By Kayode Emola

Recently, the talk of restructuring Nigeria has hit the airwaves as though it is the panacea for our development. Proponents of this cause however laudable are failing to understand that Nigeria cannot be restructured. Not simply because of how events have unfolded in Nigeria since 1966 after the first coup but because restructuring is not just feasible.

Firstly, to stop Ojukwu from having his independent Biafra country, the Gowon government hurriedly created 12 states on 27 May 1967. Today, we have over 36 states in Nigeria plus the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). How we break down all these 36 states back into just 6 or 8 regions remains to be seen. The best that will come out of any such proposal for restructuring are the creation of more states, more local governments, more government officials and more misery for the people. All my people will do in such situation is to pray for a messiah that may never come.

Secondly, restructuring is just a hoax to make the people believe that Nigeria can still work. The many problems bedevilling Nigeria cannot be solved by legislation, it has to be discussed in a round table by all the stakeholders involved just like the three regions were negotiated between 1957 to 1959.

Additionally, every solution for Nigeria will come with its own pain and gain but we have to take the bull by the horn and not merely romancing the problem and hoping that it will go away. Nigeria has gone beyond bad and merely hoping that it will work again is just a wishful thinking.

If we understood how the regions were broken down in order to favour state creation, we will understand that restructuring was already dead-on arrival. However, I salute the courage of our fathers especially in Afenifere who are still championing restructure as a solution for Nigeria.

Many of us are no fools, and we cannot be cajoled, what Nigeria need is a true national dialogue before it is too late. Not the meri go round rhetoric approach that leads to nowhere.

The Fulani bandits that are terrorising our towns and villages do not understand the word restructuring. Their motto is jihad and conquest and that is the code they live by on a daily basis. If we continue to shout restructuring from now till eternity, that will not change the status quo of things in Nigeria, it is only prolonging the doomsday for Nigeria.

Nigeria is already doomed to fail, many countries like it in the past ended up breaking apart, some into 2 separate independent nations and some into 7 or 8 other smaller countries like in the case of former Yugoslavia. If anyone still thinks that Nigeria can continue to weather the many storms and challenges it faces, then they better think again.

For Nigeria to be restructured back into regions will mean that the Fulani hegemony is completely broken; this they will never allow and would rather allow Nigeria to be broken than restructured. The earlier our Yoruba elders and leaders understand this, the better our chances of saving our Yoruba ancestral land.

Some have even begun to promote the 2014 Goodluck Jonathan national confab document as a solution to Nigeria’s wonky national arrangement. It is high time they knew that it is also not a saving grace for Nigeria. The country they love to cherish and protect is not there anymore, it is long gone.

Many people feel offended when you tell them that Nigeria should breakup. Well, I don’t blame them, their ancestors were first taken as slaves and dehumanised in foreign lands. Then their parents were also dehumanised in their own lands and forced to speak foreign language as their first language in their own land which was handed over to them. So, it is the only thing they’ve ever known and that is the trauma they are still going through themselves so trying to change that mentality will require a great task.

Let me be crystal clear, Nigeria will break up either by choice or by force because the way it is going is not sustainable, and the people will be forced to react at some point. If we think we’ve heard the last from those that organised the ENDSARs protest, then we should be in for a rude shock. If the Nigeria politicians don’t make room for peaceful dialogue when there is still opportunity, then they may be caught up in the impending doom that may befall the country. I hope and pray that our politicians do the right thing whilst there is still opportunity, to before warned is to before harmed.

By Kayode Emola

This week, on June 12th, Nigeria celebrated democracy day for the second time this year, not without drama. However, drama aside, was it really worth it fighting for democracy?

What would have happened to Nigeria had General Abacha not died? Would the economy be this bad? Would there have been even more martyrs than died already in Abacha’s regime, hell bent on killing anyone who stood in his path? All these questions beg for answer that we may never truly know.

However, what we do know is that democracy, as it’s conducted in Nigeria, is a killer. It sucks the life out of the country, turning leaders into mere puppets as it destroys the economy. This is the harsh reality to which Nigerians are being forcibly awoken. A country where the general populace must accept without complaint price increases whenever the government officials seek more money to steal, but where these same people have to go on strike innumerable times before their salaries can be so much as considered for an increase.

During the democracy day celebrations in 2000, Bola Tinubu, then Governor of Lagos State and now President of Nigeria, told a crowd of supporters that he believes in Yoruba nation, that Yoruba nation is the only solution to the people’s problem. Two decades later, the Nigerian economy has repeatedly demonstrated that unless we get out of Nigeria, the worst is yet to come for the Yoruba people.

The truth is, Nigeria’s problems didn’t start today; so anyone thinking that any solution, other than total dissolution, is deluding themselves. Unless we accept this reality, we may as well continue this charade, as though merely chanting “Democracy” will put food on our tables.

Countries like Yugoslavia walked this destructive path and it didn’t end well for them, with the eventual dissolution of the country in 1992 following a brutal and bloody war. We can continue to pretend that Nigeria is one indivisible entity, but the reality is that Nigeria is not, has never been, and will never be a united country, no matter how hard the beneficiaries of the crooked country try to make us to believe.

It would be of greater benefit to everyone if we work towards a round table discussion on the future of the country, rather than allow the forces of nature to overtake us. Have we ever asked ourselves why the military always took the reins on Nigeria’s affairs? It is because Nigeria can never function as a unified entity, so the only way to hold it together is by military force.

Every single politician is only seeking to benefit themselves, their families and their cronies. This is why none of the political actors ever try to implement sustainable development structures that will make the Nigeria people prosper, because wider sharing of the wealth among the general populace would result in less for the politicians to keep for themselves.

When our leaders do think of building infrastructure, it is only so that they appear to be doing something, with no intent to create benefit for the people. They appeal to the World Bank, IMF and any country willing to grant them loan, so that they can co-opt the money for themselves. This is the reason that Nigeria is in such a pathetic state.

If democracy were the solution to Nigeria’s problem, then 25 years after military rule ceased the country ought to be showing signs that it is on the path toward economic freedom. However, the reality is: the currency is on its knees, the majority of the youths are unemployed and the only solution the government offers to the people is patience.

Patience is a virtue, but it doesn’t put food on the table and it doesn’t pay the bills. Our people require real work and a decent living wage to take them out of poverty, not sympathy. Our people need to know that deceiving ourselves that Nigeria will be great again is futile. It can never be, so unless we dissolve the country, we will merely be vainly championing a democracy that will never solve any of the country’s problems.

Therefore, there is only one option left for us as a people: to be determined in our heart to get something better. We must, as Yoruba, pull ourselves together and ask for our own independent nation. Any other solution proposed will be no more than sticking a plaster over a heavy brain injury – we know it cannot work. Either we continue living in impoverished delusions of democracy; or else pour our energies into advocating for Yoruba independence, so that we can build ourselves a strong future in a nation that is our own.

By Kayode Emola

This week in Nigeria, many of the essential services like electricity, water supply and many others were shut down due to the nationwide strike. This should not be a surprise to any observer of the economic situation in Nigeria. For all intents and purposes, Nigeria is bankrupt, run by criminals who will not give it up so far as the people continue to let them.

When President Tinubu was sworn in on May 29 2023, he was quick to remove fuel subsidy, float the naira on the exchange market but forgot to increase workers wage that has remained flat at ₦30,000 pcm (equi $20 in today’s exchange rate) since 2019.

That singular action of the president should have made the people living in Nigeria guessed accurately the direction of travel of the president and the country. Nigeria, a country of over 220 million people deserves better government and should expect to get nothing less. However, it has a docile population who accepts any rubbish thrown at them by their leaders rather than fight for their rights.

I wonder why it has taken the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) this long to call for an overdue industrial action. They had thought the people in government will give ears to dialogue but alas they have realised now that the men in government don’t care if everybody dies so far as there is still money to loot from the treasury, they are fine.

I hear a lot of people especially in the diaspora saying that the minimum wage of ₦494,000 (equi $330) is too much and that the NLC should be realistic and accept something in the region of ₦150,000 (equil $100). For me this is repugnant and hypocritical as this argument and claim that it will cause inflation does not hold water.

Firstly, the National Assembly members has less than 600 representatives and they have voted for themselves billions of naira that far surpassed the salaries of all Nigerian workers put together. I believe that the allocation going to the National Assembly should be reduced to minimum wage so that we can start the argument afresh.

Truth is every worker in Nigeria from the President to the least person in Nigeria should be put on a salary scale according to their grade level. Once that is done, anyone found corruptly enriching him/herself from the public purse or collecting bribe should be handed not less than 10 years imprisonment or life sentence depending on the severity of the crime. If this can be done, then we can say that Nigeria is being govern fairly and the demands of the unions are unreasonable, if not those advocating for a lesser minimum wage are the true enemies of Nigeria.

In addition, if we look at the Nigeria GDP per capital, it estimates that the average individual should take home nothing less than $2,449.59 (equil ₦3,674,385 per annum). If we divide this figure by 12 months, then we should get somewhere around ₦306,198.75 pcm (equil $205). So, I don’t see the reason why the workers salary should be sacrificed on the alter of inflation when the politician’s salary is protected.

It just shows that the Nigerian government do not care about the welfare of the people of the country and if that is the case, the it is high time we re-visited the sovereignty question. We don’t need to pretend that Nigeria is not working and that the country needs a complete overhaul, we just need to be bold to be able to say it.

We should not just say it, we should match our actions with words and take every necessary step to achieve true freedom for ourselves where the politicians are not just enriching themselves and leaving the masses dry. We should be bold to take concrete actions that will liberate our people rather than sit down to judge the poor Nigerian workers who themselves are merely surviving rather than living.