By McPhilips Nwachukwu & Lydia Obot
In 1983, when acclaimed writer and Eagle on the Iroko of African literature, Chinua Achebe published his postscript on Nigeria in his little  but powerful book of essay titled; The trouble With Nigeria; the famed writer of the defining novel; Things Fall Apart squarely located the trouble with Nigeria in what he called, leadership failure.

In that land mass essay, Achebe has frontally argued that, “ The trouble with Nigeria is squarely a failure of leadership.” And over the years, that Achebe thesis has appeared to remain valid and becomes a reference remark each time any analysis of the failure of the Nigeria state is made by any persons or groups.

However, there appears every likely hood now that, that Achebe’s famous take on the Nigeria nation is being challenged following the position of another relatively young author, whose  book titled; The Only Coup in Nigeria is to be presented to the public at the Sheraton  Hotel, Ikeja tomorrow.

The book written by Uchenna Odinaka Nnadi, a chartered Accountant and socio-political commentator seeks to establish another line of argument, when he argues in his book that the problem with Nigeria is tied to lies, which according to him, has been perpetrated by successive Nigerian leaders from pre-colonial days to the present time to create what he called, the  imbalanced  power structure.

“Lies”, Nnadi says, “ is the bane of Nigerian problem and amounts to the first and only coup in  Nigeria.”

According to him, “ The British Colonialists usurped and co-sponsored the only coup in Nigeria. All activities of Britain since then has remained a litany of orchestrated efforts to sustain this coup and keep the economic rents there from flowing into the secured vaults of the western world.”

Continuing, he further argues that , “ European traders were the harbingers of this coup, which started with the Arab invasion of North Africa and was replicated through out West Africa by the Fulanis.”

The  Fulani coup, he says, “ was highly successful in the Sokoto area covering Chad and Hausa States of Northern Nigeria, except  Borno.”

Continuing he added that , “After the Berlin Conference, Britain was ready to claim her prize. Wisely, she built upon the Sokoto Caliphate system temporarily, deposing the Fulanis and extended the Fulani coup all over Nigeria.”

Through these invasions of colonies and propagation of  lies by the invading leadership forces, a culture of structural power imbalance, Nnadi further argues was entrenched in the nation’s socio- political fabrics.

This colonial lies that serve as the bane of Nigerian nation, the book further argues would be seen from the conduct  of the   1959 Federal election and in the falsification of the 1952 census figures which were designed by the British colonial order to favour the desert North against the  South.”

The lies instituted by the colonial invader to  use one ethnic formation to dominate the other ones in the view of Nnadi’s new book has succeeded in remaining the defining character of the Nigerian state; and unfortunately amounts to the structure of power imbalance, which  all subsequent coups either by the civilians or the military have carried out to correct.

The public presentation of The Only Coup in Nigeria will have in attendance  Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, Ambassador Segun Olusola, Governors and Royal Fathers.