Come, let us reason together, now that such exercise is still meaningful; before the sky gets dark and evil, and the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Today, the Nation’s Ship is on fire. The elites are shopping for new furniture to equip the burning ship, instead of looking for water and C02 to put out the fires. ’No be juju be that’?
Is a soft landing still possible for Nigeria at this stage, if yes, how? That is the exam.
Let me unpack the seven variants of madness inside Nigeria’s elite backpack that confirm the egg is about to be broken from the outside. Why this analogy? You ask
You see, when the egg breaks from inside, life begins, but when it breaks as a result of outside force, life ends. Before a State will collapse and disappear from the face of the earth, her Ship will pass through six harbours to load: Stagnation, Retrogression, Fragile, Failing, Failed and Disappearance. Which harbour is Nigeria’s Ship loading from presently?
Madness N0 1:
The ’TikTok Democracy’ that Nigeria is practising is a hallucination, it is not working and the ‘one-man-one-vote’ principle is a mirage. The vote of an idiot who adds zero value to the economy pays zero tax, zero education, and zero skill apart from voting skill carries the same weight as the vote of a man who pays tax and oils the wheel of the nation’s economy. Smart nations open schools, factories and Tank Farms, while Nigerian politicians open Voters’ Farms, where voters are raised and cultivated like sheep.
However you stack the cards, vertically or horizontally in a country where the uneducated young adults on the streets are more than the ones working in the factories and schooling, the idiots will always have it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Politicians breed and incubate the idiots, who in turn ‘’democratically’’ install one of their own as King. This is why. Nigeria is going downhill, from ‘’top to bottom,” The Greeks have a word to describe this charade: Idiocracy.
Madness N02:
The life span of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country forcibly held together and centrally administered is three scores and ten, then the superglue of force turns loose. As Nigeria approaches her 70th birthday, the elites need to stop avoiding the thinking cap and see it instead, as an ally.
For instance, the USSR with a population of 280 million people, a union of 15 Republics; 14 heavy-laden wives, and Russia, the condescending husband, survived only for 69 years (1922-1991) before the union was dismembered.
The first wife to file for divorce was Lithuania, followed by Georgia while Kazakhstan exited last on December 16th, 1991. The curtain fell on 26th December 1991, the Red Banner flag was lowered, and the USSR, which Russia boasted was indivisible and unconquerable, collapsed like a pack of cards. Today, Putin and the Russian elites exhibit symptoms of malarial dreaming, nursing the hopes that one day, USSR2 will resurrect.
Similarly, the Federal Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918-1993) fumbled and wobbled until age 75, when she split into two distinct independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Yugoslavia collapsed on the eve of her 74th birthday and violently split into seven nations along ethnic and religious lines: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.
Paradoxically, each of the seven independent countries is richer than Yugoslavia. For instance, in 2022, Croatia per Capita Income (PCI) is $16,500, Serbia, $7,100. Kosovo $4,500, Slovenia $27,000, Macedonia $5,700, and Bosnia and Herzegovina $62,600, while Yugoslavia in 1991 was just $5,000. When you unbundle any unbalanced federation, a branch can become bigger than the whole, through healthy competition or a combination of other variables.
Sudan, which gained independence on January 1, 1956, from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium was another failed union. Sudan had about 600 ethnic groups speaking over 400 languages. But by July 2011 at 55 years, the hitherto geographically largest country in Africa disintegrated and, from the ashes emerged two independent but antagonistic countries.
What does all this add up to? That a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country forcibly yoked together and unitarily administered has a lifespan of about 70 years before it collapses. (69 +75+74+55/4= 68+years).
Europe, the UK, USA knew what they were doing when they chose a loose Federation with a referendum clause in their respective constitution and focus on building factories and Tank Farms instead of Voters’ Farms.
Read also: Nigeria: Divided, we are falling
Madness N03:
Approaching the crucial 2023 elections flimsily, clumsily and lousily as the elites are doing is dangerous. The new game is nationalism, the old game – globalisation is preparing to go on sabbatical. Every smart nation is seeking self-reliance. This is the wrong time for countries to engage in acts that may lead to a crisis.
The superpowers who could separate warring nations are busy warring in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc. Finland and Sweden may soon join NATO and become the new battlefields, plus the threat of a WW3 becomes a strong possibility as the days go by. Nigeria should be careful, lest she becomes collateral damage.
Madness N04:
Stagnation/Retrogression: how can Nigeria be a dwarf despite her humongous resources? Let us search for truth from the thick forest of facts. In 1992, Nigeria’s per capita income stood at $2,030. As of May 2022, it is the same: $2,083.
Little wonder why JPMorgan recently (10/5/22) removed Nigeria from its list of emerging markets, saying the country has not taken advantage of high oil prices, unlike the Saudi Aramco which overthrew Apple on 12th May 2022 to become the most valuable company in the world at $2.4 trillion.
Akano, founder of New Horizons Company-an ICT firm, writes from Lagos
