Can Nigeria Break Up?

[Shola Sholaz]

THE question of whether Nigeria can break up still lingers 53 years after our independence. I will start by answering the question first. Yes, Nigeria can break up if we choose to and are willing to pursue and execute policies that will lead to its break up.
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The choice is ours as a people.
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Do we want to remain as one united country?
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What are the things required to keep us as one? Do we have them in place?
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Our country –Nigeria- was programmed to fail from the beginning. It was created on faulty foundations of deceit along ethnic, religious, demographic and geographic positions.
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Our colonial masters, the British, started it with their conspiracy to set the North against the South with cooked census and demographic figures, crooked mappings and the likes.
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Look critically at the map of Nigeria today, does it show equity and fairness with respect to regional allocations? That was the handiwork of our British colonial masters. When Nigerians took over, they continued to build on these lies and faulty foundations.
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That is why the issue of ethnicity is as fresh as it was at the inception of the country.
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The country took off with the three major tribes-Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo. Nothing was done for the minorities and no interest was given to issues concerning their plights. Everybody from up across the Niger is a Hausa man, while everybody down South, excluding the Yoruba West is an Igbo man.
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That was the situation and such was the thinking of our political leaders, that the whole South South with the exception of the Midwest was regarded as the East. That was why the Ibibio man was eased from office for Nnamdi Azikiwe to be Premier of the Eastern Region when the Yoruba's rejected him. The consequence of the neglect of the minority by the majority tribes is what we are witnessing today, particularly along the South-South region and some part of the Middle Belt and the North.