By Charles Obinna Chukwunaru, PhD
As several keen local and international observers ponder on the possibility that the Nigerian state is just one major crisis away from violent state collapse, its poor masses located across the length and breadth of the failed republic wonder what the yuletide or Christmas season which heralds the end of year 2024 will bring. Will it bring them peace, joy, and hope in their future as against their present state of excruciating economic hardships, abject poverty, hunger, diseases, and death?
Suffice it to say that the world’s most populous negro (black) country and former British West African colony, richly endowed in human and material resources failed as a nation-state a few years after its political independence in October, 1960. Moreover, since the highly promising new African republic effectively ousted the British through the promulgation of the 1963 constitution, firmly establishing Nigeria as a federal republic and removing the British monarch as its head of state, it has been everything but peaceful. This perhaps accounts for its lack of progress and eventual failure as a nation-state.
However, many conspiracy theorists posit that the replacement of the former colonial monarch with the young Igbo political leader (Rt. Hon. Nnamdi Azikiwe) as head of state may not have gone down well with the former colonial master.
Recall that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe successfully spearheaded the peaceful overthrow of the British colonial government in Nigeria. Thus, they allege that London may have remotely instigated the events, which eventually led to the failure of the Nigerian state in 1967, about seven years after its flag independence and barely four years after becoming a republic with the removal of the Queen of England as its head of state.
The state failure and eventual horrific civil war, which arguably sought to reduce the population of the Igbo nation by half, was preceded by a brutal state sponsored pogrom against the people of Igbo extraction in particular and Eastern Nigeria in general, across the Northern parts of the country in 1966, following the successful July 1966 military coupe d’état and brutal murder of the Igbo military head of state – Gen. JTU Agu Ironsi, by young military officers of Northern Nigeria origin.
Today, the wobbling and fumbling multi-national Nigerian state is on the brink of violent collapse as almost all of its component nationalities want the country to be divided along ethnic, religous, cultural and geopolitical lines. Incidentally, this divisive aspiration for social, political and economic liberation, freedom or independence by a clear majority of Nigerian ethnic nationalities is embodied in the person of the illegally detained Igbo leader of the indigenous people of Biafra, Eastern Nigeria – Mazi Nnamdi Kanu – by the central government in Abuja. The speculation gaining fast traction daily by concerned citizens of Nigeria is that the Northern Nigeria political establishment under the immediate past head of state, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, may have entered into a secret agreement with Sen Ahmed Bola Tinubu to keep the young Igbo political leader in perpetual detention; thereby detaining the aspiration of the young and old people of Biafran heritage, Eastern Nigeria and the Igbo nation particularly, in exchange for the Presidency of Nigeria in May 2023.
Unfortunately, the people involved appear oblivious to the grave consequences of a violent state collapse. The level of anarchy, destruction, and death that will (as usual) characterize a total state collapse in a country with the population of Nigeria will be catastrophic. The internally displaced people and refugees crisis that will result from such scenario will be unimaginable.
Therefore, all advocates of peace and humanity, locally and internationally, are enjoined to intervene now by requesting the immediate release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu as ordered by the Nigerian courts of law, restructure the country along the lines of the only authentic 1963 republican constitution of the Federal Republic whose national anthem recently got restored by the present Tinubu regime as the authentic Nigerian national anthem; or conduct a peaceful and internationally acceptable referendum to determine the unity of the Nigerian state.
It is either the philosophy of Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress as contained in the Nigerian National Coat of Arms, as well as the National Anthem (as restored) is upheld through a return to the paths of the 1963 republican constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, or a peaceful referendum or total state collapse. “Which way Nigeria”?
Charles Obinna Chukwunaru is the
President, Eastern Nigeria Development Association (ENDA)
