By Gabriel Apata

The storms are gathering. Thunder rumbles, claps then crackle across the sky in rapid succession like reports of gunfire, the echoes dying in the distant far. Between the thundery claps, lightening strikes and sparkles, lighting up the dark brooding night.

Good old George Berkeley, a philosopher and a Bishop once said: ‘we kick up dust then complain we cannot see’. Let’s stop kicking dust before we all go blind, is what I say. But they are growing this self-determination calls, like trees they are growing, now tall and nearer the sun, where the leaves would wither and die, the stems dry and haggard, sharp like spikes.

Oduduwa Nation here, Biafra there, Arewa not far behind, but the sad truth is that Nigeria will never break up. One should never say never but a break-up is remote and here’s why. Saying this much I see glazed eyes widening, widening with astonishment that such a claim could even be suggested. I hear a deafening chorus of rubbish from advocates of self-determination. This much is to be expected. Many have unquestioningly bought this ethno-nationalist dream, impaled on its hook; the fish is out of the water, mouth opening and closing as though yearning to say something, but gasping on the end of a line for dear life. You cannot drown a fish, but you can suffocate it on land. Left marooned on the island of frustration by the nation’s endless sorry passes, they seek separation, believing it the solution to the country’s myriad ailments. This, I believe is an error.

For many, the Nigerian project was a mistake from the start. The British knitted this tapestry of different groups together then baked of it a cake of political union. It was a bad cake that tasted foul and no one wanted to eat of it. That was at first, but once the appetite was whetted they consumed it voraciously until 1960 when again it tasted sour again. After 1960 Nigerians thought they could bake themselves a fresh cake, a cake of their own, but soon found cake-baking with too many ingredients very tricky indeed. So they looked back to 1914, believing that was when the problem started. The quest now is to unwind the past, break the cordage and throw off the yoke of amalgamation, unshackle the tie that binds and burst the damn of imprisonment and let freedom reign across the land. If people cannot live together in peace they should go their separate ways in pieces. But did they ever?  What is done cannot be undone, says old Will Shakespeare. Whichever way it was formed Nigeria is a reality that cannot be changed. The offspring of a couple not right for each other is but the reality of that union.

Nigeria faces many challenges that have caused the population great concern. These frustrations cannot be overlooked or ignored but must be tackled head on. The question is whether separation is the answer. I think not. The factors that drive agitation for self-determination are well known but would not be rehearsed here; but some things are worth saying. Few would agree that the current structure is balanced, fair, just or equitable. Many are aggrieved by it and a government’s duty, amongst others, is to listen to the concerns and grievances of its citizens –   all its citizens – and to address those concerns like a parent would a child even if he or she thinks those grievances are groundless.

But here is the thing. Southerners – and I use the term loosely to refer to those who call the lands south of the Niger home – have never truly understood or tried to understand northerners, instead they remain certain in the belief that northerners are a backward, uneducated, uncivilized primitive people, with whom they have been yoked in an unholy amalgamation that has never worked. They never stop to ask why this putatively backward uncivilized people now hold the balance of political power over the supposedly better educated and smart Southerners. I will tell you why. Northerners are not as backward or as stupid as people assume. There is method to their manner. But the silver arrow in the northern quiver is unity, which the south sadly lacks. While the still waters of the north run deep, gathering moss that settles still, the rushing currents of the south crash over rocks and things gathering no enduring mosses of its own. Southerners are like the fox, smart, quick and clever while northerners are like the slow tortoise. But the supposed sluggishness of the northern tortoise is deceptive, quietly going about its business by stealth, without a hum or murmur, consolidating gains that send cold shivers down the spine of the southern fox. Lack of unity has been the Achilles heel of the south, a weakness that has undone it many times in the past and will continue to do so even if self-determination were grasped. The south just cannot unite. Its present façade of unity has been fashioned upon the altar of the belief that it faces a ‘common enemy’.

Two. Southerners are deeply materialistic and hedonism is their most cherished aspiration. A funeral, for instance, sets the average southerner back millions of Naira – recall Cubana’s recent burial of his mother at the cost of some billions. A northerner meanwhile will bury his dead, immediately and without fuss at a fraction of that cost. These divergent philosophies are significant since they speak to different psychologies, mentalities and approaches. Individualism drives the pursuit of materialism and hedonism, which in turn drives a wedge through the community. This is the legacy of modernity, which southerners have imbibed tout court.

Reality is the solidification of thoughts and ideas in action. Customs rest on rituals and repetition like water turns into blocks of ice. The permafrost of ethnicity holds everything together in this unbreakable solidity even though it was all invented. Against this fantasy and wishful thinking is the reality that is present day Nigeria. Many who wish to see the country to break-up no doubt see reasons eminently sensible to them why this should happen. To them the problems that confront the people has little or nothing to do with ethnic or tribal differences. Yet, the average Nigerian is disadvantaged by members of his or her own kind (tribe, group) than by someone from other ethnic group. Since Awo passed, what have Yoruba leaders done for the Yoruba people (the Oduduwa people), or the Igbo leaders for Igbo people, and Hausa-Fulani leaders for the Hausa-Fulani people, except impoverish them by feeding them dollops of ethno-religious nationalism to keep them satisfied like a dummy in the mouth of a hungry crying baby who needs food. But just as the dummy is no food and the hungry child cries still, the dummy is shoved back into its mouth. And on and on and on it goes until the child begins to fight the dummy thinking it is the cause of its hunger. It is all a distraction from failure of leadership. They keep the people on life-support with drips of tribe, tribe tribe trickling down their veins. But one cannot live on a diet of tribal difference alone.

As the pangs of hunger gnaw at empty stomachs, the mass fights each other upon the belief the enemy is the other tribe and not their leaders. What care has been shown to the poor, the dying, the diseased, those suffering from malnutrition, the badly educated, the poor roads and so on in their midst? Poverty, squalor, malnutrition, poor health and many more know no tribe or religion and care not whether you are Igbo, Hausa, or Yoruba. Each assails the mind, body and the soul just the same. These are the predicaments from which most Nigerians suffer daily not from some manufactured ethnic problem. If tribe is the problem why do the average Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba families live side by side without rancour?

None of these problems would self-determination resolve. If anyone were under the illusion that self-determination would usher in nirvana for the proposed Oduduwa or Biafra they only need to look to the past to see what independence looks like across Africa. Cast your mind, if you can, or are old enough, to the euphoria that greeted independence in 1960 when that night many lost their lives just from revelry induced by sheer joy. Sixty years hence and that euphoria has died, replaced by despair. This is what freedom looks like in Nigeria: merely moving from one shackle to another in the name of freedom. The pyramid is turned upside-down, now on its pinhead, it wobbles from side to side threatening to topple. All it needs is a gentle push or whispering blow of air and it will topple, but it will not break; all that would happen is pain and more suffering.

No region of the country has shown itself mature or capable enough to found a country. No single region of the country is remarkably better than another. Claims of rubbish would again ring out as some would point to fledging Biafra and how it managed to sustain itself for 30 months. The problem with the Biafran example is that time did not allow us to see how that nation would have panned out. Its unity depended on facing a common enemy, just as we see now with Oduduwa nation. In a sense, Oduduwa nation exists already: it is called South-South. What an area it is. Ibadan has not changed in a hundred years. Mapo Hall stands an empty shell of its former self, while dusty brown corrugated iron sheets remain the covers over many people sheltered abodes. Just as they were all those decades ago. Some might say, at least we live in peace. Really? Then they’ve never heard of Operation Wetię. The same goes for the East and the North. Omo ti o ba ma je ashamu lati kekere ni o tima j’enu shamu shamu, the Yoruba say – the smartness of an individual is discernible in childhood.  We can tell what self-determination will look like by looking at what these areas look like now.