28th October, 2015
By: Amir
Abdulazeez
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recently, Nigeria celebrated its 55th independence anniversary
amidst a mixed atmosphere of renewed political hope and optimism on the one
hand and the fear of an uncertain economic future on the other. The general
belief is that the country has made some progress democratically and it is well
positioned to begin the journey of attaining the long elusive greatness.
However, many others are of the opinion that there is not much to celebrate as
our independence still remains ironical. They claim that with our mono-economy heavily
dependent on one single commodity which price is directly or indirectly
determined by the western giants, we are nothing but dependent.
At home,
we are still battling with debates about how the ownership and control status of
that single commodity the country depends on should be. While some think it
should solely belong to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, others think it should
be partly so. Some even think it should completely belong to the areas where
the oil is being extracted from. Meanwhile, the more serious minds among us are
asking us to shelve this debate on oil resource control and focus on how to
diversify the economy.
The story
of Nigeria over the last 55 years has been that of an independent but fragile
and disunited nation. The Nigerian unity doesn’t go beyond the word ‘Nigeria’,
besides almost everybody sees his fellow tribesman as his only true brother.
The question is no longer when this will stop; the question is for how long
would this continue? If after 55 years, citizens of a country do not see
themselves as one national family bonded by nationhood, trust and understanding,
then how many more years do we require to truly become citizens of one nation?
This is the primary reason why some genuinely believe that the solution to all
these is disintegration. The question is into how many parts do you need to
divide Nigeria into in order to do justice to the multi-ethnic nature of its
societies?
There is
an argument as to whether achieving national unity is something natural or
artificial, deliberate or coincident, divine or man-made. For instance, many
think there is no way a Muslim would achieve any meaningful and lasting
understanding with a Christian or an Igbo man achieving true unity and
brotherhood with a Yoruba man and so on and so forth. This is simply because;
there are some shape-thinking forces of nature that are beyond the control of
both parties. Proponents of this argument often say that countries that have
achieved unity are bounded by something natural like religion or tribe which
they built upon. For example, more than 90% of Britons are Christians and are
mostly English, then what is there to disagree about?
There are
people who argue that the above position is weak and to some extent baseless
and that it’s only those who don’t understand the complexities of life that
would hold such views. Their claim is that unity is quite different from
uniformity and what is required of the citizens of a nation is unity of purpose
and not necessarily unity by nature. For instance, more than 90% of the Middle-east
people are Arabs and Muslims, but there is no region with many inter-political
and intra-ideological conflicts as the region. The Arab world does not show any
sign of unity. Another argument is that, there is no way a people can be
uniform. If we happen to all be Muslims, some would be practicing Muslims and
others, Muslim by identity; some may be white others black and some may be Sunni,
Shi’ite or even extremists, etc. We may all happen to be Hausa, but some may be
purely Hausa while others are Hausa/Fulani, Christians or Muslims. rich or
poor, educated or ignorant, etc.
The
problem facing Nigeria is that most of its citizens neither understand
nationhood and the aspirations of a nation nor the interpretation of our
history and the history of others. It is true that the British did a great
injustice by not considering a lot of logical factors while demarcating the
area they called Nigeria, but nations are not perfect and even if they are
perfect, they didn’t start perfectly but with determination that imperfection
can be overcome over time. However there is no absolute guarantee, even if
there are prospects that the various original societies and kingdoms that were
merged to form Nigeria would be any better in terms of unity and progress if
they were left as they were. This is debatable.
What is
unity? An average Nigerian may think of unity as a scenario where everyone is
of the same religion or tribe or atleast something similar or close to that
situation. This explains the agitation for disintegration in many quarters. The
belief is that once we have entities of Igbos only, Yorubas only, Muslims only
or Christians only, then there would be unity. On the other hand, an average
Nigerian elite may think of unity as a scenario where the presidency rotates
periodically from North-east to South-south, from North-central to South-east
or a scenario where federal character is strictly adhered to with all states or
ethnic groups getting equal appointments and number of civil servants.
All of
these are not unity. Unity is when we all unanimously agree to pursue a common
cause, that is to make our country great for our own benefit and that of the
unborn generation. Unity is when we all understand from where we came from,
where are we now and where we are heading to together. Unity is when we
understand our differences, acknowledge them and work inspite of them to build
a civilized society of law, order, justice, equality and prosperity; a society
which everyone feels an integral part of.
It
appears, we are actually confused as to what we really want, probably that’s
why we haven’t make the progress we should make. So, now, over the last 55
years, what have we being pursuing, unity or uniformity?
Mallam Amir is on Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez
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