By Uji Wilfred Terlumun

Over sixty years ago, Nigeria, like other nations of the world, set out on the journey to be an independent nation free from the shackles of slavery, oppression and inequality.Nigeria, like the United States of America, had an ambitious and utopian dream where people could be free with equal access and opportunities to development, protection and security.

In the United States of America, Independence was attained not on a platter of gold without blood and sacrifice, but, mobilized through the people in a sustained revolutionary warfare against Great Britain. The American Revolution that led to the Independence of 1774, was a mass revolution that produced a declaration of freedom, justice and human rights. The declaration of freedom simply stated that”All men are born equal with certain alienable rights endowed them by God irrespective of race, creed and nationality.”Undoubtedly, the American declaration of freedom became the basic comer stone and driving force that has continued to shape some define the struggle for the realization of freedom in America from the American Civil War leading up the Civil Rights Movement up to the Affirmative Action Movement that secured the basic human rights of minority groups in the United States of America. America is an embodiment of freedom and the struggle for freedom, whatever it entails, has been the major driving force of United States political history since the era of the founding fathers.Nigeria became an Independent Nation on the First of October, 1960, not through a revolutionary struggle, but rather, through a systematic compromise and collaboration with the International capitalist system that agreed on a transfer of political power to the ruling political class of Nigeria while the commanding heights of the economy were controlled by the international capitalist system. Nigeria’s Independence, unlike that of the United States of America, came short of a revolutionary declaration of freedom as the basic articles of freedom that all Nigerians, irrespective of ethnicity and religion, are entitled to.The founding fathers of Nigeria such as Dr Nnamdi Akiziwe, Anthony Enahoro, Obafemi Awolowo , described the Flag Independence of Nigeria as the transfer of political power to the national political ruling class, on a platter of gold. They lamented that Nigeria’s Independence struggle did not produce Martyrs and heroes as compared to other nations like the Congo, Algeria, Egypt etc. In the First, Second and Third National Development Plan, Nigeria produced a national development blueprint that expressed the ideas of freedom and justice. Upon independence, the foundation father’s of Nigeria envisaged”A free, just, egalitarian and dynamic nation full of bright and equal opportunities for all” The first acid test of a free and egalitarian society in Nigeria was the civil war between 1967 and 1971, which many analyst including some international observers described as a modern genocide war against the Ibo nationality. One of Nigeria’s founding father’s endorsed and deployed the weaponization of hunger against the Ibo nationality as a strategy of war.Whatever the misgivings and the differences, in terms of the polemics of blame and perspectives to the war, the Nigerian civil war, to some extent, did not secure freedom and justice for the Ibo nationality. The evidence for this kind of assertion is manifest in the contemporary struggle by the Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafra by the IPOD.Over fifty years after the civil war, the nostalgia and euphoria of a Biafran nation, there was a country that, in the words of Chinua Achebe, still exists in the soul and consciousness of the Ibo people.The Post civil war era came up with the policy of Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction, to reposition the integration of the Ibo people into mainstream Nigeria. Despite these efforts at national reconciliation and rehabilitation, people of Ibo nationality have not witnessed nor seen a free and egalitarian Nigeria where they have the kind of freedom and liberty enjoyed by the other major ethnic groups of the Fulani and Yoruba. In the military, national politics and economy, the dream of egalitarianism and freedom seems distant and isolated to the Ibo nationality.The American civil war was a defining point and compass for black African emancipation and freedom but the Nigerian civil war could not attain the objective of freedom and equality for the Ibo people. Through the institutionalization of ethnicity and religion, the Ibo have suffered marginalization and isolation from holding strategic military and leadership positions in Nigeria.We have to pause for a minute, is Nigeria a just, free and egalitarian society. On paper, we seem to have a declaration of freedom but in practice and reality, what exist is inequality and injustice. For instance, Nigeria’s national anthem, inherited from the colonial past, described and referred to Nigerians as “tribes and tongue”, a sense of disunity and unbalanced society. The national anthem further prayed and requested for God to help build a nation where no man is oppressed. From the beginning of our nationhood what the nation envisaged was the existence of tribes and tongues that were under one form of oppression and injustice. In other words, disunity and injustice which dated back to the colonial foundations that created a tripartite system which gave preponderance to the politics of regionalism and ethnicity. Arising from the contradictions of the tripartite system fueled and exacerbated by centrifugal and centripetal forces, Nigeria’s dream of a free, just and egalitarian society has remained an illusion and a sham.In contemporary times, Nigeria’s dream of a free and just society has come under further scrutiny and test. The rise of militant political Islam in the far Northern Nigeria has given birth to the Boko HaramMovement and the Islamic State, with the biggest and greatest threat to a free, just and egalitarian society.In recent times, in addition to the Nigerian civil war, militant political Islam with it’s deadly concomitant of militant herdsmen, constitutes another major acid test of Nigeria’s free and egalitarian society. How free and unjust is a nation where the Boko Haram Movement took hundreds of captives of School Children in the Chibok and Dapchi school invasion that defiled every diplomatic and military efforts by the Nigerian Government to free the captives and return them back home to their parents.The story of Leah, captured by the Chibok invasion has reminded us of the struggle for freedom and intersected by the resilience and determination of Minority Christian Groups in Nigeria to be free and just people. The Boko Haram Movement with a sense of brutality and impunity decapitated Christian Leaders who believed and exercised their fundamental right of freedom of conscience and expression.On the heels of the Boko Haram Movement, Militant Herdsmen Milita Groups led by Meyyiti Allah Katohore rolled out some of the bloodiest and gruesome genocides of the twenty first century across Northern Nigeria. The most recent episodes has been the genocide at Yelwata in July of this year that attracted the condemnation of the global community, the Papacy in the Vatican, as a massacre. Despite the prompt intervention of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the hideous and cruel killings of innocent and defenceless rural farmers, with the dislocations of their economy with the attending consequences of mass displacement of populations as refugees facing a looming food insecurity and hunger, all of these have continued to shape and define the political and social landscaping of Nigeria on a day to day basis.North Central of Nigeria in particular has been reduced to the worst theatres of violent conflicts and ethnic decimation that negates the idea and sense of a free and just society. In States such as Nasarawa State, Plateau State and Benue State, as well as Taraba in the North East, their is an Institutionalized process of Modern Slavery and land grabbing which has led to the displacement of minority groups in the hands ethnic majorities of the respective states. Some of the land grabbing issues and cases of genocide have attracted legal litigation in some courts of law.In conclusion, how just, free and egalitarian is Nigeria where the poverty rate is as high as seventy percent with a rising rural unemployment, food insecurity as well as a galloping inflation and interest rates that is over fifteen percent. Recent statistics from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, including Nigeria’s National Board of Statistics and the Central Bank, indicates growth in the informal nano sector but expressed dismay and concern at a rising poverty and unemployment in general terms. These statistics underscore the strategic consideration of the impact of poverty and helplessness against the true meaning of a just and free society.It is important to note that as a nation, we may have made progress here and there but the degree of anomie and helplessness is wide spread cutting across the entire population and segment of society and it is deplorable and deep as the days go by.President Bola Ahmed Tinubu under the Social Investment schemes of his administration has reached out to millions of Nigerians creating millions of jobs but, his reform and transformational agenda should be matched side by side with the urgent national need to protect and defend minority groups and rights especially vulnerable groups such as women, children, christians, old people etc. There is need for theFederal Government to establish a National Bureau for Ethnic Relations and Inter Group Unity to handle and manage the challenge of ethnic engineering and inter group relations.There is a need for a national agency that manages and engineers the complex and often diverse and explosive nature of ethnic relations in Nigeria moreso as it touches on the fundamental issues of a free, just and egalitarian society.