ENGAGEMENT With Chidi Amuta
Our numerous current worries have driven our national conversation into a dark corner. The future of the nation has suddenly become the subject of debate and argument. A slightly confused and splintered national elite is running all over the place with sometimes conflicting notions of how not to keep our nation together. Nearly everyone you encounter has his own pocket book theory on what should happen to Nigeria now that Mr. Buhari seems to have run the ship aground.
What began as muted disagreement among political factions has filtered into market places, motor parks and beer parlors. Countless templates for the dismemberment of a nation are being bandied around mostly by politicians, mostly those left out of the gravy train of power and others without party affiliation. The terminologies are equally numerous: true federalism, re-structuring, secession, separatism, “to your tents O! Israel” etc. All these propositions are all jostling for pre-eminence in a national discourse largely bereft of light but full of loud noise.