You have this image in your head. It’s a vague image and it’s been hovering around in your head for a while. Truth is you have a little reservation about the shape of your head. You thought it was a tad bigger than usual. But then, the shape of the head isn’t political. Unlike the hair.
Hair is very political. So political as to attract Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to engage in an intellectual spat with her boy, Elnathan. Their debate about natural hair caused a ruckus in literary circles a while back.
All this culminated in a cheap publicity for Elnathan, a writer who was recently shortlisted for the just concluded 2013 Caine prize in African writing. He didn’t win. The gods of the sometimes conceiting Adichie didn’t allow. Even though, he was her boy. And she was his cocoyam.
You blame your over thinking tendencies for this illusory image in your head. You are not much of an egg head or so you think. But then too much reading of Wole Soyinka and social media rants can result in over thinking. The recent Femi Fani-Kayode’s debacle on deportation of Ibo’s is a case in stride.
You couldn’t exonerate the Americans for this image in your head. Infact, they started and stared in it. The image in your head started in 2005 when the same Americans (CIA) released a report tagged “Mapping the Global future” predicting the breakup of Nigeria by the year 2015. A report that now saunters along a path of credence in the present day Nigeria.
The report said “While currently Nigeria’s leaders are locked in a bad marriage that all dislike but dare not leave, there are possibilities that could disrupt the precarious equilibrium in Abuja”. However, the Americans (CIA) were quick to disown the prediction after some vitriolic outbursts. But then, you know the Americans and conspiracy theories.
But you like the Americans. You like their British friends even more. They are the biggest co-conspirators ever on this part of the Atlantic ocean. Scratch that. This part of the world. And for what? Economic supremacy? Political dominance? Or simply keeping the world safe?
You had read so many disjointed but specious essays on the amalgamation of Nigeria and how it arrived at this critical path. You even went in search of a good book on Nigeria’s mostly unwritten history. You had heard of Obasanjo’s version of Nigeria’s war history in his My command book.
Critics say it’s a faulted book. They want to rubbish Baba’s legacy. God forbid Obasanjo must have spat. But you were surprised to find that same Obasanjo had written a religious book with a foreword written by a Rev. Kukah.
No doubt, the Nigerian conspiracy predates the 1914 amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria. You knew better than to even state that. But you are going somewhere. Fast-forward a century later. And present day chaotic Nigeria glares at you.
Various schools of thought believe that 2014 culminates into the termination of the said amalgamation to which all parts of the fractured whole can go on their own. This is the pedestal on which the 2005 prediction by the Americans is presumed to rest on.
This presumption opened the door for an interesting discussion on the subject with your egg head friends in academia. This finally put form to the image in your head.
Truth is Nigeria may never remain the same after 2014/15. The drums of secession are being beaten in close quarters to the threat of the entity Nigeria.
And the loudest drum appears to be from the dubbed Niger Delta of the Edwin Clark’s and Asari Dokubo’s of this world. The Niger delta Republic is speculated to be amassing arms and ammunitions from the spoils of oil theft in the region in preparation of a failed Jonathan re election in 2015 or possible secession. This is unconfirmed.
But statistics show that oil theft in the dubbed Niger delta Republic has been on the increase since 2010. Coincidentally, this is the same year Jonathan assumed presidency. However, the Joint Task Force in Niger Delta differs claiming about 84% reduction in oil theft in the region in the last two years.
The Yoruba’s are quietly building an empire and a hegemonic plan in preparation for a possible secession. The Yoruba may never come out straight like the Ojukwu’s Biafra or Dokubo’s Niger Delta to declare secession. But if it happens, they will be ready.
Conspiracy theories or not, Nigeria remains a whole. For now.
You have stopped believing in “One Nigeria”.
Foye.
Ps. So I lost a close friend family to the oyinbo land. Brain drain. I had always known Diran would emigrate since our under grad days in Ife. It was just a matter of time. I’m going to miss him. As hard as that is for me to say.