Argument for dissolving Nigeria

By Des Wilson

“In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one’s way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult, but always mutual path.” Phyllis McGinley – The Province of the Heart

Each day Nigerians make a case for their self-destruction through acts that are clearly out of sync for a people that would wish to survive another day. There is so much evidence in the air that Nigerians are aiming for the exit door of a farcical marriage seemingly ordained in hell.

The first sign that the marriage is about to break up is the frequent call for a review of the amalgamation pact with Lord Lugard who refused to engage all the parties in the traditional ritual associated with all such matrimonial arrangements. Beyond the fiat of a colonial overlord, there were no consultations, no handover signatures, no visitations and no spiritual blessings of the relationship. It was just a marriage of convenience for the British, and the officiating minister, Lord Lugard, with his spouse, thought the experiment should last for a hundred years before any divorce proceedings could be held.

A visible evidence of the expiration of this forced marriage could be seen in the building which housed Lord Lugard’s residence and office in Ikot Abasi, which has become an eyesore, because no one wants the people from that area to earn the dubious reputation of being the land from where Nigeria became a cantankerous union of disparate entities.

In 2014, the tottering marriage had reached a stage of irredeemable collapse. So, from then till now we have been living on borrowed time. It has been a situation of patched love or no love at all. When marriage reaches a stage when parties begin to seek discarded stimulants to try to reinvigorate the spirit of the union, then you know you have reached the end of ‘for better or for worse’. No amount of viagra can revive its marital erectile dysfunction.

I regret I have decided to sound this pessimistic because the political and religious elites have conspired to deceive us and to wit them as well. When you talk of dissolution of the marriage, they proclaim that the marriage is indissoluble, and yet they engage in acts which make their very wish unattainable. Because of the undeserved freebies they extract from the brokenness of the relationship, they do not have the courage to call for its dissolution. Some tell tales like some of the seedy acts of disgruntled couples in a Mushin customary court as if the marriage was made in heaven or the relationship was cast in stone. But I bemoan this tragic situation when I reflect on what William Shakespeare said about ‘true love’. He, in his 116th sonnet, warned us:

‘Let me not to the marriage of true love/Admit impediments; love is not love/which alters when it alteration finds,/or bends with the remover to remove. /O no, it is an ever-fixed mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken;/It is the star to every wand’ring bark Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken/Love’s not time’s fool though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickle’s compass come./Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, /But bears it out even to the edge of doom;/If this be error and upon me proved,/I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This 16-line sonnet summarizes the foolishness of the elites who wish that this forced marriage could be sustained against the visible realities of its failure in spite of all their dissembling.

Related to this is the seemingly hypocritical call for tolerance of each other’s faiths by adherents to our different Middle Eastern faiths, when the truculent spokespersons in their havens secretly call for the elimination of those who do not bow to their gods. These aggressive calls are products of a psychological ploy hewn out of an inferiority complex of our declining numbers of adherents in our folds. So religion has become an albatross hung on our necks to achieve dominance in an imbalance of terror.

Then there is the ethnicity quagmire which has illegally foisted some three languages on the over 497 linguistic groups in Nigeria. Some have declared that their tongues are superior to others. Contrary to the freedom which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights endows us with, there is little hope that the actions of policy implementers will not organise the collective incineration of the other languages as their various pole groups tussle for supremacy. This is not a good sign for a smooth conjugal relationship.

There is a Big Lie that accompanies these attitudes of the Nigerian elites. And that lie is that Nigerians are one. We are not. There are many ‘Nigerias’ as there are ethnicities and religions in the country. The Big Lie is intended to shore up the lines of oppression which the political, religious, military and linguistic elites wish to foist on us. Needless to say, the products of this ill-tempered marriage in their own little corners seek to oppress others in areas where they also form an ethnic majority.

The Nigerian Constitution is a farcical document which proclaims that ‘we the people’ had deliberated and approved it for use. This falsehood is perhaps what has encouraged the judicial warlords to continue to exploit it to their advantage. That is why justice cannot be judiciously obtained in this relationship.

The politicians add to the better forgotten race of abusers of this contrived marriage. It’s a crazy world where this group is engaged in an abominable incestuous relationship with their kind. They contribute to the internal colonialism which exists today in this Lugard Charter. Those who have rigged themselves into power ensure that others remainin eternal subjugation.

Then the judges, in the Con Republic, and other judicial officers ensure that Nigerians do not get justice except when they pay for it through high profile solicitors and advocates. Justice in Nigeria is injustice writ large.

The last of the group that has ensured that the ‘marriage’ of 1914 is dissolved are those I have identified as the misguidedhoi polloi – the unfortunate masses who have become the flotsam and jetsam of this unfortunate marriage. Thus after going through the Niger Delta Republic, Biafra and now IPOB, Boko Haram, mindless kidnappings, herders’ invasion of farmers; farmlands, Araba, Oduduwa Republic, OPC, rebellion in the Niger Delta and countless infractions and clear efforts to dissolve Nigeria, there is no doubt that this marriage has broken down almost irrevocably. Perhaps the only life line available is a separation, a regrouping and a renegotiation of our conjugal rights, and still perhaps we could renew our vows among the over 500 ethnicities. No government can succeed under these circumstances.

But I hope to be disappointed even though I have always dreamed of a large, multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual Nigeria. Unfortunately, that hope has beendimmed by what I saw in the last dereliction we called election.