Do we bequeath nothing but fear, ignorance and slavery to our children and our grandchildren in a land where those that believe that they were born to rule constantly terrorise and kill our citizens when they don’t have political power and when they are not ruling from the centre?
Do we, like the proverbial victim of anal rape, bow down, role over, take a deep breath, take it all in and just accept our sorry plight and pathetic fate and condition?
Or do we finally stand up, accept the fact that slavery, rape and bondage are neither natural or acceptable conditions, say ”no more” and ”enough is enough”, put aside our petty differences, rise up like real men and end it once and for all by breaking the country up completely if we cannot get regional autonomy?
How desperately do we want our freedom? Are we ready to pay the price or shall we just continue to fantasise and talk about it in fanciful and long-winded essays, boring and heated verbal debates, endless and, more often than not, uninformed facebook and twitter discussions and in labourious and ill-fated government-sponsored constitutional conference after government-sponsored constitutional conference?
We either remain passive, accept our lot, stop complaining and keep our mouths shut for the next one hundred years or we put our money where our mouth is, demand for change and prepare for a long hard struggle for liberation, autonomy and, ultimately, independence. The choice is ours.
As for me I made my choice long ago. I believe that there are some things that are well above politics and one of those things is nation-building.
I believe that if Nigeria cannot be restructured and power devolved from the centre, in accordance with the will and aspirations of the majority of the people of the south and the Middle Belt, and if this cannot be done quickly and smoothly, I say ”give me Oduduwa or let me die”.
Love me or hate me, that is my stand.
Permit me to conclude this contribution with the words of Senator Femi Okunrounmu, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commitee on the 2014 National Conference. After casting doubt on the possibility of the National Conference achieving any meaningful results he said:
“they (core North) came with a very straight forward agenda, which is to block any change and ensure the sustenance of the status quo. So, the conference has mostly been a clash of the South-west against the core North. While the South-west pushed forcefully for the realisation of all the elements of their agenda, they found themselves almost in every case pitted against the core North, enjoying only lukewarm support from the South-east and a near total indifference from the rest of the country”.
Clearly we are in trouble. For those of us that are still in doubt about the gravity of the situation, that are eternal optimists and that are, despite all, still expecting change under the present system let me end with the insightful words of my friend and brother Mr. Shola Adebowale. In an interesting discussion on my facebook page on 11th June 2014 he wrote,
”Meanwhile,why are we expecting any drastic change from the status quo, after a delegate at the National Conference, Alhaji Usman Farouk, (the former military Administrator of the old Northwestern Region in the early 1970′s), has told us to our faces that: ‘sovereignty is not earned or discussed on a round table, but obtained in a battle field’. He said this whilst he was challenging his colleagues from the south over discussions on the sovereignty of Nigeria and the powers of the executive at the ongoing Constitutional Conference”.
I need say no more. In case we were in any doubt I guess we all know who the real bosses of Nigeria are now and who really owns our country. What a mess we are in. And it is a mess that needs to be cleaned up pretty quickly before all sense of restraint and decency is thrown out of the window and all hell breaks lose. It must be cleaned up before someone decides to ”cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war”.
It is time for us to bury the hatchet and for all southerners including the Igbo and the Yoruba, to come together. We must let bygones be bygones, learn from our past mistakes and not allow ourselves to become slaves of suspicion, history and bitterness. We must also forgive one another for past slights, past insults and past misunderstandings.
