Growing calls to restructure Nigeria may appear to be more reasonable than calls for secession. However, prolonging the implementation of national restructuring will continue to justify civil disobedience and demands for secession.
Since declaring its independence in 1960, Nigeria’s development trajectory has been retrogressive. Core democratic values such as rule of law, justice, liberty, and equality among people have been whittled down because of the country’s Machiavellian leadership process, its mafia bureaucracy, and its splintered civil society, all of which are hastening the country’s journey to failed state status.
Nigeria’s North-South divide remains a torturous reminder of its colonial past. Beyond the divide, recurring allegations against Nigeria are that the country is a potentials-suffocating machine, as evident in its widespread lack of access to electricity, poor educational system, corruption, kidnappings and killings; its media gagging and assault on the youth, as seen recently during the 2020 #EndSARS protests. These issues continue to drive social unrest and resentment both internally and across the diaspora. Nonetheless, Nigeria marches on, presumably to the gallows, a march that could either end in reconciliation with its nationhood, or in arriving at the feet of the beheader—disintegration.
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