Former Minsiter of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode on Tuesday, September 15, 2015 took to his Facebook page to give a historical analysis of how the British colonialists planned for the “poor”Northern part of Nigeria to subjugate and kill the “rich” South.
Speaking via a post he titled: “The 9th Earl of Bathrust and the Nigerian State”, Fani-Kayode also made mentions of countries where the British had done similar things including Old India (now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), Old Sudan (now Sudan and South Sudan) and Old Malaya (now Malaysia and Singapore), adding that of all these countries, Nigeria was the only one yet to take the bold step of splitting into separate countries.
He wrote: “The Nigeria that they (British) handed over to us in 1960 was nothing but an unworkable artificial state and a poisoned chalice. It was destined to fail right from the outset.
“Worse still, they handed us that poisoned chalice with a malicious and mischievous intent and without any recourse to our people in terms of any form of a national referendum.
“The British did the same thing in varying degrees when they left virtually each and every one of their other third world colonies. The most obvious cases, however, were Nigeria, Sudan, India and the nation that was formerly known as Malaya.
“Every one of these four countries had monumental problems with sustaining their unity after independence and all of them, with the exception of Nigeria, were compelled to breakup into smaller entities before they could bring out the best in themselves as a people and fully exercise their human potential.
“Consequently, India broke up into three and became India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; the Sudan broke into two and became Southern Sudan and the Sudan and Malaya broke into two and became Malaysia and Singapore. Nigeria has yet to find the courage and fortitude to go that far and whether we will eventually break up or not remains to be seen.
“The result of the amalgamation was predictable. It was either the ‘poor husband’ (the North) would fully subjugate and eventually kill the ‘rich wife’ (the South) or the ‘rich wife’ would fully subjugate and eventually kill the ‘poor husband’. And we are right in the middle of that struggle for mutual subjugation till today.”
