Recent development has shown that all is not well with the entity called Nigeria except we want to continue deceiving ourselves.
Going back memory lane, 1914 amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorate was not in the interest of the numerous nationalities that were integrated. The British did it in their own interest. At that time, the deadliest disease was malaria this scared away British administrators from the northern and southern part of the Niger. Therefore, dearth of white colonial administrators was the root cause of the amalgamation of these juicy part of West Africa. It is worthy of note that while France practiced assimilation/frenchification policy, British practiced indirect rule because of lack of sufficient white administrators.
Critical evaluation unmasked the selfish motive of British invasion, she went for four fertile West Africa countries: Nigeria, Gold Coast (now Ghana), Sierra Leone and Gambia. Anytime there is crisis in any of these former colonies, British will look away while France will always come to the aid of theirs. The Bakassi imbroglio attests to this fact.
Prior to the advent of Britain, each nation had her own political structure and governing style but when the British came, they altered and fine tuned the ancient political systems to suite their parochial aim of milking the colonies. One of the alterations was the enthronement of supreme paramount heads in Iboland (against their traditional age grade system) that can help them exploit the people. Ibo women were compelled to pay tax to their heads to be remitted to the colonial masters. This led to Aba women riot in 1929.
In 1956, Anthony Enahoro moved motion for independence with full support from Chief Awolowo and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe but the Sardauna of Sokoto spoke out for continued British rule, declaring Nigeria unfit for independence. Enahoro was jailed three times under the British colonial administration, the reason was not far fetched: he was too intelligent for the British to manipulate.
Reluctantly, the British left but not without negative impact: they advised the north to join the military and use that to secure and consolidate their political dominance. It was the north that first threatened secession but were advised not to try such move by British high commissioner to Nigeria because of its severe consequences to their economy. This is perhaps one of the major reasons why they will want to keep the country united in the face of disunity.
Nigeria is now sitting on a keg of gun powder that can explode anytime if decisive steps are not taken to address the burning issues of resource control, political lopsidedness, power sharing formula and true federalism. These problems had worsened the problem of ethnicity and restiveness especially among the youths hence the emrrgence of various ethnic groups: Egbesu boys, Arewa youths, Oodua People's Congress, Niger Delta militants, Fulani herdsmen e.t.c. Virtually every parts of the country is claiming marginalisation: who is marginalising who?
Our leaders are not oblivion of the fact that there is fire on the mountain but they are benefactors of the status quo therefore, their selfishness will never allow them to initiate the much needed and much desired restructuring that can heal the wounds from the past nepotism and maladministration. As a matter of fact, the country's leaders that secured independence should have sat down and discussed the bases of our togetherness immediately after independence if we must remain a country and if not, then to your tent oh! Israel but on a peaceful note.