AS Nigeria reaches its 60th. year of independence on October 1st, I fear for its future. With a population of over 200 million people and endowed with incredible natural resources it has still become a failed state.
The blame currently lies with the Head of State and the Federal Government and the army and security services. However the source of its troubles go back to the British creating a new country out of a land with several hundred tribes and languages by drawing a line on a map.
After the horrors of the Biafran Civil War the country had a period of military rule, which stabilised the country and then moved to a democratically elected government. However the corruption now in Government and almost all walks of life has left a divided nation. Whilst millions live in abject poverty, vast wealth lies in the hands of a few. Throw into the mix religious differences which have resulted in more Christians being killed in the country than the whole of the Middle East over the last decade. There was even a massacre of more than 350 Shia Muslims in the northern city of Zaria in December 2015 by Federal troops. #1
There has also been a violent crackdown by the state on largely peaceful protests by Biafran separatists seeking their 'Right to self-determination' under Article 20 of the African Charter.
However the current President, Muhammadu Buhari (a Fulani), has allowed Fulani cattle herders to take their animals across huge swathes of farm land. Any resistance by locals has resulted in countless killings by the heavily armed herdsmen. The Federal Government takes no action, many would say it is using the Fulanis as an armed militia to subdue Christian communities in the Middle Belt and now deep into more Southern states.
Also one could view Buhari's poor record of eliminating the threat of Boko Haram #2 in the country is a ploy for greater Islamification of the country. They now have control of parts of northern Nigeria and claim it to be part of the Islamic Caliphate. Over 100 of the mainly Christian Chibok schoolgirls abducted in 2014 have not been returned to their families despite Buhari's pledge on gaining power.
An even more frightening development is the increasing number of Isis fighters and other terrorists coming through Nigeria's porous northern border. I understand this has being encouraged by Turkey over recent times. There is now friction with Egypt, which many terrorists travel through.
Most of the top posts both in Government and the army are held by Hausas or Fulanis. Although there are other ethnic groups represented in Government many do not raise these concerns, either through fear or bribery.
However protests from Muslim and Christian religious leaders, often say the same thing, that poverty and corruption are the twin evils in the country. One Muslim respected voice of reason was silenced recently, namely the former Emir of Kano Sanusi who was dethroned in March this year. Little wonder when he articulated such views as the following: He called for an end to child marriage, women empowerment, building more schools instead of mosques, and infrastructural development. Sanusi also called for population planning, and said that polygamy is increasing poverty in the region.
The country is now engaged in an economic row with Ghana with wrong on both sides. Ghana has been clamping down on largely Igbo traders they claim are not all acting lawfully and Nigeria has closed Western highway linking the countries which passes through Benin, a breach of ECOWAS rules (Economic Community of West African States).
I have spent three years writing to my MP, then Shadow Foreign Secretary and now the current one, to get our Government to exert some political pressure on the Nigerian state to unite the country rather than let it become another Rwanda but worse. The House of Lords debated the issue of violence in Nigeria two years ago warning of impending genocide. More recently 20 of the House of Lords have sent a plea to Baroness Scotland, Secretary General to the Commonwealth highlighting concerns over escalating violence in Nigeria. The letter quotes highly respected former Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Danjuma, who says the armed forces are 'not neutral..... they collude in the ethnic cleansing....by Fulani herdsmen'.
I call on all Nigerians in diaspora to speak out. Altering the slogan of the Black Lives Movement, 'White Silence is Violence' to "Nigerians" Silence Equals Violence'.
#1 See Amnesty Report: “Unearthing the truth: unlawful killings and mass cover-up in Zaria,”
#2 Boko Haram: the name translates colloquially as “Western education is sin”.
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1 comment:
Before I accept at face value the comment ‘However the source of its troubles go back to the British creating a new country out of a land with several hundred tribes and languages by drawing a line on a map’, I am going to ask for a bit of evidence. Is it not equally plausible that it is the continued importance of tribal membership in the lives of (some?) Nigerians that is the cause of some of the present difficulties in the country? Would the present situation really have been any better if a different line, or no line at all, had been drawn on a map? It took 500 years for the Anglo-Saxon tribes which invaded the land I live in after the fall of the Roman empire to meld themselves into the nation we now call England. Why should we expect Nigerians to be able to perform the same feat in 60 years?
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