdered with a Government that sounded hapless at best. Was this a deliberate Government anti-Constitutional policy? Failure to resolve this issue with ‘Fulani Jihad colonisation’ is the fundamental reason for these doubts, these issues, these challenges today including flagrant abuses of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The conduct of the Northern States in brazenly breaching Section 10 therein is a case in point. We need to address this if we want to develop as a Country indeed but do we?

So It begs the question: Has the issue of Nigerian ‘independence’ been fully dealt with? Is Nigeria therefore truly ‘independent’ and truly the Sovereign State and Federal Republic that we claim it is? We should also ask: does Nigeria present as an ‘Independent Country’ in its Constitutional, agro-industrial economic, technological, educational, scientific, military, socio-political, trado-customary and religious policies? Does its best talents influence her management, destiny and vision today? Every progressive Country ensures that its brightest talents and influencers runs its affairs and creates structural Institutions to ensure it constantly and consistently unearths its best talents to run its affairs from sports, to science to economy to leadership across all of its socio-cultural strata including its spiritual wellbeing. The examples of UK itself, China, Japan and Singapore and ordinarily the United States of America [until recently it may be argued] and Switzerland prove this point. Can we say that is the same for Nigeria?

Let’s take a cursory glance at some areas of our Socio-cultural development: Are our best talents representing us? We could not secure even one medal at the 2024 Olympics! Our Sports management is so corrupt and decrepit, it demands full attention in a separate article. In Education, our Academics are now advocating for a score of 100/400 in the entrance examinations for entry into Polytechnics and 140/400 to enter into Universities!! Government Policies on Education have over the last 40-50 years deliberately truncated the development of our Educational Institutions so that our Universities are hardly in the top 1,000 Universities around the World. At the last count there were only TWO! It is a tragedy! We have harebrained policies such as removing History as a major subject from our educational syllabus. Why? Who is afraid of history?! Our Nigerian Historians

silence is reverberating in cacophonic cadence against the welfare of the next Generation. Who happened to us?

In the Uniformed cadre, it is ‘normal’ that heads of the Uniformed Institutions are politicised rather than merited Offices. Persons are appointed at the whims of Government officials usually dominated by self-interest at the expense of development, sustenance and steady development. When very Junior officers are appointed to head these Offices it leads to the mass retirements of very senior officers well and highly trained with tax payers money but whose value to the Country is wasted when their careers are artificially terminated as they are not allowed to fulfil their terms of office in the service of the Country.

This reckless decimation of trained talent and expense to the Country is routinely ignored and never addressed. You are told that is how it is – should it be so? They are voluntarily retired without a second thought! Is that how we should appoint our best talents to head these sensitive Organisations? These Institutions are also ethnicised and as observed usually across unresolved local colonisation issues and conflicts which we ignore at great danger to our Societal continuity in trenchant abuse of our Constitution. It must be said that the Buhari era witnessed some of the grossest acts of nepotism ever witnessed by Nigeria across the board in blatant and flagrant breach of Part II of the Constitution dealing with principles of State Policy from Section 13 onwards.

Our Judiciary has a system of promotion mostly through civil service based on years of experience rather than an open System allowing the best talents at Bar and Bench to participate in the appointments to the Bench. Our Political System is the most egregious and is the greatest cankerworm eating ravenously the largesse of our Commonwealth. We run perhaps the most expensive political system in the World providing such rich offerings to ‘political jobbers’ that the fight for political office has become literally, a matter of life and death using all manner of weapons – both esoteric and physical, and perhaps more! And the predilection of Political Parties to pick unsuitable candidates is gobsmacking. The APC candidate for the coming Edo State Elections struggled most painfully with articulation at one of his political rallies recently. It was embarrassing.

Why this descent into orthodox kakistocracy? It is symptomatic of a Country that is caught, bound up by circumstances that clearly impugn her ‘independence’. We also find ourselves caught up in ‘donating’ our skilled human resources in every facet of life from academia to sport, to other Countries. Our Educated Elité are regrettably not making the aggressive pervasive influential and significant impact on public thought and direction that they are purposed to make. It is as if they have taken either to flight or fancy or to serve silently, the dictates of those that should listen to them.

Is Nigeria in control of its resources – human and mineral? Is Nigeria militarily secure on land, air and sea? Are our borders secure or compromised? If the answer is NO to at least one of these questions, then Nigeria is NOT truly ‘independent’. It may be an independent Country de jure but certainly not de facto. Can we therefore say Nigeria presents as a Nation?

We should note that just as it happened across Africa, Nigeria is largely made of Kingdoms that were ‘fractured’ across her borders whilst some of these Ethnic Nations and Kingdoms or Empires were wholly within her borders. It is a mixed pot pourri of Nation States. Fiercely independent and proud Nations who have never forgotten their origins despite decades of colonisation and neocolonisation. A cursory study across the African West Coast and to other Regions of Africa will reveal that these artificial borders and the breaking up of Kingdoms to satisfy the interests of European Colonialists as famously held at the 1884 Berlin Conference reveals that contrary to widely held opinion, the domination of Africa by the Colonialists and their occidental Allies has been at least 600-700 years old – not ‘since the 19th Century’ as we were brainwashed to believe back in secondary school. The Conference was simply convened for an organised dividing of the spoils the Europeans had acquired over Centuries and which was causing wars amongst them within Africa. It was a meeting of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ [of African ‘assets’] and an opportunity to play Monopoly only this time deciding on who had what by negotiating between themselves rather than allowing a toss of the dice and relying on chance on the issue of the division of ‘African spoils’.

It is my humble opinion that if we truly want to make progress and become a fused effective and successful unified Nation State, compromising of the differing Nations [in which it is argued there are at least 371 or more of them], we have to bell the proverbial cat by confronting not only the unfettered consequences of British Colonisation and neocolonialism [have they really left?] and its effects today after nearly 65 years but the ignored and unsettled issue of the Fulani Empire ‘colonisation’ and its effect on the Nigeria we have today.

Those Nigerian Citizens in the North under the influence of the imposed Emirates and other togas of colonisation – both spiritual and temporal – across the Northern regions of Nigeria, cannot truly say they are ’independent’ so it is the responsibility of the Nigerian Government to wake up to this reality and confront and directly address the issue proactively and impactful for the protection of all indigenous Nigerian Citizens especially those still under this ‘colonial’ influence. The local agitation for this has been building for quite some time. It is one singular reason or factor why Nigeria is having developmental ‘spasms’.

Two political Kingdoms are fighting themselves with the one seeking to continue to dominate the other, insidiously, manipulatively, militarily, politically… whilst those supposedly ‘independent’ are resisting this continued despoiling bane. It may explain for example, why the previous APC Government-sponsored bizarre policies seeking to expend our commonwealth to develop foreign projects in the Niger Republic for instance rather than concentrate on Projects within Nigeria for one. The examples of such strange policies have been actively captured in today’s Media. It is symptomatic of the influences of a local colonising influence conflicting with the indigenous interests of the local people seeking to enforce their independence, their will, their Divine right to control their resources, their Economy and their destiny. This struggle still continues. What should we do about it?

It is symptomatic of a Country still forcibly held in ‘Colonial’ thrall in which ‘independence’ is a by-word, an Orwellianism. It is this fearful divide that is the reason for the continued despoliation of a Country made up of great Nations both whole and fractured. A Country that faces a nether Enemy intent on keeping it in such thrall that it cannot have time to be ‘independent’ enough to get its act together and maximise its potential using its best brains and best policies but to be kept mugged, pliant and willing to serve the will of a pretentious and wily Enemy whose goal is to keep Africa subject for at least a Millenia [in this era it is identified as Neocolonialism]. By my calculation, those that seek to rule Africa have achieved at least 700 years of their vision so far. This must be changed. It cannot continue to endure. Perhaps we should start from within, our thoughts, our mindsets, our volition…

…There is work to be done. So let’s talk about … much to mull through.