I know that by the very nature of the title of this article, some readers already consider me an “unpatriotic Nigerian.” Patriotism in this context means one who never utters anything unsavoury towards their own country. But Mark Twain has a better definition of who a patriot is. He puts it simply as “someone who stands for his country always and for his government when it is deserved.”
I believe the understanding of the following text will bode better for Nigeria. It is the patriotic thing to do. We must acknowledge our problems so that we can devise constructive solutions instead of playing the-see no evil-monkey.
This article surveys the contradictory forces that created disunity by the country’s default setting and explores a rationale for why the country has to find a better system for its administration using the concept of time travelling.
In case you’re unfamiliar with what a paradox means, according to the last person who edited it on Wikipedia it is, “A logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one’s expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion.” Simply put, it is a statement that creates a result that’s contradictory to what the statement itself says it is.
Example of such a statement is, “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” — Gandhi. Another one is, “One Nigeria.” — Every Nigerian politician ever.
While you may believe that that ought to cover it, “One Nigeria” doesn’t stop at being just a paradox. For good measure, it is also a paradox of a paradox. Eyy, I’m not being hyperbolic here.
Let’s examine it through the lens of time travel as a phenomenon. Time travel is a paradox, therefore, any contradictory idea predicated on the concept of time travel becomes a paradox paradox.
One Nigeria is a dictum popularized during the Nigerian Civil war by the Nigerian side of the struggle in justification for its foolhardy insistence on why the Biafra side cannot be allowed to secede. (My money is on oil). This means it came into vogue during a conflict amongst Nigerians. That’s a paradox. Therefore any actions predicated by that paradox would be a paradox of a paradox.
To create a truly united Nigeria, we’ll have to journey back in time to address the fundamental problem of disunity that continues to plague her existence as a polity till date. It is well known that the continued unity of Nigeria was at best an afterthought of the colonial powers who arbitrarily created the physical boundary that has become known as Nigeria, named after the eponymous River Niger by one Miss Flora Shaw.
Nigeria was amalgamated to aid in the administration of the vastly distinct-culturally and in the way they set up their societies-territories by the British. This was done with the aid of several treaties, like the treaty of cession with Oba Docemo (Dosumu) of Lagos in 1861, “friendship” and “protection” treaty with King Jaja of Opobo in 1884, a treaty of “protection” with the Obi Akata and other 12 Obis and Queen Omu Nwanuka of Asaba in 1884, treaty of “protection” with Sultan of Sokoto, a treaty of “commerce” and “friendship” was signed with Abeokuta on 18th January in 1893, and similar 100 other treaties.
Historical records say the amalgamation was done to aid the economically struggling North.
Even at amalgamation, the problems of ethnicity, tribalism and armed conflict was apparent amongst the people who came to be known as Nigerians. One may argue that it wasn’t in the best interest of the British whose intention it was to create extractive political and economic institutions to foster any real unity between them.
The business of extraction and expropriation of her resources becomes much more difficult if they were united since unity may engender the danger of struggles for decolonization as it did much later which necessitated the split of the Southern part of Nigeria into the Southeast and the Southwest when the troublesome economically successful South began to agitate for independence as a unit.
One may also add that fostering unity amongst these groups was going to be a gnarly task anyway since the territories which became Nigeria were occupied by heterogeneous groups made up of 100s of small culturally and socially diverse ethnic tribes whose main contact with each other had been through the trans-Saharan trade and armed conflict in the form of the Uthman Dan Fodio holy war in the North and expansion of the Oyo and Benin empire in the South in some instances.
Another worthy historical mention in the amalgamation of Nigeria is the imposition of chiefs on the people of Southeastern Nigeria. It illustrates another critical difference between the different groups which must be examined in explaining the divergent nature of the different systems which became unified through amalgamation. Before said “unification,” precolonial African societies had been administered in different ways with the pre-colonial Igbo society consisting of autonomous villages and village groups ruled via diffused authority without any sort of formalized, permanent or hereditary leadership systems,(1) while the Hausa-Fulani adopted the emirate system under the control of a central caliphate with powers being devolved to traditional and religious leaders. The imposition of chiefs on the people of the southeast was done to aid the British come to an agreement with the people who historically had no central figure of authority.
100s of other ethnic minorities were forcibly put under the control of the three major ethnic groups. This forced marriage and sub-marriages led to an atmosphere of mutiny. For example, the Tiv people revolted against the domination by their Hausa-Fulani rulers in 1952, violence also broke out between the Tiv and Jukun people in 1959, similar infighting took place in 1960 and 1964. The atmosphere of rebellion and mutiny was and continues to be replicated amongst several groups in the country. Some of these violent breakouts fueled by ethnic rivalries survive till date.
Back to our time machine, the mission of the time travelers will be to go back in time to infuse the important absent characteristic of unity into the country that came to be before it was a country. To solve the existing paradox, we must go back to rectify the foundation on which the paradox itself draws breath. And any attempt to do that would make this a paradoxical undertaking since the way time travel works is that the timeline will auto-correct itself and present-day Nigeria and the “One Nigeria” ethos that now holds its extractive ruling elite together will never have existed in the first place since there was no unity-of purpose or mission-to begin with.
The result of that undertaking would be a new country that is not Nigeria. Although since you cannot really change the present by going back in time to adjust the past because what is then created is an entirely different timeline. Since time exists on a single line, any effort to change the trajectory of that line will result in an entirely new line. It means those of us who exist in current Nigeria will still exist in it as it is since time is a constant phenomenon which cannot be altered universally. What will change if we attempted to create a united Nigeria is a united Nigeria for those who undertook that mission on a different timeline, different from the one currently Nigeria exists. Basically, there’ll never be a “One Nigeria,” and if there was one, it wouldn’t be the one we live in.
This is not to mean that current day Nigerians cannot find a common ground on which they can coexist peacefully. It doesn’t mean that we cannot find that ever-important common purpose to strive for as a country. What it means is that “One Nigeria” as a dictum will not be truer in the past than it is today when it has become even more apparent that the marriage which became Nigeria is at best a shaky one to which a time bomb is attached. And before the conditions which will set it off reaches its apogee, we must reconvene to have a heart to heart on what the way forward would look like for us as a nation under God.
“One Nigeria” will continue to be a self-contradictory statement on which other doomed to fail actions will be taken because we have managed to delude ourselves into believing we are one people even though we have never been, haven’t been and probably will never be. There may never be a “One Nigeria.” It is a paradox. What we can have is a Nigeria in which its different people can find a way to coalesce and exchange cultures peacefully and respectably in an arrangement that’s fair and works for everyone who chooses to be a part of the alliance. Any actions which are then taken to administer Nigeria as a single homogeneous entity is doomed to failure because it must first believe the “One Nigeria” paradox as a truism. Which it is far from.
The most visible result of this is how the constitution has been forced to create different laws to accommodate the beliefs of different regions. The Northern penal code built on the foundation of Sharia law is popular in the North and although it is accepted in most Northern states, one look at the laws in it will reveal laws that most Southerners will find highly disagreeable. Our inherent contradictions are catching up to us and at some point sooner rather than later we’ll have to devise a better model of governance for the administration of what was left for us as Nigeria. Perhaps this is why restructuring is gaining ground as is returning to the federation model of regional administration instead of the centralized unitary system that it is now.
Aguiyi-Ironsi believed in the “One Nigeria” paradox and took actions based on this belief, what resulted immediately was a civil war between the purported united people of Nigeria. Oxymoronic eyy? “One Nigeria” is a paradox within a paradox. Nigeria is here to stay but we must come to an understanding on how three people may stand in twos.
“If the foundation is faulty, what can the righteous do? — Psalm 11:3”
— Oloye.
(1) Ibenekwu, Ikpechukwuka E. Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
