A former World Court Judge, Prince Bola Ajibola (SAN), on Saturday criticised growing agitation for secession from Nigeria.
He noted that even with a population of over N1.3billion with diverse tribes and religions, there are no calls for break up in India.
Ajibola said rather, Nigerians should jointly fight and kill corruption, which he insisted was the main problem facing the largest black country in the world.
In a statement titled: ‘Confront and defeat corruption, don’t balkanize Nigeria’, Ajibola said in response to the present situation “we need to rejuvenate our morality and conduct in and out of public office to serve as good role models for the next generation”.
“With this level of endemic corruption in the national psyche, breaking up is akin to multiplying avenues of corruption. We need to nurture a new generation of Nigerians through a review of our education curricula to promote good conduct, morality and globally acceptable conduct.
“The easy and indolent way is to yearn for breaking up at the slightest opportunity while calling people with opposing views names. We should not encourage greedy and self-centred people, who will always prefer to ‘cut the baby into two’ if they cannot possess it.”
Ajibola maintained that Nigeria’s woes lie “in our curious will to undo ourselves at will through unbridled corruption and appropriation of our common wealth for personal use.”
He observed that countries like the United States of America, the United Kingdom and India had deployed their diversities to positive use and transformation and urged Nigeria to follow suit.
“India as a subcontinent of over one billion people with many religious faiths and tribes is the world’s largest democracy with no section calling for dismemberment in spite of its crises.
“On the contrary, the country has been able to fashion out technological and socio-economic advancement from its diversity.
“Those against secession are not fools but proactive people, who know that a corruption-free Nigeria under the unfettered reign of the rule of the law is the antidotes to all these calls for the balkanisation of the country, otherwise, the best alternative way forward would be to conduct a national referendum,” Ajibola added.
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