In the early twentieth century, The British decided to amalgamate the regions north and south of the Niger and Benue rivers and renamed the entity Nigeria. European colonial masters (British, French, Germans, Portuguese) overlorded the entire Western African region.
The new Nigeria was a melting port of sort, comprising more than two hundred ethnic groups, some large, many others small. More than two hundred different languages are spoken by people, who have very little in common in terms of culture and tradition. In earlier times, Islamic traders and proslyterizers have invaded most of the Northern region of Western Africa, and many Souther traders also got converted to the religion they discovered in Sudan and other far northern regions. Christianity came with the Europeans from the South (Atlantic Ocean).
In the 1950's, in the heat of the fight for independence, the people from this new melting port, like other similar amalgamation across Africa, focus more on ridding their land of the overlords, and less on the aftermath. By mid 1960's the bubble of independence had busted in Nigeria, and the nation was at War. That war, the Biafra war, was just the beginning of the unravelling of a state that has been held together mostly by the shared corruption of its leaders and the continued flow of oil money. Today, that nation tethers once again at the edge of chaos.
A new report from the latest armed groups; termed terrorist, because they are Islamic and mostly from the Northern region, and perhaps because they have elected to align themselves with Al Qeda, the thorn in the Western flesh; that they have murdered children in their sleep is not the worst but the latest Nigeria has come to see of the fire that rages across Africa's most populated and European's biggest failure in the continent.
The real question now should not be if Nigeria is a failure, but how that failure, indeed the failure across the entire African continent can be redeemed? There are human lives involved - today, almost one billion of them.
Boko- Haram (Education is bad) is just the latest reincarnation of a disease that has blighted Nigeria since after the first coup in the wee hours of 1966, that lead to the killing of its first prime minister and several politicians of northern and western breeds, representing one political party. That coup, lead to a war and the war is not yet over. For year, under military and then "civilian" rule, the nation has faced killings mostly in the Northern region, targeted at southerners in the north who were defenseless. Churchgoers, traders in the market, people sleeping in their homes in the dead of the night, and children at schools. Retaliation from the south has been far and between. Then the Ogoni 9 changed the way Nigerian government reacted to such killings. During the years of Obasanjo's second coming, the south south became a theatre of war, when government sent the military to keep the peace in Niger Delta. And now, suddenly, that same measure is being used to respond to a northern crises.
Nigeria is burning, perhaps, it is time to re-consider the whole experiment.
The new Nigeria was a melting port of sort, comprising more than two hundred ethnic groups, some large, many others small. More than two hundred different languages are spoken by people, who have very little in common in terms of culture and tradition. In earlier times, Islamic traders and proslyterizers have invaded most of the Northern region of Western Africa, and many Souther traders also got converted to the religion they discovered in Sudan and other far northern regions. Christianity came with the Europeans from the South (Atlantic Ocean).
In the 1950's, in the heat of the fight for independence, the people from this new melting port, like other similar amalgamation across Africa, focus more on ridding their land of the overlords, and less on the aftermath. By mid 1960's the bubble of independence had busted in Nigeria, and the nation was at War. That war, the Biafra war, was just the beginning of the unravelling of a state that has been held together mostly by the shared corruption of its leaders and the continued flow of oil money. Today, that nation tethers once again at the edge of chaos.
A new report from the latest armed groups; termed terrorist, because they are Islamic and mostly from the Northern region, and perhaps because they have elected to align themselves with Al Qeda, the thorn in the Western flesh; that they have murdered children in their sleep is not the worst but the latest Nigeria has come to see of the fire that rages across Africa's most populated and European's biggest failure in the continent.
The real question now should not be if Nigeria is a failure, but how that failure, indeed the failure across the entire African continent can be redeemed? There are human lives involved - today, almost one billion of them.
Boko- Haram (Education is bad) is just the latest reincarnation of a disease that has blighted Nigeria since after the first coup in the wee hours of 1966, that lead to the killing of its first prime minister and several politicians of northern and western breeds, representing one political party. That coup, lead to a war and the war is not yet over. For year, under military and then "civilian" rule, the nation has faced killings mostly in the Northern region, targeted at southerners in the north who were defenseless. Churchgoers, traders in the market, people sleeping in their homes in the dead of the night, and children at schools. Retaliation from the south has been far and between. Then the Ogoni 9 changed the way Nigerian government reacted to such killings. During the years of Obasanjo's second coming, the south south became a theatre of war, when government sent the military to keep the peace in Niger Delta. And now, suddenly, that same measure is being used to respond to a northern crises.
Nigeria is burning, perhaps, it is time to re-consider the whole experiment.
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