Gov Fayemi, At Arewa Forum, Identifies Bane Of Nigeria’s Development |The Source

By Ayodele Oni

Ekiti state Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi has identified distrust and suspicion among socio ethnic groups in Nigeria as major bane of the country’s development.

Dr Fayemi, in a lecture titled; Unfinished Greatness, Towards More Perfect Union in Nigeria, on the 50th Anniversary of the

Centre for Historical Documentation and Research (Arewa House), Kaduna on Saturday, was of the view that the amalgamation of Nigeria by British imperialists was a right step in a right direction.

Dr Fayemi, noted that “despite the challenges that we have faced as a nation, which we sometimes unfairly exaggerate, it is important for us to constantly bear in mind that nation building is a slow and dynamic process.

“The awareness that nothing in nation-building is finalised should give us hope and challenge us to do better and constantly look for ways and means to build a better country, by experimentation and learning, trial and errors, setting and resetting.

“And this is why the operative framework of any nation is never intended as a divinely inspired scripture. Most of the challenges that we face today could not have been envisaged in 1999. But we must see these challenges as opportunities to test our governance system and its responsive capacity to issues of national co-existence.

“The integrity of our governance and administrative system must be continually measured in terms of its ability to deliver the greater good to the greatest number of our people. If it is not able to do this, we must be willing to press the reset button and ask ourselves why is the system that we all must submit to not working for us all?

“However, for us to constructively confront these issues, we must start by first conquering the demon of mutual suspicion and distrust that has poisoned our politics and subverted our will to achieve the necessary consensus that is so crucial to marching confidently towards our destiny as a great nation.

“If we do this, we would have scaled the major obstacle to forging a great nation out of this colonial creation and show the world that we are finally ready to embrace our true destiny as the hope of all black people everywhere.”

According to him,  important as the power of leadership is, until and unless we recompose the Nigerian State and make it derive her original consent and legitimacy from the people, then we labour in vain.

“Contrary to the pretensions of neo-liberal economists, without a modern state there cannot be an economy or society; therefore, before public governance, there must be a modern state in the real sense. A predatory state cannot give birth to proper public governance and a sense of justice and fairness.

“Those of us in public office may delude ourselves, but the events of the past few weeks have brought the contradictions of the Nigerian state into a sharper focus.

“Whether your immediate concern is police brutality and the need for police reform or you reflect upon the rationale and the challenges of those who insist that until Nigeria becomes a theocracy, there shall be blood and tears unlimited; whether you look towards the Niger Delta where, despite the amnesty and the industry of graft and greed that it has re-produced, there is a continuous and bloody demand for justice and equity.

“You may also want to examine the endless pretexts for ethnic strife and blood-letting between the indigenous people and the “settlers” in the Middle Belt; whether you scrutinise the regular apocalyptic predictions of highly placed Nigerians about the fate of the country, or you contemplate what would happen if measures are not taken to arrest the drift, you cannot but come to the conclusion that Nigeria needs to be re-imagined and re-created.”

“Over the years, I have heard even presumably informed analysts referred to our country as the mistake of 1914. But was the amalgamation really a mistake?

“Therefore, it is possible to argue that the toxic legacy of their ‘divide and rule’ strategy may be the reason that we have remained divided even 60 years after their rule has ended. However, to describe this amalgamation itself as a mistake would be wrong, both historically and conceptually.

“The hands that drew the map may not have been ours, but the map was possible only because we are here in the first place.”

Fayemi is the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, NGF.