A civil right organisation, The Maroonsquare, has emphasized the need for Nigeria to embrace an alternative system of leadership that will effectively bring meaningful impact to the citizenry. The group said that the democratic system the country is practicing now has not yielded any positive result.

The group made the assertion during a two-day conference held recently in Lagos tagged; “The Maroonsquare Discourse 2021” with theme: “Identity Politics and the National Question in Nigeria,” supported by Roxa Luxemburg Foundation.

Issues of national interest that include insecurity, agitations by minority group and other things, were brought to fore, as the speakers presented facts with solutions.

Speaking with the Executive Director, Maroonsquare, Chiemeke Onyeisi, he said, “We are living in a country where there seems to be a dominant idea that there is only one side of a story to our problems. But from our own perspective as a positive force, we believe that there are alternative narratives to the problems of Nigeria.

“Maroonsquare actually focuses on alternative narrative to national development and that is what informs this discourse. Yes, you could say we are coming from the leftist background but most of advocacies carried out by rights group always disappear in a short while, and that’s why this particular discourse becomes pertinent. Our questions has been that the man on top should be the one to provide solutions to the problems which he may have created as a leader rather than looking the other way,” says Onyeisi.

He said that looking at some peoples’ opinion, the current national discourse has been, ‘divide! divide!!’ “But, if I may ask, will the division solve the problem of this country? Will it build enough infrastructures that the country needs to function as a nation? `These are many questions begging for answer.

“In my own opinion, the solution should be viewed through the former Ghanaian leader Kwameh Nkrumah’s model, to solve our problems. On the issue of security, if we should have a pan African army command, I believe it would solve some of the security challenges we have in the country,” Onyeisi said.

Also speaking, Dr. Wahaab Azeez Ademola, the Provost, Federal College of Education (Technical) Akoka, Lagos who was a special guest at the event said, “As Nigerians, we should seek for deep knowledge about how our society is being run and governed and ask questions about how the country’s resources are being used by the leaders, be it at the local government or federal level.

We also need to study how our society is constituted and the power plays by the people governing us, whether they are elected or imposed themselves upon the people. To me, this is the fundamental basics of having a political education like this. It can only get better if we are politically educated,” remarked Ademola.

Meanwhile, the two-day event held via both physical and online zoom platforms featured seasoned right activists as speakers who dwelt on topical issues as it affects the country Nigeria. These include Adewale Adeoye, Executive Director, Journalists for Democratic Rights (JODER), whose lecture hinged on the “The National Question and the Agitation for Self Determination in Nigeria.” The other was Dr. Adelaja Odukoya of the Dept of Political Science, University of Lagos who spoke on “Nigeria: restructured federation and minority rights.

According to Adeoye, the agitation for self determination in Nigeria is age-long and the campaign has seen renewed vigour, as it appears to be the most dominant storyline in Nigeria today.

He said while the country is ravaged by poverty, misery and deaths, the loudest cry in Nigeria is self determination which has raised serious questions about the future of the country.

“Amidst the clamour for ethnic self determination is the resurgence of terrorism, armed attacks, violence, kidnapping, rape and forceful seizure of land by armed gangs, all happening in the face an poverty, hopelessness, corruption in a country managed perpetually by inept, weak and irresponsive political leadership,” stated Adeoye.

He argued that those who promote ethnic self determination are wrongly perceived as “parochial, uncivilized, ethnic jingoists, ethnic chauvinists, crude, reactionary” forgetting that socialism is not in any way contradictory to ethnic self determination which is one of the most basic law of human existence.

Adeoye stated, “The shortest cause for the country’s leadership and the people is to address the burning fire instead of attempting to douse it through brute force. Arm-twisting tactics, bullying and the use of state violence will only consume the country and set her on a path of ruin. The starting point is to restructure the country.”

On the other hand, Dr. Adelaja Odukoya of the Dept of Political Science, University of Lagos who spoke on “Nigeria: restructured federation and minority rights,” stated that restructuring and resource control agitation is interconnected. He noted that only a socialist federal republic of Nigerian can ensure justice, equity and democratic citizenship,

“While there is a connection between the restructuring and resource control agitations, especially given that resource control is often linked and conflate with fiscal federalism, an aspect of the agitations for restructuring, the latter is broader and rooted in a different power dynamics, particularly in terms of the dominant social forces promoting them and their places in the national power equation.

“First, the social actors championing these two tendencies are not the same. Second, while restructuring is a battle cry of the temporarily ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘shortchanged’ majority political elites in the Nigerian primitive accumulative federal arrangement, resource control was by minority elites who capitalized on the painful and suffocating exploitation and oppression of resource-owing minorities of a region to demand for participation (sharing) in the federal accumulative enterprise in the country.

“This clarification however, is the key for a proper analysis and understanding of the ongoing restructuring problematic and its implications for the minorities,” he stated.

Adelaja also added, “Given the complicit of the state in the minority problem and the use of the state as a means of production and mechanism for primitive capitalist accumulation by the political elites of the major ethnic groups, a condition favoured and allowed by the prevailing decadent capitalist system, restructuring is an agenda to perpetuate the domination and exploitation of the minority within the Nigerian federation.

“Without any equivocation, only a socialist federal republic of Nigerian can ensure justice, equity, equal and democratic citizenship, productive accumulation, welfare, employment and development for the minorities in particular and all Nigerians in general,” he concludes.