Nigeria Is Pregnant…

We may very well mourn what Nigeria shall birth, or celebrate the birth of a new dawn, long promised to us, the choices shall soon be unveiled.

“O se Ewure, won ni ki lo bi, to ba je omo Enia, won a ki ku ewu omo” every birth is deserving of celebration, be it of beast, or of the sons of men. These are the words of our elders. Nigeria is pregnant. We may very well mourn what Nigeria shall birth, or celebrate the birth of a new dawn, long promised to us, the choices shall soon be unveiled.

However much the Buharists might protest, the rational and honest amongst them know, that their clay footed god, has been a resounding failure, and his protestations of probity, as hollow as his geriatric head. Buhari is the sorry past, and not the future.

Atiku! That one makes me laugh, but my laughter is devoid of mirth. I laugh as an alternative to mourning. Atiku has played the desperate card of a degenerate, desperate, and dying system. The choice of Obi is as evil, as it is shrewd, and Ndigbo would have to find a level of wisdom that is uncommon in our land, to avoid falling for the trap. I expect to see Ndigbo fall for the trick of 1999 all over, but I shall advise that they look to their Ngbati brothers, and borrow themselves some sense.

Nigeria has an Ibo problem. I am a student of Nigerian history, I have been particularly interested in researching the origins of our problems, and I have for long, meditated on solutions to Nigeria’s problems. I have found a common thread that runs through all of the grievances of the Nigerian people. It is the crisis of citizenship that lies at the root of all the agitations in our land, and it is a direct result of the nepotistic foundations of the Nigerian state.

The consistent demand of the Igbo nation, from the pre-independence conferences, up to the Aburi conference that preceded the civil war, has been predicated on the equality of citizenship. The Igbo nation has never asked anything more, of the Nigerian state, and the Igbo demands, runs through the agitations of the Yoruba, the Tiv, Berom, and every other tribe, except the beneficiaries of the inequities, and the uninformed parrots of their inanities.

The Yoruba nation was once the conscience of the Nigerian state. My people were the ones ruled by ideas, and we viewed the other nationalities with a degree of arrant condescension, after all, we were the thinkers of the Nigerian state, and by far too sophisticated to be manipulated by anyone. Or so we assumed.

The Obasanjo presidency, was the bribe that purchased the Yoruba conscience, and paved the way for the enslavement and stupefaction of a once sophisticated people, and today we are led by men, who are richer than states, whilst the people have been steadily impoverished. The bribe to a race, bought time for the Nigerian system, but the issues of 1966, those of 1967, gave birth to 1993, and wasn’t killed in 2015.

I cannot blame Ndigbo if it decides that half a cake is better than none, and goes all in with Atiku and the PDP. I have read otherwise intelligent men, doing intellectual somersaults, in celebration of the Obi news. But Ndigbo shall do well to ask itself the question that the Yoruba nation ignored to ask in 1999, when the system bribed a people with promises of seductive powers, as inducement for the abandonment of a just demand for the equality of citizenship, true federalism, and the rule of law. Power shift was the distraction employed by the Nigerian state, to kill the movement for self determination.

The Nigerian state as currently structured, is incapable of delivering anything beyond the putrefaction being witnessed. To expect anything different, is to be either naive, fraudulent, or both. Before Ndigbo opens her skirt for the seductions of the wayward husband, called Nigeria, it shall do well to ensure, that the Nigerian state, is not selling her, a fake. Many have died, many more are still dying, all because of the refusal of the Nigerian state, to be fair to all its children.

An Atiku/Obi ticket is a compelling proposition, and once upon a time, I’d have been fooled by the seductive promises of the pairing. But I have been here before, I have seen the Nigerian state ignore the leprosy, whilst expending energy and time, in pursuit of a cure for ringworm. The problems are structural, and personnel changes are incapable of addressing the issues. Let Obi not just be the VP, let him become the president, if the system is unchanged, all would be lost before the battle begins.

To the Igbo that sees an Obi Vice presidency as a prize to covet, ask the Yorubas, how they are. I did not say to ask the Jagaban oh, travel to our cities, towns, hamlets, listen to the wretched victims of the power that shifted in 1999, and you will soon find, that the charms of the Nigerian state are vague, and deceitful, whatever it offers with one hand, it takes back with the other, with the victims distracted.

Lagos’s 53 LCDAs remains just that, and it is so, in spite of the fact that the current VP, was the Attorney-General of Lagos State, when the putative local government areas were created, the National leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, was the governor, and the lie, that he helped enthrone, remains the president. Personnel changes, will not deliver the equitable nation Ndigbo bled, died for, and are still dying for.

Peter Obi is eminently qualified to be the president of Nigeria, but as president under the current system, he’d be almost as useless as the current somnambulist in that office. An Obi presidency would not address the Igbo problem that has bedeviled Nigeria for longer than I have lived, only a just and equitable restructuring of the Nigerian state will achieve that.

DF

First published 14 October, 2018.