Nothing lasts forever. Except true love, as rhapsodised by the poets. Across the great vicissitudes of time, nations rise and fall like the tidal waves of the ocean. The historian Arnold Toynbee, in his epic study of civilisations, identified 26 of them. Less than a dozen survive today.
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor at Oxford, infamously declared that Africa has no history. But he also propounded the theory of “invented traditions”. He was perhaps echoing the Swiss social philosopher Jacob Burckhardt, who described the state as “a work of art”. Great nations are built with the same vision, skill, panache and passion as Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel or as Mozart composed his great symphonies.
Nations are the collective outcomes of individual creativity, vision and purpose. The ancient Egyptians revered the sage Imhotep (“the one who comes in peace”) as the embodiment of their highest genius. Philosopher, mathematician, scientist, architect and mystic, Imhotep was the grand vizier and counsellor to Pharaoh Djoser during the Old Kingdom. The ancient Greeks looked up to Solon as the founder and law-giver of the Athenian Republic. The Stoic philosopher and Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, reigned over Rome with compassion and justice. So did Asoka of Chandragupta India and Akbar the Great after him. So did the righteous Caliphs during the first centuries of Islam.
In the history of the American Republic, I am most impressed by George Washington, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln. In England I admire Elizabeth I, the two Pitts, Gladstone and Winston Churchill. In Europe, I would doff my hat for Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Thomas Masaryk, Vaclav Havel and Angela Merkel. Gandhi and Nehru nurtured a vision of the greatness of India. So did Mao, Zhou En-Lai and Deng Xiaoping in China.
It has been alleged that the current incumbent of our high magistracy is suffering from advanced dementia. The cabal have used the opportunity to commit grand larceny with the wantonness of drunken sailors
Africa has its share of glittering stars: Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto, Seretse Khama, Samora Machel, Obafemi Awolowo, Thomas Sankara, Nelson Mandela and Paul Kagame.
It takes individuals to build a nation; it also takes individuals to destroy it. The grandest building in the world today is the 829-metre high, 163-floor neo-futurist Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It took more than 5 years to build, at the whopping cost of $1.5 billion. To destroy that edifice, all you will need is 10 kg of dynamite under a controlled explosion. Far easier to destroy than to build.
The British cobbled our country together in 1914 mainly to save administrative costs at the eve of World War I. Only six individuals signed the Amalgamation: Alaafin Siyanbola Oladigbolu; Obong R. Henshaw of Calabar; Sultan Muhammadu Maiturare; Shehu Borno Abubakar el-Kanemi; Emir of Usuman bin Abdullahi; and Sir Kitoyi Ajasa, lawyer and legislative member of the Crown Colony of Lagos. Sir Kitoyi was an agent of the British.
The majority of Nigerians were not party to the agreement. If someone signed a treaty on your behalf without your knowledge or consent, such a deal lacks the force of treaty law and the legal precepts recognized by civilized nations. The legalists are telling us that the hundred-year lease has expired.
Last week, the South and Middle Belt coalition gave an ultimatum to the federal government to dismantle the 1999 constitution, which they believe to be a fraud. Nations can live with bad constitutions, so long as the leaders govern with restraint, fairness and justice. This is why those issues never came up under Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan. But we live in evil times. Those that Aisha Buhari described as “the cabal” have cornered power to themselves; governing not in the national interest but on the basis of nepotism and exclusion. They have allowed thousands of murderous mercenaries from neigbhouring countries to come and kill our people, rape our women and desecrate our ancestral homelands.
It has been alleged that the current incumbent of our high magistracy is suffering from advanced dementia. The cabal have used the opportunity to commit grand larceny with the wantonness of drunken sailors; borrowing billions of dollars to build railroads and refineries in neighbouring countries, for which our children will have to pay.
Nigeria is today the third most terrorized country after Afghanistan and Somalia. Hunger and despair stalk the land. In creating Boko Haram and the Fulani bandits, our Northern elites aimed to impose a hegemony of fear. They have in reality unleashed a Frankenstein’s monster that has turned the North into a desert wasteland of beggarliness and destitution.
Our enemies are not only local; they are spread across Turkey, Qatar, Iran and other rogue nations. Not too long ago, container loads of arms shipment from Turkey were intercepted by our customs officials. A Lebanese vulture was also found with a huge cache of arms in the basement of a supermarket in Abuja. The matter was swept under the carpet. No bandits and Boko Haram or Fulani herdsmen militias have ever been tried and convicted in a court of law. If this does not look like official collusion, then I don’t know what it is.
Going by revelations from Wikileaks, we have reason to believe that the ongoing genocide in our country is part of a covert operation whose geostrategic objective is to dismember our country and to turn it into a comatose elephant like DRC.
The emerging reign of fear and collective anomie is generating anger and embitterment among our populations; among ancient warrior tribes that had never been conquered by Jihad. They are not about to lie down and die. It should not surprise anyone that the ghosts of Oduduwa and Biafra have been resurrected.
I am a Nigerian patriot. I innately believe that ours is a high and noble destiny. But I am also aware that it is so easy to destroy a country through incompetence, folly and bad faith. Today, we face a bottomless abyss where everything we hold most sacred could go up in a bonfire of the vanities.
Let the true patriots stand up and be counted!
