A Summary Narrative of the Nigerian Experiment
A purposive thought of a united Nigeria necessarily engages an Orwellian DoubleThink, the conscious effort to hold two completely contradictory positions at once on an issue, and simultaneously believing in both. The nation-state of Nigeria was never designed to succeed as an organic entity that independently meets the needs, visions and aspirations of its varied citizenry. It could not have, even if the British who cobbled it together executed its formation with the best intensions. As is true with all colonized geopolitical territories within the muscular domain and political competence of Great Britain, the primary objective of colonization was two-fold: to create exclusive control of material and human resources native to the submissive territory to benefit domestic productivity in Britain; and as a component of the broader objective of empire-building. None of these self-serving impulse factors into its calculus the welfare and desires of the natives.
Nigeria was no exception to this exercise of power and subjugation, and was ultimately stillborn, presumptively resuscitated and sustained for administrative convenience; that it managed to remain reasonably viable after independence from Britain in 1960 is a feat to be admired but seeking to elongate such feat would be reckless and irreconcilable to refined intelligence. Calls for Nigeria’s dissolution as a unitary geo-political entity, and to create in its stead multiple nation-states, have grown steadily in recent years amongst its disaffected citizens as the declining health of its economy lays bare concretized ethnic and religious fault lines. The rationale to retain its identity as a unitary nation-state with a strong federal character may no longer be serviceable nor can it be reasonably expected to endure much longer given its perennial failure to serve its proper functions.