NIGERIA, A REQUIEM OR NUNC DIMITTIS?

Are these signs of the times or the things yet to come? Icheoku is talking about the status of Nigeria? The unity of Nigeria? To remain an entity or not? To be or not to be? Whatever finally becomes the resolution, one thing is clear - the present high agitation is very ominous! Yakubu Gowon, a former head of state of Nigeria was the first person, chorusing the Sarduana of Sokoto Ahmadu Bello refrain, to question the continued existence of Nigeria as one entity. In his famous diatribe, the Plateau State born army man, posited that there is no basis for the continued existence of Nigeria as one entity.

Odumegwu Ojukwu took up arms against the rest of Nigeria because it was his understanding that Nigerians, through their inordinate actions, no longer want the Igbos within "their" country, Nigeria. The father of the recently slain NYSC member, Pa Josiah Akande empathised that the recent mayhem in Jos poses a major threat to the touted unity of the country. According to him, the leadership of the country should re-examine the workability of the said Nigeria unity. Simon Kolawole of Thisday Newspapers commenting on the recent Jos riots, wrote, "Nigerians once again, are questioning the very essence of our union."

"There is no hope for Nigeria" was how a one time senator, Francis Spanner Okpozo who represented Delta South Senatorial District in the Senate during the General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition to civil rule programme, put it. According to the senator, there are a lot of irreconcilable fundamental differences among the various ethnic groups that make up the present Nigeria. Continuing, the senator said, the people of Nigeria are merely pretending on the unity question and unnecessarily delaying and avoiding the evil day.

The former Nigerian Petroleum Minister Tam David-West has it that a very dark cloud is gathering over Nigeria. According to the ex-minister, Nigeria has an illegitimate presidency - Yar'Adua is a legal president because the court has made him so, but the court cannot confer legitimacy on anybody. Continuing Mr. West said, "We have reached the worst; I have never seen Nigeria as corrupt as it is now, and if we don't take time, this country may not survive the next sixty years."

Now that the agitation for Nigerians to go their separate ways has gone a full circle, from the north to the west to the south to the east, Icheoku asks, what is then holding it up? Let the truth be told, none of the component constituents which make up the present Nigeria is impressed with one another - no, they resent each other and very much. They hold one another with a contemptible suspicion and will not hesitate to stick it to one another whenever the circumstance present itself. The supposed harmony and peace of the grave-yard in Nigeria is based on the existing leech-like relationship between the arid north and the richly-endowed south. The lazy parasitic north depends on the resources in the south south to survive, hence will not accede to balkanization of Nigeria because they will starve to death. But should the rest of the country be continuously held hostage by the selfish northern oligarchy? Only time will tell!

Icheoku commends the present bravery of some southerners who are now beginning to openly discourse south's discontentment with the present status-quo of things in Nigeria; and prays that it will not take up to the Tam David-West's projected sixty years before it could bear fruit. The north is singularly fuelling this flamed agitation for "separation" due to their crass arrogant usurpation of what belongs to all Nigerians. All the key parastatals and ministries of the federal government of Nigeria including the customs and excise, the supreme court, the appeal court, the EFCC, Abuja FCT, works and housing, agriculture, justice, finance, defence, national planning, petroleum, are all appropriated by the north; leading one to ask, what then is left for the rest of the country? Nothing but scraps! And who says this condition will remain tolerable and for how long in Nigeria anyway?

The northerners bleed the same blood as the southerners, so why should the south be so afraid to bleed some blood that they concede to the north all that their arrogance desires? The north are brigands who populated the military and uses it as an instrument of cohesion to keep the south in perpetual subjugation and servitude in Nigeria. Enough should be enough of this imbalance as Icheoku would rather, these mallams are stopped either through a peaceful dialogue or using whatever means necessary.

The south shouldn't be the one making all the concessions and all the time, no, things have to change and should change! How can a Fulani man from far away Katsina State be tele-guiding the resources in Bayelsa State when no Bayelsa man has ever had a voice on how the cattle in Katsina is reared? It is a complete absurdity and smacks of stupidity on the part of the south to continue to tolerate this lopsidedness in Nigeria.

Why would the south or some of their leaders be content with just receiving simple handouts from these mallams who blatantly arrogate to themselves the rights to every resources in Nigeria including the oil which is in the south? If this is not a conquered and vanquished state of siege of the south by the north, then nothing else so qualifies. It recently came to Icheoku knowledge that Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida once paid a 250,000 pounds Sterling medical bills of a sick southerner in London and you ask yourself, how much is left from where that one came from? If a panhandler asks you for a quarter and you oblige him, that leaves you with 75 cents plus whatever other money you are with. To the panhandler, he got his 25cents but he was oblivious of the depth of the pocket of his benefactor. This is gradually becoming the fate of the southerners in Nigeria and the matter gets even more maddening when it is the panhandling-south that rightfully owns the source of wealth of the benefactor-north; but is deprived of it by shere brigandage. Icheoku says, Southern Nigeria, it is time you stood up to the north and reclaim your God given natural resources and its concomitant wealth! Any other approach is simply slavish!