Is it true Nigeria Will Disintegrate By 2015? Please Share Your Thoughts
Is it true Nigeria will disintegrate by the year 2015 as earlier predicted? Please share your thoughts
Will Nigeria disintegrate in 2015?
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OLAJIDE OMOJOLOMOJU 
ObamaThe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the espionage arm of the United States of America (USA's) intelligence apparatchik released a report in 2006, in which it predicted that Nigeria may disintegrate before 2015. According to the agency then, Nigeria as a corporate entity was likely to splinter along tribal and sectarian lines in 2015 if some of the inherent fault lines were not properly managed and controlled. This prediction received sharp reaction from Nigerians; most people not only condemned it, but also lambasted the CIA and the USA over the warning with the claim that Nigerians possess the uncanny capacity to manage the fragile peace and the unity that has bonded the people together since the amalgamation of the country in 1914. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed the report as baseless. The government then beat its chest and claimed that it had put in place measures that would not only promote but guarantee the peaceful co-existence of all Nigerians, irrespective of ethnic and religious differences. The CIA report was presented at a oneday conference of USA experts on Africa, convened by the US National Intelligence Council, aimed at discussing the trends in the African continent over the next 20 years.
Tagged “Mapping the Global Future, the report projected global trends and likely scenarios up to 2020 and stated that: While currently Nigerias 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. The most important would be a junior officer coup that could destabilise the country to the extent that open warfare (may) breaks out in many places in a sustained manner. “If Nigeria were to become a failed state, it could drag down a large part of the West African region. Even state failure in small countries, such as Liberia, has the effect of destabilising entire neighbourhoods. If insurmillions were to flee a collapsed Nigeria, the surrounding countries, up to and including Ghana, would be destabilised. Further, a failed Nigeria probably could not be reconstituted for many years if ever and not without massive international assistance. But the report did not end with its glooming prediction; it also proffered some antidotes to the problems it envisaged. The report further showed that many home truths negated the possibility of a disintegrated Nigeria in 2015, agreeing that violence, insecurity and killings in what it called troubled states “may not translate into disintegration.
States with high levels of violence will not automatically be failed states; indeed, the ability of African countries to continue to muddle along, despite high levels of violence, should not be underestimated. For instance, 20,000 people have been killed in Nigeria while that country has maintained its democratic facade,†the report added. In his reaction in a letter to the National Assembly then, former President Olusegun Obasanjo picked on just two paragraphs of the report and said: “I am sending this to you, not because I am alarmed by the report, but because if we know what others think of us and about us, we can prevent what they project for us. “But it is important for us to know that we are being rated low, not because of what is happening to us from outside, but because of what we do to, for and by ourselves internally. I believe that it is only God and ourselves that can map our present and future. No outsider can do that accurately for us. I know that some people glibly talk of the probability of Nigeria as a failed state. I believe that they are living in the past…. “I believe that we can and should disprove the modern experts of the United States Intelligence Council who are like the prophets of doom and, by the grace of God, for Nigeria in this first decade of the 21st Century, we must be determined to show that we are neither a basket case nor walking on a banana peel.
The National Assembly latched on to this development and put aside its simmering feud with the presidency to attack the USA, which was by no means a strategic ally of the country. To further lend credence to its determination to ensure that the CIA’s prediction come to nought, the Federal Government, desirous of showing its determination to preserve the unity of Nigeria ordered the arrest and prosecution of leaders of ethnic militia groups. This led to the arrest of the leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Ralph Uwazuruike, alongside the leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Asari Dokubo and leader of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Gani Adams. They were all later released, but that action then revealed government’s fear, occasioned by the CIA prediction. In March 2010, former Libya’s strongman, late Muamar Ghaddafi, while commenting on the Jos pogrom, called for the splitting of Nigeria into two along religious lines in order to avert further bloodshed. Today, the Jos pogrom has continued to be a recurring decimal, with hundreds of lives lost. Senate President David Mark and many prominent Nigerians have no complimentary words to say about Ghaddafi. Mark actually called the late Ghaddafi a ‘madman.
And recently, the Niger State governor and chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, Babangida Aliyu warned of imminent disintegration of Nigeria if government continues to treat treasonable acts and terrorism with kids’ gloves, warning that Nigerians should stop politicising such issues as the future of the nation was at stake. He was actually making veiled reference to the arrest of a top notch of the Boko Haram sect and jailed just three years as well as pronouncements made by Pastor Tunde Bakare, vice presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the April 2011 election, during the fuel subsidy protests, calling for regime change as well as statement credited to a presidential candidate who was alleged to have said that he would make the country ungovernable if he did not win the April, 2011 election. He said: “We have to work to solve the present security situation in the country. We cannot only depend on prayers without work. Most countries at peace today did not achieve it through prayers or else, we will gradually work ourselves towards the projection that Nigeria will disintegrate by 2015.
But will Nigeria disintegrate before or by 2015? May be a few years ago, many Nigerians can emphatically answer this question in the negative. But it is not certain that today, as things stand in the country, up to 20 per cent of the over 160 million Nigerians can answer this question in the affirmative. A few years back, the major security threat confronting Nigeria, apart from the ethnic militias, was incessant armed robbery, which gradually graduated to kidnapping, following the insurgency of the Niger Delta militants. Then Islamic militancy crept in and today, the whole nation is at the mercy of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram. But before Boko Haram became the major Islamic militant or terrorist group, there have been insur gencies here and there, especially in the North.
Few months before the end of the Obasanjo administration, he was forced to send soldiers to the forests and hills of Adamawa to flush out Islamic militants who wrecked havoc on innocent citizens of the state in many unprovoked attacks. Ethnic conflict has never taken as much toll as religious conflicts, as represented by the Boko Haram sect on human lives and property in many parts of the country. Terrorist acts have now crept into the psyche of the nation now that to many, especially in the North, the fear of Boko Haram is the beginning of wisdom. Nigeria first became a member of the selected few tagged ‘terrorist nations’ by the USA shortly after the infamous attempt by a young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdumutallab, to bomb an American passenger plane on Christmas Day in 2009. Apart from pockets of pipeline bombings in the Niger Delta in the hey days of the militancy in the region, the nation had its first taste of terrorist act on October 1, 2010, when about 12 people were killed in Abuja near the venue of the celebration of the country’s 50th independence celebration.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) was implicated in that incident Series of bomb attacks followed suit on December 24, 2010 in Jos and Maiduguri where no fewer than 38 people were killed and over 70 injured. A week later, on New Year eve, four people were killed in another bomb blast in an army barrack in Abuja, the nation’s capital. Since then the spate of bombing has increased in tempo and veracity. Suleja in Niger State was next on April 8, 2011, when the office of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) was bombed, leaving 11 people dead and 38 wounded. Twin bomb explosions in Bauchi and Abuja on Democracy Day, May 29, 2011 left 18 people dead and 31 injured. On June 16, 2011, Boko Haram sect took the fight to the police headquarters in Abuja, where the former Inspector General of Police (IGP), Hafiz Ringim escaped death by the whiskers. Next in line was the UN Building, also in Abuja which was bombed on August 25, 2011, leaving 18 people dead in its wakes. Boko Haram sect wrecked more havoc on hapless Nigerians on Christmas Day, December 25, 2011 in Madalla in Niger State killing 45 people, injuring over 90 and destroying property worth millions of naira.
The declaration of state of emergency in some local governments in four states of Niger, Bauchi, Gombe and Yobe did not stop the sect from unleashing further mayhem on the people as terrorists visited a Deeper Life Bible Church in Mubi, Adamawa State and killed eight worshippers while another set killed another 12 in Gombe. The Kano multiple bomb blasts of January 20, perhaps has the highest number of victims as over 200 people were sent to their early graves. Since the Kano multiple blasts, it has become a daily occurrence for the Boko Haram sect to attack innocent people in different parts of the country. In all these attacks, the response of the Federal Government has been that the perpetrators would be brought to book, yet not a single person has been prosecuted, save for a self-acclaimed Boko Haram spokesman, Ali Umar Konduga, alias Al-Zawahiri, who has been convicted and a serving senator from Borno State, Mohammed Ndume, who is currently facing trial for his sponsorship of the Boko Haram sect. The other suspected mastermind of the Christmas day bombing in Madalla, Kabiru Sokoto, who was arrested by the police, was alleged to have escaped from the police a few days later. Meanwhile, on January 1, New Year day, Boko Haram gave Christians and Southerners living in the North a three-day ultimatum to quit the North or face annihilation.
Today, many have accused the government of ineptitude. They believe that before the nation got to this point, government ought to have addressed the question of some prominent Northern politicians who promised to make the country ungovernable if they failed to win elections. In the run up to the 2011 general elections, many prominent Northern politicians were alleged to have threatened the corporate existence of the country if they do not have their way of ruling the country. Up to date, not a single one of these politicians have been picked up to clarify the alleged threat. Also ominous is the silence of the graveyard of the Northern emirs, perhaps with the exception of the Sultan of Sokoto, Abubakar Sa’ad III. Many people have seen the activities of Boko Haram as a plan not only by some Nigerians, but also some foreign interests to destabilise Nigeria. The Igbo Youths Movement (IYM), while reacting to the Christ-mas Day bombing described it as attempt by Boko Haram to disintegrate the country, saying that the action has put to question the survival of Nigeria as a country. The IYM said: “The strategically, wellrehearsed reaction-cum-indictment from certain quarters, blaming leadership failure (on the bombing) only heightens the fear for the continued survival of Nigeria.
The desperation for power and unworkable unitary structure makes it impossible for any leadership to succeed. “The bold and emphatic statement made by the bloody Boko Haram sect to wit that religious and traditional leadership in the North has collapsed, is a very poignant message.†Whether the terrorism acts and activities by numerous armed bandits, of which Boko Haram is king, would disintegrate Nigeria, would be seen in the months ahead, even as Boko Haram continues its acts of terrorism unabated. To those who belong to the school of thought that President Goodluck Jonathan may be the last President of corporate Nigeria, recent events may seem to be the beginning of the end for Nigeria. But President Jonathan sees what is happening across the country as “mere developmental challenges faced by other countries at one time or the other, adding that Nigeria remains an indissoluble entity. President Jonathan has allies in former Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Alfa Belgore, who sees those predicting Nigeria’s fragmentation as “agents of doom who are scared of the future greatness of the federation.
His words: They have always predicted our break-up and we have always proved them wrong. They said it will be in 2008, we survived. Now they said 2015, we will even survive better. Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu believes that Nigeria will not collapse; he however said that “we need a lot of catching up to do. However, should the present crop of leaders take the bull by the horn and resolve the lingering and emerging crises and faithfully implement its transformation policies, then Nigeria may emerge as the African tiger that can favourably play its role in the comity of nations. To former US ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, Nigeria might fail as a state. Campbell in his book: ‘Dancing on the Brink, sees Nigeria tottering on the brink. He lamented the acute poverty in the land in the midst of plenty and blamed Nigeria’s pathetic situation on: a weak government and rigged elections; a ruling elite who view the state as a dispensary of petro- profits; endemic corruption; bloody sectarian violence between radical Muslims and Christians and the curse of oil wealth, which encourages Nigeria to ignore industrial development and agriculture. Former chairman of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), Sam Ohuabunwa, believes that “disintegration will not solve our problems. It will multiply them.
Instead of having one country, we will have 100 countries with 100 problems and then, we will become a threat to the rest of the world. The survival of the component units of this country is better assured the way the country is now. To former military governor of old Kaduna State and retired colonel, Abubakar Umar, “It does not matter what you have, no section of this country can stand on its own, no region will be able to hold together and progress in the event (that) Nigeria disintegrates. He added that as soon as Nigeria breaks up, “you can see the North breaking into so many piece¦ (and) farming activity will be virtually impossible because they will also be in perpetual state of war. He does not even understand how the country will break up, saying: “How do you break up? Is it North versus South, or South versus West? ... I cannot conceive of a situation where Nigeria is breaking up; into what? As far as I am concerned, there is no better alternative than a one united Nigeria.
The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senator Bala Mohammed, roundly condemned the idea of break-up, saying that it was the imagination of those who do not wish Nigeria well. But in a situation where places of worship no longer offer people a sanctuary to make peace with their creator, and communicate with Him, then we are already on the brink and this may no longer augur well for the nation. As the controversy rages, the US ambassador to Nigeria, Terence McCulley, has denied that his country predicted Nigerias break-up in 2015, saying that the prediction was done by a private agency that carried out a survey and not the US government as claimed. He said: “If the US had believed that Nigeria would break up by 2015, it would not have involved itself in the developmental programmes, aids and grants to the country, adding that Nigeria is US most strategic partner in Africa. If Nigeria would outlive the 2015 prediction, then all hands must be on deck to bring to an end to all acts of terrorism and acts that are inimical to the corporate existence of the country, because if aggrieved groups decide to take their destinies in their hand and fight back and Nigeria boils, it is difficult to predict what the outcome would be, but surely, it is not certain if Nigeria would survive it. Wither our “one nation bound in freedom, peace and unity?
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