Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Charles Obinna Chukwunaru, PhD., a contributing Analyst to USAfriconline.com, is President of the Eastern Nigeria Development Association (ENDA). This commentary is published exclusively by USAfrica.
The barbaric, dastardly and inhumane murder of the recently married Nigerian Army couple, Master Sargeant Linus Audu (a Northern minority Christian) and Private Gloria Matthew (an Eastern majority Igbo Christian) of the failed British republic of Nigeria, is a reflection of the level of insecurity in the country. It can also be described as high political intrigues and subterfuge taken too far.
Sadly, the real masterminds of this heinous crime against humanity have upped their game in the messy and bloody assertions of political, social and economic power by the Fulani led far North (primarily, the North East and North West).
They are being resisted, primarily, by the Igbo youth and some Yorubas in the South (East and West) and in the Middle Belt by some of its indigenes.
This is the time for round table talks for a peaceful renegotiation of Nigeria’s future, in order to avert escalation to another high-intensity, more catastrophic conflict than the 30-month Nigeria versus Biafra War (1967 – 1970).
Therefore, a renegotiated Nigeria by all the ethnic nationalities sitting together in a round table to agree on a peacefully negotiated settlement to the recurrent question of Nigeria’s National Unity is the solution to the fast escalating social, economic and political crises in the collapsing British republic of Nigeria.
Suffice it to state that the Northern Nigeria Fulani-led government of Major General Muhammadu (retired) must jettison ethnicism, tribalism, nepotism, primordialism, god-fatherism and corruption; and rise to this humanitarian call to avert war and promote peaceful coexistence between the ethnic nationalities in the failed British republic of Nigeria, through a peacefully negotiated process of social, economic and political change, based on the principles of equity, natural justice and good conscience.
Looking back to history, Nigeria, an experimental colonial State birthed by the British Empire in 1914 and granted flag independence in late 1960; was designed to be the leader of the African continent.
Unfortunately, the so-called giant-of-Africa appears to have been asphyxiated by the bad politics of Britain — acting under the pressure of the post world war II decolonization policy of the government of the United State of America; and complicated by the British hostility and distrust for the Igbo led Southern Nigeria political elites (the Zikists movement and its student affiliates). Let me note that the British hostility toward the Igbo was fueled majorly from the intensity of the pressure the Zikists mounted on the British Colonial administration for accelerated decolonization of the richest colonial territory of Her Royal Majesty and its brothers in the rich Gold Coast of West Africa (Ghana) as well the British Cameroons.
The details of the bad politics of the British Colonial administration in Westminster is a subject for another day. However, the British Empire left this newly independent country with a parliamentary government and a lopsided federation, deliberately crafted and configured to permanently place the political leadership of the new British peripheral state or dominion in Nigeria, in the hands of the Fulani regardless of their western education disadvantage — in comparison to the South.
Consequently, the newly independent plural Nigerian state comprising of diverse multi ethnic, multi religious and multi cultural groups fast descended into calamitous social, economic and political conflict between the oil rich Eastern Nigeria led South and the Middle Belt, with Igbos as arrowhead, and the British-backed Fulani led far North (East and West); culminating in the Nigerian military mutiny of January 1966, the bloody, revenge, counter military coup d’etat of July 1966 by Northern elements of Nigerian military, backed by the British government; the horrific Pogrom of 1966 against Eastern Nigerian people and Igbos in particular across mainly in Northern Nigeria, as well as the bloody, catastrophic and horrific civil war, which many believe is the second most deadly genocidal war after the Jewish Holocaust, against the Igbos of Eastern Nigeria.
I believe that at the end of the day, Nigeria and all the parties involved as well as their international collaborators must understand that nature [manifestation of the Almighty Creator] does not authorize humans to destroy one another. So, I am confident that human actions cannot overrule the God-factor which is constant in this complex world.
USAfrica: Eight lessons of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. By Chido Nwangwu
