THE frequent threats to the unity of Nigeria may persist until Nigerians agree to negotiate the basis of their corporate existence, a former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has asserted.

Fani-Kayode, who also served as a  Senior Special Assistant [Public Affairs] to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, said though he was against the breakup of the country, it faced the stiff challenge of tackling the issue of national question.

In an interview with Saturday Tribune in Abuja, he was exasperated by the endless acrimony and bitterness that had continued to trail the unity of the country.

“We need to answer the national question and that means we need to understand and need to know what Nigeria was meant to be. How it came about, who put it together and on what purpose? And we need to accept the fact that we have been wobbling along without answering the questions.

“We have been in denial of the fact we have to answer our national question before doing anything. What is the national question? What is Nigeria? Is it a nation or is it a geographical expression,” he queried

Recalling the huge human loss incurred by the country during a three-year civil strife, the former minister claimed that Nigeria had “gone too far” to break up now.

To him, the challenge confronting the country is structural and can be tackled by stakeholders addressing the issue of national question.

 “I don’t believe in the breakup of Nigeria, especially when over two million people died in a civil war in an effort for us to stay together. We have come together for so long. What I believe is that we must answer the national question and renegotiate the terms of our federation if we want Nigeria to continue. So, that is the problem.

“It is a structural problem, a situation whereby everything is at the centre, all the power, all the money  and all the largesse is concentrated at the central government and there is no devolution of power; there is no true federalism in the country and there is no autonomy of the regions or the states is suicidal.

“Everybody is depending on the centre, and then of course, once you have that, all the various nationalities in this country will kill each other to be able to control the centre and hold it to themselves. Once you have that kind of thing, you know that who handles the centre becomes a do or die thing and we will never progress in this nation.

“That is the problem, national identity, how are we answering a national question and the realization that we need to have a national conference to renegotiate the terms of our country, the terms of our union in order for you to continue in the distant future.

He said other countries that were apparently artificially brought together as entities by their colonial masters had adopted different approaches to resolve similar challenges of nation-state currently facing Nigeria.

“Nigerians do not like the truth and they do not like to really analyse problems very deeply. Other countries that came about the same way we did right from the onset when the British coupled them together as artificial states that were large and diverse like Nigeria, answered their own national questions very early. Some did through war and some through negotiation,” he noted.

Comments (4)

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Why Nigeria's Crises Persist
written by Forfaka, July 14, 2012

In actual fact during the civil war that Chief Fani Kayode
alluded to,4 million Igbos were either murdered or simply
starved to death by the Yorubas and their Hausa allies.Even
at the end of that war of genocide,Fani Kayode's Yoruba
people seized Igbo property,took over our banks and
plundered the oversea accounts.Adekunle the black Scorpion,
dumped refief materials destined for the Igbos after the
war into Lagos Lagoon.Up till today the Tinubus of Lagos
are yet to pay trillions of Niaras to Ojukwu's family for
rents accrued on the family property seized by them.
The oil wealth of Eastern Nigeria became war indemnity for
the Hausa/Fulanis and the Yorubas who own it up till today.
Why would a greedy Yoruba like Fani-Kayode want to lose such
a lucre? Just becaus of the oil wealth of the Lower Niger,
Nigerians are ready to go to war again.The previous war was
for the same reason.
Indeed the Almagamation of 1914 by Lord Fredric Luggard was
never supposed to be a fait accompli and the arrogance of
the barbaric cattle rearers who take Nigeria for their
fiefdom is very nauseating and unbearable.Nyasaland and
Tanganyika are nomore.Why can't we just go our separate
ways like the others rather than continue to endure these senseless wastes of innocent human lives and the destruction
of human efforts?

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written by francis cole, July 14, 2012

Well Mr Fanikayode its true that, we have been together for long. But, its time for us to depart for good. Our living together is fake. The north is our major problem, just because they feel that, they are born to rule others. The north have killed too many prominets southerners for the past decades. They killed too many Igbos and up till today, they are still after them, killing them for nothing. Even your own father the great Fanikayode was almost assasinated,before he escape to over sea. What we are withnessing today, was the reason why the great man Ojukwu wanted to break away. Our only option now is to divide the country. Beside this, the killings would never ever stop. We can never ever have any more in Nigeria, if we are still one. Our unity snd one Nigeria is super FAKE. The north see southerners as infidels including you too. What we need now is SNC to sit down and table all our problems. You should know that, the north is playing games over south.

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