Are Nigeria and Abuja two great mistakes?

By Adeola Aderounmu.

For a while now, I have been wondering if Nigeria was/is a mistake. Maybe four or more countries would have been viable and prosperous instead of the one nation (Nigeria) populated by more than 90 million extremely poor people.

Indeed in the absence of corruption and very bad governance maybe Nigeria would have become the greatest country on earth. We will never know. What we know is that there are people in Nigeria whose 14th generation from now will not experience poverty because some members of their families have looted and are still looting and preparing for them-the unborn.

In the same set up called Nigeria, for example in the Niger Delta we have people who are living on less than 1 dollar a day. As these people continue to suffer, treasures and wealth are taken away from them daily and part of this wealth was used to build a new city called Abuja.

Instead of building a new capital called Abuja the right thing would have been the building of the Niger Delta. If mumu and idiots like Babangida have built the Niger Delta, we would have no militants today. There will be no MEND. There would not have been any kidnapping in the Delta and Ken Saro Wiwa would not have died.

So the questions remain: Would the people in my area of West Africa have been better off today if the vagabond Briton called Lugard did not establish NIGER AREA (Nigeria)? If the successive evil governments of Nigeria did not introduce poverty as a way of life, would MEND and other criminal militants be waging war against Nigeria today?