EXPLOSIVE: HEAR WHAT SOYINKA, OONI OF IFE SAID ABOUT ANOTHER CIVIL WAR IN NIGERIA (READ DETAIL)

"Among such issues of urgent import are the ongoing insurrectional movements that derive from religious fanaticism and intolerance, exemplified by Boko Haram and allied tendencies, as well as aspects of commercial enterprise, in which some groups consider themselves especially privileged, singular, and above laws and entitlements that are binding on other vectors of commercial and industrial undertaking. We have in mind destructive forms of social transactions that characterize groups such as nomadic cattle herdsmen,and their umbrella groupings in the nature of Myetti Allah.

"We confess ourselves increasingly distressed and appalled, that the hitherto harmonious cohabitation, even routine collaboration, among the productive arms of society that Nigerians have taken for granted even from pre-colonial times, have deteriorated to unprecedented levels of barbarity, contempt for human lives and a defiant trampling on the civic entitlements of other productive vectors such as farmers, the providers of both food and cash crops. This abhorrent, yet consistent pattern of sectarian, and homicidal arrogance is obviously not merely counter-productive but inhuman, criminal and divisive," they said.

The communique stressed that the present development was not new, nor had it lacked warnings, saying that numerous times, voices had been raised, and resistance mounted against the evolution of internal heirs to external colonialism, be this manifested by a military elite or by religious or economic groupings which flaunted their scant recognition of, or respect for human dignity, civic rights and sanctity of human life, as the state had cultivated the art of looking the other way - until forced to confront reality.

"We call on the Nigerian people to recognize that the internal colonization project is ever recurrent, that there are backward, primitive, undeveloped minds that have failed, and continue to fail to overcome delusions in this antiquated belief in sectarian domination as the key to social existence, a belief that despises peaceful cohabitation that is based on mutual respect, a spirit of egalitarian apportionment, and recognition of the dignified existence of others, including their antecedent modes of material production of the means of existence.

The leaders also called on all occupants of the nation space known as Nigeria to adopt all the foregoing as guiding principles for mutual co-existence and to transmit the same to their offspring and wards as foundation blocks for their very social awareness, charging the Nigerian people, both on state and community levels to convoke a series of frank encounters, across various interests and concerns, to debate and determine in full freedom the future structure of their nation, most especially with a view to attaining a genuine, decentralized functional governance arrangement.

"We consider it a primary imperative of nation existence that the constitutive parts of the nation take steps to preserve and enhance their distinct cultural identities, including tested and relevant pre-colonial values, their spiritual apprehension of phenomena and worship, all without detriment to the principles and ideals of mutual co-existence. To this end, we undertake to create state-of-the-Art Ethnic Museums for our people both at home and in the Diaspora, where present and future generations can access their histories and cultures vividly, as living expressions of their very humanity, not simply as relics of eras vanished for ever or irrelevant to the present.