| by Osita Ebiem
( May 26, 2012,Abuja/ New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) By every definition, Nigeria has failed as a state. The fact still remains that the various peoples within it were forced to surrender their sovereignty and pretend allegiance to a union that failed from inception. Nigeria continues to prove to be incapable of delivering on any of the promises inferred to or explicitly made at its beginning. After more than half a century the state has not kept any part of the contractual agreement that should exist between it and the peoples within its borders. As a result the country has remained in a permanent state of anomie. Law and order, the basis and justification of the existence of any such union is totally absent. The extant one-Nigeria as we have it is incapable of working any social system because it lacks the most important element: Freedom. Nigeria is chained down and will never function because it is the forced union of very unwilling associates. We must emphatically assert here that forcing any kind of unity on any unwilling people is a criminal act that the subjugated people have every right to resist. Any forced unity is a heinous crime against humanity.
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| (Photo: Reuters) Despite the country's growing wealth, most Nigerians live on less than $2 a day. |
Since the end of the Cold War a new world order began. No one is left in doubt about the leading roles the United States, Britain, France and others play in helping to consolidate the gains of this new arrangement which is; more freedom for more people around the world. As a result of freedom to once oppressed peoples around the world, it seems we have made more progress in the short years since the complete meltdown of the iron curtain and the depolarization of world politics than in the many years of the old order. Freedom, Democracy and Self Determination is emphasized today more than at any other time, and the world is better off for it.
It is not by accident therefore that this era in world’s history is rightly called the era of Freedom and Self Determination. It is only natural to assume that the more freedom and confidence people have in themselves the more creative they become and are able to effectively contribute positively to the world’s commonwealth and collective aspirations. Today peoples around the world are encouraged to creatively define and assert themselves. In doing so they are able to bring to humanity new and unique perspectives and solutions to the many problems facing the world. We do not have to stretch our imagination to know that a world where peoples and individuals are turned into amorphous and defused entities is a dangerous place. When a people are violently compelled to assume strange identities, they engage in an unending struggle; fighting to find their lost selves and in so doing pose a threat to the overall wellbeing of the world.
Today Northern Nigeria is in total crisis not because of poverty as is being touted by some countries like the US and Britain. The north of Nigeria as well as the rest of the country is in disarray because the peoples are suffering under a serious identity crisis and they are trying to find themselves. There is a serious conflict of selves, hence the name Boko Haram: The repudiation of Western culture or Western identity. Northern Nigeria wants an Islamic sharia identity (culture) and one-Nigeria is denying them that inalienable right to choose how they want to live, worship and be governed. The world community cannot expect that if they continued to naively acquiesce to the false notion of a one-Nigeria that they will permanently escape the scourge of Islamic Boko Haram.
The solution to the problem lies in encouraging the various entrapped civilizations to embrace the principles of Freedom and Self Determination. Through breaking up of the present one-Nigeria tensions will cease and the world will have peace, prosperity, progress and security from that part of the world.
True relationships are only those based on mutual trust and respect and are usually complementary where each individual brings unique qualities that enrich the union. The present Nigerian union is an absolute contradiction rather than complementary and can never work. It clearly shows that an uncaring world (United States and Britain, because of oil) is trying to forcefully fuse into a “cancerous one unit” peoples with dangerously opposed characteristics, worldviews, religions and cultures. This sort of union can only succeed as cancerous cells (the various parts of the “one body” [country]) that destroy and kill off one another. Who benefits and who suffers from insisting on saving such incurably diseased parts? Precious lives can be saved by severing the parts that would not work in harmony with the body. Dividing Nigeria today will end the current Islamic bigotry, hatred, antagonism and intolerance of Igbo/Biafra people; the Boko Haram scourge. No one leaves a progressively decaying part of the body attached waiting for the “one day” that a cure would be found. This becomes even more absurd when experiences like those of Sudan and South Sudan, India and Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, etc. show very clearly that cutting off the gangrened part/s would mercifully end the pain and suffering, and a world’s eyesore that is one-Nigeria.
Today, because the world community places great emphasis on Freedom and Self Determination, individuals and societies are beginning to benefit from the fallout by becoming more prosperous and wealthy and the peoples within Nigeria can benefit too. We have today in the world the largest number of millionaires and billionaires than we have ever had. It is also quite noticeable that more places around the world that have embraced the principles of freedom and self-determination have experienced more prosperity across the larger spectrum of their population than they had ever had. So freedom does not only liberate the mind from the shackles of unfounded fears, tensions and psychological limitations it also enriches the people with creativity and material abundance. Freedom therefore is good for all and should never be withheld from any section of the world for any reason whatsoever. But it is unfortunate for it seems from the policies of such countries like US and Britain that freedom is being withheld from the various peoples who are held down with the iron grip of one-Nigeria. And we must clearly state that just as freedom is good for American and British citizens, it is also good for Igbo/Biafrans and the other peoples unjustly locked down in the ill-fated one-Nigerian union.
Experiences continue to show, as we have already noted, that we should never use different yardsticks for different parts of the world in the application of Freedom and Self Determination. When we do the price for such decision becomes too high to pay. Should we hope for a more peaceful and secured world, freedom and self-determination must not just become abundant but must be reachable to all peoples everywhere. Today’s world has become too interconnected to ignore this very important wisdom. Events around the world are continually proving to us that the lack of freedom of any kind (religious, cultural or political) in any part of the world does have direct impact on other parts.
In this regard several examples come to mind of not just the futility of a one-Nigeria effort but the clear danger that such oppressive arrangement poses to the rest of the world. In Nigeria there is a serious lack of sociocultural freedom. The people’s freedom is severely curtailed because the US and Britain due to oil are forcing into one place, in one-Nigeria, the most antagonistic diverse cultures, and civilizations. As a result of this damning decision, the one-Nigeria continues to boil and spill over to the rest of the world. A ready instance is the Nigerian Underwear Bomber (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) of Delta Airline of December 25, 2009 and the suicide bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Abuja in August 26, 2011.
Another argument that is often touted is that Nigeria contributes to peacekeeping efforts in the West African sub region and elsewhere and that is why the one-Nigerian status should remain. But what is the use of keeping peace in other lands when they cannot maintain the same thing in their own home. And should a one-Nigeria be encouraged to help prevent the killing of innocent peoples abroad when the same state kills innocent Igbo/Biafrans at home? The next point is just as laughable. When people talk of Nigeria as the most populous country in Africa and for this reason its unity should be preserved. Such reasoning casts the advocates in the light of those who do not care about the sanctity of human life. Nigeria as a failed state is incapable of providing security, healthcare, utilities, etc. for that population. It is a clear example of the unreason of a ballooned population of a people with a doomed fortune and destiny. Who can ever forget that only one year ago Sudan was also touted as the biggest country in Africa for all the wrong reasons as well? Sudan continued to pride itself in its monstrous size while it also committed genocides and other crimes against humanity on its own citizens. Today, Nigeria is committing crimes against humanity and genocides against its citizen while maintaining a one-Nigeria at all costs and the status of the most populous country in Africa. Thousands of Igbo/Biafrans are being killed and millions of others displaced for the absurd idea of keeping Nigeria as the most populous country. We think that the world can be more humane and reasonable than this.
In the new world order, the United States, Britain and people everywhere who work for a better world would like to see a world where democracy, freedom and self-determination are the rule rather than the exception. In the context of the new order when the people become conscious enough, the preservation of freedom easily becomes more important than the preserving of subjugated lives. When there is serious lack of freedom and human dignity, life even if lived in any condition of relative comfort becomes worthless. In a people’s life it will reach a point when they would rather perish than live as slaves. And it is not difficult to see that Igbo/Biafra people are at that stage right now. They would rather be free of every attachment with Nigeria than prosper as part of the one-Nigerian union.
We want to note here that it is not just the Igbo/Biafran people who have come to this stage of impatience with the slavish one-Nigeria mentality. Boko Haram jihadists take it a step further. They would rather go on suicide mission where they know that certain death await them than continue to live under the rule of secularism in Nigeria. For them, freedom consists in the practice of the sharia in a theocratic Islamic state. It therefore amounts to denial of their fundamental human right to continue to subjugate them and insist that they remain in an un-Islamic country of one-Nigeria. The terroristic violence of the Islamic fundamentalists, Boko Haram is just their way of putting it in a more dramatic language. It’s just foolhardiness and insensitivity to continue to detain the Islamic North of Nigeria in an unworkable one-Nigeria. Boko Haram is a fight against one-Nigeria.
Finally we must ask: Is the concept of Freedom the exclusive right of citizens of the West? In Europe and America Freedom is such a fundamental human right and everyone has an inalienable right to it. It is for this reason that even the wishes of children in these societies are inviolably respected. Hence they go by the name Free World. Why then should Europe and America continue to champion the enforced unworkable union of one-Nigeria on irreconcilably diverse ethnic nationalities that constitute Nigeria against their wishes? Does that agree with the West’s understanding of Freedom and Self Determination? That is absolute breach and vitiation of the concept of Freedom by any honest standard. Have people of other nationalities no right to this Freedom? Why must the subjugated peoples of one-Nigeria not be granted the forum and opportunity to exercise their fundamental human rights to Freedom and Self Determination?
It even seems that animals in Europe and America have more rights to Freedom than the entrapped nations in one-Nigeria. Why must that be so? Whose interests does the confiscation of these people’s Freedom serve? Freedom and Self Determination is an urgent matter that must be taken seriously in the present Nigerian situation. Biafrans and other ethnic nationalities must urgently be set free from the chains of the current one-Nigeria. They must be allowed to express their true desire now in a referendum. Let them cast votes to demonstrate how they want to live and leave the current bloody debacle going on in Nigeria. Lies and deceit serve no purpose. We are living in the era of Freedom and Self Determination, and this Freedom is an inalienable right of every human person, including Igbo/Biafrans. And Freedom and Self Determination like most words should have universally acceptable definitions.
( Osita is a Biafranist who believes that: Human beings have an infinite capacity to improve when they are honest, sincere and determined. And they can achieve great things and attain excellence.)
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