Date: 2017-06-12

prof. Oyeniran Abioje, PhD, University of Ilorin, Kwara State: A principal philosophy of the United Nations is that there cannot be peace where there is no justice. Were (and are) Nigeria's rulers following the path of justice that can block justifiable social disorder and violence? And if they were (and are) not following anything of such, what warning or proactive measure did the UN issue or take, respectively? Only now that northern youths asked people from a certain part of the country resident in their area to leave the north the UN became alarmed. Otherwise, the UN saw nothing wrong with former President Goodluck Jonathan and current President Muhammadu Buhari refusing to entertain dialogue in preference for war with Boko Haram that didn't attack anybody until attacked by Nigeria's rulers. President Buhari has consistently ignored any suggestion coming from well-meaning people that Nigeria needs to be restructured or revert to the regional arrangement abandoned under the military incursions of the past.

Every ethnic nation (not tribe) in Nigeria is complaining of marginalisation, yet Nigeria's rulers are saying that rotation of key positions among the ethnic nations or zones is undemocratic. Is democracy more than what a people consider to be good for their own societal order, peace and progress? Why does Nigeria hardly know peace and progress, from 1966 till date? Isn't it because the rulers are insensitive, greedy, and egotistical? Are people in developed nations better humans or that they have established rules and regulations that must be obeyed and are enforced? World powers ignore justice. They want to make money from sale of weapons, and they are complaining about terrorism and insurgency. In respect of Nigeria, they don't want to know that Boko Haram didn't attack anybody before it was attacked.

What is important to world powers is that war renders Nigeria incapable of developing technology and essential commodities and so will remain a constant market for goods from developed and actively developing nations. Luckily for them, Nigeria's rulers are blinded by insensitivity, Christian and Islamic imperialisms, greed, and egocentricity. In consonance with the expectations of the world powers, Nigeria is now living on borrowed money, and many workers are owed several months of unpaid salaries and emoluments. Many of those who are lucky to be paid regularly still find it difficult to make ends meet, given the high and worsening levels of inflation.

Do the UN and world powers not know that but for haram (corruption) Nigeria should be an actively developing nation? They know but don't care. Nigeria boasts of billionaires and trillionaires, coupled with gross infrastructural underdevelopment and mass abject poverty. Where then lies the justification for the war against Boko Haram? Why must Nigeria's rulers not reposition the nation to what is sustainable? Why must Christianity and Islam loom larger than Nigeria notwithstanding the secularist constitution of the nation?