AN emergency Federal Executive Council meeting last Wednesday underscored the delicate balance the Nigerian nation had tottered in, in recent days. Although President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in just 15 local government areas across four states, the entire nation appears to actually be in an emergency. That Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting could be likened to a conference of medical experts called to deliberate on how best and quick to attend to a critically ill patient.For ministers who attended last Wednesday's FEC meeting, the sheer mien of the president and the business-like disposition devoid of the usual jokes drove home the point that, truly, the government had quite a lot in its mouth to chew.Almost an unprecedented revolt over a new year oil subsidy removal decision and a 3-day ultimatum by the Boko Haram sect to southerners to leave the North were enough headaches for a government that just got the endorsement of the highest court in the land a few days ago.The fears that something could give way were still in the air even after President Jonathan declared a state of emergency in 15 local governments spread across Borno, Yobe, Plateau and Niger States. The concern for the nation grew with the body language of the countries of the West, traditional allies of Nigeria, whose positions appeared very ambiguous, even covertly patronising the angry elements in the country.What is America up to'It is more than normal that within a spate of one week, key United States foreign policy analysts/advisers warned the US not to do anything to harm Northern Nigeria. This issue hung in the air on Monday January 2, 2012, among analysts of the Nigerian question with the appearance of a strongly worded article in the influential New York Times authored by a US professor, Jean Herskovits. The concern grew against the background that seven days earlier, precisely on December 27, 2011, John Campbell, a former US Ambassador to Nigeria, also addressed the same issue , tacitly suggesting that America distanced itself from the Jonathan administration on the current security challenges posed by the Boko Haram.Herskovits, a Professor of History at the State University of New York at Purchase, indeed, warned that the US must work to avoid becoming an enemy of 'Northern Muslims' including a large number of long time admirers of America.' Campbell, on his own, declared that the United States must not be seen assisting the Jonathan presidency on the Boko Haram challenge so that the sect would not attack 'American targets.'The two Americans have a history of setting perceived agenda for the International public at critical moments in Nigeria's recent history. On 12 January, 2010, at the height of the President Umaru Yar'Adua health crisis and when Nigerians hardly had any information about their president, Herskovits published an explosive article headlined; 'Is the Nigeria President brain dead'' Analysts believed that that piece cleverly leaked American intelligence on the hopelessness of the health situation of Yar'Adua and prepared the minds of stakeholders on the succession matter. A specialist in African history who appears to have very considerable interest in Nigerian affairs, at the threshold of the Second Republic, she was so enamoured by Nigeria's adoption of the American presidentialism that she gleefully shouted that 'Americans should feel comfortable more than Britons' with the political arrangement in Nigeria.Herskovits has since remained more than a keen observer on Nigerian affairs. Nigeria has, however, countered Herskovits through the Nigerian Ambassador in Washington, Professor Adebowale Adefuye. The Nigerian government said the American's assertions were 'grossly incorrect and patently unfair.' Nigeria maintained that relations between it and the United States were 'at an all time high not because Washington is biased towards a Christian president from the South as Jean said, but because, among other things, there is a convergence of, and mutuality of interest in the strategic global objectives of the Obama and Goodluck Jonathan administrations.'Signs that the Americans were not exactly pleased with the security situation in the country showed in November 2011 when the American Embassy issued a statement advising its nationals to stay away from some key hotels in Abuja over fears of planned terrorist attacks. It issued that statement without notifying the Nigerian government.Campbell, in his own case, was an Ambassador who later predicted that Nigeria might cease to exist latest by 2015. These two Americans have never hidden their disappointments with the failure of leadership in Nigeria. A cynically disturbed Campbell in his comments on the contentious fuel subsidy removal fell short of declaring Nigeria bankrupt as he hinted at 'the prospect that the government could be short of money' hence the hugely unpopular decision. He wondered aloud that 'with Boko Haram in the North, the prospect of resumed militant activity in the Delta, and lack of security in Plateau State, why has the government decided to tackle a reform as difficult and contentious as the fuel subsidy now''Campbell was not the only one who querried the wisdom in the decision and especially, its timing. Former military President Ibrahim Babangida described the decision as 'ill-timed,' a judgement echoed by other Nigerians hitherto sympathetic to the government's position.However, for a majority of Nigerians across all divides, that decision taken on New Year's day and at a time Boko Haram's mass killing was still shocking to Nigerians was capable of bringing down the Nigerian roof. But in it all, Jonathan's government maintained that the decision was in the interest of the nation because there was a cabal of the rich feeding fat on the subsidy on oil. Interestingly, those very words had been used before in one Asian country, Indonesia. On May 7, 2008, at the height of a major crisis, very similar to the current one in Nigeria, then Indonesian President Susilo Barnbang Yodoyono appealed to his people to accept his government's withdrawal of fuel subsidy declaring that the poor would benefit from the fuel price increase. His deputy, Yusuf Kalla informed the people that 'the fuel subsidey has been benefitting the rich.' That was four years ago. The system in that country still benefits the rich.The problem of Nigeria is deeper than the oil issue. Every government in recent history has had to contend with the issues of failed leadership manifesting in endemic corruption, conscricted economy, widespread unemployment and debilitating poverty. Thus, the protests that have rocked the nation were merely outlets for people's hitherto unvented spleen on a nation and its poisonous system. Even then, among the protesters were elements who would rather see a solution to the problems in crashing the federatioin. To such people, Nigeria as presently constituted is unfairly structured to favour certain segments to the disadvantage of others.Such people, interestingly, abound across all the nation's six zones. The Boko Haram bombs and its subsequent threats (a day after fuel price hike) that southerners should leave the North within three days, were seen as an indication that Nigeria was ripe for the undertakers. This ignited responses from other ethnic militant groups such as the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and the Niger Delta militants, who warned that Boko Haram did not have a monopoly of violence.Crawford Young, an emeritus Professor of political science at the university of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, in a 1996 piece described Nigeria as a 'constructed nation' and an 'artifact of the colonial partition'. He, however, held that 'both the Nigerian rulers who succeeded to power in 1960 and their estwhile British tutors saw the need for just such nation building.''As they conceived it, Nigerian nationhood rested on three pillars: the state, as competent manager of the public realm; a 'federal character' with equilibrated roles for the three large ethnic communities and the many smaller ethnic minorities; and the democratic process. The growing fear in Nigeria today that a Nigerian nation may be what Soyinka has called a more 'farcial illusion' is the result of manifest dereliction in all three fronts,' he said.Indeed, the history of Nigeria itself (how it got its name and its land mass) clearly holds it out as 'constructed'. Christened 'Nigeria' in 1897 by Flora Shaw, a journalist with The London Times in an anonymous article (written without her name), the nation of disparate nationalities eventually became one country in 1914 courtesy of colonial Governor-General Lord Lugard (who later married Flora Shaw). However, the story of Nigeria under British colonial rule is a narration in cavalier manipulation of ethnicity, language and religion. For their own selfish reasons, the British played one part against the other so much that today's crisis developed directly from the unhealed wounds of those days.A colonial official, Harold Smith, in a London television interview some years ago provided a window into the motives that informed British policies on Nigeria through the period of colonialism to independence. Hear him:'When we assessed Nigeria, this was what we found in the southern region; strength, intelligence, determination to succeed, well established history, complex but focused life style, great hope and aspirations... the East is good in business and technology, the west is good in administration and commerce, law and medicine, but it was a pity we planned our agenda to give power 'at all cost' to the northerner. They seemed to be submissive and stupid of a kind. Our mission was accomplished by destroying the opposition at all fronts. The west led in the fight for the independence, and was punished for asking for freedom. They will not rule Nigeria!''Despite seeing vast land with no human but cattle in the north, we still gave the north 55 million instead of 32 million (in the census). This was to be used to maintain their majority votes and future power bid. The West without Lagos was the most populous in Nigeria at that time but we ignored that. The north was seriously encouraged to go into the military.We believed.. that the south may attend western education,-but future leaders will always come from military background. Their traditional rulers were to be made influential and super human. The northerners were given acceleratcd promotions both in the military and civil service to justify their superiority over the south. Everything was to work against the south. We truncated their good plan for their future. I was very sorry for the A.G; it was a great party too much for African standard. We planned to destroy Awolowo and Azikwe, the west and the east and sowed a seed of discord among them. We tricked Azikiwe into accepting to be president having known that Balewa will be the main man with power. Awolowo had to go to jail to cripple his genius plans for a greater Nigeria. If Northern leaders have any agenda in Nigeria at all, sadly it is only for the north, and nothing for Nigeria. The time has come now to see people of intelligent minds with an open and inclusive agenda for all Nigerians in power... people who will really look after Nigeria's large population... her wealth, her potentials, her future.'An Itsekiri leader, Professor Tony Afejuku, and the leader of the Oodua Peoples Congeess (OPC), Chief Gani Adams, in separate reactions, said there is the need for Nigerians to renegotiate their living together as a nation.According to Afejuku, 'there is need definitely to gather Nigerians, after all, for a sovereign national conference. Today we talk of six different political regions. And the Itsekiris, for instance, were unilaterally grouped in the south south. Who consulted them before they were put there' Who consulted them before they were grouped in that horribly oppressive south south''Let there be a conference where each group, each ethnical group determines its present and future. Lastly, we need to go back to regionalism as we were before 1967. Statism has turned out to be a tragic curse in Nigeria. We need to argue among ourselves to find the correct answers to our present bad and problematic pains. But we shall soon be there,' he said.Gani Adams in his own reaction also said the ethnic groups must sit down and renegotiate the basis of their staying together.'If we want to stay together, we must live in peace in Nigeria. The only way we can have that is by sitting together and re-evaluating this joint project called Nigeria. We have been calling for a restructuring of the federation through a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) since 1993. We forsaw all these crises long ago when we formed the OPC. All self-determination groups- OPC, MEND, MASSOB, have one demand and that is restructuring through the SNC. The same is true of Afenifere and the Ohanaeze. So, all those who love Nigeria should tell the federal government to constitute an SNC now but not the kind of conference of handpicked individuals which Obasanjo held when he was in power...'The amalgamation of 1914 was arbitrary. Look at America, at the beginning, the people sat down and came up with a constitution that has taken care of all its ethnic groups including the red Indians. But in Nigeria, the present constitution was written by 26 hand-picked individuals without consulting Nigerians. The Nigerian structure is terribly lopsided. The last census, for instance gave Kano more people than Lagos when we all know that Lagos is the most populous state in Nigeria. There is no way we can continue like this. Look at these Boko Haram and the needless fuel subsidy removal crises. No one is safe anywhere again. Even those who believe in Nigeria are having a second thought. Restructuring through the SNC is the answer,' the OPC leader said.However, despite the very scary low the nation has sunk, a great number of people believe that it is indissoluble and that it is so lucky to always have a divine hand pulling it back from the brink. Two former presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida, are in this group of optimists. To Obasanjo, 'God is a Nigerian.'IBB, who claimed to have survived eight horrible national crises as president, told a foreign journalist years ago about Nigeria : 'Sometimes you think the whole world is going to end. But no matter the turbulence, no matter the bumps, you realise there is always a way out.
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