GOING OUR SEPARATE WAYS WITHOUT WAR OR BITTERNESS – Akinmoyo
I’m beginning to buy into the idea of a New Nigerian Framework that truly does encourage “Unity in Diversity” amongst the teeming nations and ethnic groups in the present day state. The elite of this country keep trying to confuse us with terms like secession, self-determation, UN declaration of nation state, but to mention a few. I bet you the vast proportion of Nigerian’s over 200 million population wouldn’t know which way to choose if a Referendum were permissible and called today.
Let me digress slightly, I’m the second of six children and ever since we each left home for university, we each followed our separate paths to planning, building and developing our own individual homes. We love each other as blood siblings (sometimes you would wonder 😁), but we had to leave home to further our lives and those of our children and today even grandchildren.
The two females amongst us have married and now answer their respective husband’s names. It doesn’t make our females any less a child of the family. Whilst the four males retain the family name, it doesn’t make us anymore superior within the family network, particularly as few married non-Nigerians.
Some of us left Nigeria to other frontiers and laid down our best efforts abroad, but always remained committed to our root our origin or source.
Every festival like Easter or New Year, (proximity permitting) we all get together at the family home and celebrate with our ageing mother, even many years after our late father joined his ancestors as far back as 1999. His departure from the scene for 22 years now did not bring the house down.
This is a miniature illustration of nations and countries which are all made up of people, families, clans and tribes. Living separately and deciding our own destiny as individual family members has worked in most family settings.
Just ask yourself whether the same levels of progress and development would have been achieved if your mum and dad had insisted that you and your siblings were never to leave the family home ever, all were to operate under the same roof. Needless to say, some may well have killed each other, many families would be a wreck today.
The unity that can sustain Nigeria under a single umbrella or roof is one In-separation.
I believe the modern term is akin to a Confederation. The idea that we can as a nation practice real/true Federalism doesn’t appeal to me. Some say it worked in 1963, maybe so, but what were our resources and population back then, talkless the real and perceived levels of injustices meted out since then.
Confederation of Nigeria for me and I so submit.
Barr Gbenga Akinmoyo (Hon. GaRo) writes from Idanre, Ondo State.
25th June 2021