Nigeria’s Eclectic Union

I felt like resting a while. Therefore, I lay down on my bed, closed my eyes, relaxed and waited on sleep to come bear me away to the place of dreams. However, I realized I had been gently borne into the mental realm—the limitless ocean of thoughts—where thoughts are truly alive, and like-thought waves float about in clusters; take on voices and forms, and dwell in the exact colours which depict their nature—that place where one’s thoughts are instantly manifested.

Didactic. Emphatic. Commanding attention. A strong thought-wave drifted into me, saying: 

“It is ideas and ideologies that rule humans and their societies. Ideas and ideologies also mould the nature of an individual or society.”

“Yes, I know.” I responded.

The thought continued speaking. Seemingly ignoring my reaction.

“When our individual ideas are divergent or in conflict with one another, it is practically impossible for us to work together. Any society in which different peoples with divergent social outlooks and world views are lumped together, and forced to co-exist, can conveniently be described as an eclectic society. Nigeria as it is presently constituted is eclectic in nature.”

This particular assertion above by the inner voice thoroughly stirred my curiosity. It was such that I resolved to remain a passive participant in this uncommon dialogue and just be a good listener to this voice from within. And the thought continued speaking.

“When one selects from different sources, regardless of their origins and nature, those things which he in his own judgement, thinks are best suited towards the achievement of his purpose, the resultant mix of ideas, doctrines, styles and methods, is indeed eclectic.

“When contradictory doctrines from Schools of Thought which are completely opposed to one another, are forced together, such an absurd fusion gives birth to a philosophical system which agrees only with the convictions of the person who concocted it. This is known as Eclecticism. The problem with Eclecticism is that it is utterly devoid of philosophical depth and sound logic.”

The thought paused. It ceased speaking for a brief emphatic while. Then it said:

“Isn’t that an appropriate depiction of Nigeria?” It was a rhetorical question.

I was still turning over the earlier statements of that thought strain about Nigeria, when its voice sounded out crisp and clear. It was unrelenting.  

“The Nigeria which exists today is a perfect example of a Tower-of-Babel—a philosophical, psychic and physical Community of Confusion—a cacophony of sounds as could only be produced by an orchestra of lunatics. Nigeria is merely a geographical delineation, a contraption wrought by the selfish, vain, base imagination of its experimentalist social engineer colonial masters.

“Nigeria is an evil enterprise—the devil’s demarcation. This patchwork deceitfully contrived and derogatorily named, would never metamorphose into a united entity. It is an association of strange bedfellows. The ethnic nationalities inhabiting the geographical space tagged Nigeria are extremely dissimilar to each other. The cultures, values and perceptions of life of the ethnic groups are at acute variance with each other, yet some delude themselves in the pretentious pursuit of an unattainable phantom unity. Nigeria is a country of so many incompatible nations; a country of different peoples locked in utter uncompromising opposition to each other. Nigeria presents itself as a smelly, rotten eclectic concoction.

“It is people that make up nations. It is human beings that determine the progression or regression of the society. Sadly, Nigeria has been ruled by a class of people totally lacking in creative vision, a very selfish set of people whose group consciousness is polarized at the base material level— heartless men without any droplet of conscience.

“As long as it serves their selfish ends, they preach the inviolability of this ill-conceived, makeshift contraption of a country—their iniquitous coven, in which they mindlessly spill the blood of others they perceive as enemies, in defence of their perverted, malformed dream of a nation weaved by their warped minds—a country where only them and their own are lords while the rest ethnic groups are their serfs.

“Since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, it has, with faltering steps blundered; drifting aimlessly from one crisis to another. Due to the insincerity of most of Nigeria’s sectional leaders, there were no genuine efforts to find solutions to virtually all the nagging problems bedevilling Nigeria. Therefore the issues became transformed into ugly, poor patchworks. Many of the misgivings that brought about the problems of yesterday have remained unattended to, thus they have degenerated into unsightly festering sores, gaping ulcerous wounds and painful fractures. 

“Nigeria’s political leaders from the South became flattered by the deceptive praise-singing of Nigeria’s external ‘admirers’—those workers of iniquitous mischief, who extolled to high heavens, their ‘foolish virtue’ of ‘undue’ compromise. Those Southern leaders seemed not to realize that by tolerating the overbearing excesses and always conceding to the often outrageous demands of the feudal Fulani Muslim led Northern Nigeria, even to the disadvantage of the South, just because they wanted to build a country together with them, they had embarked on the immoral sacrificing of ethical values which would sooner be the undoing of the South.

“Nigeria, flaunting her sheer size and questionable population, prided herself in such over-bloated, unmerited self-importance. Therefore, she has become so blinded by her foolish pride—unable to see the deep widening gullies the ruptures arising from the many injustices inflicted on certain sections have become. Unfortunately too, her senses so dulled, are incapable of understanding that the faulty foundation on which her federation stands has been massively eroded.

“Why is it that Nigeria, with enormous human and material resources, remains potentially great in perpetuity? And the reality as at this moment is that Nigeria is irreversibly regressing. It is sliding down swiftly in a free-fall mode into an irredeemable state of utter hopelessness and self-destruction.

“When a country is roundly betrayed by its leadership – the ruling class, the top political class, the top military hierarchy, the civil service, and the business class, it is headed for a sure retrogression, eventual perdition and obvious oblivion.

“Fear, so monstrous, bestrides the length and breadth of Nigeria. The individual and collective minds of all Nigerians are stricken numb by the lethal wasp stings of fear. So much of killing and blood-letting have forced love to flee from Nigeria. The lush greenery of its land has turned blood-red. Nigeria shall therefore remain embroiled in blood orgies until proper penitence and appropriate recompenses are made.

“We must realize that the reason for the establishment of a country, to a very large extent, determines its survival and possible emergence to greatness. Any country that is not founded by spiritually illumined, morally upright men, but rather by men mired in mere greed and selfish material gains, will continue to flounder until it is battered into disintegration by opposed and unbalanced forces.

“But that country founded with the hindsight of spiritual knowingness is bound to grow from strength to strength. No matter the ordeals it may pass through, it will eventually re-emerge stronger.                 

“The only hope for the salvaging of Nigeria is that Nigerians must come together and sincerely address the basic sins and injustices that brought into being, this malformed concept tagged Nigeria, which has consequently resulted to the unending blood-letting that have characterized this atrophied, nay retrograde nationhood.

“Nigerians must sincerely discuss their nationhood and resolve to found a new Nigeria based on equity, justice and freedom, else Nigeria will certainly disintegrate. The possibility of a violent dissolution looms large. Ethnic and/or regional armies would rise in defence of their people. Nigeria, grovelling under the weight of terribly festering corruption, could become so weakened such that the rampaging forces of anarchy would ride roughshod over the land and its peoples. Therefore, the Country would become partitioned into enclaves ruled by armed gangs and war lords.

“Let it be emphasized. Geographical delineation alone does not make a nation. The unity of a nation must originate from within the hearts and minds of the people that constitute the nation’s citizenry. Where they do not reach out to one another in sincerity and goodwill, there cannot be unity among them. The physical territorial definition of a country cannot be preserved through the unholy gang up of the rest members to perpetrate genocides and other forms of atrocities on members of one of the composite groups.

“A nation cannot be secure from violation when the very nation itself has abused and direly violated any of its component ethnic groups through deliberate acts of injustice. Humanity takes precedence over, and is superior to nationality. In any union where there is injustice, humanity is abused and that union is the worse for it.

“This is why many African nations, today, are embroiled in lingering internecine strife. They were all founded on the greed and consideration for material benefits of their selfish colonial authors. They all are devoid of spiritual and sound moral foundation.

“As Prometheus, the Titan god of forethought, who loved and worked for the good of mankind, was chained to the top of Mount Caucasus; severely tortured for generations until Heracles the great hero released him, man’s higher nature is chained to his inadequate lower personality. In like manner, Nigeria’s greater potentials are held down, manacled to the Caucasian mountain of mediocrity, nepotism and ineptitude which its makers and subsequent leadership have created and sustained with the stunted fingers of deception and corruption.

“The stench of festering cancerous corruption, the stinking odour of fear, hatred, despair and desolation and all forms of evil depressingly envelop every facet of the Nigerian society—a suffocating wet blanket choking life out of this mockery of a nation.

“Nigeria is so richly blessed with the bounties of nature manifesting as boundless human and material resources. If these God-given resources are properly harnessed, adequately and equitably utilized to provide for our real needs, everybody would have enough with so much left in the common reserve.

The main cause of acrimony and violent rifts which Nigeria is embroiled in, is the selfish motive by the few—the Muslim Fulani feudalists, to suppress all the indigenous ethnic groups in Nigeria, dispossess them of their lands and keep exclusively to themselves, that which belongs to others, without even an iota of consideration for the people whose lands are being denudated and ravaged in the course of exploitation of those resources.”

Despite all these negative facts that have been the Nigerian situation for as long as it has existed, which were laid bare to me, I still groped for even the flimsiest reed of hope on which I could cling to. But I could grasp none. Yet I kept trying to create a picture of a better Nigerian nation in my imagination. And the incurable optimist in me said quietly:

“Even for all the evil that abound in Nigeria and all her faults, I will never give up—I will never lose hope in humanity. Though only sombre pictures, uninvited, appear on the screen of the mind—vivid ugly scenes of dark ominous clouds—monstrous evil birds of prey looming above, I hope and pray that this frightening phase would soon vanish, and a bright morning sun would emerge to usher in a beautiful new day. We shall then rise above our inadequacies and differences and surmount those obstacles that restrain us from attaining our greater potentials as members of the one great human family.”

    A silent, strong response wavered in my brain, surging through my mind as thoughts. It was so emphatic.  I heard its clear voice say:

“Yes indeed, there will be light at the end of the dark tunnel, but the earthly time is not near. The evolutionary time-gap in-between the consciousness levels of the major ethnic groups in the two opposing sides, forced into the present Nigerian union, is still very wide apart from each other. For now, each of Nigeria’s dominant ethnic group’s environment for the acquisition of experience must be separated from the other, such that each can develop at its own pace. You are presently contending with a politically dominant group which is bereft of even a drop of conscience.

“You must therefore be unyoked and totally unbundled; free from each other, in order to halt the continued, excessive animalistic shedding of human blood occasioned by the unrestrained greed and desire of one particular ethnic group to subjugate the rest. There must first be the disintegration of the whole before any reintegration. Illusion—that which seems to be, must be dispersed, that reality might be established.” The inner voice said, in a tone of finality.

And the factuality of Nigeria’s irredeemable descent into balkanization dawned on me.

Then I stirred; became conscious of my physical environment. Just then, the television set in my bedroom came on. The electricity distribution company had unceremoniously withdrawn power supply for the whole day. Suddenly the foreign station which I had programed the television to, started blaring the news in sight and sound, of the carnage being wrought in  the Middle Belt, South West and South East, Nigeria, by land grabbing terrorist Fulani herdsmen.

Copyright: Chike Nwaka