CRACKED HOUSE PAINTED IN GREEN & WHITE COLOURS
When you keep covering the cracks on the wall of your house with paints instead of tackling the cause of the cracks, note that you're only wishing away the date of your house collapse..
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After the Endsars protests, "age is the problem" became the new music our youths are vibing to. I've been seeing lots of posts and comments on this YDPN platform with the view that Nigeria's problem is the age of people ruling us, and no one is really talking about the mother of Nigeria's problems which is RELIGION & TRIBALISM, and the dividing lines it has given birth to.
Yes we know that YDPN platform was created to champion youths' dreams, but while in this dream, it'll be nice we wake up occasionally to face our realities.
Nomatter how we want to shy away from it, the reality of today's Nigeria is that there are numerous lines of division drawn across the country; no thanks to this administration for making the lines very bold.
I think it'll make more sense if we focus our discussion majorly on how to erase these lines first; because to many of us, the lines has made 'Nigerian' our second identity even though we pretend about it.. the lines has made us an Igbo person, a Yoruba person, an Hausa person, an Ijaw person, a Tiv person, a Benin person etc before making us a Nigerian. Some of us are Nigerians not because Nigerian government knows that we exist, but because our documents asked for nationality.
These lines are usually what make truth to be bitter in Nigeria especially when the person speaking the truth and the listener belong to different sides of the divide, like the case of Bishop Kukah and his Christmas day message.
These lines are in various forms and shapes; at the national level we have the bold lines dividing Hausa, Igbo & Yoruba.. at the states level we have lines like the ones dividing the Igala & Ebira, Ijaw & Ishekiri, Tiv & Jukun etc. On the spiritual level we have the thick line dividing the Southern Christians & Northern Muslims, and on the vengeance level we have the blood tainted lines dividing the Fulani & Berom, Northern Kaduna & Southern Kaduna etc.
These are imaginary lines that can actually be erased by having 'proper & honest' discussions among ourselves, but the political class have used the phrase "Nigeria's unity is not negotiable" to keep us away from having these discussions.. and we're gradually believing it, hoping that the lines would vanish on its own someday without discussions.
Each time election is approaching, they'll start playing the card of 'restructuring' because they actually know that that is where the solution to Nigeria's problem lies.. that's the card they use in winning the masses hearts, but after winning they'll keep the card to be played again in four years time.
These lines were faint lines that are constantly thickened by the political class in a bid to keep the masses at war with themselves, thereby taking away the masses eyes from their misrule.
The first step to having that Nigeria of our dream is by being free to discuss our differences and fashion out the best way to live together in this house called Nigeria.
Nigeria is a big house with many rooms, all of us mustn't live inside one room to be seen as "one Nigeria". Nigerians were living comfortably in their different rooms until 1966 when the military pushed everybody inside this one room they called "unitary government".
We need to start talking about where rain started beating us, our adage says that "if one doesn't know where rain started beating him, he won't know where it'll stop. As ugly as the Rwandan genocide was, they embraced the truth and the offender asked the offendee for forgiveness; today they teach it as history in their schools, the citizens freely talk about it, that has brought about healing to that country and Rwanda is becoming the pride of Africa.
But down here we run away from talking about the Biafran war, we hide our ugly past and we expect healing, we refused to talk about our differences and we expect unity, government warned we only talk about 'unity' that is in the real sense nonexistent.
When 2014 CONFAB was held, they still put the clause "Nigeria's unity is not negotiable"; and with such clause, one doesn't need a soothe sayer to tell why the CONFAB failed to yield any result.
Truth is that there's no two different people that will live peacefully in a house without discussing and agreeing on how they'll live. Much of the problems Africa is facing is from this forced unity by the colonial masters.
The earlier Nigeria negotiated her own unity, the better for everyone of us.
Yes, it's possible to erase these lines and have the Nigeria of our dream, but the possibility lies in our readiness to tell ourselves the truth, and swallow the truth nomatter how bitter it is. We need to retrace our steps to where we missed the road, we need to go back to the point where things started falling apart, we need to ask eachother for forgiveness and start healing our wounds.
When these lines are erased, the elected leaders won't dare mess up cos the masses will be united in confronting them; the region where a president should come from will no longer matter, religious belief of his/her vice won't be a problem anymore, age and gender issues all will be taken over by COMPETENCE.
We have competent Nigerians that can drive Nigeria to the promised land, Nigerians that know the way, but those Nigerians won't be able to take the driver's seat except these dividing lines are erased.
A 'beautiful Nigeria' is still possible, we only have to wake up and in all honesty work on our reality and stop working on fantasies.. denying our reality is not patriotism, as politicians want us to believe.
The attached photo depicts what these crack lines has metamorphosed into, and sadly that's the reality of today's Nigeria.
Nwafor King
