The reason is simple: the marriage of a wife to a man must have clear rules. If you get married and become polygamous in an agreement where you told your wife it would be a monogamous relationship, there would be a problem. Your wife would be entitled to ask for the rules of the marriage.
If you apply this to the Nigerian scene, the problem dates back to 1914. The autonomous people of Nigeria, represented by Nigerians who were in the country before amalgamation on January 1, 1914, never agreed on how they would be involved in the political union.
Everything was imposed from 1914 to 1960. I’m sorry to say that the political class of Nigeria, stretching back to 1960, has never had the interests of Nigerians in view.
It is critical when we reach a logjam and are not moving forward, to find a solution.
This question has been pertinent since I was 29, and now I’m 71. That alone shows that something is wrong. Nigeria will not move forward substantially without a sit-down.
It must be a conference that involves both parties in the marriage. If you go back to pre-1914, there were people in what is today Nigeria.
We had the Borno Empire, the Onitsha Empire, the Benin Empire, the Oyo Empire, the Sokoto Caliphate, and others. They are the owners of Nigeria, and these are the ethnic nationalities that the government of the day must be magnanimous and open-minded enough to allow to speak.
They should determine the kind of union they want. There has been a lot of deceit, with terms like restructuring, rearrangement, redesigning, and political devolution, but it is just at the campaign level.
Nigeria is held down by the force of arms. If you remove the army and the police, this country will fall apart.
When Tito, the leader of former Yugoslavia, died, the country broke apart into six because they were not one.
They were held together by force. Tito’s absence made the people of Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro assert their independence. So anyone saying Nigeria is a country is not truthful. It is a country bound by force.
Let Nigerians organise their discussions freely and ask themselves, “Do I want to marry you?” If yes, “How?”
That is what will be viable to create a new Nigeria. The reason politicians are stealing money is because they don’t believe in the concept of Nigeria as a nation. That’s why we are where we are.
Unfortunately, no Nigerian leader has been able to step aside to allow these discussions.
What President Bola Tinubu needs to do is to allow people to have the discussions and bless it, just as a father would bless the relationship and wedding of his children.