Nigeria Is A Failed State

By Nwabunwanne Elughaiwe Solomon (Abia State)

Edited and published by Joseph Afokwalam

Nigeria as a country is a failed state and cannot carry on anymore. The contraption possesses every feature and characteristic of a failed one. For so long, the corrupt political bourgeoisie, religious leaders, and their Fulani Masters never conceived that days like these will ever surface in history. They had shielded themselves from harsh realities that are commonplace in Nigeria. They never thought that a day would come when they can no longer control the populace by the forces of fear and oppression at the centre and so forth.

A failed state is a political body that has degenerated to a point where a sovereign government's primary conditions and responsibilities no longer function properly. We all can see that Nigeria had slipped down to the lowest level and cannot carry on with its primary responsibilities. The government couldn't hide the bad situation anymore. A state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy. The legitimate President elected by the people is no more. In 2017, the Biafran leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu told the world that President Muhammadu Buhari is dead. The government has not proved him wrong, neither have they presented the President to the people. Instead, they tell one childish lie or the other to the citizens. 

Secondly, the amalgamation agreement, the document that brought the parts of Nigeria together, is no longer valid for continuity. And now, Nigeria has become the biggest joke of the century and can never recover from this mess. Who will want to make friends with a failure of sixty years, filled with hate and corruption? A failed state is a state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control.

The Fulani oligarchy, ruling this country for so long, has balkanized her that she can never survive. Even according to online Bitcoin news of April 20, 2021, Godwin Obaseki, Edo State Governor, openly alleged that the "Federal Government (had) printed an additional $120-$150 million (50-60 billion naira) to top-up for us to share." While speaking at the Edo transition committee stakeholder's engagement, Godwin Obaseki, the state governor, said that Nigeria is in huge financial trouble. The federal government printed the money to enable her to meet up with federal allocation for March. You can imagine that Nigeria couldn't pay monthly allocation to states anymore, that she had to go on printing currency. Where is the money from oil proceeds? Sucked dried through corruption?

A failed state is a state that is unable to exercise authority over its territory and peoples and unable to protect its national borders. Every quarter and region are standing up for their right. There's no more submissiveness to the central power, apart from the Fulani stooges in those regions, as there is no president of the country but the presidency, which is absurd. And so, she couldn't fully meet up with the critical needs of the citizens in all ramifications. These shortcomings created huge gaps that I catalogue into three faces: security gap, capacity gap, and legitimacy gap.

As of present, Nigeria is nowhere. NY Times reported the kidnapping of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria on February 26. Armed men abducted 317 girls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe, in Zamfara state. One police officer was killed during the attack. It was the second mass abduction in as many weeks and part of an alarming trend going back to 2014, when the violent extremist organization (VEO) Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok, in Borno state.

The Jangebe abduction is particularly troubling, as the school was supposedly under the protection of the Nigerian military. They planned the operation: kidnappers initially attacked the troops as diversions, allowing the kidnapping to occur. Additionally, it's no longer just Boko Haram carrying out the abductions but organized criminal gangs (locally known as bandits). Let's not forget that, on December 3, 2016, Vanguard Newspapers stated clearly that the Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna state paid bandits from another country to come to Kaduna state. 

And today, it has spread beyond northern Nigeria to the Western and the Eastern part of the country.  As this piece was being put together, a great war is happening in Imo State, Biafraland. Fulani combined forces of terrorist soldiers in Nigeria military, DSS (Department of State Security), and police backing Fulani herders to take over Biafraland. And these herdsmen have been raping, kidnapping and killing our parents, sisters and brothers on the farms. Yet nobody deems it fit to speak against the destructive activities of the herdsmen, which is rated second in the world terrorist index. 

Despite our oil production, we are rated very poorly, and the government continues borrowing money that they can never be re-paid. Nigeria is a failed state because they depend strictly on foreign aids like Syria, Somalia, Myanmar, Chad, Iraq, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Lebanon, Afghanistan and other failed states, which is a big shame. 

The strong indicators of a failed state are: the Nigeria central government is so weak and ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory; non-provision of public services; widespread corruption and criminality, which led to sharp economic decline, refugees and involuntary movement of population. What again will I say? Nigeria can never rise again. The best advice, let every region go their separate way for better productivity. One Nigeria slogan is a complete devil alternative that gives no good at all to anybody.