All your strength is your union, all your danger is in discord. – Henry W. Longfellow.
At the beginning of my tertiary education at the University of Jos, I was able to appreciate the peace, beauty and the good weather of the tin city. Going round tin city reminded me of the slogan name of Port-Harcourt “the Garden city”, and I thought indeed, this is the real garden city as trees and flowers are the first few things a visitor or a new settler will notice about the city. My freedom to move to any part of the city and move through any street of my choice knew no bound. The friendliness of the people both Christians and Muslims alike was beyond pretense which got me relaxed to explore the town while educating my mind. But on 28th November 2008 all that came to a
sudden halt, the city became strange and fearful to me.
The residents of the city told me that what I met was already a spoilt Jos, according to them the 2001 crisis was what fragmented the peace in the city and established mutual suspicion between Christians and Muslims. Before my eyes friends turned to foes overnight without any issue between them and I thought it would be a thing of the past in a short while and be overtaken by more promising events but I was wrong. I thought the city I used to know would return before I graduate but my graduation ceremony was held under heavy security and fear in a neutral venue suitable for both Christians and Muslims.
From Dilimi Street to Feringada market and from Terminus market to Bukuru building material market, it is now all depreciation of value, market divisions and capital flight. These are the few results of seemingly unquenchable savagery, brutality and destruction of lives and property bedeviling tin city for long now. I have heard people in the Southern Nigeria talk about Jos in particular and the north in general. Their perception and belief about the security situation with regard to north is gloomy, scary and unbelievable. This is the case of Nigeria as a country where everything is happening before our naked eyes with little or no points left in our defense to the world that the country is healthy, harmonious and ripe for investment. If Nigerians living in Nigeria will have strong inhibitions to visiting, living and investing in some parts of Nigeria, what will now be the state of mind of foreign investors as regards Nigerian situation?
A little more than a year ago, hopes in a rejuvenated Nigeria was high with shouts of fresh air. A break from the past dominated by self serving and iron fisted rule. We looked into the future with undeniable revival in our heart and our dear president Goodluck Jonathan represented all that hope with a unique background he highlighted so much during the build up to the election. What dimmed that hope in a short period of one year is still exclusively security brouhaha. The foundational problem of Nigeria predated any living Nigerian today including the president so also with other nations but why we keep compounding ours when others are solving theirs is what baffles me.
During the struggle for independence and in the 60s, Nigeria’s problem was embedded in regional politics until it was hijacked by the military. In the second republic, the problem persisted but was waning when suddenly uninvited guests from barracks arrived again. Throughout the 80s to early 90s, religion was not a visible problem to the existence of Nigeria. This same country that is presently fragmented by religion once voted Muslim/Muslim ticket in an election adjudged to be the best ever in this country and I ask, where, when and how did religion creep into the frontline problem of Nigeria? In 1999, the introduction of sharia in some northern states and the subsequent crisis marked the beginning of the debacle we are seeing today. Kaduna which has become more or less the religious boundary in northern Nigeria took the issue to a boiling point.
From the present state of affairs of Borno and Yobe states, can any serious businessman invest in such places? Some Southerners are seeing the insecurity and religious intolerance as northern problem but I’m always quick in reminding them that this is our national problem. Not only northerners die in both attacks and their reprisals and most especially, the world links the bombings and chaos to the name Nigeria and not to Borno, Yobe, Kaduna or northern Nigeria only. We are still yet to understand that Boko Haram is not an organization as most people understand organizations, with rules and a hierarchy. It is a ghost. An idea and you can’t destroy an idea. You can only impede it. Boko Haram is like a flat warm. Cut off its head, and it will grow just another.
I have refused to believe that our security agencies can not fight Boko Haram to a stand still. Sympathizers and emissaries of Boko Haram seem to have infiltrated the security agencies and causing more damage than Boko Haram themselves. Enemy within appears to be the biggest problem facing Nigeria today. Nigeria seems to find it difficult breaking away from the vestigial divide and rule employed by the imperialists which in turn has taken a dangerous dimension and if not well handled, the name Nigeria will join the likes of USSR, Czechoslovakia, Senegambia, Yugoslavia, etc.
Energy and education which are the backbones of any thriving economy have become the most ‘elusive’ in our search for national economic footing. I don’t want to remember a futile $16 billion expended by the Obasanjo administration in power sector without any result at all. I don’t want to remember some incidences of cash and carry judgments from our judiciary or the putrid news of bribery coming out of our legislative chambers. The banking sector has been on a merry-go-round movement without any visible improvement or is it the stock market and its security and exchange commission where afternoon meals cost as much as ₦750,000 for the managing director only. Agriculture, the sector that can generate millions of jobs has been laying fallow for decades. If we are not endangering our union then we are strengthening our discord.
-Obi Ebuka Onochie
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