I remember growing up in the bustling city of Kaduna not giving a hook and eye on the tribe or religious background of my playmates, classmates and neighbours. Like many Nigerians who lived anywhere and everywhere then around the country, north, south, east and west, I never cared or was I ever apprehensive about the culture and tradition of others around me. All I was taught and grew up with was the understanding that Nigeria was one country with so many tribes and people.
I remember that many of us Muslim kids in our neighbourhood partook in eating heavy pounded yam or rice in Emeka, Joseph, Esther, Bidemi, Segun and the other wonderful Christian friends around during Christmas and they also happily did the same in our houses during Sallah celebration. Our detribalized parents never discouraged us or bombarded our ears with segregated and hate induced upbringing instructions. We were a united bunch of happy and merry-go-round kids.
Our parents then I could still remember were their brothers’ keepers and sort of good Samaritans to each other in term of sorrow, joy and needs. Our markets were never segregated nor were our schools. There was nothing like private schools for the rich as we all rumbled it out in public schools, both the sons and daughters of the rich and those from poor background. The civil servants among our parents served diligently everywhere across the regions irrespective of tribe or religion. There was nothing like state of origin, religion or tribe discrimination in promotion, training or transfer. They were superb Nigerians and patriotic civil servants who served their country for God and country.
Today all that has changed across virtually all the regions in the country where we now have a segregated and self-centered leaders and parents, including some ethno-religious induced youths who have been brainwashed and constantly used as pawns in the various ethno-religious and political motivated crises that have torn the country asunder. From Jos, Bauchi, Kaduna, Maiduguri, down to Oyo, Abia, Delta and the other crises swallow up states across the country.
It is actually a shame that in this 21
What about the hitherto beautiful Plateau? Should we view the myopic utterances of some of the so-called elders and leaders as reasonable and a sign that they really want us to continue as one, when all they seem to see is a vanity land, and other materialist recycled things we must all leave behind one day. Who among them really owns this gigantic land with God? I mean both the so-called indigenes and settlers. Are we not all settlers in this free world?
Should we also outlook the recent selfish and childish expulsion of Muslims in the Niger Delta by some unpatriotic and short-sighted group? History seems to have eluded them to the fact that no man is really an island. Has it really occured to them that all across Nigerian are scattered millions of Niger Deltas in the north, west, east and south? How do they plan to accommodate, feed and employ these millions of their people if they were eventually sent packing from the other regions, especially from the north, where there seems to be a large concentration of people from the Delta? Are they certain the men and women from their regions who daily ply their goods and services and trade freely among the Muslims and northerners are in support of their lopsided stir?
Can Nigeria ever remain one again with the senseless bombings and killings of the notorious Boko Haram and its dare devil suicide bombers? Are these people really Nigerians and sincerely have the country at heart? Has it also occured to them that they cannot really bomb all corners of Nigeria while other regions and its people fold their hands and succumb in defeat to their mayhem? Has it come to their mind that they have wasted many innocent souls and turned many children to orphans and various women to widows? Would other Nigerians agree to accept them in their fold and embrace their ideology and agitations? Or has it transpired in their minds that Nigerian being a federal nation with over hundred languages and different religious view will be difficult to stamp sectionalized ideas and specific doctrine on? Maybe it has not really registered on their minds that Islam actually emphasized that there should be no compulsion in religion.
And back to our self-centered politicians who have long been using the cheap idea of divide and rule to lord it over the people. I mean those men and women who see nothing wrong in regionalizing our democracy and instigating us against each other through myopic policy and selfish agendas. How can there ever be true development in Nigeria when most of them are championing different regional and tribal groups? How do we expect to see light in our homes, industries, factories, offices and streets when the whole exercise has been subjected to narrow-mindedness and corruption? Why should there be a stable fuel price and working refineries in the country when tribal and regional sentiments have overtaken the reality? How can we have good roads and efficient transport system when tribal and sectional interests are the top identity of those in charge? Can our educational sector ever be the same again given the massive corruption, maladministration, nepotism, sectional and tribal sentiment that have taken over our education ministry, schools and classrooms?
Will Nigeria ever be one again or are we silently falling to the prediction of disintegration as predicted by the western world and other modern day soothsayers? And if we are to take into consideration the various sectional, ethno-religious and political crises that has engulfed this hitherto one nation over the years, maybe one tends to take seriously these contemporary prophecy of a divided Nigeria in the nearest future.
The veracity of our present situation as a sentimentally divided people is noticeable in our social, economic and political lives. And until we learn how to appreciate ourselves irrespective of our social, religious and political differences, we shall never progress in our developmental drive. Until our sectionalized leaders and rulers brazen up and discard their myopic vision and learn how to fix the right pegs in the right holes will our roads ever be safe and good, our refineries will bounce back to life, our epileptic electricity stable and our economy truly vibrant.
I am still in Nigeria, but not the Nigeria that I grew up knowing as a one united federal nation, where the style of my clothes, my religion and my tribe meant nothing to anybody, but rather the fact that I am a Nigerian gave me that privilege of living and working anywhere nature pushes me to. This, unlike what we now have across the country today, where narrow-minded people have taken over our hitherto one nation under the sun.
st century a governor of a state could disgracefully retrench hundreds of so-called non indigenes from his state civil service and blindly expect unity among his Ibo brothers and sisters across the other states in the south-east and south –south. In my view I think people like Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State, who is where he is today as a result of the people should never be allowed to hold another high position in this country again. His cheap action has exposed him as a sectionalized leader without a nationalist view.
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