MS Ankio Briggs, rights activist and one of the leaders of the National Summit Group, says there is nothing to celebrate at 53 and the amalgamation of Northern and Southern protectorates to create Nigeria was a mistake.
MS Ankio Briggs, rights activist and one of the leaders of the National Summit Group, says there is nothing to celebrate at 53 and the amalgamation of Northern and Southern protectorates to create Nigeria was a mistake. Excerpts:
How do you view Nigeria at 53?
I’m yet to see what we are celebrating. If we are celebrating the fact that we have had independence for 53 years and lived together for a 100 years then, 100 is just a figure. When you are celebrating, you have to show what you have achieved. And the question I’m asking is what have we achieved?
Unity? We are not united in this country. Developmentally, what have we achieved? I mean in things like roads and what have you? These are the things that should matter as we are progressing. We shouldn’t now be building roads at 100.
We should be improving on what we have built may be at 30, 40, 50, 60, not starting the development of Nigeria after a 100 years of being together.
So, for me, those are the things I use as yardstick to measure Nigeria. Like other countries are sending satelite into the space, Nigeria sent a satelite and lost it.
So, we should ask ourselves if Nigeria is not too big a country to be governed the way in which we are being governed today? Should we not have states being responsible for themselves? This is why national conference is necessary.
We have been like this for 100 years, aside the fact that we have been together and this is what everybody tells us as if it’s such a big deal to be together.
America is still together and look at what they have achieved, likewise other countries. Other countries like the Soviet Union, Sudan, have broken up.
For Nigeria, I think by age alone, we are matured enough to ask ourselves some questions and answer them in a truthful manner. We are just deceiving ourselves.
People have said the coming together of different parts of the country is a mistake, do you agree?
I totally agree, but we can’t take responsibility for that, I might say, because it’s not Nigerians that created Nigeria.
It’s Lord Luggard who created Nigeria that brought us together and called us one people. But it’s very clear today that that’s not so. The North is the North and the South is the South.
These regions are made up of so many people with different cultures, religions, foods and different ways of looking at things.
And when you bring them together to say they should look at things the same way, you are telling them to look at Nigeria in only one way.
But one day, some of this people will wake up and say, look, things are not working for us this way.
The people it works for will resist other people who don’t want the process to remain like that. So, this is the problem Nigeria is having and anybody that doesn’t see it like that is not telling himself the truth.
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