The last one week has been full of ups and downs. Only Charles Dickens’ opening lines in: “A Tale of Two Cities” could adequately sum up the emotions and the turmoil, and the turbulence of the last one week. Dickens wrote: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”
These, my friends, have been the most horrific of times.
The Class of 75/77 HSC in Edo College laid to rest one of the finest debating minds I had the privilege of sharing a room with in High School. Barrister Ekinadoese Omo-Osagie was a Thinker, Philosopher—-an intellectual in every sense of what the word means. Every encounter with him always crystallized into how we could solve the problems of Nigeria. In 1980, long before Chinua Achebe wrote that leadership was the problem of Nigeria, Eki, myself and a few others including Professor Iyere had come to that conclusion in our daily debates at my first call to fame: The O’meekey Rendezvous. In debates about forms of government, we came to the conclusion that rather than forms of government, what we needed mostly was “Forms of men.”
The search for forms of men continues in earnest even as Eki took a bow to meet his maker.
Nigerians, weep not for Eki.
He did his part.
We must keep hoping against hope. The journey of nation-building is not a sprint. It is an adventure, a never-ending saga, a marathon of eternal bandwidth. Only God in creation, understands and knows when in His perfect timing, a savior will arise for each nation. France had Napoleon Bonaparte. Germany had Otto Von Bismarck. America has had a number of great minds, a string of them beginning from George Washington through Abraham Lincoln the emancipator, FDR and his New Deal; JFK and his quest to go to the moon. Singapore had Lee Kuan Yew. Dubai had Sheik Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum.
It is to Sheik Al Maktoum I wish to speak concerning Northern Nigeria and the rest of us. The incident that happened in Uromi last week which resulted in the deaths of 16 travelers raises many questions. Why would 16 travelers ordinarily raise suspicion? It is in trying to answer this question that we must examine what leadership has done to Northern Nigeria.
The leaders of Northern Nigeria have done mindless, unconscionable, and almost irreversible damage to their peoples. Not satisfied, the damage is being spread to the rest of Nigeria. By their policies of classism and elitism, they have excluded whole classes of people from accessing education, thus relegating millions of their able bodied population into fetchers of water, hewers of wood, shoe shiners, wheel barrow tomato hawkers, roving herdsmen without ranches, hawkers of Suya, iron benders, and now, kidnappers and bandits.
Haba!!!!
What is it?
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
This trend must be arrested and reversed. The Northern child must be emancipated from this emasculation. From the example of Sheik Al Maktoum and the wonders he did in Dubai, the argument can be made that the problem of Northern Nigeria is nothing but a culture, a string of past and ongoing uninspiring leadership. Everyone can see and applaud what Zulum is doing in war ravaged Bornu. He is building schools that Sokoto or even Kaduna under the fiery ex-governor who now wants to be president could not achieve. May more Zulums in the image of Al Maktoum happen to Northern Nigeria.
In X-raying the situation that unfolded in Uromi, a commentator had this to say:
“I am sad at the killing of innocent Hausa travellers. But it must be remembered that Esanland has been at the receiving end of relentless Fulani herdsmen assault in terms of kidnapping, killings, destruction of farmland and raping of women for a long time. They have cried out for protection without any help from local, state or the federal government. It is said that once one has been bitten by a snake, he will be scared of any long thing. The vigilantes were responding to recent history. They are not maniacs. Everyone is condemning them without regard to their history. The press has been projecting an unbalanced report of the situation. If these otherwise heroes are sacrificed because of the passion of the moment, no one will be encouraged to protect and defend our homeland. I can almost swear that the herdsmen are going to come back with more ferocity to attack our people and no one will be in the gap. Kindly wake up the press to rise up to the defense of the defenders of our homeland by presenting a balanced report of events. Why will hunters who are going home on holidays be travelling with guns? Why will hunters come all the way from the north to hunt in the south?”
This is a commentary from an enlightened mind. It will be ignored as usual. The people who lead us have no time for the level of discourse or intentional rigor that go into building great nations. Who needs rigor when the treasury awaits to be pillaged by the next leader? Intellectuals and intellectual rigor be damned.
In a country where a professor cannot afford a 20-year old car, how do we raise the professors who will train and equip the next generation?
Northern Nigeria must pay attention.
Nigeria must wake up.
Enough is enough.
At Egogonews, we do not talk without providing solutions. We have debated and we arrived at a solution to the problem of insecurity that plagues the entire country. However, because this is a security issue, it will be imprudent to share the solutions publicly. Long live Nigeria. May God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
O’meekey O. Ovienmhada.
Bravo!
Every sentence is a valid point.
Nigeria should be peacefully divided into at least fifteen different nations.
Edo state population is far more than that of several nations in the world.
Kano state population is 16. 11 millions plus with a growth rate of 3.29% in 2024. That is a higher rate than most developed nations.
If Edo state were a sovereign nation, the so called hunters will require a passport or other permits to entry the country. They will not dare go into someone’s farmland now being called forest- as if the forest does not belong to someone- in the name of hunting. NEVER.
However Since Nigeria is so large without proper utilization of the vast forest in the north and south, criminals elements as terrorists, bandits kidnappers, herdsmen and now so called hunters with AK47 rifles, have all turned these beautiful, fertile and serene forests into a haven of committing all manners of criminal activities.
The executive government at the three levels has been in a deep sleep for years and are completely bereft of how to develop these forests to become a source of economic activities generating revenue for exports from products cultivated there from.
I believe that the nations that will come out of Nigeria will engage in active competition in the quest to develop by exploring the natural and Human Resources that so greatly abound in its territories
Yugoslavia was divided into about 6-7 countries after the needless bloodletting for years.
Nigeria should avoid the route of Yugoslavia and adopt that of Zechoslovaskia that came to a round conference table and went their separate ways
I believe these will curb the incessant daily killings of the innocent people in every state of Nigeria.
The only way to describe the unfortunate situation in Uromi that resulted in the killing of the so called 16 Fulani hunters could be likened to an event that has happened difficult to pronounced but impossible to be silenced. The responses to the event by the people in authority sent the whole country into a fever pitch. With speculations and stories glowing everywhere in the air nobody has shown any courage to find out the real mission of these marauders carrying different catches of guns and ammunition. The question should be why are these Fulani’s traveling inside an eighteen wheeler vehicle full of ammunition’s and weapons? Why will Fulani hunters travel all the way to the South to hunt what? Why were there no equal response from the authorities when these Fulani herdsmen would enter a farmland with their cows destroy the crops of the indigenous people, kidnapped them, kill them and rape their women? Is one tribe superior to another in Nigeria or one tribe is more Nigerian than the others? The leaders of Nigeria should be ashamed of themselves. Those fanning this hatred and destruction if fight should break our in Nigeria no where is safe.