Nigeria’s March to the Gallows

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.

Written by Gbóláhàn Adébíyì

Oct 27, 2021

Photography by Paul Kagame / FLICKR.

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 protest s. 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.

A similar North-South divide featured in Sudan well before South Sudan’s secession in 2011. The Sudan to the north (now Republic of Sudan) had Islam and Arabism as its religious and cultural identity, but the Sudan to the south (now Republic of South Sudan) had a mixture of mostly animists, secularist Muslims and Christians to a lesser extent. This mirrors Nigeria’s Muslim hegemony in the North and Christian hegemony in the South. Oil politics in Sudan also presents a striking semblance to Nigeria’s reality. Oilfields are situated in the South; Sudan seized control of them through balkanization. Also, in a quest for religious dominance, northern Sudan was determined to impose Sharia on southern Sudan—the final tipping point of the second civil war.

The secession of South Sudan mirrors Nigeria’s current realities and may even serve as a deterrent for Nigerian state actors who equate the growing call for ‘restructuring’ (returning Nigeria to a federalist system) with treason. It can probably inspire in such state actors the urgent will to start building democratic systems to forestall the resurgence of a nationwide movement for secession. Besides, learning from the experience of South Sudan may also motivate rigorous evaluation and preparation for issues that arise from secession. Barely two years after seceding successfully from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan itself descended into civil war—rendering its previous 40-year struggle for self-determination somewhat purposeless. In view of that, strategic organization of restructuring or ‘struggle’ campaigns may play a purposeful role in rescuing Nigeria from the edge of the precipice.

SUDAN: THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE

British colonization of Sudan attempted to weave different Sudanic identities into one structure but, across Sudan, colonial governance was not uniform. The North was held in trusteeship in recognition of its Arab-Islam hegemony (because British colonialists believed introducing Christianity would spark a far and wide Jihād). The South, however, was administered indirectly, with Christianity and the English language institutionalized.

As of 1956, northern Sudan accounted for 70 per cent of the Sudanese population, the majority of whom were Muslim. From as early as the ninth century the region had seen a large influx of Muslim Arabs, who arrived from the Arabian Peninsula via Egypt and the Red Sea. Exploring the supposition that northern Sudan was unique from southern Sudan, Amir Idris noted that ‘Neither the people of the North nor those of the South constitute a distinct cultural and racial group with a distinct history that can be taken as an object of inquiry.’ This would mean that northern Sudan, though Arab in some sense, asserted Arabism as a convenience for power and economic ‘monopoly’. Southern Sudan, however, had served as a ‘slave reservoir’ to northern Sudan many centuries before Britain arrived. Moreover, traditional religions continued to exist strongly in southern Sudan even as Christianity was introduced under British colonialism.

Subscribe to our free newsletter

You're in — welcome to The Republic

Complete your onboarding

Read

Connect

Apps

More

Read

Connect

Apps

More

Nigeria’s March to the Gallows

SUDAN: THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE

You've Reached Your Limit of Free Reading.

Ad-free reading experience

Unlimited access to exclusive archives

In-Depth Deep-Dive Reporting

You've Reached Your Limit of Free Reading.

Ad-free reading experience

Unlimited access to exclusive archives

In-Depth Deep-Dive Reporting

Comments

SHOP THE REPUBLIC

Related Stories

There Is Too Much Ideology in Nigerian Politics

Does Nigeria Need 36 States?

Kidnapped From the House of God

What Endures in Borno Are the People

The Bombing That Changed Abuja Forever