There is a kind of fatalism in our public conversation nowadays. It resurfaces in group discussions, on panels; you hear it in the weary asides of professionals who have done their best to the point of giving up: “Nigeria”, they say, “is not working and cannot work as presently constituted”.
To buttress the point, they invoke the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and other “forged nations” that eventually shattered under the weight of their contradictions. It is an attractive thesis, and it carries the comfort of resignation: if the union is unworkab
