A Wise Hedgehog Never Keeps A Single Hole Outlet

Source: Anthony C. Konwea, PhD, P.E.

Come the 2027 presidential elections, what would be the fate of Nigeria and a vast majority of Nigerians? Condemned to another four or eight years of grinding poverty and back-breaking deprivations?

It is a near given that there are three broad categories of serious political tendencies forming a triangle of power constellations. At one vertex of the power triangle are the ruling or rather misruling All Progressives Congress (APC) who many agree are running or rather ruining the country under full state capture and political lockdown. All the institutions of the state are currently under the thumb of President Bola Tinubu.

At another vertex of the power triangle are the aggrieved, from power ousted, Northern elites. Many of them are from the ethnic Fulani stock who once served as the praetorian guard of the immediate predecessor APC government which also ran Nigeria under a condition of full state capture and political lockdown led by the immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari.

Like President Buhari before him, President Tinubu is guilty of never -before - witnessed administrative nepotism, in the former’s case unduly favoring his ethnic Fulani sub-nationality, and in the latter’s case his ethnic Yoruba sub-nationality. Many would rather describe Tinubu as illegal President, but his manner of ascent to power including the electoral authority’s and the Judiciary’s contortions can safely be regarded as water long since gone under the bridge, or rather flushed down the drain and therefore fully irrecoverable.

Bola Tinubu and his core supporters, mainly of the ethnic Yoruba sub-nationality, and known derisively as the “Ronus,” would clearly want to see a renewed state capture by their master come 2027.

Buhari deployed state capture to develop the infrastructure in his northern region and even his ancestral country, the neighboring La Republique du Niger, at the expense of the rest of Nigeria. He also attempted to implant non-Nigerian Fulani imported from across the Sahel in all the thirty-six states of Nigeria through forcible seizure, nationalization, and conversion of other ethnicities ancestral lands, in a deliberate, futile expansionist move.

Tinubu is deploying his state capture to channel major infrastructure development to his South-West region as well as strip the Fulani of their carefully cultivated and brazenly aggregated political power infrastructure in Nigeria. Naturally, the Fulani elites who played a decisive role in drumming up the support base that gave Tinubu a launch-pad to clinch power, feel betrayed and are determined and fully resolved to retake the power they helped Tinubu to grab and run away with.

As one insightful female social media political content creator, Ifeoma Edum aptly put it, the Fulani power elite became “victims of their own strategy” to deprive presidential candidate, Peter Obi, an ethnic Igbo, of his presumed electoral victory, because in their own words, ‘over their dead bodies would an Igbo ever emerge President in Nigeria.’

The third and final vertex of the power triangle slugging it out are the formidable and rather youthful Obidient Movement who constitute the power base of the aforementioned Peter Obi, who many believe actual won the last presidential elections only to find his prize seized from his grasp by a conspiratorial alliance between the other two power triangle vertices, hitherto allied and working as one.

The Obidient Movement a.k.a. Obidients, cuts across all the ethnicities and tribes of Nigeria. Although their tribes and tongues differ, they are united in their fierce determination to see the emergence of a new Nigeria, governed by the rule of law and equitable to all, regardless of biographical background.

I n I's preferred option naturally is this new Nigeria, ferociously sought after by the Obidients, which is respectful of the rule of law, mindful of the rule of merit, acknowledges the rule of competence, is subservient and obedient to the rule of good character, and remains blind to ethnicity and religion.

Although the other two power triangle vertices led respectively by the Yoruba Ronus and the Fulani expansionists are currently bitterly opposed to each other, they are nevertheless united in their determination to never see the so-called new Nigeria emerge under their watch.

A new Nigeria would give neither the Yoruba Ronus power vertex nor the Fulani expansionists power vertex the opportunity to implement their respective state abuses which led to the free fall of the Nigerian economy from the #1 spot in Africa when Buhari took over power to #4 spot when he handed over power to Tinubu. Nigeria’s economy’s ranking has depreciated further under Tinubu to the #5 spot in Africa under less than two years of his tenure.

At this point in time, it is difficult to say for sure which of the three overarching and competing power triangle vertices, namely the Yoruba Ronus, or the Fulani expansionists, or the Obidient Movement would emerge victorious at the forthcoming watershed 2027 presidential elections. This brings us to the main thrust of this piece.

A wise hedgehog never maintains a single hole outlet because it will certainly run out of options if ferocious predators permanently besiege that outlet. So also, those who desire good governance in the Nigerian geographical space, or their sympathizers, are well advised to maintain secondary fallback hole outlets to escape from the suffocating misrule and poverty inducing state abuses that will surely follow should any one of the Yoruba Ronus or the Fulani expansionists emerge victorious, in 2027.

Those second hole outlets or emergency fallback options are for all ethnic nationalities to deliberately nurture and cultivate. This they would do by erecting zonal separatist movements in all the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, primed and ready to go their separate ways should the unthinkable and unimaginable happen in Nigeria with renewed state capture by the Yoruba Ronus or state recapture by the Fulani expansionists.

You can take it for a given that electoral victory by either dreaded power vertex. namely the Yoruba Ronus or the Fulani expansionists would lead to scorched earth approach to abuse of state powers, by either power triangle vertex.

The various distinct ethnic sub-nationalities or tribal groupings in Nigeria should reserve to themselves the democratic rights of freely associating with other ethnicities or tribal groupings they feel most comfortable with in establishing their zonal separatist movements.

It is either Nigerians get it right in a new Nigeria, fair to all and injurious to none, as championed by the Obidients, or we should all go our separate ways, re-aggregating and reconstituting ourselves as independent nations, only with those ethnicities we feel most comfortable with.

There should be no middle ground, living in a self-deceiving, inchoate state, neither one nor discrete, neither united nor disunited, but jointly under continual abuse by tiny but powerful ruling cliques alternating power between themselves and maltreating the rest. This is what has been happening in Nigeria, to the disadvantage of the vast majority, and the benefit of a tiny abusive minority since Independence nearly 65 years ago.

It is either we all get it right together, or we all get it to our full heart’s desire and satisfaction, separately. No one, and I n I repeat no one has the right to lord it over others in perpetuity, imposing their will and customs, no matter how backward, retrogressive, anachronistic, and archaic, on the rest of us, whether on account of artificially inflated population, or force of arms, or force of state-sponsored terrorism, or force of imported ethnic militia, or force of sponsored religious terrorism, or force of control of the Federal Government.

It is either Nigerians get serious as outlined above in a new Nigeria, or things should be allowed or induced to fall apart gracefully, without violence.

To this end, as an ethnic Igbo, like I n I did caution my fellow Ndigbo before in earlier public writings, their agitation for a so-called Republic of Biafra or a United States of Biafra, is dead and buried, except if it is championed by non-Igbos.

The Igbo should champion a Republic of AnIgbo instead as their second hole outlet should Nigeria prove unreformable and unsupportable. Based on I n I’s appreciation of the facts on the ground, anything else besides Republic of AnIgbo is doomed to meet with failure and is a gross disservice to other emergent separatist movements in other zones.

I n I recognize that not all ethnic Igbo would love to belong to one monolithic Igbo sovereign entity. But that is okay. Let everyone, Ndigbo inclusive, decide for themselves with whom they feel most comfortable, and want to associate with, should the need which we pray should never materialize, become inevitable.

While the rest of the world surges ahead, we cannot remain content to seeing our individual and collective destinies being tossed or passed around like a round object between the worst of us. We cannot be passed around from one Buhari to one Tinubu, back to another Buhari onto another Tinubu, ad nauseum, getting poorer and more tightly bound in chains by mass poverty with each iteration or pass.

We must break out of this endless cycle of deceit, deprivation, denudation, and degradation by either going for the best among us as the leader of all of us regardless of their biographical background, or alternatively, collectively and synchronously heading for the exit from Nigeria, come 2027.

On this basis we call on all Nigerians to start plotting their preferred exit contingency from Nigeria should the need materialize. Segments of the Yoruba are currently plotting their exit from Nigeria. Segments of the Igbo are also plotting their exit albeit currently headed in the wrong direction as noted earlier.

Let the South-South geopolitical zone start plotting their exit as well. Let the Middle-Belt (North Central) ‘geopole’ zone begin plotting their potential exit too. The two ‘far north’ geopole zones, namely the North -West and North-East should start their own exit plottings too, if they do not want to become the carcass remains of Nigeria, left behind by the rest.

Paradoxically, complementary geopolitical zone exit plans ready and primed for synchronous launchings far from making state capture either by the Yoruba Ronus or the Fulani expansionists more likely, make the realization of the long sought after new Nigeria more likely, for the ultimate benefit of all Nigerians. This is because nothing else frightens parasitical elements more than being left all on their own by their erstwhile host bodies.

So let everyone start plotting, so that when push comes to shove, there will be a synchronized break-out from the yoke and carcass of Nigerian backwardness that would surely henceforth belong to History.

I n I hope I am wrong in my postulations, but I fear I n I would be proven right in my conclusion about a dreadful future if we do not start now to dig our second hole outlets to reinforce and complement our preferred wish for a new Nigeria.

We are 👁 👁.
Anthony Chuka Konwea, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, MNSE, FNIStructE, MNICE.

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