"This Synergistic Nigeria will speak with authority on the global stage, with clarity and with a mandate that will come from its position as Africa's pre-eminent economic and political giant. This synergistic Nigeria will wield significant influence at the UN and be a moral advocate for the world's downtrodden."
---Malcolm Fabiyi

This exactly is the Nigerian quagmire-case. Our history records we are good at reacting, not at decisively, objectively acting in our quest for national sanity; our convictions are pivoted upon impulse, never rationality.

A fat fraction of our departed days harbors a line of misfortunes emotion breed, while it was not Herculean to reason and escape calamities. We always maneuver our social, nay humane responsibilities to offer comfort to destructive hopelessness and oppression.

The war that collated members of the 'Biafran' and Nigerian armies for wastage and tragedy playfully began like a moon-light tale: a member of an ethnic group had beaten up and killed a member of another ethnic group for forgivable offences, trivial reasons and rectifiable situations -weaving a stubborn chain of ceaseless violence that made a humble Hiroshima of Nigeria between 1967 and 1970.

The spate of ethnic killings has not neatly reduced today: hunger and diseases, and hopeless hopelessness slaughter Nigerians more efficiently than the vexation of civil strife. Some groups, more of interest and ideological than ethnic, have declared simple survival a taboo for others, resulting in revived evaporation of faith in the promise of the Nigerian nation.

But decapitation cannot be the solution to headache, caring or chronic; beheading the aching head is a thoughtless transformation of great pains into an irreversible tragedy. Nigeria may have been blessed with pious leaders of dirty conscience; Nigeria's historical headache is a challenge discerning and sacrificial ideological physicians must take up immediately. This country shall not break up; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

Whether by omission or commission, Nigeria is a concrete reality of peoples' past. You cannot change the past, but you can ruin a promising future by striving to diminish the structure of the present. Incontestably, the sacrifices for a consolidated social and political structures are marginalisation, temporary or permanent imprisonment, and even death, which the progressives and plebeians, activists and humanists from all parts of Nigeria had suffered in the past, and may still suffer tomorrow, and as long as our nation desire a new status in true liberty, but we must be more disposed to these than to reducing in influence as a nation of vast size and resources populated by visionary men and women from invaluably rich cultural varieties. This country shall not break up; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

Beyond the economic ill blessings of daily bread stands the glory of a country intrepidly collected from the iron-claws of endless miseries. Unifying structures ought to be left undepreciated if selfishness, laziness, visionlessness and paranoid political perceptions prevent their appreciation.

To readily embrace the option of secession is to defactor indispensable brackets from the matrices of essential socio-economic and political rituals. Even after dis-integration, this entrenched mentality of opting out of a political union because it disfavors our interests without much true efforts in the direction of its salvation shall hunt and destroy weathered units.

The irrational reasons and evil people who conjure disfavors as a people's only profit for surrendering their authority and resources to a strengthened national union, no matter what, who and where they spring from, remain the only geo-political regions we must tenaciously long to excommunicate from our union-being for this country shall not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

Compel unsacrificiality to depart the Nigerian political scene; allow corruption into secession; give favoritism and insincerity the right to dis-integrate: all these are unseen but negatively efficient elements, which ensure eccentric political happenings in our country.

They foster the masses' hopelessness and drastically reduce their faith in the Nigerian enterprise. We who clamor for secession would not have seceded if evil of any variety lords it over our minds after we may have left the union. We would have rebutted a political association with the most appropriate features for greatness into miserable fragments. Anyway, this country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

In larger human history, instances exist where constituents of given countries had opted out and attained secession and later, almost instantaneously, saw the hell of divided strength and reduced influence, re-applied for, and reunited as one, undivided political and economic union. History forever honors the experiment performed in the dis-integration of Germany and the courage involved in her re-unification after weighing the woes of a reduced capability that collective resolve in sane and just practices could destroy.

It is predictable here too that our disintegration shall strive for reunification. And if any degree of stubbornness prevents this inevitable adumbration, regions shall languish in the dark cell of frustration and humiliation. This is because, the practices of the leaders and followers, never the size structures of the union, abort the survival-assurance of any political union. Anyway, this country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

In every ethnic group we have in Nigeria, there are stratifications and discriminations. The Yoruba race, like the Hausa-Fulani and their Ibo counterparts are characteristically individually stratified into the rich and the poor; the Ijaw group, like the Itsekiri and the Edo sections have been structurally divided into the elites and the masses.

Now if we applaud secession and allow it to fulfill its extravagant ambition through our nation, nothing alters in the situations of the masses of all ethnic groups---the poor achieves poorer hybrid of poverty {!}, secession can only, based again on the evil principles of selfishness and visionlessness, assist the animalistic ego of the elites via gaugeless wealth accumulation and trumperous fame deposition. It means moral vanity for all elites and capitalists from these cultural units most of whom are strict advocates of secession. This Country shall not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

I had found myself in the midst of men of similar nationality who vaunted the phantasmal fortune that a certain man or woman, or even a group of these who had (or still control) key social, economic and political positions in our country come from their race or section.

Nothing I had said to make them disregard such consideration as a cause for true fulfillment could drive them away from this stinking thinking: "Any man or woman, regardless of his her place of birth, religion, sex or age, is good for Nigeria if he or she is a Nigerian who believes in the survival and happiness of every Nigerian and in Nigeria's inescapable destiny as Africa's voice and action in the league of humane nations of tomorrow who shall save humanity in the end."

I had countlessly repeated in the classroom, on the streets, in the midst of friends and at fora , concrete and electronic. Their wisdom shines in nitwitdom; but no matter how they think and what they do to attain the paranoid ends of this fetid and sinking thinking, our country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

I predict that nations with this kind of mentality will never cease seeing succour in divisiveness even after they may have dis-integrated. The affairs with such political fragments will be dictated by favoritism, nepotism and sectionalism because bias reigns superior in them. How does Obasanjo's Yorubaness fit in his roles as the Nigeria's President if he continuously disappoints all Nigerians, part and parcel of which the Yorubas are?

If he is dedicated to his people's survival, the Yorubas, is it not wise if he rules Nigeria well, at least for the sake of his own people? Was Abacha less cruel towards the Northerners than he was towards other regions because he was Hausa or because he got more Supporters in those who devotedly invested and Cultivated belief in the ignominious ignorance that a North-produced or imposed Nigeria's President was first of all a Northern servant before he is a Nigerian servant? With what shall an East-produced or West-made leader purchase bias towards his people without the accumulated authority, power and resources other regions in the same Union have invested in, and relinquished to his trusted care?

How is the Bayelsan unlucky thief (DPS) the man of the people when he refused to make education and health facilities freely or affordably available to his dying comrades before carting away millions of Naira in British banks? In bitter truth, no secession shall bring fortune with leaders of low moral fertility, and leaders who truly boast some fertility in morals will always strive for the well-being of all, not for the survival of a section of a specific population.

A man who truly loves himself will cater to others; the best way to ensure personal survival is to assist millions with hope of livelihood. Anyway, this country will not secede, Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

Only prejudice discriminates on the basis of factors reason does not inspire. My own people, with whom I am forever well-pleased, are those whose jaundice can never rule. They are people who always expand the scope and charm of collective promise, regardless of what their interest suggests. My own people, in the context of true Nigerianism, which we have formed from fine Samaformism and humanism neglect their own culture, religion and language to respect strangers and Judge others only by their conducts.

Neither our place of birth, nor our look constitutes fairness as a parameter of calculating others' perception and treatment of us. Even when I derail from this and those I call my people go off the track of unbiased, multiple replacement shall emerge from everywhere to sustain the truth we may have explained away to aid the sinister cause of our ignoble interests. Let all elites turn interest from sectional goals. Nigeria shall change when all muscles are built and used for the common desire of moving Nigeria forward to glory. This country shall not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

While an ideal political union is one which is fashioned in such a way that every healthy agendum from constituent-units is justly provided for, dis-integration fails to be dignifying when a people become belligerently obsessed with their own interest, and refuse to regard the need for happiness, the battle for positive change as a political collectivism beyond ethnic and organizational considerations.

As Nigeria progresses, the well being of immediate and distant neighbor-nations shall form part of its national agenda as a responsible and humane nation. We shall not spare any Nigerian leader in our constructive criticism and actions; past destroyers could vandalize the fortress of our democratic ethics to steal our ungiven mandate and ruin Nigeria more than the capacity of real ruin, but never with our consents!

They shall miss our patronage and its eminent absence in their unpleasant existence shall create purposeful vacuum and hunt them here and hereafter. We shall assist one another secure temporary and permanent means of livelihood and wildly stand on their wide paths to blockade the smooth cause of these man-monsters for ours and posterity's survival.

We shall think and pray, we shall speak and write, we shall act and counter -act, we shall live and die, to destroy the success of those who prefer us ghosts, than as humans, by serving our stomach-hollowness with hungry hunger, treating our deathly diseases with cadaverous sickness, and surprising our future with hopeless hopelessness. Whatever it takes, we shall give, but this country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

Let no regional and racial ambitions murder our union. We give no room for interests alien to our samaformistic Nigerianism. Things are bad because our leaders are unsacrificial, visionless and cruel. Nigerians are suffering because we respect our oppressors more than our liberty.

If our leaders repent of their material vanity, purposelessness and trickishness, and Nigerians offer oppressors bold dose of contempt, Nigeria shall change for good in a jiffy. If our leaders persist in fraud and go for expedient, criminal feats that defeat needed justice for the good of all Nigerians, and we are deluded and denuded by the graceless glitters of their foolish fauxpas, and give honour to men and women worthy of crude dishonour, Nigeria shall die, and none of its fragmenting geographical organs can meaningfully live.

The Spirit of a possible but squandered socio-economic and political synergy shall hunt the passion of these who seek to suddenly ascend to Olympus through its wreck. This Country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

Nigeria was made by the work and faith of men whose wholesome wit and wealth, efforts and sacrifices quenched our earth's thirst for liberty. In the course of getting us independence, personal businesses suffered and ethnic differences were surrendered, only to our national order.

They planned together, walked, talked and worked as one to convince the foreign invaders of our readiness for manumission. Their vision and efforts shall not be in vain. Their work and faith shall last eternity. Only nobler agenda that no freedom-abode on earth shall refuse to wed shall swallow the noble sweats of these Nigerians. Balewa and Azikwe, Awolowo and Bello, Macaulay and Enahoro, and all whose efforts assisted these responsible men of all time to achieve us what we now have shall never regret project Nigeria. This country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

For project Nigeria Ken Saro- Wiwa died. In normalizing our hyper-algolognic Socio-political situation, Pa Alfred Rewane, our own Dele Giwa and Chima Ubani left. We shall again murder Bola Ige and trivialize the legacy of MKO and thousands of several Nigerian radicals incarcerated, tortured and banished for sneezing at our relentless tyrants. The suffering of the masses of yesterday shall not be wasted. Nigerian brave men and women died in the civil war to make Nigeria Live. No!

These citizens would not have toiled and died in vain. Those who fought on the side of the Federal Troop did not kill or maimed for nothing; our gallant Biafran Troopers did not squander their rare courage. All that they wished to see that spurred their willingness to kill and be killed shall be fulfilled by this finer Nigeria: the dead from the two sides shall fight again if the living do nothing to inject balance into the imbalance that catalysed their agenda, and convince their successors of our neat wish of sparing their thinking of the reasoning that inspired war-fare. This country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

I do not know if Africa can ever obliterate the painful effects of slavery and colonialism on her landscape, but I am convinced, beyond Everest that we can prevent these toxic effects from protracting into our future as a people. We must give all it takes in getting African lenders to work, for even bad leaders have similar insalubrious, if not worse impingements, as strangers who visited Africa to distort our socio- cultural and political arrangements. Descendants of our enslaved forefathers are out there in the cold, missing their origin, incapable of blending with new land and new culture.

They are discriminated against at all times and we are here chanting the shameful songs of secession {by not participating in politics, by not helping the youths, by not assisting Nigerians to overtake the basic motivations of existence}! We must foster the psychological return of these foreign Africans to mother Africa now (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HomeAfrica is a forum to start with).

If we engage our attentions with the questions of secession, this fine assignment will prove elusive. We have the earth and the resources, we boast the heart and the hospitality, to bring back, welcome and perpetually accommodate our brothers and sisters forced into the status of strangers abroad. This country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

No Nigerian leader, or would be ruiner, at any level of government shall regard our noble clamour against the secession of component units as an advantage of any sort. It is indeed an additional disadvantage intended to murder their fraud in case their destiny is service to eerie evil. Sooner or later, covertly and overtly, seceding units shall see sense in the Nigerian project, and in place of going apart, shall deposit their energy into the most dangerous protests ever planned by peace, for the survival of the Nigerian dream, which shall be measured by its people's and outsider's happiness. This country will not disintegrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

The Nigerian leaders historically are the writers of the secession-proposals units merely directly and metaphorically submit to the Nigerian public. This would not have come to a focused fore with citizens reliably protected against all socio-economic enzymes that form the nations political ezymas; ideologies that style citizens into victims for tyranny, and ignorance that polishes their tomorrow for impossible redemption.

It would have been impossible if burgesses are genially, qualitatively grown into selfless puritans, sages and humanists who, proud of their own identity and uniqueness, and dedicated to their own basic survival, can never think low of others' necessity for dignity and survival. However, secession is unnecessary where heavy criticism designed to change the leaders, and kind kindness structured to efface others' wretchedness in Nigeria replace the clamor for new republics which members of former caucus of unethical destruction shall run with wickeder intentions.

Men and women who today favour secession are, by their mental and economic muscles wealthy enough to help the poor attain education and employment chances. Their children are abroad and their future secure but they enlist the masses in the army of confusion and war, narrowly banishing the people's hope of freedom to the conditions of costly and faithless secession.

They show no love with their kindness other than in unpropitious propaganda aiming dis-integration. They are the influential who can afford to do more than what the beasts at the center always deny their people, but who only view development from the increase of their own growing empires of businesses. This country will not dis-integrate; Nigeria shall be Nigeria!

We are all strong, we are all weak; strength alone we seek to launch our nation on the path of growth and development. We are all virtuous, we are all vicious; virtues only we require to add onto, and sustain our status in political greatness. But our weaknesses and vices too grow, unnurtured, independently of our conscious care, buglariously expending their energies against the fruition of our precious Nigerianism, our desire for moral glories under the umbrella of one Nigeria.

We must not pretend that they do not exist. We must tenderly present them to extenuation. A nation is better prepared to lead other nations only when it overcomes its own weaknesses and does not run away from its own problems. This we must truthfully do for this

© August 2006 By Olawale Oyewumi
Afromerica staff writer

Brother Olawale Oyewumi will be keeping the Black community updated on Education And General World Development. Visit regularly for new information that could help you overcome and make the best of your everyday experiences.

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