PIUS ADESANMI MAKES A CASE FOR RESTRUCTURING OF NIGERIA

Pius Adesanmi’s piece, “NIGERIAN CRIMINALS AND THEIR TRABALISM: Keeping Crime in the Tribal Family,”
NIGERIAN CRIMINALS AND THEIR TRABALISM: Keeping Crime in the Tribal Family ~ By Pius Adesanmi. 🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫
makes a strong case for the restructuring of Nigeria.

Here are my reasons:

If Nigeria is a country operating at full efficiency, utilizing its natural and human endowments in the most effective manner, there would be no need for tribe-based criminal gangs.

In America, criminal gangs are also tribal, because of segregated neighborhoods and economic disenfranchisement of minorities. Black gangs operate in black neighborhoods and white gangs operate in white neighborhoods. And America is a true federation. Tribe in Nigeria is the same as race in America. Gang members, whether in Africa, America, Asia, Australia, or Europe, recruit from people with similar affinities, language, loyalty, race, and religion. How many Igbos, Yorubas, or Ijaws are in the Kaduna Mafia or the Aso Rock cabal? The distrust amongst tribes in Nigeria will always keep criminality tribal, whether by politics or origin.

The violent criminal gangs form in an effort to get a piece of the economic prosperity that is brandished in their faces but remain outside their reach, unless they forcibly grab a piece of it. They are self-serving as Nigerian politicians. The political criminal gangs are self-serving, seeking to perpetuate hegemony and pilfering of the national wealth.

The governors see their monthly disbursements from Abuja as not belonging to their states. It is money meant to be shared amongst relatives, friends, and sycophants. Workers’ salaries are unpaid. If there is no Doyin Okupe, one will be invented. The same applies at the center where the Federal Government collects revenue without any investments in the states. These revenues are shared amongst the states, relatives, and sycophants. If there is no Dasuki, one will be invented. The sharing is spread geographically and tribally, but not equally.

There would be no Mallam Doyin Okupe in a truly Federated Nigeria. Otunba Doyin Okupe belongs to the same political tribe as his collaborators. In a federation, there are regional parties that collaborate at the center. With a weak center, there will be no Doyin Okupes. Nigeria currently has a formidable strong center that doles money to the states without any validated formula. With connections to a strong center, Alhaji Okupe can navigate from one state to the other laundering money. Prior to 1966, there were no Chief Doyin Okupes in Nigeria. Is the “criminal” gang that recruited cadets into the DSS (Department of State Security) any different from criminal kidnapping gangs? No. They are both tribally based and put their selfish interest before national interest.

In conclusion, restructure Nigeria and eliminate the Doyin Okupes, Sambo Dasukis, and Oke Okerieonwus. This reduces the influence of tribally based criminal gangs that want a piece of the National cake. People care much more about their local cake than the cake baked in some cavern under Aso Rock. In a Federal system, the center depends on the states for revenue.