HOME NEWS Q & A JOBS MORE Nigeria is repeating the mistakes of 1964/65 –
Nnadi on january 17, 2015 at 8:46 pm in periscope Facebook Share Twitter Share By AZU AKANWA Tony Nnadi is the Secretary of Lower Niger
Congress (LNC), a group working to have Nigeria
restructured. He holds the view that Nigeria has
been run into a cul-de-sac by the insincerity of its
leaders from certain sections of country. In this
interview, he says holding elections in Nigeria at the moment, without resolving the issue of the
country’s ‘illegitimate’ Constitution, would amount
to courting violent disintegration. In several places that I have heard you speak, you seem to give the impression that the Nigerian constitution is the problem of the country. Why is this so? In recent MNN Bulletins, we have taken the
trouble to tell the whole world why we would
rather dissolve the Nigerian union than remain in
enslavement in it. It is the same reason for which
Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and
others insisted that the apartheid constitution in South Africa could no longer be the basis for the
governance of that country. Likewise, we are saying that this Constitution that
is a product of imposition and force can no
longer be the basis of Nigerian union. And if we
are not discussing to come to an agreement; to
come to a consensus in place of force, in place of
imposition, we would rather dismantle the monstrous enterprise they call Nigeria. How easy do you think that would be? The thing has already divided itself; the 12 states
that passed Sharia law have already opted out of
the Nigerian union. Boko Haram was merely an
enforcement arm. The Yoruba west is a cohesive
bloc that could be a country of 55 million people.
We saw them saying clearly when the conference was on that “either we go back to regional
autonomy” or they would pull out of Nigeria. Those who said it have the capacity to take
themselves out of the failed union of Nigeria,
because the single thing that ties the people into
place today is this Constitution. To the extent that
it lied in its preamble that we the people have
agreed to live by it, to that extent, the Nigerian title document is bad beyond redemption. We have waited since 1967 to conclude the
discussions that began in Aburi, for us to
recommit to Nigeria. But they say over their dead
bodies. They say they are born to rule the rest of
us. That is why if we do not come to that
agreement; to that recommitment, we will immediately take steps to retrieve our various
portions. In the eastern side, we call it the Lower
Niger. You saw when the Ijaw people came with
the map of 1885 before Okurounmu Committee,
which showed the territory we now called the
South-East and South-South together as one territory now. It will be a country of about 70
million people. That is the Lower Niger. Of course the Middle-Belt, that has been playing
the role of willing tools and attack dogs, are now
on the front line of being beheaded in the name
of Sharia. They are not Muslims and they have
said it that they would rather leave the union if
the Nigerian union is what will compel them to remain the sacrificial lamb to be killed at will. Of course in that formation where you see the
map of Nigeria that is broken into four, the
caliphate is already in place with people shooting
and pretending to be fighting terror in the place,
the matter is simple: the northern political
leadership were clear in what their mission is. Now Boko Haram has come to enforce their
threat of making the place ungovernable. We
must remember that the enforcement of making
the country ungovernable started on the day of
election when corps members were killed. From
there they marched on to a police station, burnt it down; they marched on to army barrack, and
then the franchise became more and more
popular all over. Looking at what is going on in Iraq today – ISIL
(Islamic State of Iraq and Levant), what is their
mission? It is to establish a caliphate. You saw all
the bulletins that Boko Haram gave. The matter is
simple. They want to Islamize Nigeria. Look at
their method, how is it different from the one we watch on CNN from ISIL? They behead people and
do all kinds of things that are not different. Many people will not agree with you on that Boko Haram is abducting girls for sale, and if
anybody is thinking that Boko Haram fell from
the sky, no! It was 12 states that passed Sharia
law. Remember that their champion at that time
was Sani Yerima, who is now a senator. He was
chopping off people’s hands as governor of Zamfara State. Today, Shekau is blowing off
people’s heads. What’s the difference? To that extent, they have a right to self-
determination in that territory to go and do their
Sharia since democracy is what offends them. In
the same vein, we also have a right to live by
ourselves. They have made the Nigerian union
impossible. If we make the mistake of proceeding into an election, they don’t need to win that
election in order to bring the sort of violence
they had in mind in the threat of “ungovernable”
and the blood of baboons mixing with that of
dogs. But All Progressives Congress (APC) that Muhammadu Buhari is flying its flag insists that elections must hold It may look like APC to you, it does not look like
APC to me. It is a determined march toward
imposing authoritarianism in the land, which
would lead to the extermination of one part of
the contraption. Our answer to all of it is that the
dissolution of the union is what we prefer at this time. If since 1967 till date, we cannot go to regional
autonomy which has been the demand, because
even the MEND is all about regional autonomy –
to recognise your land as your own – which the
Constitution today forbids. They say my land
belongs to a man in Kano who is not willing to come to discussion with me. It is our proposal; we are going to pursue it
because we have a right under the United
Nations instrument governing the situation. You
saw Scotland go through referendum the other
day. People have made Constitutions for the three
territories that are not Sharia. In the eastern side, those six languages there have made their
Constitutions – the Ijaw, the Itshekiri, the Urhobo,
the Annang, the Efik, the Igbo – as we were in the
60s when Eyo Ita led his party to victory in
Eastern Nigeria. Then the Middle-Belt. With the Yoruba bloc and
the Lower Niger taken out, it is all the balance of
the country minus the Sharia states, but including
the borderline cases of southern Kaduna and
others. The people who are going to make it
happen in their territories are going to insist on their right of self-determination. Nobody is going
to keep them by force in the union of Nigeria,
election or no election. But President Goodluck Jonathan instituted a National Conference. Is that not enough? Of course, Mr. President understood what the
problem was because he knew how the
presentations were made for there to be a
conference. Then he told them in writing at the
time of convening that the conference was
designed to realistically examine and genuinely resolve the long-standing impediments to our
cohesion as a united country. If you read the
speech by which he inaugurated the Okurounmu
committee, you will see it. So, we have a situation in which the President
was clear to them that it is a matter of how we
live together that was going to be discussed on
the floor of the Conference. What was the first
decision on the floor of the Conference? The
same elements from that part of the country, the North, working with their allies, decided that the
matter of our unity was not to be discussed at
the conference. Bottomline, nothing has been
discussed. Therefore, we are saying that we are not going
to fold our arms and watch those who have not
discussed how we want to live together, how
education and healthcare can get to the people,
just in an attempt to go to hold the head of the
knife, drag us into the situation we saw in 1964/65, that became 1966 and therefore 1967
to 1970, where more than three million got killed. If we go into this election, we are thinking that
up to 10 million would have been buried before
we go back to what we would have done in the
first instance. We are going to confront the
politicians. We are already mobilising for massive
civil disobedience if they insist in going for elections because we are rejecting that
Constitution. We are not looking at who the
winner or who the candidate is. We are looking at
what instrument they will use to govern because
that is the job description of the government. There is this argument in some quarters that Nigeria has been a terrorist state since the 70s, which was stopped in a way with the coming of Jonathan as President, and pushed terrorist elements out of governance. Do you agree with that assertion? Well, to the extent that anybody who saying it
and taking it only from 1970 may have his own
reasons may be when he became aware of it. But
I can tell you from the documents we have that it
was created to be so from 1914, when the British
lumped together various territories they had conquered, albeit under the pretence of treaties. You know they were doing things by force, but
would come later and bring their documents for
you to sign when you are not in a position to
refuse. So, by a combination of brute force and
guile, they were able to secure a vast swat of
territories which theyin 1914 called Nigeria. Are you then saying that Nigeria, as a terrorist state, started long before 1970? Yes, the British started it and handed over to
Fulani in the North. The bottom-line of it is that
the Britain saw Nigeria as its outpost. They have
come from Europe to take away what they could
find to take away peacefully here. But those who
opposed them they terrorised and subdued. Why did they so much want to put the Fulani in charge? Why were they at home with the Fulani? They were resisted in the South from the onset
by the likes of King Jaja of Opobo, Oba
Ovwieramen of the ancient Benin Kingdom, King
Pepple of Bonny, Chukwemeka Odumegwu
Ojukwu’s grandfather. From that point, it was
clear to them that the people of the South were not going to accept them, especially in view of
the larger scheme of the things they (the British)
sought to take away from the southern part, and,
as such, must be kept down at all times. Oil is at
the heart of this mayhem. Now, somebody may be talking about Oloibiri as
the place of the first discovery of oil in Nigeria. It
is all falsehood; they had sold our oil for about 50
years before Oloibiri. It was the approach of
independence that made them declare Oloibiri. It was when they started the pretence that they
tried to obfuscate the matter of who owned the
assets they were taking away, then they started
looking for new identities of people who would
not be able to resist them the way a larger bloc of
people would be able to resist them in the east. In the whole country, it was a clearly settled
intention on their part to create a master-servant
relation between the North and the South. From your assertion, it would then mean that the North was willing to play that role? Yes, anybody talking of 1970 maybe became
conscious of the matter by 1970. If you doubt
me, you look at this statement by Ahmadu Bello,
which he made in the week of independence in
1960, because the British had created this
master-servant thing that they left in their hands, while the rest were celebrating what they
thought was the exit of the British, Ahmadu Bello
was telling his lieutenants a different story. I
quote him now, from the Parrot newspaper of
October 12, 1960, where he was saying:”The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of
our great grandfather Uthman Dan Fodio. We
must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We
use the minorities of the North as willing tools
and the South as a conquered territory and never
allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future”. So, even at the point of Independence, these
matters had been worked out into a
constitutional framework in which one region of
the country – the then Northern Region – was
going to be a permanent political majority. They
did this even when they were in the minority. How was it possible to create a majority from a minority? British did it; they turned it around by inflating
the population figures for the North in the
1951/52 census, which they again reinforced in
1961/62 census that became controversial. They also wanted to reinforce it in 1971 and
again it got rejected. It has been falsehood and
falsehood all through, and you now had a
situation where that thing that Ahmadu Bello was
talking about became a battle script. If you look at
the Constitution by which Nigeria is being managed today, you will see that we came to that
arrangement on account of the implementation
of that battle script of Ahmadu Bello, because he
was talking to his political descendants. You have a map of Nigeria and you make a
mental picture of three or four divisions in it; you
begin to place the characters that played one role
or the other in the development of what we now
have as Constitution. Who did what coup? Put
them where they belong in that map and you will see a clear picture of the roles of the ones from
the Muslim North, who are at the apex, and the
ones from the Middle-Belt who were their attack
dogs. Ahmadu Bello called them willing tools. These people are still playing that role of willing
tools in the hands of the people who are the
inheritors of the political empire of Uthman Dan
Fodio which Ahmadu Bello was talking about. Ben Nwabueze, who took part in the drafting of
that Constitution, confessed the other day that
Murtala Muhammed and his agents had already
written the Constitution fully before the
Constituent Assembly was called. He confessed
that the little adjustments they thought they had made during the Constituent Assembly were
removed. On the 21st of September 1978, when
Murtala Muhammed had already been killed by his
fellow military rulers, Obasanjo who became the
new enforcer completed the job for him. How do you situate the Biafra/Nigeria war in all these? What they call the civil war was an attempt by
one side saying that you cannot continue to kill
us in an arrangement we have not agreed upon,
and it was the first serious push to be truly
independent. Of course there was a gang-up
between the Northern Region and the Western Region to choke the Eastern Region. A gang-up? If you thought it was an accident, you look at
that letter that Murtala Nyako wrote to the 19
northern governors, accusing Jonathan of
genocide in their place. In that letter, you will see
that instructively that he had described Jonathan
as an element of Eastern Nigeria, that was out to avenge the killings of 1967/68 in their area. He
conveniently forgot the new name tag they
placed on Niger Delta, being South-south and
South-east. When it was convenient for him, he describes
Jonathan as an element of Eastern Nigeria. Let me
tell you what it means. If you go back to the era
of Azikiwe, when he was fighting the colonialists,
he did all the fighting with Mokwugo Okoye, Osita
Agwuna, Mbonu Ojike, and of course with few other people here and there. But when the matter
of transfer of power came to be effected, it was
an alliance of that conservative North and a
renegade wing of Yoruba South-west that was
given power. It was that alliance that made it
impossible for Azikiwe to preside over Nigeria at independence. It was same alliance that came to life when
Awolowo, having been premier of Western
Region, and with all his knowledge and
experience, subjugated himself to working under
Gowon, a boy then with school certificate. Gowon
only went to school after he was thrown out in 1975. Awolowo worked under Gowon for nine
years in order to beat down the East. Again, if
you have an imaginary map of Nigeria, you will
see who comes from where and to what purpose
their alliance has been put. Certainly that alliance cannot be existing today? It is that alliance that has come up in the name of
APC today. Anybody may be talking about
democracy or free and fair election. But what I
am seeing is the fifth re-enactment of that
alliance of two regions to undo the other region. I am not seeing any APC, I am seeing the Sharia
North with that wing of the Yoruba west forming
a majority in the name of a political party to
choke out what they call the minority man from
Eastern Nigeria. And we are saying that the issue
of how we live together must be addressed before we go for any election.



Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/01/nigeria-repeating-mistakes-196465-nnadi/

Omo this epistle tire me to read o

I quite agree with this only that this time the result will be very different and permanently irredeemable

Shay Nigeria nah strange country since 0000AD aba too much fake ppl come together! Waiting u think go happen before? :'

I am hoping that a civil war between the Niger delta, South East and parts of the middle belt versus the core North and yorubas don't break out because of intolerance, insensitivity and greed of certain Nigerians who believe they own nigeria and were victorious in the last civil war, who believe they have the right to determine who rules Nigeria and who will never rule Nigeria

Only God will help this pretending 9ja.