The just concluded Federal Government Amnesty Program for Militants presents Nigeria with the best opportunity for a political restructuring and may well be the last if mishandled. It may be mishandled if it is seen as merely an opportunity for the ruling party or politicians to retain power by removing the only threat to financial viability of Nigeria and therefore their own survival in office. This is likely to be the narrowest assessment of the opportunities presented by this epoch making event in the life of Nigeria. The circumstances leading to the Amnesty is not isolated from the general appalling socio-economic and political situation prevailing in the country. If anything, they are interconnected and solution must flow together to be sustainable. Think of the
Poverty index that defies figures and then understand what unemployment does to the youths of a country whose demography if such were allowed to exist would present them a majority figure .Then perhaps you would begin to understand why we don’t seem to get it right no matter how hard we tried in the past. Heed this well. Amnesty is not about the Niger Delta region alone but about Nigeria as a whole. It should be about correcting all injustice wherever it is found in Nigeria; it is about doing those things that would build a Nation out of the separatist factions and disparate interests juggling for attention and resources. This is the only way the program can be sustainable.
This writer knows how hard it is for people to receive a warning on face value without one creating a scenario before hand to illustrate the wrong and the right choices open to Nigerian leaders at this point. It is not just about the President making a right decision or the National Assembly members voting aright for bills, at this stage all hands must join together to put Nigeria on the right part. However, it is not always constructive to give the scenario of the wrong choice because it would give it fuel to manifest, so in this article I will resist the temptation to give the reader what would happen if we misuse the opportunity given to us to rebuild Nigeria. Suffix it to say that short term goals should not determine what we do in solving the Niger Delta crises. Please no one should think that State creation is a long term solution, nor political appointments to militants or allocation of oil blocks. These are short term solutions to gain time between now and the next uprising because go back in to history ever since the Ogoni uprising it has always been the same short term calculations to lead us beyond the next election. You would notice the troughs and peaks of a pendulum like swinging of uprising and appeasement but you will also see that after every appeasement time is gained but the next one is always double the impact of the former. It all started with harmless educated demands and gatherings which were often disallowed until they started throwing stones and then it rose to killing people and burning houses until after Saro Wiwa it became armed resistance.
Later it became more militant after President Obasanjo failed to take the 2007 opportunity and then boom, it became a parade of sophisticated weapons and many factions.
We must understand that the Nation is telling us a story by what is happening and listen carefully to what it is saying. It is saying that something is wrong with the direction we are going, that you don’t use crises to mitigate crises. Let us tackle unemployment across board. Let us recognize the organic nature of Nigeria and make broad based policies that will ensure that another group or the present group do not take up rams in future by removing the geopolitical calculations in the polity. Instead of creating States to give people sense of nearness to power, let us make everyone a citizen of Nigeria everywhere you belong or live. Is it too big a demand to make? When people know they can change their state will they be demanding for new States? No. They will try to develop which ever State they find themselves. It is very easy to achieve and I believe a bill to that effect is already in the National Assembly. Let the States start off by awarding state citizenships or indigene ship to high performing settlers.
The State Assemblies can put forward bills to regulate settlement in their territory. They ca at least define criteria for any one who can enjoy privileges within the State as distinct from those who should not. In putting forward such legislation, each State will attempt to marry constitutional provisions with cultural, religious and geographic imperatives. The courts can begin to look at complaints and suggestions or demand in this light as precedents build up within the Nations emergent legal environment. If you don’t do it now, you will end up creating States which are only a transit dwelling place for the best portion of their own citizens or rather indigenes that would eventually naturalize in Europe or America where the elected representatives are sensitive to their responsibilities to those who elected them. And you would continue to divide because even before the pen dries from today’s demand for new States, new demands to create from the existing State will become compelling to make instability permanent. Should Nigeria continue in this direction?
Of course the answer is a resounding no. The World has gone global in every facet-Political, economic, technological and even social and Nigeria cannot hide her head in the sand like an Ostrich for long. If only for the sake of our children, let us stop sentencing the coming generation to our directionless political ambitions by thinking for once of their welfare. Let us stop giving young Nigerians the excuse migrate abroad while legislators destroy the future considering useless bills and dumping vital ones for extraneous reasons. I want to see a State house or National Assembly debating remedies for mitigating unemployment in the year 2012 when the multitude of 1st year University undergraduates are due to graduate into the labor market and not just how to ban Okada
or mitigate problems when they have gotten out of hand. Our government should not just see itself as a day to day manager of the country but it should try to influence the future positively by planning ahead for other generations.
So let us begin with the Amnesty program. Nigeria is lucky to have a President whose ego did not allow him to reject the opportunity of negotiating with militants. Maybe there is yet a plus in a President without too much military psyche. You can imagine what would happen were Nigeria governed by those whose spirit is bound with her troubled past, those who see certain portions of the country as second class ci
tizens. You bet they would not sit down in one room with Militants who are fellow Nigerians. So we have made progress in Nigeria and one day the restructuring of Nigeria would come without fanfare.
For today let us begin with this opportunity of calls for State creation, calls for settlement of Militants as if Nigerian problems can be reducible to those two issues. These two seemingly imperative issues are only symptoms to a root cause lying untouched. Unemployment, displacement of people from their habitat by unnatural legislations such as the Land Use Act; unbalanced and lopsided federation or rather unitary federalism as some people describe it. Unemployment has roots in the laws that remove people forcibly from where God ordained that they be born and nurtured by the resources therein. If you are born a fisherman and you cannot fish in the river because a petroleum Law says you should keep away, you grow up not having a home nor a culture of restraint nor a value or satisfaction with anything because the most important thing in your life has been taken away. Yet, you cannot call any other place your state or home because there are also laws baring you from benefiting from any State you domicile unless you seek for asylum or tell lies about your origin. And when such people go into government they loot the treasury and relocate abroad.
But there is a remedy open to all. Instead of creating new states and making them Governors or Ministers or Board members, closing your eyes to their ambition to loot the place dry only for you to probe them with EFCC and then divide the State tomorrow to meet another demand. We can stop the drift with one clean move. We can grant citizenship to all those who currently reside in any state of their choice where such people have put ten years or above. Criteria will be the productive disposition of such applicants.
With this law ,you stop the present system whereby Monkey de work Baboon de chop .By rejecting the unfair economic arrangements in the States whereby some will work their assess out while some will reap the bounties because they are indigenes, you spiritually open the door for greater productivity, greater revenue and higher employment. You would have increased citizens’ commitment and loyalty while saving the world of boundless illegal immigration and business scams. Most importantly you would save the existing states from incessant hemorrhage and remove Nigeria from the Failed State list.
Mr. Nworisara, a public affair analyst once aspired to the Nigerian Presidency
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