The 1954–1968 civil rights movement in the United States was preceded by a decades-long campaign by African Americans and their like-minded allies to end legalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and racial segregation in the United States. Although, the Civil War had officially abolished slavery, but it didn’t end discrimination against Black people—they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans had had more than enough of prejudice and violence against them. They, along with many white Americans, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned about two decades.

Fast forward to today’s United States, though racism isn’t totally abolished; something that will admittedly take more time, moral, constitutional and dare-i-say, spiritual activism to correct, the situation isn’t as bleak as it once was before the civil rights movement. A black man of Kenyan descent has twice been in the oval office as president of the United States. Black people are becoming even more recognized and beginning to rule their world. The police prejudice and brutality towards black aside, the fight for racial equality is culminating into a freer society for black people. The lesson is: when we’re intentional about making the right decisions today, big things will eventually grow from it which would be beneficial to us. Same for choosing to make the wrong decisions today, a monster will arise from it later to consume us.

The supercilious core Northern Nigeria and the APC which is fast becoming one fused entity has chosen to deprive the rest of the country of privileges, rights and anything at all that seems good, denying them a sense of belonging in their national affairs and democracy. They, along with a few ‘Northern ass-kissing’ elites from the South and the Middle-belt have successfully turned the country into an animal farm inundated with crass leadership, throwing its affairs into a hopeless state of higgledy-piggledy. A situation which is embarrassing at best, and at worst horrendous. This ought not to be so considering the often recited, but trite, mantra of “One Nigeria” preached by the same elites, and forced down the throat of the downtrodden.

In case you missed it, the national assembly was recently divided at plenary over an amendment to clause 52(3) of the 2021 Electoral Act Amendment Bill, presented to it for consideration. It was a rather embarrassing turn of events which resulted into session of heated verbal arguments amongst the senators, the antagonists, who opposed the original bill which would have allowed for electronic voting and transmission of results, took the day. Something which left majority of Nigerians reeling, and one can’t simply blame the masses for rightly feeling hard done by as the reality stares them in the face; there shall be no free and fair elections come 2023. Again!
The repugnant Senate, along with the House of Representatives, decided that the country isn’t ripe enough for electronic voting and transmission as we don’t have a nationwide network. They claimed only 43% of Nigeria is connected. How can a senator say the country isn’t ready for technology in a time where JAMB exams are now being held and transmitted electronically nationwide!? Is JAMB now a bigger and more financed institution than INEC? If INEC, just after the last general elections, could strangely claim in court that they have no server following leaked data from their own server which showed that the PDP’s candidate originally won the presidential seat and not the APC’s candidate whom they declared winner, how much more transparency is left of this present administration?

Let’s not even throw in the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) where a meager three percent (3%) of the actual annual operating expenditure would be channelled for funding of the Host Communities Trust Fund. The lawmakers from the host communities (South-South Nigeria) whose people have suffered heavily for decades the effect of oil exploration in their land rightly opposed and protested the 3% allocation. If the Northeast or Northwest were the host communities, would that insulting 3% be allocated to them? This is a travesty of justice, something the masses have become painfully accustomed to being at the receiving end of.

The chaos and the unsurprising divide mirrored in both chambers of the ignominious national assembly due to the electoral amendment and petroleum industry bill points to a much bigger problem of disunity which has become a national emblem. Whether we admit this fact or nay, there’s a valley between us; a valley that has now become so daunting we’re left to wonder how we let it get this deep. Were it not for the vicious greed of the unscrupulous political elites, attempts at rebuilding Nigeria as an institution and rebranding her as an entity by well-meaning individuals and guided minorities wouldn’t have consistently crashed into the formidable trees of failure and the deep waters of futility.
Moreover, there’s a feeling still; considering the fates of the Lekki youths, Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Igboho and the overzealousness of Northern elites, that the worst is yet to come. Add the current move to ban freedom of speech by the government and you begin to realize the enormousness of the valley between us. Anyone who has tried to level the valley, sooner rather than later, discovers it’s the proverbial valley of the shadow of death. Martin Luther King Jr put the works in motion against racial inequality in the United States, and by the time the valley began to fill up, even he would be consumed by the rising fumes of its core. Today, as I earlier mentioned, that valley has somewhat filled up.

It’s not a valley between the APC and the PDP. That’s what they want you to think. Both political parties are the same and exchange members at will in order to continue to ride the crest of national affairs. It is a valley between; the north and the south, the Hausa/Fulani and the others, the rich and the poor, the elites and the masses, the enlightened and the blind, the free and the oppressed. Friends, it’s a valley created between you and I. Until well-meaning people arise from both sides of the supposed divide and channel the ingenuity of unity and the power of oneness towards a better tomorrow, the fumes will continue to consume.