Nigeria: Stand Up! For Nigeria

Not to be dignified

When that mendicant (read megalomaniac) from Libya first suggested Nigeria split up, I considered it beneath me to dignify his rant with an opinion, having never equivocated about the entity of Nigeria or the identity of Nigerian, I could not be perturbed.

However, this new atrocity of a comment from Muammar Gaddafi [1] requires a comprehensive put-down but better still it is that one opportunity for true Nigerians to stand up for their country in purpose, in unity and in truth.

Feeling the whole of Nigeria

I do wish I had lived all around Nigeria, I only lived in the North and the SouthWest, but I do speak two of the three major indigenous languages of Nigeria.

My mother was born in the SouthWest, grew up in the North before travelling out for studies and returned to the North afterwards, she however speaks the three indigenous languages even though she learnt the third without having first visited that region.

She can well pass for an indigene in any of those places for her command of the language and her understanding of nuances of those tongues.

I remember my father struggling with his Hausa lessons, he really did not need to speak Hausa but the sense of Nigerian in him lead to his desire to integrate.

The great Nigeria

But Nigeria as a whole is a wonderful place, a country of 150 million people, maybe 250 tribes and just as many nations but with a common purpose and identity of which we must all be proud and be ready to defend.

If no one has yet seen the evil, despicable and Machiavellian notion of Colonel Gaddafi, review once again his absurd suggestion.

Nigeria should split along ethnic lines, if Nigeria really had clear-cut ethnic lines there might be a second to consider it, but to then give the example of the Yugoslavian split, it sends a clear message of a deep felt hatred for everyone who boldly declares their Nigerian pride.

Working this Nigeria

I would have welcomed the peace of a Czechoslovakian split, but Yugoslavia is one of bloodshed, sectarian violence, war, genocide and backwardness in comparison to ones neighbours - a split would make our sad history of Biafra child's play.

Obviously, we have to find ways to accentuate the things that make us uniquely and wonderfully Nigerians whilst we in unity militate against those things that divide us and take us away from the common purpose and desire of a great fatherland, great to us and great also in Africa. That potential greatness threatens small minds.

There is no clamour for self-determination in our country; what we seek is equity, justice, fairness and peace - with all the abundant resources of our rich country used to the welfare and development of our people by honest, courageous and visionary leaders.

This is the time to ask yourself if you are really Nigerian or someone seeking an unviable fiefdom with speculations of Utopia that do not exist.

The country we have

For 96 years, we have had the entity called Nigeria, whilst it was handed to us by colonial masters, we have run this country for 49 of those years, very few of the countries of colonial progeny that have split up in Africa have ever done so peacefully.

Nigerians need to rise above their religiosity and primitive clannish tendencies to the promise of a worthwhile commitment to a place called Nigeria.

We inter-marry along all sorts of lines, religious, ethnic, tribal, ideological and what else, we have one pledge, one anthem and one identity – it is Nigerian.

Any division would definitely lead to abnormal divisions which is very much like a cancerous growth which eventually kills the host – you can begin to kill Nigeria by entertaining the rotten thought of division and watch it die or starve this travesty of an utterance of oxygen and make Nigeria rise by condemning the notion in its entirety.

You can however allow a Libyan dictator to take away your right to be a Nigerian, but for me, all men would have departed the earth before Nigeria is no more.

My fellow compatriots – Stand Up for Nigeria.

Source

[1] Gaddafi suggests Nigeria split along ethnic lines

Today, We are Kosovans

The Flag of newly independent Kosovo (WikiMedia Foundation)

The people have spoken

Many regimes have rolled tanks over the aspirations of their people and shot bullets into the hearts of a few of the people who yearn for freedom.

Men, women and children they can kill but a hope that has become a movement for the emancipation of the people can be delayed, it can be obstructed and it can be temporarily crushed but it cannot be destroyed.

The Balkans has always been the tinderbox that has set Europe on fire much as peace in the Balkans keeps an uneasy calm in Europe.

This day, the people of Kosovo by their democratic will and earnest desire became a nation – the parliament unanimously declared independence from the Republic of Serbia.

A promise to all

Many have welcomed this realisation and others have rubbished the reality as false.

The leaders of the people have vowed to protect the minorities in their new nation whilst they forge ahead building a new identity and ready to play their part in the commonwealth of global nations.

Any nation that would not recognise the validity of this declaration should reflect of why they would deny a people their aspirations and wonder at their democratic credentials.

A treasure un-cherished

Serbia for instance claims that Kosovo is the cradle of Serbia, if it were that precious and priced as a place of their heritage they should probably have been smarter about treating that heirloom with respect and recognition.

They should have striven to unite their different peoples rather than wage wars (Wars waged in 1389, 1448, 1915, 1944 & 1999) and belligerent rhetoric against the dominant and majority occupiers who have a considerably different heritage.

The deed has been done here and hopefully, we can keep the peace and watch this nation grow into a force for good in the old Yugoslavia, the Balkans, Europe and the world at large.

We are Kosovans

There is nothing illegal about realising the aspirations of a people, the memory of the martyrs whose blood flowed to realise this dream shall not have been shed in vain.

Today, we who seek freedom and liberty with safety are together at one with Kosovo.

Today, we are all Kosovans – Long live the independent Republic of Kosovo, we welcome you.

Reference

The timeline to Kosovan Independence

A rest but no arrests

The dead bury the dead

When Jesus said let the dead bury their dead, one can be forgiven for not fully understanding the import of that statement.

There is however a whole mine of wisdom in that saying of which I might just be able to mine a gem or two. I can safely say we are moving one from the cult of the dead and are just fascinated by the Egyptology and the pyramids.

The great discovery announced a few weeks ago is not a king’s burial chamber but the preparation room for embalmment.

Sometime ago, I offered advice to a couple one of whom had to fulfil a set number of years or residency as part of resolving an immigration issue. Having lost his father, there was the compelling reason to go and bury his father as one would in Africa.

However, fulfilling that would mean losing the relationship and a possible loss of the right to return. So, some inspiration came to me in the guise of having the man parcel some sand to be poured over the grave in Africa on burial.

This would fulfil the ceremony of pouring sand on the coffin at burial and this the ability to continue sojourning here till the days are fulfilled for gaining the entitlement to the right of abode.

In context, one should not sacrifice one’s future well-being in satisfying the traditions of burying the dead.

Duties done

So, we see that Slobodan Milosevic was laid to rest in his village on Saturday without his son or widow attending. As it transpired, the suspension of the arrest order in Yugoslavia allowing them to attend Milosevic’s funeral had ropes attached.

The son did visit the Netherlands to collect the body but did not travel with his father’s body to Belgrade, the widow however, stayed in Moscow.

I could very well say that husband and wife has probably said their goodbyes long before the death occurred, the son however, performed his duties to the best of his ability.

What one cannot argue with is that a leader who has happened upon some misfortune as Milosevic did is not without friends and they have done him proud in terms of his interment.

Friends who excel kin

Even so, I remember, Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (reference in German) died in 1987, a spinster but a mentor and foster mother to many who are of repute in Nigeria.

She has more luminaries attend her funeral than many her age who would have had great grand-children and generations of relations.

Basically, kinship does not guarantee a worthy burial. By happenstance, I met a funereal stones salesman who said a lot less people are taking the cremation option because they miss the opportunity to visit a location where their loved one is buried.

My religion your grievance

Then again, China and the Koreas are always given to extreme histrionics when Junichiro Koizumi the Prime Minister of Japan visits the Yakusuni Shrine where the Japanese war dead are buried and worshipped as gods.

It so happens that some of the war dead includes those who warred against China and Korea, occupying those countries with a iron fist and committing despicable war atrocities.

However, this shrine was founded in 1869 and hence there are more war dead honoured there than those that give China and the Koreas such umbrage.

This worshipping of the dead as spirits is part of the principle of Shintoism which is a major religion in Japan.

The Japanese cannot for the sake of the few then condemn the shrine to extinction or excommunication from the Shinto faith.

Though, I am not sure there is a rite to expunge the spirits of men later adjudged to be wrong in their earthly life from a Shinto shrine.

It is almost the equivalent of saying because evil kings were mentioned in the Bible no one should read the Bible again – now, that would set fire to the Catherine wheels.

Basically, the Japanese have buried their dead and draw strength from their service in Shintoism whilst the Chinese and the Koreans are still haunted by the memories of the evil dead who have advanced to greater things of divine worship.

It is a crazy world out there; I want no part of it.

Innocent red blood spun as roses in their bloom

A swarm of new destruction

Operation Swarmer represents the biggest offensive on Iraqi soil since the invasion in search of Wielders of Mass Deception in 2003.

As they conquered Baghdad and the statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down with the help of a liberator tank, oil installations were protected but buildings of antiquity their treasures were left to looters and brigands to plunder.

No greater treasure than oil

We haughtily sniffed at the Philistines of our Modern Age who having a long history that stretches back a long 250 years as a nation forgot to secure treasures that date more than ten times 250 years into the past.

Nevertheless, one can conceitedly surmise that they were protecting treasures of the deep that date back even billions of years – Oil!

Somehow, if oil is a fossil fuel, I can only wonder how much would have had to go to waste in decay, sedimentation and precipitation to offer so much oil – sometimes I cannot muster enough faith to believe to Darwinism.

The whole thing blows my mind, I would rather be a simpleton of the creation story, and the miraculous can more believable.

However, I would contend that there was an eternity of time between the beginning and when the earth was found null and void. Eternity past could very well be billions of years of passage of time – the earth is as old as you want it to be.

From Baghdad to Berlin

Having suffered the plunder of the Museums in Baghdad, I thought to myself, the only other place top see Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and Mesopotamian culture would now have to be the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

Then on Larry King Live early this morning a number of commentators had a few things to say, but I did wonder how history had been twisted when a Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair vain-gloriously misrepresented some facts.

• That Iraq was under a greater danger of a civil war under Saddam Hussein as his regime was already imploding.
• That Iraq is no more occupied since it has an Iraqi head of state.
• That military might would handle the insurgency just as the Sadr Army was succumbed in 2004.
• That the Al Qaeda operatives working in Iraq arrived long before the coalition forces invaded.

The red blood of roses

I think it is time we fully document and journal the events in Iraq before other people blinkered by some unconscionable partisan loyalty rewrite the events before our eyes – misrepresenting the red blood of the innocent lives lost as the colour of roses in their bloom.

Yesterday also, a whole programme on Newsnight documented in some detail the mismanagement of moneys meant for the reconstruction of Iraq to the tune of $50 billion.

This is looking like an American “Oil for Food” type of scandal that enthusiastic senator-persecutors of the UN have not taken note of.

In what can be cynical viewed as a poll-boosting exercise reminiscent of when Clinton bombed Yugoslavia whilst the Monica Lewinsky scandal captured the imagination of the American People, Operation Swarmer is riding on comparatives and superlatives with the hope the those rock bottom ratings of the President get a nudge upwards.

History lost to the present

It is however with interest that this exercise is taking place in Samarra where the force of occupation and incumbency failed to prevent the destruction of one of the holiest Islamic shrines.

It also shows that heritage and history plays more significance in the matter for preventing internecine violence leading to a possible civil war.

It is probable that flushing insurgents out of Samarra would snuff out the purveyors of violence, but it would not rebuild the shrine.

That shrine would also not get rebuilt is moneys are corruptly disbursed to political personnel who are allegedly lining their pockets better than an African chieftain his hands in the bank vault.

Such great ruin we behold

The fact is helicopter gunships and all that artillery do not daintily miss out infrastructure and innocent people as the culprits are being searched out.

After the operation is over such great ruin would we behold as the quest to prevent a civil war that has unravelled as a result of our pre-emptive war.

The division of a united people

The parallel with Yugoslavia is stark from the fact that Marshall Tito kept six constituent nations together as one and it all broke apart as Slobodan Milosevic stoked the embers of nationalism.

Iraqis who were Iraqi nationals under Saddam Hussein are now Kurds, Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims.

The bizarre case of a branch of religion in schism for 1,400 years being synonymous with a tribe and a location and exacerbated by Western equality in representation democracy simply accentuates the divides and does nothing for unity.

Iraq is one big and opened Pandora’s Box and God help us if we ever find the lid and get the strength to shut it up tight.