Nigeria: The Postponed Disintegration Of Africa’s Biggest Economy

Jonathan

Buhari

 

Have you read local and international newspapers lately? Have you been monitoring the reaction of the cable news networks around the world from the CNN to CCTV since Nigeria’s presidential election in which the incumbent president, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan conceded defeat to the opposition candidate General Muhammadu Buhari?

The general consensus was that by conceding defeat President Jonathan saved thousands of lives because if he had been declared the winner the streets of some parts of Nigeria would have been oceans of blood of the innocent as those who wanted to kick him out had amassed weapons to unleash terror that would shake the very foundation of Nigeria.

 2015 is the year the United States foreign policy experts believed that the country would disintegrate. The actions of the political actors at the run-up to Nigeria’s presidential election showed that many of them were working the script of the American experts whether intentionally or not. The United Nations understands this. The United States, United Kingdom, the European Union was also aware of this. Why do you think the United States stationed their planes in Chad on the eve of Nigeria’s election? It was to evacuate Americans when the war starts. Jonathan averted that war. That is why he is being celebrated by the United Nation’s secretary general Ban Ki-moon, President Barack Obama of United States among others. Already Jonathan has been tipped for Mo Ibrahim’s prize for African presidents who did not cling to power against the wishes of their people.

But what should worry Nigerians more is the reality that some of their fellow Nigerians amassed weapons to kill their neighbours, friends, colleagues among others in Rwanda 1994 styled killings if Jonathan had won. Now that Jonathan has not won, what are they doing with the weapons they amassed? Keeping it until the next president they don’t like his face shows up? Could it be that Nigeria’s predicted disintegration was merely postponed because Jonathan is a statesman who don’t want the shedding of the blood of the innocent to sustain him in power?

Perhaps that is the case, but it seems the unity of Nigeria can never be sustainable on the basis of fear that one side was ready to shed blood while the other side continue to tolerate because it wants peace. This kind of peace is unsustainable and akin to the peace of the graveyard.

As it is typical of Nigeria, its leaders think that the country’s feared disintegration is over because Jonathan did ‘the needful’. So Nigeria’s avalanche of injustices against the minority, ethnic and religious domination by the majority which are at the root of the feared disintegration would now be swept under the carpet.

The fear of ethnic and religious domination can only be addressed by restructuring Nigeria along the line of true federalism. That problem is already half solved when the national conference report was submitted to President Jonathan. Will Buhari implement the report? His body language indicates otherwise. The fact remains that only true federalism can stop Nigeria from disintegration. Even if Buhari reduces corruption to zero level-which is not possible given the characters around him- it cannot stop Nigeria from disintegration. Yugoslavia was not the most corrupt country in the world when it disintegrated.