A former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, on Wednesday, raised concern over the state of the country and warned that Nigeria is a genocide theatre waiting to happen.
According to him, to get the country on the right track and correct some past mistakes, Nigeria required resetting in core areas of the economy.
Odinkalu stated these in his paper titled, “Resetting Nigeria”, during the 10th-anniversary annual lecture organized by Just Friends Club of Nigeria in Abuja.
While warning that the current level of ethnic and tribal bigotry in Nigeria is threatening its unity and corporate existence, he said so long as Nigeria continued to dwell on indigeneship rather than citizenship, insecurity may persist across the country.
The constitutional lawyer also identified Nigeria’s failure to evolve national citizenship and forging of nationhood being among the factors fuelling the crisis in the country.
Odinkalu, a former Advisor for the World Bank and the International Council for Human Rights Policy, advised that for the country to move forward, “we must count genuinely in areas of votes, and resources.”
According to him, Nigerian politicians have been criminally allocating votes, and resources to undeserving areas and people.
He said, “Fundamentally flawed political economy is compounded by long-established ethics of deliberate political innumeracy. As a political economy, we specialize in fraudulent counting and accounting, legitimised post-hoc by the instruments and skills of the law.
“The country’s dysfunction with civics and citizenship itself is reflected in a leadership ethos that is incapable of treating citizens with dignity as well as a national preoccupation with discrimination.
“In Nigeria today, the only significant minorities are Nigerians. We are all polarised along a multiplicity of lines: Christians vs Muslims; militants vs Boko Haram; men vs women; ruling party vs opposition; indigenes vs settlers; poor vs rich; Army vs police and Police vs bloody civilians.
“Nigeria’s diversity is a positive resource, not a curse but recognize that Nigeria’s leaders have, for the most part, failed to transcend the narrowness inherent in this diversity
“Nigerian political leaders are looking at socio-political symptoms of Nigeria, rather than the real underlying illness. For Nigeria to grow, it must be reset. Except for some measures taken to reset the country, Nigeria is a genocide theatre waiting to happen.
Odinkalu said that despite the firm prohibition against discrimination in Section 41 of the 1999 constitution, discrimination has become institutionalised.
He said, “Those who think they do service would only seek to serve those that they know not those who need to be served.”
The President of the JFCN and former Editor of Saturday Guardian, Fred Ohwahwa also advocated for urgent resetting of Nigeria.
He said, “Whatever angle you look at it, Nigeria requires resetting. Be it in infrastructural development, the educational sector, health, internal security, the economy, our politics, our value systems, etc.
“We need to reset ourselves at the individual, communal, corporate and government levels. We need a rebirth as a people. Otherwise, we will keep wallowing in the doldrums.”
