Understanding the roots of an artificial insurgency

“Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man”.

-Henry Adams

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

-Mahatma Gandhi

It is without doubt that the Nigerian demography is an extremely complex one in every sense and a few people have used this complexity to their advantage and intend to continue doing so at all cost.

Since its amalgamation in 1914 Nigeria has been a simmering cauldron of all sorts of strife and running conflicts. Crime, fraud and corruption crept into the mix unnoticed and unheeded. One after the other they have been added into this brew which was already so potent that their addition largely went unnoticed until they had changed the colour and texture of the brew.

Now, here we are, ensnared by guilt, trapped in a quagmire of corruption and fraud, enmeshed in a never ending circle of tribal and religious violence as we still reel from the chaos and destruction wrought by one Civil war.

 

Here we are guardians of an entity which was another man’s dream, a foreigner’s notion of a nation. Here we are bleeding and striving to sustain an entity that nature herself strives to tear apart. Here we are crying and gnashing our teeth at this chaos that streams and gushes upon us.

Here we are, in search of peace yet unwilling to offer her the sacrifices she solemnly demands, knowing full well that these supplications would involve disorientating ourselves and giving up the very ideals that define our separate entities and name us as individual people.

A compromise seems the best way forward, but at what cost?

Would a compromise issue us peace or simply a cessation of hostilities? Would a war without arms ensue and guarantee the birth of a generation of hate and an empire of intrigue and espionage or would it offer integration, coexistence and tolerance? A cross roads it does seem but at this speed it is impossible to veer either left or right. Full steam ahead and inevitable destruction seems most likely. All the same, it is said that Nature herself often plays tricks, and she could suddenly come to a halt in doing so throwing her inhabitants together forcing them to make peace.

 It has been a tumultuous 24 months for Nigeria. Each day that goes by sees mountains of uncertainty looming ever closer.

The trick with using the carrot and the stick goes with making sure that your adversary believes that accepting the carrot is worth the while in contrast to the very real threat posed by the presence of the stick. When you substitute the stick with a cucumber then you would have a problem.

In the path of an inferno every item is an accelerant. Snuffing out a flame would ultimately prevent you from dealing with an inferno that could potential annihilate everything in its path.  

Nigeria’s’ problems though complex are not insurmountable. There are quite a number of solutions that do not involve bloodletting, though with so many variables and equally as many (counterfeit) constants the calculus of this problem becomes ever more complex with time.