*LOVE AND MUTUAL COEXISTENCE IN NIGERA*
It would not amount to an exaggeration for anyone living in Nigeria to conclude that the greatest threat to the unity and national integration hence peaceful coexistence of Nigerians is phobia and distrust among the citizens especially on the basis of tribe and ethnicity. This phenomenon is itself not the problem but a mere symptom of a more fundamental problem which has to do with the feelings of social injustice, real or perceived, arising from inculcated half baked account of Nigeria’s political history which have generated seemingly indelible tribal stereotypes in the minds of the citizens against one another on an ethnoreligious basis. With the one time removal of the teaching of History from our curriculum by the government, the spread of the mixture of truth and lies or outright falsehood has been having a field day to the detriment of objective reasoning which is most central to the maintenance of love, unity and promotion of national integration.
Unfortunately, all our successive governments have merely mouthed unity in the mood of sermons without having ever lifted a finger to genuinely address, in concrete terms, any of the fundamental causes of its absence among us.
Naturally the human spirit doesn’t harbour hate and bitterness in an atmosphere of palpable justice, equity and fairness. It follows therefore that where mutual hate and distrust exist, then the aforementioned factors of genuine peace have given way.
Based on this, it is obvious that there are outstanding agelong unaddressed injustices. The mere passage of time may heal biological injuries but contrary to popular opinion, psychological injuries caused by social injustice of any kind could only worsen with the passage of time until the day when restitutions are made through truth and reconciliation talks. On this task, our political leaders have obviously failed us. But more freightening is the fact that we the followership seem to have failed ourselves too as we are equally guilty of the culture of mouthing love and unity without making any real call for a just, fair and equitable structure and system which elicit love and the desire for coexistence in spontaneous manners in the minds of humans.
I therefore call on our NGOs, public analysts, opinion moulders and others in such category to focus more on the need for Nigerians to renegotiate their terms of coexistence as we did through the 1958 London Constiutional Conference towards independence before the military unfortunately misadventured into politics and subverted those terms we all mutually agreed to as a sovereign people.
By Skinner Moses O. for Nkemdi Mordi Development Initiative (NMDI)
About The Author
