By Douglas Anele

To repeat, many passages in the Holy Bible and Holy Koran prescribe intolerance against non-believers, although there are numerous texts in both scriptures that promote peace, love and solidarity as well. Therefore, it is incontrovertible that one cannot grasp fully the underlying causes of religious fanaticism in Nigeria without appreciating the role played by the “holy” scriptures in projecting the culture of religious exclusiveness.

By hiding our heads in the sand like the ostrich and pretending that the “revealed scriptures” of Christianity and Islam are beyond ratiocinative scrutiny, we close our minds prematurely to the desirability of inculcating in our youths the capacity for critical thinking and scepticism especially with regard to the pronouncements of antiquated prophets.

As I indicated before, religious intolerance is one of the greatest obstacles preventing the evolution of genuine unity and national consciousness among Nigerians. The typical devout Muslim has stronger emotional attachment to Muslims from distant countries compared to what he or she feels for a compatriot that happens to be a Christian.

Similarly, Christians tend to feel more comfortable with other Christians irrespective of their countries of origin, and regard fellow Nigerians who are Muslims as potential jihadists. Hence, Nigerians are alienated from one another because of religion. Aside from inculcating into children a healthy dose of sceptical attitude towards ethnic chauvinism and religion, the best way to resolve ethnic and religious conflicts is geopolitical reengineering so that different culture-areas in the country can have greater freedom for self-determination within the framework of cooperation in a confederacy.

In otherwords, there is an urgent need to jettison the present unitarist geopolitical architectonic created by the military for a more decentralised arrangement which accommodates the socio-cultural and religious differences of various ethnic nationalities or culture-areas that constitute Nigeria and allows individuals the freedom to choose where to reside and actualise their potentialities under the protection of good laws.

The history of colonial Nigeria reveals that Britain was not keen to develop the various autochthonous culture-areas of Nigeria, because the colonial amalgams she created throughout the world were for maximum exploitation of the human and natural resources domiciled in those places. That explains why, despite the justness of Biafra’s secessionist attempt, the duplicitous British administration of Harold Wilson ensured that the fledgling nation was defeated.

Now, if reason and levelheadedness had prevailed among Nigerian and Biafran leaders even after a year into the civil war, a confederal system could have been established that takes cognisance of the differences and commonalities among diverse culture-areas in Nigeria to create a better commonwealth wherein pernicious ethnic rivalry and religious intolerance was minimal.

A confederal system is slightly different from a federation in that unlike the latter the units that constitute a confederation retain both their separate identities and right of secession. In my opinion, Nigeria should be a confederation for the following reasons. To start with, the current state-based unitarist arrangement is a flawed fabrication of the military government dominated by Northerners, which was obsessed with preserving the system inherited from British administrators of using resources derived from Southern Nigeria to develop the North.

In other words, military dictators from the North adapted the exploitative and lopsided system bequeathed by the colonial master to create states and local governments in favour of Northern Nigeria. For instance, given the numerical superiority of the North over the South (especially the South East) in states and local government areas deliberately instituted by Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, and considering that federal revenue and seats in the House of Re
presentatives are allocated based on the number of states and local government areas, Northern Nigeria has an unfair advantage over Southern Nigeria, despite the thirteen percent derivation afterthought contained in the 1999 Constitution.

Of course, Abuja, the federal capital located in the North, is treated almost as a state and receives special funding from the federal government. In a confederal arrangement the union is far less binding than unitarism, and each confederating unit has a right to secede. Therefore, confederation is more in keeping with the right to self-determination enshrined in the charter of the United Nations, in the 1960 Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries, and in the 1970 Declaration of the Principles of International Law. Confederation permits each confederating unit to develop at its own pace by exploring and utilising the human and natural resources in its domain to empower people and create an atmosphere of healthy competition if well managed.

Again, if Nigeria were a confederation, consciousness of the right of secession would have compelled the leaders at the centre to govern well in order to prevent any part of the union invoking its right to secede. Furthermore, because each constituent part of a confederation has considerable powers of self-determination, fear of domination of a particular ethnic group by another will be minimal, thereby enhancing mutual respect and trust among different components of the union.

A wise and imaginative central leadership can harness the commonalities between different ethnic nationalities to enhance harmonious coexistence even in the midst of diversity. Thus, in a well-organised confederation diversity is a source of strength not of weakness and tension as is the case in Nigeria that, ironically, operates a unitary system of government.

Finally, because in a confederation powers of the central government are greatly attenuated, poor leadership at that level will not affect all the constituent parts adversely. I magine if Nigeria had been a confederation since 1970: the heart-rending corruption and financial rascality at the federal level would have been avoided because profligate administrations could not have had the lion’s share of revenues that accrue to the country.

This implies that a confederal system would empower different cultural zones that make up the country, which pay an agreed percentage of their income to the central government for the maintenance of common services such as national armed forces, foreign affairs, and a federal judiciary. It is beyond dispute that Nigeria is yet to overcome ethnic suspicion and rivalry that precipitated the 1966 pogroms against the Igbo and the bloody civil war of July 7, 1967 to January 15, 1970.

It is also a fact that the deadly cancer of religious intolerance has become malignant since the violent Maitatsine religious disturbances of 1981. Still, my arguments in favour of confederation does not mean that I subscribe to extreme forms of self-determination that easily degenerate into the kind of ethnic cleansing practiced by the Serbs in the 1990s.

Instead, my contention is that the present political structure necessarily exacerbates ethnic tensions and bickering about control of the federal government which controls a disproportionately large percentage of the country’s resources to the detriment of the “federating” units. It also provides fertile soil for the emergence and growth of religious fundamentalist movements like Boko Haram that seek to impose its antiquated theocracy nationwide.  CONCLUDED