By Kayode Akano
History has a stubborn habit of repeating itself — especially for a nation that refuses to read it. The Soviet Union deceived itself for 69 years, insisting that a forced union could hold forever.
It was eventually restructured — into 15 autonomous, often antagonistic states. Yugoslavia’s class of ’45 — military men turned political elites — sustained the illusion for roughly three decades. When peaceful restructuring became impossible, each nationality went its separate way, violently. From one Yugoslavia emerged seven countries.
Europe itself deceived itself for over a century before discovering that progress was impossible while Germany, Austria, and Poland remained locked under one roof. Rapid transformation only came when each nation was allowed to fend for itself. And had India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh remained under one roof, the Tower of Babel would have looked orderly by comparison.
The Structural Argument
Nigeria, as presently constituted, is not working — and cannot fulfil its destiny, regardless of who occupies the leadership seat. I once believed, like many, that Nigeria’s problem was squarely one of leadership. But after years of researching how nations fail and how they succeed, I came away convinced that our problem is fundamentally structural.
No nation has ever transformed without elite consensus. I studied 50 countries — China, America, India, Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, among others — and the pattern is unmistakable. It was the elite consensus of 1950 that erected India’s ICT foundation, the same foundation that makes India a global technology leader today.
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Consider Israel. Between August 27 and 31, 1897, 208 Jewish elites gathered and declared that within 50 years, they would have a nation of their own in Palestine, their ancestral homeland. Exactly 50 years later, Israel was born — reuniting a people scattered for 2,000 years.
Today, that tiny nation sits behind most of the technological innovations the world depends upon, from America to China, from Saudi Arabia to Nigeria. Israel’s roughly seven million Jewish citizens have more companies listed on NASDAQ than all of Europe’s 700 million people. The young men behind WhatsApp and Facebook are Ukrainian Jews; Google was founded by two Americans — Larry Page and Sergey Brin — one of them a Russian Jew.
Elite consensus builds nations. Nigeria’s tragedy is that its elite have never been able to agree on a single transformation agenda for implementation. While some declare that western education is an abomination — Boko Haram — others champion it. A house this divided cannot stand, let alone rise.
The Evidence of Failure
It is no accident that Nigeria has earned over $1 trillion in oil revenue, yet we are the poverty capital of the world. The country harbour an estimated 15 million street urchins — the Almajiris — in the North, a humanitarian time bomb.
Statistics indicat3le that over 133 million Nigerians — plus 4 million newly counted — are multidimensionally poor while youth unemployment approaches 60 percent, whatever the official 4 percent figure government keeps throwing up.
The giant of Africa is also the 9th largest gas nation globally and the 6th largest oil producer, blessed with coal and unlimited sunlight — yet the nation sits in darkness. But the country has
no functional refineries, while workers at Kaduna, Warri, and Port Harcourt refineries draw salaries for jobs not done.
The Fear of the Unknown
Those who oppose restructuring know these truths. What paralyses them is not ignorance — it is the fear of the unknown. But history is not on their side. Nature abhors a vacuum, and no situation can be mismanaged forever. That is simply impossible.
Nobody can fight an idea whose time has come.
Restructuring will happen — of this I am 100 percent convinced. My only prayer is that Nigeria learns from the Yugoslav and Soviet experiences and works it out peacefully, before events choose the path for us.
Russia played the arrogant, irresponsible husband within the USSR; when the union’s members grew fed up, they declared their respective independences, and Russia is licking its wounds to this day.
We have played for 63 years. We are still playing.
But the clock — as the Soviets and Yugoslavs learned too late — does not stop ticking for those who refuse to listen.
