I write from a diasporean perspective. And still do even though I have been back in the Country for at least a Decade but thanks to technology turning the World into a global village, I have not lost touch with my diasporean experience which from the realities of living at home in Nigeria, has made my senses keener whilst comparing my experience abroad with living at home in pondering over the solutions to ensure a greater Nigeria.

It is a unique perspective, having had the fortune of being born out of Nigeria and lived both abroad and within Nigeria surfing the social, educational and professional waters of these quite differing yet obliquely similar Worlds. My intention is to ‘detonate’ and destroy brainwashed ‘colonial’ thinking; it is to uproot colonially- influenced educational maleficent direction; it is to introduce the reader to the joys of original and independent thinking, mind- setting and objectivity. It brokers no peace for the occluded. For the cognitively dissonant. For the otiosely and fundamentalist-thinking ritualist who claims to be ‘religious’. .

In London, United Kingdom [UK] back in the late Nineties, as the Abacha/Abiola saga was coming to a head and having interacted with ‘players’ in the Nigerian space, professionally and personally as I entered early mature adulthood, I had a ‘Eureka’ moment. it suddenly dawned on me with incredulous certainty that Nigerians were not the ‘problem’ of Nigeria – the seemingly intractable challenges she faced and which seemed almost always likely to overwhelm her but somehow never really did. I coined a phrase that these challenges were orchestrated between the ‘halls of Whitehall and the White House’ ably assisted by their Occidental allies!

I had no real data to support my growing conviction but it seemed to me that the penny had finally dropped! All the research and knowledge I had garnered knowingly and unknowingly, consciously and unconsciously, through primary to tertiary education, experientially and outside formal education had led me to this poignant conclusion: the rationes for Nigeria’s challenges were sponsored by foreigners! Nigerians on their own were foremost in their endeavours, interactions and application in their various fields. Nigerians are notable for their intelligence quotient and achievements across the board. Left to themselves Nigerians and Nigeria would have no problem but flourish most naturally.

I came to this conclusion ironically abroad in the land of the UK – our colonial ‘parasites’ – the gestalt but not the only reason for Nigeria’s fundamental and foremost challenges that haunt her till date. It is easier to appreciate and understand these issues looking at Nigeria as a ‘Project’. That was the original intention of the creators of Nigeria. The Colonialists. Not Azikiwe or Awolowo etc as we were taught most insidiously amongst other things that they were the ‘fathers of the Nigerian State’. We innocently believed back then. We should also examine the vision of the original creators and why the Northern and Southern Protectorates were amalgamated in 1914. It was not for convenience of unity and bonding but based purely on commercial considerations. These points need to be examined.

It is now 25 years – a Generation – later. A great deal of ‘surfed’ water has passed under the bridge and I have seen the origins and excitement of the birth of the Third Republic – a Civil, not military dispensation. Today I am experiencing with my fellow Nigerians, the travails besetting Nigeria’s Third Republic as it lurches from an uncertain yet hopeful birth through the travails of ungainly youth and now in the throes of young adulthood beset with the indulgencies of impotent leadership and myopic vision – exposed haplessly to the menacing temptations of vice’s twin sisters: drugs and alcohol. So Nigeria lurches on…

…these travails have never been more keenly felt than today.

In the same intervening period, the elements that gave rise to my nagging conclusions that Nigeria’s challenges take root in external rather than internal factors began to emerge. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s songs began to make sense beyond the latent humour to the stark realities of life after colonialism in Nigeria and indeed in Africa. I will discuss some of these factors but let me first attempt to address some rather awkward and controversial issues:

Did Nigeria truly attain ‘Independence’?

We never ask, we assume we know what ‘independence’ in this parlance means. I ask YOU: ‘independence’ from what? In real terms we say that we achieved self-governance from the United Kingdom [UK], which colonised ‘us’ and ‘gave’ us ‘independence’. That is what we were taught from primary school. That is what we’ve always known. That our colonial ‘masters’ United Kingdom, granted us ‘independence’ but is that true?

Nigeria is on paper, an ‘independent’ Republic and sovereign Country. We however did not wrest control of the ‘geographical expression’ called Nigeria. We ended up negotiating for it and in so doing, only secured what I describe as the proverbial ‘poisoned chalice’ – a deal that suited our Colonial Antagonist. I always wonder why our People tend to see the Colonialists as ‘genteel’ and

well-meaning to us-ward the ‘colonised’. Where did we get the idea that a Country that saw your human resources as cannon fodder for their factories and agricultural industries, and when they could no longer openly enslave you and your resources, decided to ‘enslave’ your entire land for which they forcibly carved unnatural boundaries, artificially dividing ethnic groups and African Kingdoms, separating the people and their homes and in this process, massacred your ancestors, Africans in the hundreds of thousands to millions; going so far as to alienate your ways of life – temporal and spiritual; decimated your traditions and customs and in fact labelled them mainly as ‘repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience’ and for the rest, consigned them to secondary or unofficial regulation-status but made their imported foreign rules as our standard and official Laws up till date – as humane and ‘civil’ and working for our ‘development and growth’. In fact it has been argued that every October 1st is a celebration of our neocolonialisation – for the successful transition of colonialism into its new format but christening it ‘independence’.

Talking of ‘independence’, the ‘geographical expression’ known as Nigeria has a unique if chequered colonial history. It was colonised in recent recorded history, twice: by the Fulani Empire spreading from the Futa Jalon Mountains in Guinea spreading across the whole of West Africa spreading into the Nigerian ‘Space’ led by Uthman Dan Fodio in the North conquering the great Hausa Kingdom and all the lesser Ethnic Nations across the North cutting great swathes across the Savannah and going so far as to stretch all the way from the Northern borders of what is now Nigeria all the way to the borders of the ancient Kanem-Bornu Empire and spreading all the way down to the Middle Belt Regions of Nigeria and into the Northern Regions of the former Oyo Empire having taking Ilorin [Kwara] and all the areas surrounding it and keeping an uneasy peace as it sought vainly to conquer the Peoples of the Middle Belt. The Jukuns and the Tivs, for example, were a major stumbling block and they had little or no purchase in subduing the warrior Ethnic Nations of the Middle Belt. The dream of the Fulani was to ‘dip the Qur’an into the Atlantic Ocean’ – a dream of Dan Fodio it has been reputedly said. It was a political and therefore ‘colonial’ conquest of the indigenous Nations in those areas wearing the toga of religion [‘Jihad’].

The Fulani Empire’s military advance into Nigeria today was only eventually halted in its entirety by the other ‘colonial parasites’, the United Kingdom which was arguably the major World Power at the time, during its own march across the land in its bid to colonise and annex the whole of the area which the UK or British Empire eventually called ‘Nigeria’. They too wore the ‘toga’ of religion in their claim to ‘civilise’ the ‘Natives’ in their own land. Our political history will easily reveal, during the period of colonisation from the late 19th Century, under the pervading influence of the first Governor-General of Nigeria, Lord Frederick Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard, a sado-masochist and mass murderer who had plied his brutal and totalitarian ‘trade’ in the Eastern parts of Africa, where he was Military Administrator of Uganda between 1890 – 1892, before he was set ‘loose’ on the Peoples of the Regions that became Nigeria and was the greatest singular factor for the successful establishment of colonisation in Nigeria, up till 1960 under several Governors who replaced him; that the local inhabitants especially in the Southern Regions, agitated for ‘independence’, that is ‘self-governance’ and removal of the socio-political presence of the Colonialists from Nigeria. The agitation for independence took several decades to reach the compromise with Colonial UK. Lugard was especially against the education of what he called ‘Natives’ and detested the educated Southerners who he saw as a threat and sought to subjugate.

The reluctance of their Northern counterparts is well known – even legendary. They did not want ‘independence’ from the Colonialists at all. It was the UK that persuaded them to remain promising them that they will ensure that obtain favourable terms. The Southern agitators were apparently happy to make significant concessions to accommodate them in the affairs of the newly self- governing independent Country to be. With information available today, that position is now in doubt as the Colonialists were not averse to using manipulation and blackmail to achieve its aims. It should be noted that in dealing with the North, although the UK realised that the Fulanis had subjugated the Hausa Kingdoms and other peoples of the North and created Emirates over the local people’s lands, unlike in the South, they did not dismantle the Fulani institutions established over the local peoples but used it to administrative advantage in applying their ‘divide and rule’ policies. This contradicted their claims that they sought to ‘civilise’ the Colonised and introduce them to God through the Bible. They did not evangelise the North or send missionaries in any significant if at all as part of their colonisation drive.

The British Empire ran their Colonies according to strategic administrative and manipulative advantage, which was only natural. It remains controversial up till today but it is clear that in setting structures to leave Nigeria, the UK decided to leave the North with certain advantages and this included manipulating fraudulently the National Census they undertook and the Independence Elections which they organised. The Empire also ensured that it applied its divide and rule policy to maximum effect in the South breaking up the South into West, East and separated Lagos as a Federal Capital Territory but leaving the North [which incorporated the Middle Belt as ‘North Central’] intact. The devastating consequences and effects of this policy is arduously felt across the South of Nigeria up till today. In politics today, the West and East find themselves daggers drawn for inexplicable reasons they cannot really identify and refuse to assess and hold on to real or mythical generational angst.

The elephant in the room so to speak and what has been completely ignored was the 19th Century invasion by the Fulanis and the consequences. In the Region the British self-styled ‘the Middle East’ [it has no geographical basis just like ‘South-South’ – a geographical misnomer], the issue of the Palestinians and the invasion by the Israelis who systematically have been obtaining vast swathes of Palestine at the expense of the locals is on the News almost on a daily basis. The suffering of the Palestinians is carried in the news showcasing the sheer unfairness and brutality of it all with the daily murders and even pogroms. A lot of propaganda is bandied by the two main groups especially by the Israeli to justify their act of occupation and systematic annihilation. It is what it is. The Israeli claim the land was promised to Abraham by God, they cry. There is no evidence of their direct relationship with biblical Abraham but that is another story.

Back home, no one hears the silent tears and cries of the Nigerians in the North whose lands have been occupied for more than 150 years – especially the Hausas. Why has there not been a call to resolve the Fulani Empire invasion of the Northern Regions of Nigeria up till today to ensure balanced Independence OR is African colonisation an acceptable norm that must continue in perpetuity? Is this in accord with the Rule of Law? Is this act of colonisation not repugnant to ‘good conscience, equity and natural justice’? The recent spat between two Fulani fighting over the Emirate of Kano, a strong enclave of the Hausa Kingdoms – brings this stark contradiction into focus. Do the protagonists actually ‘own’ the land by origin, over which they are claiming titular bragging rights? When would the issue of ‘independence’ from the Fulani Empire’s colonisation through its imposed Emirates across the Northern Region of Nigeria be discussed and solutions reached for the benefit of the original owners of the land – the indigenous Peoples of those areas? Is this unresolved situation not fuelling the almost daily terrorist acts of ‘unknown gunmen’, ‘boko haram’ and ‘Fulani herdsmen’ in no particular order, wiping out indigenous Nigerians and their villages especially up North and which has been called a crime of ethnic cleansing?

Why have successive Nigerian Governments since ‘Independence’, failed to address, tackle but ignored this artificial situation, which has not improved one bit but is steadily getting worse? It is wisdom that this matter be tackled beneficially for everyone. As American freedom fighter, Martin Luther King Jr. pondering over these type of issues in an Alabama jail back in the 1960s, said –

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

This issue affects all Nigerian Citizens directly. We cannot afford to play the Ostrich and proverbially bury our collective heads in the sand concerning this matter. Should there not be a Convention for the determination of the original rights and powers of the locals [now indigenous Nigerians] in the Northern States whose Lands and Political/Traditional power were seized by the Colonial Jihadist Fulanis; convened to deal with the consequences of Fulani colonisation? Where are the guaranteed fundamental human rights of those Fulani-conquered Peoples in the North – our fellow Nigerian Citizens? In light of the recent terrorist activities and breakdown of security and the inability of our security forces to handle the menace of terrorism, can we say that the drive to ‘colonise’ the Peoples of the North percolating to indigenous Nigerians across the Nigerian Space is over? It will be observed that these lands and territories of the North were particularly targeted by what eventually became known as ‘Fulani herdsmen’, terrorists that pillaged almost wantonly across Nigeria during the reign of General Muhammadu Buhari [Rtd.], President of the Republic of Nigeria – a Fulani. His term in Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria [POTFRN] was marked with noticeable difficulty to deal decisively with the terrorism challenge and lack of empathy for the victims [indigenous Nigerians] of the gruesome and heinous attacks of the terrorists. It marked the worst period in the history of Nigeria in which her Citizens were routinely attacked and murdered with a Government that sounded hapless at best. Was this a deliberate Government anti-Constitutional policy? Failure to resolve this issue with ‘Fulani Jihad colonisation’ is the fundamental reason for these doubts, these issues, these challenges today including flagrant abuses of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The conduct of the Northern States in brazenly breaching Section 10 therein is a case in point. We need to address this if we want to develop as a Country indeed but do we?

So It begs the question: Has the issue of ‘independence’ being fully dealt with? Is Nigeria therefore truly ‘independent’? We should also ask: does Nigeria present as an ‘independent Country’ in its agro-economic, technological, educational, scientific, military, socio-political and religious policies? Does its best talents influence its management and vision today? Every progressive Country ensures that its brightest talents and influencers runs its affairs and creates Institutions to ensure it unearths its best talents to run its affairs from sports, to science to leadership across all of its socio-cultural strata. The examples of UK itself, China and Singapore and ordinarily the United States of America [until recently it may be argued] and Switzerland prove this point. Can we say that is the same for Nigeria?

Let’s take a cursory glance at some areas of our Socio-cultural development: Are our best talents representing us? We could not secure even one medal at the 2024 Olympics! Our Sports management is so corrupt and decrepit, it demands full attention in a separate article. In Education, our Academics are now advocating for a score of 100/400 in the entrance examinations for entry into Polytechnics and 140/400 to enter into Universities!! Government Policies on Education have over the last 40-50 years deliberately truncated the development of our Educational Institutions so that our Universities are hardly in the top 1,000 Universities around the World. At the last count there were only TWO! It is a tragedy! We have harebrained policies such as removing History as a major subject from our educational syllabus. Why? Who is afraid of history?! Our Nigerian Historians silence is reverberating in cacophonic cadence against the welfare of the next Generation. Who happened to us?

In the Uniformed cadre, it is ‘normal’ that heads of the Uniformed Institutions are politicised rather than merited Offices. Persons are appointed at the whims of Government officials usually dominated by self-interest at the expense of development, sustenance and steady development. When very Junior officers are appointed to head these Offices it leads to the mass retirements of very senior officers well and highly trained with tax payers money but whose value to the Country is wasted when their careers are artificially terminated as they are not allowed to fulfil their terms of office in the service of the Country. This reckless decimation of trained talent and expense to the Country is routinely ignored and never addressed. You are told that is how it is – should it be so? They are voluntarily retired without a second thought! Is that how we should appoint our best talents to head these sensitive Organisations? These Institutions are also ethnicised and as observed usually across unresolved local colonisation issues and conflicts which we ignore at great danger to our Societal continuity in trenchant abuse of our Constitution. It must be said that the Buhari era witnessed some of the grossest acts of nepotism ever witnessed by Nigeria across the board in blatant and flagrant breach of Part II of the Constitution dealing with principles of State Policy from Section 13 onwards.

Our Judiciary has a system of promotion mostly through civil service based on years of experience rather than an open System allowing the best talents at Bar and Bench to participate in the appointments to the Bench. Our Political System is the most egregious and is the greatest cankerworm eating ravenously the largesse of our Commonwealth. We run perhaps the most expensive political system in the World providing such rich offerings to the Politicians that the fight for political office has become literally, a matter of life and death using all manner of weapons – both esoteric and physical! And the predilection of Political Parties to pick unsuitable candidates is gobsmacking. The APC candidate for the coming Edo State Elections struggled most painfully with articulation at one of his political rallies. It was embarrassing. Why this descent into orthodox kakistocracy? It is symptomatic of a Country that is caught bound up by circumstances that clearly impugn her independence.

Is Nigeria in control of its resources – human and mineral? Is Nigeria militarily secure on land, air and sea? Are our borders secure or compromised? If the answer is NO to at least one of these questions, then Nigeria is NOT independent. It may be an independent Country de jure but certainly not de facto. Can we therefore say Nigeria presents as a Nation?

We should note that just as it happened across Africa, Nigeria is largely made of Kingdoms that were ‘fractured’ across her borders whilst some of these Ethnic Nations and Kingdoms or Empires were wholly within her borders. It is a mixed pot pourri of Nation States. Fiercely independent and proud Nations who have never forgotten their origins despite decades of Colonisation. A cursory study across the African West Coast and to other Regions of Africa will reveal that these artificial borders and the breaking up of Kingdoms to satisfy the interests of European Colonialists as famously held at the 1884 Berlin Conference reveals that contrary to widely held opinion, the domination of Africa by the Colonialists and their occidental Allies has been at least 600-700 years old. Not the since the 19th Century as we were brainwashed to believe back in secondary school. The Conference was simply an organised dividing of the spoils the Europeans had acquired over Centuries and which was causing wars amongst them within Africa. It was a meeting of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ and an opportunity to play Monopoly only this time deciding on who had what by negotiating between them rather than allowing a toss of the dice and relying on chance.

It is my humble opinion that if we truly want to make progress and become a fused unified Nation State, compromising of the differing Nation States in which it is argued there are at least 371 or more Nations, we have to bell the proverbial cat of not only the unfettered consequences of British Colonisation and neocolonialism [have they really left?] and its effects today after more than 60 years but the ignored and unsettled issue of the Fulani Empire ‘colonisation’ and its effect on the Nigeria we have today. Those in the North under the influence of the imposed Emirates across the North cannot truly say they are ’independent’ so it is the responsibility of the Nigerian Government to wake up to this reality, confront and address the issue once and for all and protect all indigenous Nigerian Citizens. The local agitation for this has been building for quite some time. It is one singular reason why Nigeria is having developmental ‘spasms’ because two political Kingdoms are fighting amongst themselves with the one seeking to dominate the others, insidiously, manipulatively, militarily, politically.. It will explain for example why the previous Buhari Government-sponsored bizarre policies seeking to develop the Niger Republic rather than concentrate on the development of Nigeria for one. The examples of such strange policies have been actively captured in today’s Media. It is symptomatic of the influences of a local colonising influence conflicting with the indigenous interests of a local people seeking to enforce their independence, their will, their Divine right to control their resources and their destiny. This struggle still continues. What should we do about it?

It is symptomatic of a Country still forcibly held in Colonial thrall in which ‘independence’ is a by-word, an Orwellianism. It is this fearful divide that is the reason for the continued despoliation of a Country made up of great Nations both whole and fractured. A Country that faces a nether Enemy intent on keeping it in such thrall that it cannot have time to be ‘independent’ enough to get its act together and maximise its potential using its best brains and best policies but to be kept mugged, pliant and willing to serve the will of a pretentious and wily Enemy whose goal is to keep Africa subject for at least a Millenia [in this era,it is identified as Neocolonialism]. By my calculation, those that seek to rule Africa have achieved at least 700 years of their vision so far. This must be changed. It cannot continue to endure.

So let’s talk about … much to mull through.