OPINION: Until Nigeria Fails
I’ve listened to plethoras of insinuations about Nigeria being a failed or failing State, people that peddle this opinion are obviously bereaved of logic because a system that was never designed to benefit you has not failed you if it is not benefiting you.
It is not a farfetched knowledge that no informed occupant of this geographical entity called Nigeria was a signatory to the treaty that birthed a nation of more than 200 ethnic groups in 1906 and subsequently 1914, rather, some voracious imperialists supervised the “marriage of inconvenience” for an interest faraway from the interests of the natives.
The white folks were not running charity organizations when they came to partition Africa, they simply came to honor the first law of nature which is law of self survival by occupying Africa and exploiting it to the fullest, during the process of exploitation, the natives could only have a taste of what Walter Rodney called “supposed benefits” just to keep them alive to work further for the surplus values.
The British created Nigeria to protect the interest of Britain not the interest of Nigerians, Nigeria is their invention and it was invented solely to safeguard the political and economic interest of the inventors.
While British were leaving Nigeria in 1960, they handed over their exploitative skills to few individuals to continue with the same system, corruption became another name for exploitation that existed hitherto.
British never created Nigeria for Nigerians, so Nigerians shouldn’t fell betrayed for the inability of Nigeria to cater for their needs because they were never meant to be beneficiaries, the white folks who were the inventors of Nigeria are satisfied with the affairs of things up to this present moment, Nigeria is serving the interest of her creators. Until Nigeria fails the inventors, Nigerians will continue to with the annual cacophony.
We shouldn’t place emotion above reality, If there would be anyway forward, we must first go backward to the foundation, there must be a sincere discussion about whether to or not to, outside that, Nigeria continues to fulfill the reason for her existence. Sincerely, every humane person needs to place the interest of Nigerians above the interest of Nigeria.
Ogunwoye Samson Gbemiga
MSc. Student, University of Abuja.