Nigeria’s unity is negotiable

It has been amusing for me watching a plethora of President Muhamamdu Buhari’s supporters lamenting his recent appointments, especially among the military and paramilitary agencies hierarchy. Many of them finally saw what some of us have been shouting since that our president is clannish and terribly sectional. One wonders when they woke from their stupor and how they came about their moments of epiphany.

An elderly friend, one who was very much in the drive to get President Buhari elected, was apoplectic while talking with me last week, “Wale, we should be worried, very worried. I mean all the heads of security agencies are now from a section of the country, this is very dangerous for the security architecture of Nigeria. It means decision can now be taken without recourse to the diversity of our country.” I merely teased my egbon, a brilliant mind and great patriot who I know have many friends from all over the country, that our president has a four year mandate and we just have to wait till 2019.

But this is not just only about appointments alone, as crucial as they might be in a multiethnic and diverse country like ours. It is also about sensitivity and compassion, attributes which I don’t’ think most of the present crop of our public officers possess. It was just last week that this column wrote about the way and manner some of them speak, seemingly rubbing off on the wrong sides of citizens. I refer to the president’s mantra of “Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable” which perhaps seems his major concern than the actual business of governance. At an investment summit in his home state, Katsina, last May, the president said it clearly that one Nigeria is divine and so cannot be changed just as it cannot even be discussed.

Last week, while receiving some Christian and Muslim leaders at the State House, he re-echoed the same thing. “Please pass the message to the militants that one Nigeria is not negotiable and I pray they better accept it. The constitution is very clear as to what they should get and I assure them there would be justice.” This is not a discourse analysis of his words, but the president later revealed a major reason while he keeps repeating this mantra. It is basically his military mindset, that’s all. He went on to talk about while he was in the army and how a former military dictator, Yakubu Gowon, said to keep “Nigeria one is a task that must be done.” Other military dictators like Ibrahim Babangida and Olusegun Obasanjo have also repeated these words as though they were like the laws Moses received on behalf of the Israelites on mount Sinai.

It also shows the mindset of our leaders. The civil war ended 46 years ago but apparently some leaders are still taking territories while some people must be annihilated and subjugated in the name of “one Nigeria.”  Even if Yugoslavia seems far away and so the lessons of how the country split might not be easily visible to our leaders, South Sudan is close by for them to see that nobody can force a group of people to stay together if they don’t want to do so. To affirm that it is not just the president that thinks that there is a divine decree behind Nigeria’s existence, vice president Yemi Osinbajo at the weekend incredulously said that we do not need restructuring but only diversification of the economy. Not only was it depressing that our vice president could say that, it also shows that power does not change people as we think, but merely reveal who we are originally. For a professor of law to look at this country as lopsided as our so-called federation is, and concluded that it is well and good, we should be alarmed.

Buhari is also incorrect to say that only the militants want to renegotiate Nigeria as Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, also affirmed that we could do so. He said this last month while visiting Punch newspapers that “Nigeria is bloody well negotiable” and this is someone who has condemned Niger Delta Avengers publicly, who is also not a militant. Expectedly, the argument is already accentuating our fault lines as Afenifere, Ohaneze, IPOB, and Ijaw youth are for restructuring while the Arewa Consultative Forum sides with the president. The fact remains some Nigerians are for restructuring whatever our leaders feel and say and we only ignore them at our peril. It is also clear that our national assembly is too bankrupt to lead the movement to renegotiate Nigeria, but it is a call that will not go away.

Dear president, even if it happens when you are out of office, we will renegotiate Nigeria.