By Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie
Every political entity has a purpose for its existence and creation. If that purpose is no longer being met, that entity will atrophy and from natural causes it will implode and dissolve itself from the internal dynamics of its dialectical nature, and domestic forces within its environment; those forces are incapable of being stopped.
Nigeria has in the past 50-years reached and surpassed these interregnum, and that is why it has intractable problems in the entity , such as Boko Haram, ethnic biases, favoritisms and jingoism, endemic official & business corruption, religious-Islamic violence; demands for new separatist republics, insufficient electricity generation & supply, rising unstoppable cost of energy including petrol-electricity-cooking gas; permanently skyrocketing cost of living, inflation and very low quality of life; degeneration of the economy and devaluation of the local currency (the Naira), and the dilapidation of educational, medical and physical services and infrastructures.
All the itemized issues and problems listed above, have persisted in Nigeria for close to 50-years now, and they have not been solved, and cannot be solved. It does not matter who is named, in the foreseeable future, to form a new or another government in Nigeria, or occupy any Presidential, Ministerial or legislative position: that effort will fail, and that person will soon become a rejected pariah to the populace.
First, Uncle Bola Ige pledged in 1999 to solve the problem of electricity shortage in 6-months; after failing to solve the problem for nearly one and half years, Obasanjo shunted him to the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice’s office, in which office he was brutally murdered in his bedroom in Ibadan.
Buhari and Tinubu:
Two other examples will suffice to prove the above assertions, namely, all the hopes and expectations heaped on Muhammadu Buhari that earned him the praise epitaph as Sai Baba (2015-2023), and the political energy, seriousness and reputation of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as an achiever and goal-getter, have all been decimated in 5-months of Tinubu’s horrid government that keeps getting more horrid and terrifying every passing day.
Note also the mid term Governorship elections just held on Thursday November 11, 2023, in Imo, Kogi and Bayelsa states. Numerous declared irregularities including stolen ballot boxes, pre-thumbed ballot papers, outright rigging, prior prepared election results, results in units where elections were not held, lack of election materials, all avoidable human foibles, go to show that the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, with amendments, is an unworkable document, because the basis of the electoral processes being successfully carried out is not there.
If the right indigenous ingredients are provided, ab initio in the Constitution, it is possible to have elections in developing entities such as were just conducted, and the process will work. Not copying or mimicking Western democratic principles, completely alien and unworkable, in the local Nigerian environment, the provisions become fruitless experiments.
For example, how can ethnic origins be used as basis for elections? As opposed to, making provisions to avoid ethnicity as basis for elections.
Until these revisions are made, no elections will work in Nigeria.Nigeria will not and cannot be redeemed any longer, and those forces enumerated already, will tear it to smirtherings in the nearest future, unless it is constitutionally dissolved now.
The new appropriately re- constituted entities or republics, will develop more coherently and prosper faster, for the benefit of the suffering millions of the different ethnic nationalities, whose general quality of life has consistently been lowered and reduced over time. ow, we must further examine the pugility of the factors already listed above:Boko Haramo Until 2002 the phenomenon of Boko Haram was not known in Nigeria. But at the Alhaji Muhammadu Ndimi mosque in Maiduguri, Bornu State, a charismatic youth named Muhammad Yesuf began to gather young people to inculcate conservative Sunni Muslim ideology that preached outlawing Western education and culture. He called the group Jama al Ahl al-Sunnah li-l-Da’awah wa al-Jihad (Association of the People of the Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad), but the more widely known name Boko Haram means Westernization is Sacrilege.
Fundamental to the ideology of the group was to restore sanity to social and political space in Nigeria through the establishment of strict Islamic way of life for the entire population of Nigeria, beginning in the Northeast of Nigeria.
Though issues of radical Islam and violent revolts had occurred severally for close to 40-years in Nigeria, Boko Haram spread and lifted with it, the prospects of overturning the Political structures of secular Nigeria to the Sharia Islamic mode. By 2009, Muhammad Yesuf was killed in fiece violent exchanges with the Police and about 700 members of the group were killed in an effort to destroy the group.
It was the harbinger of a new method of vicious revenge against the Nigerian State. Government institutions, religious organizations opposed to Islam, individuals, including the Police, military, educational and business institutions were attacked.
Even Abuja came under ferocious attacks, and soon nearly all of Nigeria was fully threatened. States such as Bauchi, Taraba, Yobe, Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara etc in the entire North, and then the Middle Belt, Southwest and the entire South have suffered the killings, and maiming directed at converting vast Territories, and peoples and forcing them to be converted to Islam. Inspite of close to N2 trillion Naira spent to militarily eliminate and exterminate the Boko Haram group, with doubtful periodic proclamations of victories by the Nigerian military, Boko Haram has survived and indeed changed into ISWAP, Bandits, Fulani herdsmen, Ansaru etc and operated now close to 22-years; abducting and forcefuly converted several thousands – mostly women, female, male and underage boys and girls, to Islam, with no end in sight.
More than 30-local governments in the North are under the sovereign control of these violent Islamic groups, they collect taxes and force local populations to follow their prescribed modes of religious and social ways of life. Even soldiers and traditional rulers kowtow to them, pay royalty and are granted special privileges such as armistices and logistics, completely obfuscating the goals, doctrines and ultimate goals of the war.
At this rate, Boko Haram may never be defeated, or turn to be like Afghanistan’s Islamic Mujahideen, the Taliban, that first defeated the Soviet Union in 1980, and the United States and their stooges in 2021, inspite of Donald Trump’s prior militaristic postures and intensity.
All the Islamic terror groups in Nigeria are very well armed, have huge reserves of laundered funds, as well as complex international affiliations.
Even several State governments in the North of Nigeria are now negotiating with them, or have their militant converts, as rehabilitated infiltrators to further the struggle against Nigerian governments, and a way of life long condemned as forbidden.
Boko Haram and their affiliates raise huge external funds and gain massive incomes from illegal gold trades, drugs, money laundering, kidnap for ransom, and are essentially de facto governments in their zones, facts well admitted by the Nigerian State, and there is no going back on these modus, inspired from the Middle East and South East Asia, to ensure the full Islamization of the entire African continent. This is where the future, true and real dangers lie for all non-Muslim ethnic nationalities of current Nigeria.
Only the constitutional Dissolution of Nigeria now will enable new republics to structure new constitutions that will liberate them from total Islamic DOMINATION, that will overwhelm them and effect total conversion.
These processes in some North African countries such as Algeria and Tunisia took more than 300-years, of Arabization and Islamization, yet their original Berber populations were in time islamized entirely. Same with Turkey and more recently Lebanon, and we must therefore insist on constitutional Dissolution of Nigeria now, to save us from creeping Muslim Domination and forced overthrow of our own traditional African customs, traditions and heritage.
NO MORE BASIS FOR CONTINUED UNITY OR CO-EXISTENCE AS ONE COUNTRY
We must campaign, negotiate, dissolve Nigeria and separate now.
The North is encouraging continued unity and continuation of Nigeria because it is highly profited in terms of huge funds shared by the States and local governments, since there are more States and local governments in the North than in the South: any sharing of periodic or monthly monetary resources benefits the North more than the South, where nearly all the crude oil and gas that sustains the entire country are found.
With the Islamization and fulanization creeping to overwhelm Nigeria, and the Yoruba-Muslim plan to keep the Presidency only for the North and South West, with Igbos not being permitted to vote in Lagos State in the last general elections, there is no more basis for the continued existence or continuing of the country. In a shared federal country, like Nigeria, there is legal constitutional equality, especially the right to vote and be voted for.
Igbos were stopped and prevented from voting in the last March 25, 2023, Governorship and State Assembly elections in Lagos State and no one in the entire other regions in Nigeria protested.
The cynicism in Nigeria is very deep and wide, especially amongst the younger youthful generation, including the women, and they will not accept the current paradigms of Nigeria; including the disingenuous electoral and judicial systems in the country: only the future can foretell how and in what direction the country will evolve.
ETHNIC BIASES AND JINGOISMS
Ethnicity is the primary and most critical factor of how politics is played, practiced and operates in Nigeria and how it has evolved, since the constitutional conference of 1954.
It is totally impossible to live or work in Nigeria without experiencing first hand, the arduous repercussions of the phenomenon of ethnicity in the country.
Most foreigners who live and have been treated to the malady, would at an early stage of experiencing it, have wondered why it is so prevalent. The answer is essentially a sociological one: the ethnic factor precipitates and drives competition and corruption in underdeveloped entities such as Nigeria.
A clear picture of competition amongst all the contending ethnic nationalities compels individuals, groups and minions to seek to achieve their set aims and goals, by any means including offering financial inducements, sometimes by accepting monetary offers in anticipation of new grounds in which accumulated funds would be employed to overcome and dominate the other ethnic nationalities in pursuit of the same goals or objectives.
There is the irony in which members of the same ethnic nationality faced against one another, rely on merit as basis of determining who gains or wins in a fair competitive field, and accept the results of such situations.
Yet once other persons of different ethnic nationalities are involved, bribes and financial inducements are used to ensure the sacking and overwhelming of the other competing parties. Thus, how can this phenomenon be eliminated within the competing fields in Nigeria?
Due to longstanding effects, especially the omissions and refusal to apply remedies constitutionally designed to ensure the guaranteed equal placement of all competing ethnic nationalities or groups, such as constitutional zoning and periodically scheduled rotation, this is the main factor which once it is absent, intensifies and brings out the worst struggles or excessive competitions, in all Nigerians, irrespective of their social standing: it often instigates further compulsion to offer any inducements, to gain the favor sought, which in itself amplifies the need to accumulate money or strategic positions that will enable the achievement of the initial primary need and situations, of individuals or groups.
Apart from meeting immediate direct needs, providing for future satisfaction of such needs or similar needs, which drives the compulsion to offer, or receive fresh accumulable inducements. Why assume that constitutional guarantees can write off or eliminate offering or accepting bribes or other financial inducements?
Over time, the setting of provisions that reduce or eliminate fierce aggressive competitive fields, would set patterns and effective platforms that points individuals, groups and minions, not to be anxious and be concerned whether or not their specific positions are preserved.
Social behavioral patterns in human beings if and when set as achievable, inculcates, teaches and trains, peculiar particular expectations that over time ensures permanence in actions, gains and behaviors. If an individual is assured that a goal is due and is already slated towards him or her, that individual will neither seek to corrupt or bribe to gain it.
On the obverse, where such an assured guarantee is absent, the compulsion will be to gain it through bribery or by offering, accepting and corrupting the competitive field to gain, or to prevent loss of capacity. This is the age-long situation that has prevailed in Nigeria, thus since ethnicity cannot be removed from the entity, it is in the superior interest of the entity to organize such institutions based on ethnic paradigms, defended and patterned as such , from the original outset.
Outside this format, the cycles of corruption would ever be perpetuated interminably. Corruption cannot, as it obtains now, be eliminated in Nigeria, and it will in good time dissolve the entity.
TAIWAN AS EXAMPLE
The defeat and subsequent Dissolution of the Kuomintang as a result of the corrupt tendencies that its political and military elite went into, enabled Communist Peking China, to militarily drive the regime from the Mainland China into the Island of Formosa as known in 1933, or Taiwan as it is known today: and until the corrupt tendencies within Taiwan was altered, over more than 4-decades, with US support: only then was Taiwan re-awakened, which enabled the economic and social reawakening of the Republic of China, which was shriveled and had lost the capacity to compete against a much larger and endemically superior entity the Communist Peoples Republic. There are other Central American countries that have suffered such same fate, including Cuba and Nicaragua.
It is therefore better to plan ahead to constitutionally dissolve Nigeria and thus move forward the benefits that the peoples can gain from. But even the current Nigerian elite cannot stop the decomposiing process, where the Nigerian entity is currently positioned.
It is incumbent and most advantageous for ethnic nationalities in Nigeria now, to begin the political negotiated Dissolution of the country, perhaps through Bola Ahmed Tinubu, judging from the severe difficulties of legitimacy and rejection his government has suffered, since the Presidential election of 2023: or perhaps through other member(s) of the National Assembly, one such attempt was made courageously on October 7, 2023, at the House of Representatives in Abuja, which was abruptly, and amidst a fracas on the legislative floor, stopped by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Nigeria will do better through a constitutional Dissolution. It will be a catalyst for the reconfiguration of the prior territories that had been the territories or country the British amalgamated in 1914.
Just as it occurred in the Soviet Union, from 1989-1991, and between the Islamic Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan, from 2006-2011, when the Dissolution ended successfully, with the latter becoming a separate political entity.
Subsequently, in our writings, new additional modalities to achieve political dissolution in Nigeria shall be set forth by the Onochie Political Action Conference (ONOPAC).
Endemic Official-Business Corruption and Favoritism
Clearly the most rampant ills of Nigeria has been official and business corruption. Over the years this malady had been diagnosed as a very endemic and crippling factor that capably would kill the country.
There was a public statement consistently credited to Muhammadu Buhari, then as President, to that effect, as one of the capacities that would enable him to cure the country of the malaise. But it was soon clear that the expectations were misplaced, because Buhari’s APC led government began to recruit Politicians who had been tainted by corruption in the PDP.
The pressures to gain more notable politicians under it’s membership, and to expand his acceptability/legitimacy, pushed its erstwhile Chairman, Adams Oshiomole to publicly proclaim that opposing PDP members linked to corruption could join the APC and be granted a reprieve and solace from criminal investigation and prosecution.
In droves, corrupt politicians being hounded for stealing and stashing huge public funds began to join the APC and as soon, charges against them were dropped by the major prosecutorial agencies, the EFCC and ICPC. Apart from hurting the reputation and image of the government, it tended to grant impetus for greater corruption for those in government, and business.
By the ending of the Buhari government it had become a nest of favoritisms, nepotism and graft, and gained the reputation of being the most corrupt government ever to be established in Nigeria.
Commercial Banks as Doyen of Corruption and Foreign Exchange Crimes Accusing mostly politicians and senior government officials of being corrupt in Nigeria had been fashionable. But the persistent decline in inflationary and foreign exchange environments pointed to vulnerabilities that were economic rather than solely political or bureaucratic.
The rapid persistent devaluation of the Nigerian currency the Naira, became sure proof that several fingers must be pointed at commercial Banks.
Competition to gain more access to foreign exchange led to several bank mergers and collapses, and even more fiece lobbying for the position of the Governor of the CBN, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the statutory allocator of foreign money. Once favored, the annual profits of the individual banks soared, and soon the annual profits declared by the forex dealing banks got to several more billions of Naira.
That is where the current irrecoverable standing of the Naira against the US Dollar began: no body, except the US government (or another more bigger economy such as the EU or China), accepting to re-COLONIZE Nigeria, can change her current economic standing.
In less than 156-days of Tinubu being sworn in, the Naira has been devalued at the accessible Parallel Market, from N420.00 per $1.00 US Dollar to N1,160.00, and still rising, nearly 180% loss in value.
There is no more economic mainstay for the Nigerian entity, and once any product is imported, it’s prices and those of others will keep increasing and going up: and this is peace time, the Nigerian entity is not at war?
Quality of life, and its expectancy for the population is reduced by the same percentage, thus there is no basis for loyalty or allegiance to the government, or continuation, or belief in belonging to the entity.
Those who still propagate such unity or sharing, harbor worse intentions for the population or sections of it, and must be openly rejected. Favoring Fulanis, Northerners, Yorubas and Muslims Accusations of recruitment of mostly Fulanis , Northerners and Muslims in the most critical lucrative federal government positions, had been openly labeled against the government of Buhari.
Furthermore, there were accusations of Islamization and Arabization, by which persons who were expected to assist in the furtherance of the policies who were Southerners got appointed to or rigged to win elections and to become Governors and legislators. The program has very effectively weakened the fabric of government and operators of the entity. Alignment of persons of such ilk has increasingly made the most impact in security, intelligence, financial and federal administration. The highest echelons of government has not followed the Constitutional prescriptions for spreading the reach of recruitment of federal officers to foster unity and patriotism.
In new appointments by Tinubu, the obverse has again become the norm, with nearly 80% of all strategic and critical highest and best echelons of government positions slated for Yorubas, of the South West or North Central, and Muslim extraction.
What Buhari did for the Northerners, Tinubu is now doing for the Yoruba-Muslims, and then other non Muslim Yorubas, while crumbs are left for other sections of the polity.
The general level of despair and hopelessness amongst those not favored has increased in the wake of the favoritisms shown to others.
It is already planned in plank that the next government at the federal level will revert to the North, setting a perpetual turn of governments to Muslims, thus effectively making Nigeria an Islamic country.
Conjectures such as these make patriotism more difficult, and impossible, disloyalty to the concept of a united Nigerian entity also most difficult to expect or achieve. Those are the reasons for the current calls for the constitutional DISSOLUTION of Nigeria.
EXPECTED SPIKE IN DEMAND FOR SEPARATIST AGITATIONS AND NEW ENTITIES
A corollary to the current grave situation in Nigeria is a deadened public sense that the country is in high peril.
Especially the worsened cost of living situation, galloping inflation, continuing devaluation of the Naira, higher cost of petrol, insecurity, kidnapping, Boko Haram and failures of the Political Elite and the judiciary: the Supreme Court of Nigeria sold out the country, at the moment of her highest need, by ruling that Tinubu whose local and international crimes, must be superimposed to lead the country.
Even without election petitions or irregularities, revelations of Tinubu’s forgeries, of fraudulent certificates, and curriculum vitae, warrant resignation on his part from the position now awarded to him by the Supreme Court. The only path of honor left for those who state vehemently that illegality and crime, cannot be rewarded by an award of high office, see shame and disgrace as the main consequence for the country.
Other stiffer and saner persons, wish to be out and cultivate and set up new political entities where honor, dignity and patriotism will be a heritage to be cherished openly and be passed on to the younger generations.
This is the source of the expectant spike in the agitation and demand for new separatist republics. Riddled already with insoluble problems, additions of leadership that has highly questionable legitimacy and public acceptance, is a much taller order. The 2023 General and Presidential elections were a cooling, soothing balm for the demands to dismember the country.
The electoral robberies occasioned first through INEC, then by the Election Tribunals, and finally by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, denote that there is no sense in relying on the workability of the extant 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, severally now amended.
It is a document that is not workable, one that is so fallacious that even the 2022 Elections Amendment Act, with IREV and electronic loading and collating of results, was rejected by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, as not binding as law, and a nullity depending on the goals of the political elite.
Worse for the country as a federal entity, the equality franchise that every citizen can vote during elections was abrogated in Lagos State, during the Governorship and State Assembly elections of March 25, 2023. Igbos and those who resembled Igbos were stopped from voting, in most cases violently estopped, some with their chattels destroyed: the rest of the country kept mute, and not even high sworn security, military and public officials batted an eyelid.
There is really not much left by way of a basis of unity in Nigeria, for those who suffer from these democratic deprivations, because they are simply nominal citizens, Second class, merely retained towards the achievement of even more grevious objectives, maybe modern-day slavery, conquest, conversion to Islam, or extermination.
The questions are: will Igbos or their look-alikes be permitted to vote ever again in Lagos State? What other States in Nigeria will follow suit along the same path?
For how long will Igbos continue to accept this level of electoral disparagement, disenfranchisement and disrespect, and they will insist that the entity is not serving there noble best interests? Who else within the Nigerian entity will follow suit, asking and acting on the same predicates?
SOLUTION IN CONSTITUTIONAL DISSOLUTION
Part of the associated problems of illogical political policies and behaviors in Nigeria is the concomitant disloyalty, violence and lack of patriotism that victims suffer due to wrong characterizations, profiling and discriminatory policies of the oppressors.
The most evident signs in Nigeria politically today is that Northerners and South Westerners expressly plot to overwhelm Igbos and other ethnic nationalities, in the rest of the South and the Middle Belt, using money and other inducements to dominate them, corner the highest gains for themselves, their families, friends, cronies and tribal or religious groups.
The plan is that political maneuvers will be sustained in future, in which the country’s highest political office will be occupied by them and with time Nigeria will become a total Islamic country.
In most parts of the Southeast of Nigeria, an ungovernable public disobedience situation has persisted for close to 4-years now, known as “Monday Stay at Home”. A full militarization of the urban centers and heavily wooded rural areas are under Nigerian military attacks, checks and patrols.
Those who are opposed to the ills and constitutional imbalances that have plagued Nigeria in the past nearly 30-years are dubbed terrorists, not even separatists. Human self-determination rights are denied them, in order to further the DOMINATION objectives of the Northern and Islamic politicalelite.
Detention, exile or prosecution of their violent leaders, such as Nnamdi Kanu, and Sunday Igboho, Igbo/Yoruba separatist agitators respectively, and others, sets the pace of violent agitations to divide up Nigeria.
This circle of repression and violence remains, denying the wider opportunities for general devolution of the erstwhile country, in order to reduce all the insoluble ills that has obliterated the high prosperous living standards of millions of citizens, trapped under the greed of the ruling elite.
Rather than sustain a wholesome unworkable Constitution and country, clearly tabulated processes of Constitutional Dissolution will eliminate gross separatist agitations that are bound to increase and further paralyze the country.
November 16, 2023, was a germane date, and the plain reason for this assumption shall soon be revealed hereunder.
EMERGENCE OF THE CONFEDERATION OF ANIOMA PEOPLES AND TERRITORIES
There is a tendency in human and political affairs to be ready and be prepared for unforeseen circumstances, if those involved are alert to the environment they operate in and the threats apportioned.
In the history of Nigeria, running close to 109-years of the amalgamation of all the territories and peoples under British control, trade and Christian/Islamic DOMINATION, there have been events that took place which were unexpected.
Even the so-called amalgamation was unplanned; yet it took place and has lasted for as much as it did, inspite of heavy burdens of ethnic and religious heterogeneity.
The US Congressional African Caucus predicted in 2007 that the Nigerian federation would collapse, and get dissolved by 2015. That epoch has since passed and Nigeria has remained.
Except for 1961 when the Saduana Province, through a British accepted and implemented referendum, voted to join Northern Cameroun, and Nigeria has remained the same since that unexpected unprepared excise from the country.
In 2001, parts of Bakassi local government of Nigeria was again ceded to Cameroun, as part of a 1967-1968 Agreement reached with Nigeria, as Cameroun’s reward for assisting and enabling the economic blockade of Biafra during the war of 1967-1970, in which Biafra militarily fought to separate from Nigeria: loosing the oil rich Bakassi peninsula was very painful for Obasanjo, on whose Presidency it occurred, but it epitomized the absurdity of leadership that has plagued Nigeria and which is inexcusable in the current Tinubu mileui in which nothing has worked or will work, unless all these outstanding constitutional absurdities are DISSOLVED to herald the devolution of new small republics that will be created and be led, based on ethno-generic principles that will coherently prosper and develop the new entities.
Soviet Union as Example
Despite the several advantages of the Soviet Union, amalgamated in 1917 by Vladimir Lenin, into a Socialist expansive country, five times the territorial size of Nigeria, the entity was dissolved fully constitutionally after 74-years in 1991.
It was a devolution that was unexpected, which created 15-new republics and entities. In the nearly 32-years of it’s Dissolution, several of the small republics it birthed, Croatia, Lithuania , Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine etc have prospered exceedingly more than had been expected, and even faster.
These were the ones that were partially prepared, if not fully, but seriously on a path that proved expedient and prophetic. In 1989 when the Soviet Union began crumbling, the problems of Nigeria had seemed soluble.
It was two years from the demise of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who with the eyes of a Sage had abandoned Nigeria, (he ran to be Prime Minister in 1957, and 1960 but failed; resigned being Finance Minister in 1971 to run for President in 1974 but the Military reneged, ran to be President in 1979 & 1983, lost each time), in the belief that Nigeria was an unworkable doomed geographic expression.
Concerned very rightly of the preponderance of negativistic tendencies in the ideological spectrum of Nigeria, Awo pleaded with Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1954 to join him in the insertion of ” a divorce clause” to allow any ethnic nationality or entity in Nigeria not satisfied with the devolutionary prospects of the Nigerian entity, to pull out and prosper on it’s own path.
Azikiwe believed deeply in the future glory that would befall Nigeria, and spent several congenial hours, and convinced his perennial political competitor otherwise.
So both the South and North, were trapped in a federal constitution that ultimately the Nigerian military mangled into an abyss of corruption, favoritisms and religious ethnic contraption.
Since Obafemi Awolowo did not get an opportunity to lead Nigeria on a path of pioneering economic and social development that he placed the old Western Region on, is it Bola Tinubu, who mimicked and copied Pa Awo’s spectacles but refused to copy his dimpled cap, who will now succeed?
As Deputy Chairman of the Federal Executive Council and Commissioner (Minister) of Finance, from 1967 to 1971, Awolowo fought a civil war and won, without borrowing a kobo or devaluing the local Nigerian currency, yet could not get the opportunity to be Prime Minister or President to redeem or pull Nigeria out of degenerate economic and social failure, from 1954 to 1963, and from 1979-1983: is it Bola Tinubu, who has from May 29, 2023 crashed the local currency, and is borrowing more than $7.26 Billion US dollars, in less than 6- months, to “stabilize” the local currency he crashed, and to buy a Presidential yacht, who will pull Nigeria out of her current economic and social abyss? Tinubu who on Day One removed petrol subsidy and hiked the price of petrol by 250%, and still rising? Who else, indeed?
Study all their 2023 Presidential Campaign economic planks, all of them, and for very minor differences predicated on anti-corruption, and fiscal non-wastage, they are all incapable of rescuing Nigeria from where Buhari first, then Tinubu has dumped her now.
2023 EMERGENT CONFEDERATION OF ANIOMA PEOPLES AND TERRITORIES – WHAT TO EXPECT
In light of all the above postulates, I have hoisted on November 11, 2023, a flag of an emerging Confederation of Anioma Peoples and Territories.
It represents the belief of the various dialects of Igbo/Olukumi speaking peoples, West of the lower River Niger, that our wish and desire is to be speedily out of Nigeria, through a constitutionally dissolved process.
Without rancor, violence or recriminations, all the ethnic nationalities in the current entity, amalgamated by the British in 1914, must sit and negotiate, divide assets, allot all outstanding fiscal resources, share outstanding liabilities and debts, set all the differing ethnic peoples on their own to seek new and due constitutional avenues, to use their local resources and improve their living standards and quality of life.
On our part, we have drafted a Charter that is the basis of a Constitution that will offer all our Peoples the following:
1. Fraternity, Neutrality, Unity and Modernism
2. Parliamentary Model, Unicameral Legislature, of 30-members only, 15-Traditional Rulers, 15-Politicians, 50% being females, on a 2-Year Non-renewable non-Incumbent tenure (same composition at Province and LocalCommune levels), with a Confederation Capital in Asaba, and 10-Provinces in the ethnic dialect Territories of Olukumi-Odiani, Ukwuani-Ndokwa, Ika, Enuani, and Oshimili (Political and Physical maps fully denoted)
.3. Rotational Confederation Chairman and Head of Legislative-Executive Ceremonial Duties and Protocol, being a Hereditary First Class Traditional Ruler, on a 5-monthly intervals of zoned rotation: Rotational Prime Minister, Politician-Parliamentary Leader on a 5-monthly intervals of zoned rotation
4. Rotational Province Chairman and Head of Legislative-Executive Ceremonial Duties and Protocol, being Hereditary Second Class Traditional Ruler, on a 5-monthly intervals of zoned rotation: Rotational Premier, Politician-Parliamentary Leader on a 5-monthly intervals of zoned rotation
5. Rotational Local Commune Chairman and Head of Legislative-Executive Ceremonial Duties and Protocol, being Hereditary Third Class Traditional Ruler, on a 5-monthly intervals of zoned rotation: Rotational Chairperson, Politician-Parliamentary Leader on a 5-monthly intervals of zoned rotation
6. Governance goals- fraternity, inclusion, turn-by-turn zoned rotation, non renewal of 2-year non incumbency tenure, no immunity clause, adherence to ECOWAS Treaty, free movement, ZERO CORRUPTION AND ZERO FOREIGN LOANS
7. Economic goals – Local resources control, 50% retention of incomes locally, 50% transmission of locally generated income to Confederation; FREE EDUCATION AND MEDICAL SERVICES, Social security, unemployment benefits
.8. Social welfare goals – equality of rights, friendship and happiness, individual privacy, dignity of each, and each is his brothers’ keeper
9. Rights, of Citizenship and Peoples- our territories belong to aboriginal peoples; citizenship determined based on aboriginals, your Great – Grand forebears and Parents must be born in Anioma to have citizenship; 7-years of excellent recorded sojourn, local language knowledge requirement for naturalized citizenship, who cannot be Prime Minister, Premier or Local Commune Chairperson.
10. Confederation Anthem, Coat of Arms, Public Acclamation and Pledge, draft international travel passport, Ego Anioma – E0.50 (Ego Nta Ili Ise) equivalent to N200.00; E20.00 (Ego Oru) equivalent to N4,000.00; Ego Anioma local currency pegged at E0.92 to $1.00 US Dollar statutorally pegged, never to be devalued; general imports of essential commodities prohibited, population use of forex prohibited by the Constitution; citizens to rely only on local made essential products in Anioma cottage industries and factories.
11. Transitional provisions – initial confederation-wide elections, accounting of assets, liabilities, debts; existing and outstanding laws, Cases transfers; setting up Military, Constabulary Police, only 3,000 personnel per detachment, with 50% for females; no provision of government official vehicles except for Judges, Military, Constabulary etc; procurement of individual vehicles based on loans, vehicles hire-purchased on personal/individual Salary income loans guaranteed by Government within 14-days.WHY NOVEMBER 16, 2023?
The Story of Nigeria cannot be told without copious references and citations of Nnamdi Azikiwe, who was born on November 16, 1904. Were he alive today, he would have been 119 years old.
Azikiwe served Herbert Macaulay, a Yoruba Sage and Politician of the highest order, and though Azikiwe was Igbo from Onitsha, he gave Yoruba names to all his sons, in the true belief that though tribe and tongue may differ, we should stand together in brotherhood. But were he alive today, certainly like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Zik would have admitted that the basis of unity does not exist anymore.
Tribe and ethnicity are the most critical factors that ensure Nigerian jobs, contracts, privileges, positions, high income, followed by Islam, without the profession of which you cannot achieve to lead Nigeria, no matter your administrative or ideological pedigree. Nigeria has indeed failed, and been consigned to the domain of a failed state.
In Tinubu inviting Saudi investors while there this week for an Islamic Organization Conference, to trust in the economy of Nigeria, it is absurd to believe that anyone can invest or trust in an economy where the price of a crate of eggs changes three times upwardly in a week. How will the Tinubu invited investors’ profits be repatriated?
Or that the Nigerian judiciary will guarantee foreign investors, when local Nigerians have openly accused Judges of the Supreme Court of Nigeria of being allegedly bought with money to declare the 2023 Presidential election result in favor of Tinubu.
Only the truth can set a people free, and no matter how hard you fool a people, you cannot fool them all the time.
No one can predict the future, except that in Nigeria there has not been any known economic recovery for more than 50-years, and in such a context, it is easy to note that nothing has changed for so long, and ip so facto, nothing economically or socially can change that quickly now, for the impact to be highly beneficial for the impoverished populace.
We hereby reject RESTRUCTURING NIGERIA now, or ever again, because for a very long time, the elite of the North refused to restructure Nigeria, playing only to their own ethnic biases and fiscal advantage.
We insist and state openly that we do not want to belong any longer to Nigeria. Those who still wish to remain in the country should enjoy their wish. We want a speedy Constitutional Dissolution of the country, without violence or acrimony.
This position will not change. We shall continue to prove that a newly constituted Confederation of Anioma Peoples and Territories, will in a very short time-frame be more prosperous and harmonious, than Nigeria, because we shall remain honest, dedicated and true to our purposes. Nigeria has been long lost and cannot be redeemed again!
*Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie, Convener, Onochie Political Action Conference (ONOPAC)