An apparently innocuous question which a student asked me a few days ago unexpectedly escalated into an inevitable intellectual evaluation of the much-talked about American apocalyptic prediction of the possibility of the disintegration of Nigeria, come 2015. The simple question, if I could rephrase it, was something like: “Sir, to what extent can we still uphold the validity of that section of the Constitution which proclaims that ‘Nigeria is an indissoluble and indivisible sovereign State’ when for several months now many parts of the country have been forcefully occupied and excised from the rest of the country and from the reach of the Nigerian authorities?” Honestly, I was taken aback by the question and even more so by the implications of the answer it would necessarily generate if processed logically. Can we in good conscience and with sound logic still say the territorial integrity of Nigeria is intact when some areas have been cut off territorially, administratively, legally and militarily from the Nigerian system for months, if not years? According to an Esan saying, a tuber of yam loses its wholeness (integrity) once a piece is cut off it. I think it is the same with the Nigeria of today. A piece has been cut off. It is now incomplete. Constitutionally speaking, the sovereignty of the Nigerian State and its territorial integrity are conceptually expressed in the Constitution in the following terms: The Federation of Nigeria shall comprise (of) 36 states and a federal capital territory and about 700 local government councils. For all intents and purposes, the territorial integrity of Nigeria is only meaningful when the government is able to maintain its sovereign presence within the entire real estate. When the Americans predicted that Nigeria is going to be confronted with serious sovereign challenges that could undermine her territorial integrity in 2015, little did we expect that we would indeed not get to 2015 before such an unfortunate doomsday situation materialises. The territorial integrity of Nigeria is intact only if every inch of her territory as defined under the constitution remains under the full suzerainty of the government. For several months now, hundreds of Nigerian female students have been forcibly separated from their school in Chibok and ferried into territories that are outside of the administrative and magisterial reach of Nigeria. We were told that the authorities know where those girls are but they just cannot go there to save them because it is beyond their reach. In other words, the sovereignty of Nigeria has been circumscribed by the activities of the insurgents that presently control those areas. The situation there now can be likened to the unusual one in Pakistan where large areas of the country have been designated as “tribal areas” and are beyond the regular reach of the government in Islamabad. The only difference between the local Shekerau’s Caliphate and the Pakistani tribal areas is that the Paksitani government occasionally make incursions into those semi-autonomous “tribal no-go areas” where the Talibans hold sway and run their madrassas where jihadist terrorists and suicide bombers are hatched daily while, on the other hand, the Nigerian authorities cannot gain access to BH-held territories. The old civil war slogan, “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done”, is still very relevant to Nigeria. As long as parts of the country have become inaccessible to the Nigerian political and military authorities, it is to that extent technically correct to say that the country has been divided thus making a mockery of the constitutional declaration that the federation is “indissoluble and indivisible”. Clearly, the territorial integrity of Nigeria has been badly compromised and it has already vindicated the unpalatable prediction of those busy-body Americans. Their time-line was 2015, possibly with an eye on the great cataclysm that the forthcoming elections portend. They were however beaten to it by BH that chose to immediately put to question the constitution’s claim that the sovereignty of Nigeria cannot be territorially compromised. I think it behooves us as a people to avert the doomsday prophecies of those who do not wish us well by striving hard to avoid situations that would only hasten such negative predictions. It is no rocket science to tell that a given society is heading for the rocks. It is simply a matter of actions and reactions. Whenever a people conduct their public and private affairs in a manner that ignores the imperatives of the Rule of Law, truth and social justice, the result can only be detrimental to their overall wellbeing. When, for example, we seem to have adopted corruption, a veritable cankerworm, as a national creed, it is predictable that the State will fail someday. The late erudite Chinua Achebe once said in connection with his fulfilled prediction in the epochal volume, Man of the People, that when a man climbing a ladder gets to the last rung and still continues to climb, you need not be told that he will eventually fall off. Nigeria had all the opportunities to ward off, if not abort, ab initio, the demon that Boko Haram has become but she dilly-dallied, looking the other way. In many respects it could be said that we created the environment within which the evil of BH and other similar tendencies germinated either in the ignorance that it will serve some selfish political purposes or further some sectarian objectives that are also tied to selfish politicking; now the monster has eaten up its creator and everyone is on the run. Those bearded governors who started the whole thing by their creation of “political Sharia” have all now become displaced persons and refugees in Abuja. It was obvious from the beginning that there was no good faith in the indiscriminate imposition of Sharia administrations over the existing secular arrangement when they did. It was never their intention to genuinely advance on the cause of Islam but to use religion as a ploy to hold on to undeserved power. Little did they realise that there are also others who want to exploit the pervasive hypocrisies to their peculiar advantage. That is where we are today: the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. The “boys” have now become the masters! It is certainly no longer a legitimate subject to be talking about the possibility of the country being broken up as the BH phenomenon has already put paid to that: some parts of Nigeria are for the time being already beyond the sovereign reach of the Nigerian State. What should bother us today is how to reclaim our lost sovereignty over Sambissa Forest and other parts of our federation now under the savage control of the insurgents. To keep Nigeria one, I repeat, is a task that must be done but a fast failing economy and the ubiquitous turbulence flowing from our mutually destructive politicking will only make the inevitable task of national restoration a lot more burdensome. That, really, is an assignment for a creative leadership and clearly not that of mere sloganeering. We must reclaim our sovereignty all over Nigeria. It is a constitutional obligation without excuses. Copyright PUNCH. All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH. Contact: editor@punchng posted on November 23, 2014 at 12:00AM jtnng.blogspot/
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 23:38:08 +0000
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