Fifty years after the end of the Nigerian Civil War, principal actors, historians and other players in the political space have warned against acts capable of destroying the country.
Urging Nigerians to see the war years as a reference point for reconciliation and unity, they advised politicians to chart paths for harmonious living among the people.
They made this known at the ‘Never Again Conference 2020’ organised by Igbo think-tank, Nzuko Umunna, and Ndigbo Lagos, in collaboration with civil society organisations.
In attendance were political historian, Prof. Banji Akintoye; former head of state, Gen Yakubu Gowon; Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka; a former presidential candidate, Prof. Pat Utomi; Fellow of the Institute of Biology of the United Kingdom, Prof. Anya O. Anya; singer and rights activist, Onyeka Onwenu; a former minister of information, Frank Nweke; and Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, among others.
In his keynote address, Prof Banji Akintoye noted that Nigeria consists of many different nations, radically different in culture, political tradition, perception of reality and expectation.
According to him, these differences must be addressed, if the country must have peace.
He lamented that the country is being managed like the exclusive preserve of a particular minority group intent on establishing its interests in the executive, administrative, judicial and security sectors of the country.
“The voices of the majority register protests continually and are continually disrespected and ignored. The state of the law is patently being subsumed to the needs of that agenda, with seriously damaging effects on human life.”
This situation, he said, is inevitably fostering among the people of the Middle Belt and South of the country the feeling that they are being reduced to the status of conquered people.
He warned of the need to terminate the descent into war and speedily move the country into a state of law, mutual respect, and peace.
Akintoye said Nigerians must restructure the country with the objective of giving the people a true and acceptable federal structure under which the sections of the country would deploy their resources to conquer poverty in their domains.
“Ignoring these fundamentals, we have almost continuously let our country wobble and teeter on the brink of violent implosion and we have continually inflicted serious pain upon ourselves. We fought and ended the civil war, but we have never really moved measurably away from the brinks of civil war,” he said.
In his remarks, Gen Yakubu Gowon, in a video message, declared that commitment to Nigeria must be total and patriotic and that leaders must ensure the wellbeing of the country in politics, economy and security.
He urged citizens to reconcile their differences to avert another war.
In a presentation at the event, Prof Wole Soyinka warned that the nation cannot afford to lose another 2.5 million people to war as it did 50 years ago to the Nigerian Civil War, saying that the loss of about 2.5million people in a war should provoke sober reflection.
He also advocated the entrenchment of democratic principles to forestall war.
“No nation has ever survived two civil wars. The sovereignty of the country is non-negotiable and the wisdom of not holding a banknote over a flame is not a justification to tempt fate. We need to ask, are we being heard?”
According to him, “Any time that leadership, on whichever side, is about to repeat yet again the ultimate folly of sacrificing two and a half million lives on the altar of absolutes, any absolute, we should borrow that credo, paint them on prayer scrolls, flood the skies in their millions with kites and balloons on which those words are inscribed: ‘African Lives Matter!”
He added that “For example, ask ourselves questions such as: What price ‘territorial integrity’ where any slab of real estate, plus the humanity that work it, can be signed away as a deal between two leaders – as did happen between Nigeria and the Cameroon. You seek an answer to the claims of territorial integrity? Ask the fluctuating refugees on Bakassi Islands just what is the meaning, for them, of ‘territorial integrity’?
“Again, I feel obliged to emphasize that this has nothing to do with whether or not one side was in the wrong or right, nothing to do with accusations of a lack of vision, of pandering to, or resisting the wiles and calculations of erstwhile colonial rulers, or indeed, taking sides in a Cold War that turned Africans into surrogate players and the continent into prostrate testing ground for new weaponry.