BIAFRA IS ALL WE WANT NOT NIGERIA THAT HAS EXPIRED.
Written by Tim Elombah
Created: 30 September 2017
Mrs Annkio Briggs delivering her speech during the unveiling of SoapBoxNG
Human and environmental activist, Mrs Annkio Briggs has stated that “keeping Nigeria as one nation is a task we can achieve but it can't be by force, but rather through liberty, equity and justice on truth.
Mrs Briggs made the statement during the unveiling of SoapBoxNG, a people’s platform for citizen engagement, inclusive dialogue, informed national conversation and national cohesion, held in Abuja.
She therein restated her commitment to free her region from the Northern oligarchs that have kept fending off the call for a restructured Nigeria that will allow for fairness, equity and justice.
Read below full text of her speech at the event:
I am very honoured to be here with you at this maiden edition of SoapBoxNG a people's platform for citizen engagement.
This is sad, and embarrassing and time is no longer on our side. If we plan to wait another years to get it right we will fail not only ourselves but the young citizens sew here today and painfully their children tomorrow.
I was touched and intrigued by your vision, and l buy into it hence l am here today to contribute my bit to this great vision.
Any initiative to dialogue amongst ourselves is welcome but we must not fail to realise that we cannot dialogue forever or continue to plan development for another 100 years, we must reach a point where we have to start doing our dialogue., and start implementing our reports of many, many conferences, meetings communiques etc.
Nigeria has the capacity to be great, and show other nations particularly other black nations how to get it right but we have failed and are today struggling to get off the floor.
After 20 years of trying to make our people see that the responsibility to get it right is the electorates and not the politicians l am convinced that it is only when we get it right that we can insist that politicians do it right. The electorate should pick their politicians, the politicians should not pick their electorate.
l am indeed worried, and cant stop wondering if we can get it right and give our young citizens a much better tomorrow than we got from our own forefathers.
I do not want to be part of the process that will deny the young
The opportunities abound, we can exercise mutual understanding, love, respect, protect, develop in brotherhood and build a great black nation and even continent but the problem have always been we have had and still have inadequate, lazy, incapable, greedy and corrupt leadership.
If we continue to allow these failures to go on in Nigeria then we will be unable to rekindle, and restore the passion and hopes of the young citizens of Nigeria.
It is unacceptable in today's fast pace of nation and global building Nigeria deludes herself with past glories of colonial leadership and is handing over to our children and their children as you quite rightly put it in your letter of invitation to me, a generation of young men and women challenged by growing despondency and hopelessness.
To be born into a nation that offers no hope, no future, no visions or dreams to improve upon is not their fault but our fault.
They will be right to be ashamed of such a nation.
They will be right to have no commitment of patriotism to a nation that does not recon with their survival.
I am always encouraged that indeed our young citizens are willing to give us another chance to make it right for them, this is the reason why l have so much love for the youths and do try to go the extra mile for them with the conviction that where there is life there is hope.
But hope just for the sake of hoping is not good enough, if we ask them to have hope we must deliver hope to them, not hope to give them hope, but deliver the child of hope for them.
The only and right way to start off the young citizen of today to whom tomorrow belongs is to allow them, and l use the word allow in the most serious sense of the word, meaning that any reasons constitutional or otherwise should be opposed by the young citizens of our nation, because there is no better path to a better and best tomorrow but for the young citizens to take the right position, get involved in your tomorrow today.
REINVENTING OUR NATIONHOOD
The dictionary definition of Reinvent or Reinventing is very simple and basic it means ... To replace (a product) with an entirely new version.
To remake as if from the beginning i.e. to reinvent a government.
To remake or redo completely
If this is in the dictionary definition then it cannot be criminal to ask or tell politicians and government to have the political will in Nigeria to make these changes that will give birth to a new Nigeria, a Nigeria of the people for the people by the people, not a Nigeria by politicians, for politicians.
Any Nigerian that resists the call to build a new Nigeria and a new Nigeria is simply to restructure Nigeria, politically, economically and socially , this will be the Nigeria of our own, and let go of this Lugard built Nigeria of over 100 years, does not love Nigeria.
The call to reinvent or in reality to invent a new Nigeria for ourselves is the best call for us, a call to invent and build Nigeria is not a call to break Nigeria, it is a call of love for ourselves.
The dictionary definition of a nation is
A large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language inhabiting a particular state of territory.
Before the British colonial empire brought the different people in 1914 that make up Nigeria we had none of the above in common, we were forced into nationhood without our consent but today after living together for over 100 years we can and should, if we want to continue to live as one people invent and build a new nation that we and we alone will control and develop.
This is where we all fit in.
ISSUES, CHALLENGES, AND PROSPECTS OF OUR NATIONHOOD
The issues, we have faced and lived with in Nigeria are issues that Lugard and the empire should have known and in fact l have no doubt that they knew but left us to our fate when the time came in 1960 to grant us independence we not only got independence we also had inbuilt issues that 60 years after we have not begun to resolve amicably and maturely.
The choice is ours we will either resolve our issues with love and understanding or our issues will resolve or dissolve Nigeria.
If we refuse to resolve the issues we will be unable to overcome the challenges.
As Nigerians of diverse Ethnic Nationalities we are highly challenged 100 years after Lugard made the negative decision to amalgamate many people into one people to find a solution to the problem of keeping Nigeria together.
Some of those challenges are identified as injustice, corruption, incompetent leaders in politics and development.
Theses challenges have lead to the Niger Delta agitation for resource ownership, self-determination, which is not a minority agitation as the Niger Delta region and people are equal partners in the project Nigeria not minority.
IPOB call for a nation of their own, Boko Haram position of being against anything western including education, the murderous rampage of violent herdsmen or those pretending to be herdsmen who unacceptably the incumbent FG and the Nigeria Army confirms are not even Nigerians.
We must overcome these challenges.
Keeping Nigeria as one nation is a task we can achieve but it can't be by force, but rather through Liberty, Equity and Justice on TRUTH.
Prospect of staying together as one country is a probability, it will be wrong to force it, it is more likely to be realised on the table of negotiation and harmony not on the field of terror and force.
It is more likely we all will succeed in staying together if we discuss honestly.
Nigerians are more likely to choose to stay together if their yearnings to discuss is accepted and not forced to agree to the continuation of the status quo that is unfair, unjust and to some of us strangulating.
After 100 years of living together under unjust and unfair conditions, after over 60 years of independence from where the military took over 30 yeas to oppress and suppress Nigerians, that has given some individuals ownership and control of the land, wealth and resources of others that allows them to live in stupendous wealth, while the owners sleep and wake in poverty should come to an end.
All over the world changes for a better tomorrow are taking place, buzz words are occurring, in discussions, words such as referendum, self-determination, federalism, even secession none of these words have to result in breaking up of our nation.
But If we refuse to sit down together and apply real change then we are heading towards where we think we are avoiding.
We cannot claim to be one Nigeria if we refuse to sit down and map out a way forward for the future.
If we are fighting corruption let us fight it collectively.
There are thieves, criminals, jobless and uneducated everywhere in every state in every region of Nigeria.
The constitution that highly favours one people and disfavour another people is a wicked constitution.
The constitution we have today the 1999 constitution is not a peoples constitution , before we can fix Nigeria we should have a true constitution of all of us, tinkering and reviewing the 1999 constitution is dragging us backward.
Let us accept the past 100 years particularly since after independence have failed us, let us therefore find another path that works for us, today, tomorrow and forever.
There are many documents from the 1914 amalgamation to the 2014 National Conference that we ought to look at from where we can find some solutions to our national problems and invent new paths of liberty, equity and justice on TRUTH that will build a new nation of Nigeria.
We must love, develop and secure our nation Nigeria but we will fail if we refuse the Igbo, Yoruba Tiv or Isoko man to first of all love, develop and secure his ethnicity, LGA.
I don't know about you but my ethnicity is my pride as it is my ethnicity that makes me a Nigerian.
Again l am honoured and humbled to be amongst you today.
Thank you for letting me share my views with you