Nigeria And The Ides Of March By Posi Olatubosun

Six years ago, effective from 31st December 2014, the edict which created the Nigeria Project by the British formally elapsed thereby bringing about the end of an illegitimate and an unfortunate arrangement which forcefully pit-together two rather unlikely and unwilling parties, in a beauty and the beast macabre union.

 

With the expiration of the 100-Year ill-informed amalgamation treaty unilaterally midwifed by an equally deranged Colonial Governor-General in the person of a certain Frederick Lugard, Nigeria as we have known it has ceased to exist and must be renegotiated under new terms and conditionalities, in properly guided plebiscites that must return the illegitimate-geographical farce to its Pre-1914 structure, which reinstates the Lagos, northern and southern entities as was; whilst giving room for an entirely new order wherein the Peoples must necessarily broker new agreements under conscious understandings and based on each region’s strengths and unique value propositions.

It is noteworthy to mention that, at some point, along the forced marriage; things seemed to have worked-out, albeit under an unrelenting surreptitious overlordship of a particular section(s) of the country at the gross detriment of the other sections, as evidenced by glaring and ofttimes; arrogant displays of a condescending manner, across the board and which reflected across almost every political and economic vantage point.

It started with the unguarded and an unjustifiable maxim peddled by the northern elites, suggestive of a right to leadership over and above all else within the same structure. It beats the imagination how a section of a nation, so steep in crass-mediocrity and a determined culture of retrogression, can for so long keep-up with the usurpation of the resources and talent of an evidently more aristocratic South, in blindsiding-manner, as to craftily undermining the otherwise advanced sections, by means of a despotic document referred to as the 1999 constitution.

Like the 1914 document prior, questions arise, as to who the author(s) of this so-called document were, and from whence; did ‘they ’ draw their terms of reference? Which people or what manner of persons colluded together in agreement, to draft and foist such a fiendish document that has altogether rendered a nation with so much growth potential – failed!

Who are the ‘we’ the People…?

A pocket of Military Personnel under guise or a handful of the Kitchen Cabinet of General Abdulsalami Abubakar…??!

It is as laughable, as it is criminal for a minority, to go as far as usurping the inalienable rights of the majority in the masterminding of such a travesty.

To what end? …and for whose benefit?

Nations can never be built upon layers of falsifications and misrepresentations.

It never bodes well and in Nigeria’s case, it has resulted in a history of shame, gloom, and doom – as it ought! A supposed constitution that seeks to promote mediocrity over merit will never augur well for its constituents. A document that fundamentally and baselessly alters the Foundational principles of competition and fair play amongst its complimenting entities, cannot prosper and can never be productive. The end game typically results in failure – and Nigeria, as currently constituted has failed altogether and in all ramifications. An attestation of this assertion is supported by the glaring inability of Nigeria to rise to the occasion brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, in tapping-into its teeming brightly and scholarly population of circa 200 million strong peoples, to developing a vaccine for itself and for the rest of the continent – being the supposed giant of Africa!

It is not surprising that this cannot happen even in spite of the fact that the country, given its early start, across diverse human endeavour, had advanced early-on but had inadvertently donated its brightest talents to other nations under unfortunate and bizarre brain-drain circumstances.

We are incapable of keeping our home-grown talents because we destroyed our own value systems altogether.

Now, we wait on India, China, and the West for our salvation…?

What a shame on a nation!

Insecurity has come full circle to hunt us and to hurt what is left of our national Pride.

Under the watch of a supposed Army General, Nigeria has recorded its worst human carnage in all of its history, save probably for the civil war carnage. Like a dream, one watches in utter shock, how low and how far down on our knees we have sunk, to surrendering our sovereignty to a rag-tag array of bandits, terrorist-shepherds, and terrorist insurrectionist – all drawn from the now hopeless northern provinces of the country.

There seems to be a well calculated attempt at the overthrow of the current leadership under the Muhammadu Buhari led regime by these band of terrorists albeit with his own covert approval. Worst is the palpable fear across the land, of the real intent of these advancing army of Fulani-Jihadists southward under the guise of pastoral-enterprise; but which clearly, is indicative of a more sinister plot. A plot for the subjugation and the alienation of the entire southern provinces of the country.

The tell-tale signs are all too evident in the wanton and unabating spree of kidnappings, raiding of farm settlements and murder of farm owners are a few of the machinations of these marauders. In the midst of these sad development is the deafening silence of the military and other armed forces who stand complicit and culpable for the assaults on farmers and affected settlements alike. Increasingly, the peoples of the southern provinces have now resorted to self-help of any and every guise, in the defence of themselves and their territories, hence the armed forces have also resorted to aiding and abetting the rampaging Fulani Herdsmen – reminiscent of State-sponsored terrorism plot! The accounts of terror across the land under this impotent regime is all too gory to recount, as it is too shameful to think about.

Nigeria has never had it this bad. Successive administrations had been faced with their own fair share of challenges and near fits, but each leadership had always found a concerted approach to cracking and solving its own problems – but not this one! This administration seems resolute on a self-destruct mission and the rest of us are now more than ever aware of the goings-on, and we say ‘enough-was-enough’!

We are not going down that route Sir!

It was time to call-in on the legality of the 1914 amalgamation edict and to take a firm decision to also challenge its ill-representative twin repressive 1999 constitutional document, which has hitherto bound us to the vicissitudes of the Fulani-led North! Consequently, the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS), at its December 16, 2020 Sitting had issued a notice of constitutional Grievance against the Nigerian State, and further made a declaration of Constitutional Force Majeure and a further demand for the transitioning process for an orderly reconfiguration of the Constitutional Basis of the Federation of Nigeria.

To that end, the constituent component nationalities of Nigeria, under the aegis of NINAS amongst others, did issue a pronouncement – calling for the cessation of Nigeria’s unitary constitutional order, which was unilaterally imposed and forcefully maintained by a section of Nigeria, in negation of the federal basis upon which Nigeria became one political union in 1960 in brutal subjugation of the collective sovereignties being currently forcefully and fraudulently appropriated by the Nigerian State.

In effect, the proclamation of Constitutional Force-Majeure pursues the outright nullification of the General Abdulsalam Abubakar led Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council Decree No.24-backed illicit document in its entirety and further seeks to enthrone  an autochthonous process by which the constituent components will, by their own volition, elect to submit their Peoples and their lands into a union, and by so doing, stipulate their terms for staying in that union (which must then be ratified by referendums and plebiscites – in reference to the Decree  No.24 as was incorporated into the obnoxious 1999 Constitution and its preambular text therein). Invariably, a call to the restoration of the 1963-styled Constitution, the essence of which is to ensure a return to a federating structure which supports the coming together of autonomous regional bodies; with each region armed with its own constitution and backed-up by full-sovereign regional powers.

In essence, for the sake of peace and the avoidance of anarchy, NINAS, acting together with a common goal and in the realization of their long suppressed collective sovereignties, had since issued the Federal Government of Nigeria alongside a host of other international Sovereigns, a 90-Day Notice with effect from the 16th Day of December 2020, within which a Constitutional Force Majeure has been set in motion for the reconsideration and re-evaluation of the continued allegiance to the disputed 1999 Constitution.

The said notice duly served on the Federal Government of Nigeria lapses by mid-March, in the current Year 2021.

Posi Olatubosun writes-in from the United Kingdom