By Emeka Obasi

Compatriots, please let us wake up from this dream. Enough of expectations, there is no way Nigeria can do better than we are seeing now. As they say in computer lingo, garbage in, garbage out.

As we enter 2019, I want to make it clear to the world that this fraud called Nigeria cannot work. Those who do not want to face reality are part of why we are where we are today.

I am tired of praying for Nigeria to work. God destroyed Sodom for the evil that engulfed the place. Worse things are happening in this country today and some of those who keep the people in perpetual bondage are given prime positions in places of worship.

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The different nationalities that make up Nigeria were not alien to themselves. They did a lot together before the arrival of the Europeans. There is so much between the Bini and Lagos, Yoruba that you find the white apparel common among the royals.

Eko is indeed, a Bini word and even Oba Akiolu does not hide his identity as descendant from Edo. The story of Ife and the burial place of past Bini kings  known even if it is debatable.

Some Igbo words are also close to what one finds in Yoruba and Bini languages. Take Ewu for instance, the Igbo word for goat. In Yoruba, it is ewure. Abeokuta in Yoruba means place of rocks. That would be ebeokute in Igbo.

When the Igbo talk of enwe, it is all about monkey which is eme in Bini. Till date, before the Obi of Isele Uku is crowned, he travels to the Oba’s palace in Benin and spends time there as part of an age long ceremony.

Someone told me that just like the Japanese use the word Nippon [Land of the Rising Sun] for their country and Germans refer to their country as Deutschland, the word Yoruba is alien to the South-West. They fancy Oduduwa.

Yoruba, I understand, is a corruption of the word ‘Yaribawa,’ which was used by Trans Saharan traders from the savannah to describe their partners from western side of the of the tropics.

Why we have a big problem today and have not found a way out is because Europeans came to Africa and obtained territories by trick [OBT]. Our ancestors were forced to sign documents which they did not understand.

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How did you expect King Jaja to cede territory to people he neither invited nor understood. And for standing up for his right, the imperialists made the Amaigbo slave turned merchant look like a man without balls.

As the Europeans descended on mother Africa, they raped the people of all vestiges of decency. We had our palm wine and gin. The white man brought rum that made us rumble with guns.

Instead of facing the real enemy, the intruder, liquor from Europe made our strong men long for the blood of their kinsmen. They were high and knew not what they did. Slavery boomed and made millionaires out of moles.

The Igbo had little regard for the colonial masters who came from England. Our forebears called them ‘Ndi Ngulodu.’ The belief was that the white man was cursed to live beyond the seas.

And because the Cochranes, Winterbottoms and  Meirs wore shoes, our people thought they were leprous. That was how the Igbo word for a victim of leprosy [onye oria ocha] was shortened to give the white man a name [onye ocha].

The Europeans who devoured Africa were mostly rejects from their respective countries. Lord Frederick Lugard was a failure in India and Afghanistan. In Nigeria, he became a hero and joined us together in what has remained a monumental disaster.

His wife, Flora Shaw, had enjoyed the good things of life from Cecil Rhodes after whom Rhodesia was named. And she found a name for this land. It became Nigeria, an amalgam of over 250 nationalities.

Africa’s fate was decided in Berlin. It was a conference on Africa but Africans were not represented. Those who benefitted immensely were England and France, countries that emerged out of conquest.

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England is indeed Land of the Angles, who plundered and conquered the Southern part of Britain in the 5th century. They continued their march to Africa without let.

France was called Gaul in the past before the Franks conquered the country. It was from the Gauls that the word Germanus [neighbours] came. England and France were friendly foes and they fought for Nigerian territory in the famous race to Nikki.

Lugard won the battle for England.

He had no regards for the African and he needed to prove to Buckingham Palace that the crash programme, Sandhurst officer, who lay in a sick bay while British troops sacked Kandahar was not a failure after all.

Lugard looked at the North, found little that could boost the economy but much that fitted into his imperial drive. The South on the other hand offered much in terms of fertility.

The South got enough education, the North remained largely illiterate. Lugard tried direct and indirect rule. That was on paper. What he planted was divide and rule.

The Governor General sowed the seed of discord when his policy made sure the North got power while the South got education. And when the British were leaving, they handed over power to the North.

That is our problem today. The North, having tasted power will not likely relinquish it. The educated South does not understand why power should be in the hands of someone who is not as schooled.

Unfortunately, some Nigerians out of greed and envy have continued to apply this divide and rule tactics. They use politics to pauperize and terrorize the country. After 58 years of independence, nothing works for the masses.

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President Muhammadu Buhari cannot do better than he has done.  We are expecting so much from him. He is a product of the British and owes allegiance to them. You now know why he frequents hospitals in the United Kingdom.

From Biafra War to Boko Haram, what else do we need to know that Nigeria is not one.