What is holding Nigeria down is not bad leadership or corruption or language or religion -By Azuka Onwuka

Please let us not mix things up.

I have been an advocate of Nigeria being broken up into different smaller countries to be more effective. But I repeat that speaking Igbo or Hausa or Yoruba or English or wearing isiagu or buba or babariga or suit or bearing an indigenous name like Azuka Onwuka or a foreign name like John Emmanuel has nothing to do with making a country great technogically. There is no evidence of that from any country.

If the whole of southern Nigeria were to be a country, despite having different ethnic groups, languages, cultures, and speaking English as national language, southern Nigeria would excel ten times more than Nigeria because the Igbos, Yorubas, Urhobos, Ijaws, Edos, Efiks, Ibibios, etc share core values in life which include love for Western education, love for freedom of religion, love for merit, love for competition, love for Western type of modernity, love for capitalism, love for entertainment, etc.

The reason why Nigeria will not work is not because we speak a foreign language or practise a foreign religion or wear suits. It is because the core life desires of the North are opposed to the core life desires of the South (some of which I listed above). So it is virtually impossible for Nigeria to move forward because of those opposing views of the South vs North (especially Northeast and Northwest) on critical life issues.

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Therefore, what is holding Nigeria down is not bad leadership or corruption or language or religion. It’s a clash of two aggressively opposing civilisations that have no meeting point. Ironically, those two opposing civilisations have also refused to sit down and discuss how to manage those opposing worldviews, so as to see if something good can come out of a terribly bad situation.

Nigerians know this truth, and even state this point in their privacy, but from one year to another, as Nigerians sit down and watch Nigeria flounder and get worse, their only weapon is to lament, pray and hope that someday there will be a miracle that will transform Nigeria!

But can someone please remind me what the Bible says about faith without work?

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This is a comment I made on a thread where we discussed why India is ruling the tech world.