Nigeria Is Sitting On A Keg Of Gun Powder -NBA President

President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Joseph Daudu, has declared that the unity of Nigeria is in jeopardy and except urgent steps is taken; the country would soon break up.

Daudu made this declaration Friday in Benin, the Edo State capital at the ongoing 7th All Nigeria Editors Conference, thus confirming the stand of some Nigerians including Prof. Wole Soyinka, who has continued to drum that the country is disintegrating.

President Goodluck Jonathan has maintained that the country's unity will continue to stand against all odds, but Mr. Joseph Daudu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, in his paper titled: "Danger Signals to Nigeria's Democracy," described the country as facing several crises that it has become evident that soon, the country may face disintegration.

Describing the crises currently facing the country as very grave, the NBA President said some of them includes the almost endless killings in Plateau State, the crisis which followed the 2011 presidential election in which many Nigerians including corps members serving in some parts of the country were murdered, the endless militancy in the Niger Delta, and the activities of the Islamic fundamentalists, popularly nicknamed Boko Haram.

Others, according to him,are corruption, which has become a part of daily existence in the country, economic crimes and the poor state of roads in Nigeria.

He said the post-presidential election problem really showed the weakness of the government to respond to disturbances just as it also resulted in doubts about the unity of the country and its political maturity.

To emphasise his point, Daudu said: "it is agreed by all and sundry that if the root causes of these events and calamities are not resolved, then Nigeria may not remain a corporate entity for long," adding as part of his solutions: "If you have elected to live among any ethnic group in Nigeria for an agreed number of years and demonstrated a desire to live there, then such a person should be qualified to append as his local government and state such place of his domicile."

While maintaining that there should be stiffer punishment for perpetrators of acts considered criminal in the country and that there is need for the government to stand up against the few who wants to make the country ungovernable, Mr. Daudu said failure of justice has grave economic and political repercussions for any society.

"Firstly, investors - local and foreign - will not put their funds in any tinderbox economy that is prone to conflagration at any point in time. That there are such incidents is not the issue, it is their frequency and regularity. Taken together, they portend great danger to the ship of state. It shows that the structure or machinery of government is weak and unable to guarantee the constitutional minimum of peace, order and good government."