A legal practitioner and political activist, Dele Farotimi, has warned the suffering majority Nigerian masses against allowing the minority beneficiaries of the bad system in the country to continue to prevent them from taking actions to salvage their condition, through religious, political, and ethnic divisions.
Farotimi believes the way to change Nigeria’s bad governance is for the suffering masses to look beyond their multiple contrived divisions to find a common purpose in addressing their challenges.
In a video of his media public appearance shared on his official X platform, the outspoken public affairs analyst regretted that Nigeria was not founded on the idea of citizenship, but rather on the idea of feudalism.
According to him, this is why the law does not rule the nation: it cannot apply equally to everyone.
Farotimi argued that, given the way the Nigerian system is currently wired and functioning, it would be foolhardy to expect any sustainable progress from it.
“Systems are built with purposes in mind, and purposes are almost always found in ideas.
“The idea of Nigeria is a very bad idea, and that informed the design of the entire superstructure of governance.
“Nigeria is not founded on the idea of citizenship. It is based on the idea of feudalism, the acceptable inequality among persons living within the same geographical space. That is why the law does not rule in Nigeria, because it cannot apply equally to all.
“That is the bad idea that rules Nigeria, and that is also ruining it.
“One thing about the truth is that it has very little respect for the opinion of those it is delivered to. What they do with it is entirely up to them.
“All I say is the fact that the way we are, our current trajectory will not deliver anything positive,” he said.
The legal practitioner attributed the difficulty in evolving a sane society in Nigeria and the continued evil that has thrived for so long to the citizens’ readiness to be divided on the basis of religion, politics, ethnicity, as well as sectarian differences between the religions.
This, he noted, has prevented Nigerians from taking the right actions despite the anguish they face daily.
He also identified the refusal of the beneficiaries of the rot in the Nigerian system to change the system as also contributing to the problems.
Farotimi, however, noted that the observation is not a death sentence on the country, but a call to understanding and redirection.
“This is not a message of doom. It is a message demanding that we find a way forward and correct the pointed-out error, because every Nigerian is in the same pot of hardship and affliction.
“The antidote to feudalism is citizenship. If we elect to construct a country founded on citizenship, we would have simply walked away from the madness that has overtaken us.
“It is not like we are in a situation where doom is unavoidable. What is making it seemingly unavoidable is the refusal of the ‘ruining crass’ in the country to address the problems that have been identified. The belief that they can continue on this unsustainable trajectory and deliver something sustainable. That is why it seems like it is gloom and doom.
“All Nigeria has to do is to yoke the country to the rule of law. A system that is unyoked to law cannot deliver anything positive. If you yoke the country to the rule of law, where the courts become effective and the constitution, as imperfect as it is, begins to reign supreme, we would have begun our journey to sanity.
“But we cannot continue our current trajectories and expect that something positive will come out of something that is manifestly evil.
“The beneficiaries of the current system in Nigeria have shown clearly that they have no intentions of changing the system because it works for them.
But it is also the responsibility of the majority of the people for whom the system does not work to look beyond their multiple contrived divisions to find a common purpose. How many of these people are holding us down?
“If the afflictions are the same, Nigerians need to find a common purpose to address the collective challenges they face,” Farotimi suggested.
