- …declares nation-building experiment a failure
The National Association of Seadogs, popularly known as Pyrates’ Confraternity, has thrown its weight behind the agitation for the restructuring of the Nigerian nation.
According to NAS, the fact that the multifarious negative variables that had been agitating the minds of all Nigerians since the 1914 amalgamation and independence from colonial rule in 1960 had persisted, had clearly shown that the Nigerian project had not been successful.
It stressed that the Nigerian experiment as a nation had proved to be an “unmitigated failure.”
Urgent and radical measures are required to rescue Nigeria from impending disaster
The association argued that the continued existence of the age-long agitations among the different sections of the country about its future was an indication that Nigeria was heading towards the precipice, if nothing was urgently done to halt the imminent crash.
NAS National President, also called the Pyrates’ Cap’n, Mr. Arthur Boje, said in a statement that urgent and radical measures must be applied now to save the country from an “impending disaster.”
Boje said, “Public discourse in Nigeria in the past one year, at least, has been largely dominated by the idea of “restructuring”: from political gatherings to places of worship; from print to the broadcast media; from market squares to ivory towers; from airport lounges to motor parks; and from legislative houses to protest marches – calls for and against the restructuring of the Nigerian project have reverberated with striking and often alarming persistence.
“The restructuring idea has received various interpretations among both its proponents and its opponents, including as a call for such initiatives as the devolution of political power from the Federal Government to the states or indeed to regions, fiscal federalism, public control of the economy, a change in the system of government and even a return to pre-1914 Nigeria.
“Whatever the exact meaning of this newfound Nigerian buzzword, and it is not the intention of the National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates’ Confraternity) to get bogged down in an effort to
define it with any precision, we consider ourselves duty-bound to draw attention to various critical issues about today’s Nigeria that should have a direct impact on the main restructuring debate.”
The Pyrates’ cap’n argued, “There is little or no disagreement among Nigerians and students of Nigerian history about the fact that from either the amalgamation in 1914 or independence in 1960 to the present, the Nigerian project has not been particularly successful. Judged by reference to such indices as Gross Domestic Product per capita, infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy, physical and social infrastructure, cost of governance, and public-sector efficiency, the Nigerian experiment has, for the most part, proven an unmitigated failure. For this singular reason, the National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity) is of the firm view that urgent and radical measures are required to rescue Nigeria from impending
disaster.”
The confraternity, therefore, expressed its resolve and belief that rationality and good conscience demand the restructuring of any polity that, among others: “Obscenely rewards political office holders who “served” for only four or eight years, with hundreds of millions of naira in lifetime pensions and free housing, while retired civil servants, who sacrificed as long as 35 years of their lives in the service of the nation, slump and sometimes die, on endless queues, waiting for paltry pension receipts that they cannot be sure will ever come.”
