Time for Nigerians to decide , Peace or war

Nigeria has never had worse enemies than its own people who refuse to reason beyond geographical, religious or ethnic boundaries. Happenings across the country have never been uglier than now; from the dreaded Boko Haram sect unleashing their terrorism in the Northeast to the marauding bandits in the Northwest kidnapping and killing people in their villages at will, coupled with criminal elements among herdsmen bearing automatic weapons, creating discord with in the Southwest, to secessionists in the East, pushing for their Biafra.

Nigeria is on fire and unfortunately issues like the second EndSARS protest is also coming at this point acting more of a fuel to the on-going crises than a solution.

The truth is we all have no other country than Nigeria, and by virtue of the crises we have on our table at the moment, we already have more than enough to deal with. No one among us can kill another and live in peace; we are at the time to decide either to live in peace or die. We must leverage our commonalities and understand our differences to be able to live in peace.

Martin Luther King has never been more right in our context than today when he said “we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”. This is the time for us to unite and identify our common enemy. Our enemies are not Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa for that matter; we must put aside our primitive thinking and wake up from the long-time slumber that blocked our vision from seeing our true enemies spread across all ethnic extraction and regions. These are predators always ready with their fangs wide open to bite upon any slide opportunities that present itself.

For those people thinking of going into full scale war, I refer them to the Rwandan genocide. It started with empowering some tribes under the pretext of self-defence. The case of South Sudan is no different; they are still fighting and killing themselves even after getting the much desired said freedom.

Current realities in Nigeria question our ability to learn from our history and the mistakes of many countries. The value of human lives is far more than any tribe or religion, talk less of geography. Only the living goes to the mosque or church or even speak Yoruba or Hausa.

There are things in life that are far more than mere coincidence and the formation of Nigeria is one of such. We were brought together by God for a reason, and the best way to move forward and live in harmony is to realise that there are things we cannot change as humans and one of such things is our tribe.

Civil societies and organisations whose membership cut across the boundaries of all tribes and religions must live up to their expectations at this gloomy moment. To live in peace or perish in violence lies in our hands. The government might have failed us in this regard, but we can refuse to fail ourselves as a society. As eloquently said by Professor P.L.O Lumumba: we can still change our dancing steps even if the music refuses to change. I’m afraid; changing our steps in Nigeria is no longer a choice but a necessity.

We must avoid general labelling of particular tribe or region as criminals, scammers or terrorists. We have reached the crossroads to decide for ourselves either peace or violence. I have chosen peace because I have seen what wars can do to people here in Maiduguri, and I still see on daily basis how life in internally displaced persons camps looks like. Not even the whole world can handle an explosion of more than 200 million people.