Calling agitation for Oodua Republic a declaration of war is a "curable ignorance"-Soetan

 Calling agitation for Oodua Republic a declaration of war is a " curable ignorance"- Soetan.

Why are activists running away from their agelong slogans?

But why are some prominent activists and many June 12 emergency progressive politicians now running away from the campaign by ethnic groups for self determination in Nigeria? The slogans and demand for sovereign national conference (SNC) and fundamental right of ethnic groups to self determination as legitimate right were the most popular demands during the military regimes and aftermath of June 12 criminal annulment by Babangida regime. Right of ethnic nationalities  to self determination is legitimate and still valid till today and it may not die soon. 

"Self-determination is act of a particular people or an ethnic group to exercise its sovereign right to become an independent state and to decide on the form of state (including the system of government)" 

"By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development"

I am yet to see any prominent activist of my generation and our elders who had not raised the banner of sovereign national conference and supported the right of ethnic nationalties in a union to self determination, to remain in the union by mutual consensus on the basis of democratic referendum or to exit the union.

So, what has changed and what is your  alternative if you are abandoning all you used your youthful and adult life to campaign as a liberal democratic right. 

I remember that I was the person that (late) Chief Gani Fawehinmi sent to the  national assembly to distribute our (NCP) publication on Sovereign National Conference to Senators and Representatives in Abuja.. And many popular organizations and ideological movements had their publications too on the same undying issues through books, press statements, communique and the like. 

If many of us decided to abandon the barricades and preferred  the confererence rooms, seminar communique, television appearances, the barricades would be taken  over by aggrieved citizens of different ethnic groups who have legitimate right to demand for nations within nation or secede.

We may not like the faces or their multifaceted tactics, errors of strategy or strategy of errors of the champions, but we cannot walk away or pretend there is no  resurgence of ethnic consciousness due to bad governance, government's obvious provincialism and insecurity which escalated it, and weakness of radical and revolutionary forces to challenge the bourgeois class, defeat its divisive tendency along ethnic and religious divide and unite the masses and working class along programmes of common interest. 

I think the least we can do is to demand for a national, regional / ethnic referendum as a step forward.

You don't expect the present crop of political bandits in power that are united across parties, ethnic and religious divide when power is the dinner to yield to any demand for right of self determination by willing  ethnic nationalities in the country. The constitution that says "We the people.." is a lie without referendum of the people to authenticate it. 

Slogans are not for fun or for applause, don't say it if you don't mean it to be tested  by you or people who are recipients of your demands and slogans in the ways they like to interpret it and demand for it. 

I only pity those who are still mesmerized with the military catchphrase of "Nigeria's unity is non-negotiable". Nothing is non-negotiable even slavery and "holy marriage from heaven". In fact, Where's the unity that's not negotiable. And those who still wrongly think that  demanding for self determination peacefully by ethnic groups, a legitimate universal right, as a declaration of war need to be sympathized because they are glaringly displaying curable  ignorance. They need to be sober and read the UN charter on ethnic self determination.

It is those who want to face the agitators with guns that would be declaring war on people's right and sovereignity.

At the end of the referendum, it may even surprise the agitators that majority of their ethnic groups members  want to stay in Nigeria but  on renewable terms of mutual respect and rights, control and autonomy.It may also shock the gunpoint nationalists that many ethnic groups are fed up with union.

Lastly, the unity of the working people is not determined by geographical lines or artificial boundaries  but by their oppressed  condition of living  / working and the need for liberation collectively, regionally and globally without frontier.