SOLVING NIGERIA’S PROBLEM

| by Osita Ebiem

( June 15, 2012, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Nigeria as a country is a construct that will never work. The earlier it is broken up into the conducive and agreeable sections that have ethnic/cultural affinities the better for everyone. Insisting on the present structure of one-Nigeria is mere wishful thinking. It’s practically impossible to work out any modality that will eventually produce the kind of result that the dreamers of a united Nigeria remotely wish for. The continued existence of one-Nigeria can never produce anything more than death, decay, destruction and retrogression. Nigeria by accident or design was created to produce at its best insecurity, poverty, bad governance and unconscionable political corruption all because of the built-in mutual distrust of the component groups. Nigeria at its worst was created to produce ethnic/religious cleansing, pogrom and Biafra Genocide in which 3.1 million Igbo/Biafrans were murdered as a result of ethnic/religious intolerance, hatred and bigotry.

Solution to Nigeria’s problem is simple if those in positions of authority and media people around the world are willing to see it as it truly is. Divide Nigeria into four or more independent sovereign countries and the killings will stop. Hold a plebiscite or referendum supervised by the United Nations to democratically ascertain from the various peoples the sections or groups they want to go along with. Implement the results by separating the warring groups from one another into the new countries of their choice.

So long as we fail to apply this solution, we will continue to harvest the death of children, their mothers and a host of other defenseless peoples imprisoned in the unfortunate one-Nigerian union. Between 1970 and the present time (2012), a period of 42 years an additional 2 million Igbo/Biafran people have died because of the continued existence of one-Nigeria. These people were killed by Nigeria’s Islamic terrorist groups as well as by the Nigerian state through extra-judicial killings. A responsible world cannot sustain such murderous structure or state for whatever reasons. It’s a shame.

The Nigerian problem is indeed very easy to solve if opinion leaders and policy makers around the world are not merely (mischievously?) over-analyzing the situation. Most observers have been tempted to conclude that the seemingly insincere approach of the world community is because most of the people involved in discussing the issue are completely detached from any direct effect of the dastardly unspeakable events. These analysts are not being directly affected so for them the Igbo/Biafrans’ deaths can as well not be happening. The natural tendency in most people it seems is that once it is not their children or family members that are getting killed then it is easy to analyze endlessly even when all the right cards are clearly on the table.

But for the sake of decency, honesty, justice and doing what is right, we can choose to walk the path of truth and apply the right solution to Nigeria’s problem. We can choose to accept the fact that Nigeria’s problem has nothing to do with poverty, bad governance, corruption or any such mocking phrases being bandied around. We can solve Nigeria’s problem by truthfully accepting that Nigeria’s problem solely consists in the irreconcilable ethnic, cultural and religious disparities that exist amongst the various peoples. We can solve Nigeria’s problem by separating the warring groups into their different independent sovereign countries. Then we would have put a final stop to the seemingly unending one-Nigerian clash of civilizations or collision of divergent cultures. Divide Nigeria now.