Since the beginning of history never has it been easy to work for progressive change in any human society. The reasons for that can be found in the different ways that people react to dehumanizing conditions in their society. Some would quite easily accept such dehumanizing conditions as natural or from destiny. Some in this category find some half-baked but erroneous reasons to side with their oppressors, and even blame their fellow victims as the architects of their own suffering.
In Nazi Germany there were several Jews who sided with Adolf Hitler and his henchmen and by so-doing aided and abetted Nazi extermination of Germany’s Jews. There’s also the category of individuals that explain away the dehumanizing conditions that oppress them and take solace in religion. People in this category gave Karl Marx cause to dub religion the “opium of the masses”. Such individuals abound in what exists as Nigeria. Some of them go as far as closing ranks with their oppressors under the umbrella of all sorts of religious sects to sing ‘hallelujah, God is great’ every time.
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You mustn’t forget the category of those that work for and reap from the dehumanizing condition of things in society. People in this category live their lives without conscience. Some of them scour the World Wide Web casting senseless verbal aspersion of public intellectuals who labor to articulate the evils oppression and the need to tear it down. They do so for crumbs that fall off the oppressors’ table. Some use their education to labor for the oppressors and reap benefits by so doing. The good news is that there’s another category of smart people with so much conscience within them who transcend every excuses to dedicate themselves to the thankless task to redeem their society from oppression for good. I dare stand up and be counted in this last category.
Each one of us who still identifies with what exists as Nigeria has the right and freedom to choose and identify with any of the afore-stated categories of actors in the ensuing quest to reclaim our destiny from the shameless ones who would prefer to support and sustain the status quo in what was called Nigeria. In that quest, there are facts and fallacies. One such fact worth proclaiming with vigor is that what exists as Nigeria is a ruse, a lie told by the British. Those of us who believe it shouldn’t be shy or afraid at all to proclaim it. The other one is that nobody, no group that lives in Nigeria should feel obliged to continue to subscribe to the ruse, the lie called Nigeria. The fallacy equivalents of these two facts are the rationalizations that argue otherwise. Their purveyors are feeble-minded and short-sighted people who live in the present mostly on pleasure principle. Each time when their selfishness and short-sightedness backfire on them somehow, they blame others or Satan.
Experience continues to show that Nigeria has consistently existed for and in the service of actors who have used it to dehumanize most of the groups and individuals who reside inside its territorial confines. Why then would any right-thinking group continue to let itself be dehumanized in the name of ‘national unity’? Truth is often bitter, and many a time in the ears of hypocrites. I have no apologies to render for my proclamation that Nigeria is illegitimate. Anyone who believes and proclaims otherwise is either feeble-minded or is intellectually incapable to come to that conclusion him or herself. Why then should groups and individuals who feel oppressed and dehumanized in Nigeria continue to tolerate their condition? I cannot apologize to anyone when I proclaim my support for any group that decides to walk out of oppression and dehumanization under the aegis of the ruse, which is Nigeria. There’s nothing sacrosanct about Nigeria. Its imminent implosion is simply logical, and the havens will not come crashing when that comes to pass. It’s all a matter of time.
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E. C. Ejiogu, PhD is a political sociologist
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