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Author: By Amanze Obi
Posted to the web: 6/8/2005 7:03:16 AM

A fertile ground has been mapped out for Nigeria’s many patriotic do-gooders. A recent report by the United States’ National Intelligence Council which predicted outright collapse of Nigeria within the next 15 years has provided jobs for their itching palms. They now have materials to work on and to work with. For more than one week now, a good many of them have remained in a mood of frenzy, throwing brickbats at, haranguing and casting aspersions on the prophets of doom from the United States (US).But first, what is the kernel of this report from America’s National Intelligence Council? The report had noted that the insistence by Nigeria’s leaders to keep the country united may, ironically, lead to its collapse. It observed that 'while currently Nigerian 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 report, contained in a document entitled, 'Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa’s Future,' discusses likely trends in the region over the next 15 years.For those who would have us believe that they love Nigeria more than the rest of us, the US has, through this intelligence report, committed a sacrilege. They have wondered why anybody should dish out this tissue of white lies about Nigeria. They consider it misleading for anybody to say such a thing about a Nigeria that is working so well. They have therefore dismissed the report as a piece of hogwash and its authors as glib critics or arm-chair analysts.But there are Nigerians who have not chosen the path of the rabble. They are those who have spared a little thought on the issue at stake. Such Nigerians have said that there is nothing new about what the US intelligence has come up with. Indeed, such people insist that everything about the report is true of Nigeria. But they share differing opinions on whether the prediction would come to pass.I have been part of some fora where this issue has been dissected.My observation is that the responses of Nigerians to it are largely influenced by their long cherished sympathies or idiosyncrasies about Nigeria. The reactions, to a large extent, are informed by wishful thinking, rather than by a dispassionate reading of the Nigerian situation. But the issue at stake does not call for emotive or emotional responses. It demands realistic analysis. However, if we agree, as some have said, that the report did not tell us anything that we did not already know, then we need not raise dust about it. Or are we falling over ourselves in this matter because the US has also come to know what we know about our precarious national situation?But if we must divest the report and the responses arising from it of all their pugnacious underpinning, we will discover that the issue cannot be wished away. The conditions that may disrupt the 'precarious equilibrium' in Nigeria will not cease to exist simply because some people have decided to play the game of the ostrich. In this matter, facts are sacred, and we have to face them. The basic fact here is that Nigeria is bogged down by disequilibrium, something the US intelligence report has chosen to call 'precarious equilibrium.' If we are caught in a state of disequilibrium, it is because those basic ingredients of corporate existence, which should make all peoples, tribes, tongues and religions hang together have been wilfully ignored by those the US report called Nigeria’s leaders. Incidentally, this column had, last week, drawn attention to some hallowed provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, which our leaders have thrown overboard. The argument, as we had it here last week, was that Nigeria must return to those basic truths and honour them if the country must survive as a corporate entity. Today, as last week, we are still confronted with the issues of justice and equality. If we are faced with the scary spectre of disintegration, it is because Nigeria’s leaders have enthroned injustice and inequality in the business of statecraft. These are strange ingredients in corporate governance which have been allowed to take roots. For some reason, some people have taken mischievous interest in them. They are people who, over the years, have derived unmerited benefit from the disequilibrium. They have become used to the body-politic that is accustomed to this incongruous state of affairs. They now want to protect it at all cost. This is the danger that Nigeria’s corporate existence is exposed to.Regrettably, those who truly love this country are hardly in a position to speak for it or determine its course in national affairs. Those who are always quick to intervene in its affairs are its worst enemies. They are the habitual or compulsive liars. They are those who re-write the history of this country to suit their purpose. They are those who think that unity or oneness is achieved or sustained by coercion and injection of the siege mentality in the citizenry.We all know the truth. In moments of sanity, we will be gracious enough to admit that Nigeria has not been programmed to work. There is, for instance, no evidence to show that Nigerians like and cherish their yoking together by the colonial overlords. When a US intelligence group observes therefore that ours is a bad marriage that all dislike, we should not raise eyebrows.If I were those who claim to love Nigeria, I would shun the path of emotional outburst and toe the line of reason. This will essentially consist in evolving ways and means of making the bad marriage that is Nigeria to metamorphose into a good one. This is the task before those who believe in the indissolubility or indivisibility of Nigeria.For some others who are not so inclined, the worry now is that the report is capable of throwing a spanner in the works. In a way, the report has given some ideas to some junior officers in the armed forces when it declared that what it would take for Nigeria to collapse is 'a junior officer coup that could destabilise the country to the extent that open warfare breaks out in many places in a sustained manner…' If this prediction is anything to go by, then we should expect a certain cataclysm arising from military adventurism. Thus, even as we congratulate ourselves that military incursion into politics has become a thing of the past, certain officers may see the prediction as a self fulfilling one. And all they need do is to give effect to it. That will be a dangerous idea to entertain.Another source of discomfort about the report is that the US, which has a very strategic interest in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, may come to believe religiously in the report. If it does, it may actually take subterranean steps to ensure that the prediction comes true. Such a project may be well received by segments of the country where tempers are boiling over and people’s hairs are standing on end over perceived injustices and disequilibrium. These are sources of worry which our patriotic do-gooders ought to take steps to avert. But because they do not mean well for Nigeria, they are selling a dummy to us. But we cannot be led by the nose. Not any more.