The renewed calls for the dissolution of Nigeria by way of American intervention, currently advanced under the banner of self-determination or ethnic emancipation or to save Christians from Muslim persecution, deserve a calm but rigorous interrogation. Other than the fact that the bases of these calls are fundamentally false, history, demography and political sociology also do not support the assumption that Nigeria’s component parts would be more peaceful, prosperous or stable if they went their separate ways. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that separation would impose far heavier costs on many of the regions advocating it than on those often accused of obstructing it – i.e. the North.
It must first be clearly stated that the North’s preference for Nigerian unity is not because it is incapable of standing on its own, nor because it is uniquely dependent on the present federal arrangement for its existence. Historically, the North demonstrated a strong capacity for political cohesion and governance under the regional system, where the Caliphate produced the Premier and the Sultanate provided the Governor. With a vast, geographically contiguous landmass, a dominant lingua franca and largely shared religious and cultural frameworks, a substantial part of Northern Nigeria has historically functioned as a coherent political space. Indeed, within the North itself, the real structural vulnerability lies not with the former Caliphate areas but with the Middle Belt – a region made up of numerous, distinct and diverse ethnic nationalities, religions and cultures, lacking geographical contiguity, a common language or even a shared historical authority. Statistically, this group constitutes a minority in both population and landmass within the historical North. For it, the Nigerian state has served as the primary centripetal force holding its diverse components together. This illustrates a broader truth that the Nigerian state has functioned less as an oppressor than as an arbiter and stabilizer among deeply plural societies.
A similar logic applies even more forcefully elsewhere. The South-South, as Professor Emmanuel Ayandele famously observed, was historically an “atomistic society perpetually at war with itself.” The modern Nigerian state, with its layered system of states and local governments, has been the principal guarantor of peace, order and coexistence in the region. The idea that an independent South-South state would automatically resolve long-standing internal rivalries is historically unfounded.
In the South-East, the challenges are even more structural. The Igbo are traditionally organized around autonomous, community-based systems, numbering in the hundreds, each historically sovereign and answerable to no other authority than itself. Attempts to forge a strong, unified central political identity, even under the extraordinary pressures of the civil war, proved deeply problematic. While the war fostered a sense of collective solidarity against an external enemy, it also exposed and intensified internal tensions, which manifested in the forms of accusations of sabotage, leadership rivalries, resource disputes and enduring mistrust between “home-based” populations and returnees from other regions.
These challenges would be exponentially magnified today. With an estimated population of between 55 and 65 million people, and nearly 40 million living outside the South-East, the demographic realities alone raise existential questions for any independent Igbo state. Confined to a landmass roughly the size of Niger State, such a country would face unprecedented population density, acute land scarcity and intense competition over space for housing, agriculture, infrastructure and social services. The inevitable conflicts, particularly between long-established communities and returnees who may numerically dominate, could easily degenerate into severe internal instability, if not outright civil war.
In the South-West, history also offers sobering lessons. The Yoruba country was marked by prolonged internecine wars and feuds to such an extent that its leaders infamously invited British colonial intervention as a means of restoring order. This is not a moral judgment, but a historical reminder that ethnic homogeneity does not automatically translate into political harmony or stability.
Taken together, these realities suggest that the Nigerian state, for all its defects, has been the framework within which deeply fragmented societies have managed to coexist. Its collapse would not usher in a romantic era of ethnic harmony; rather, it would likely revive old rivalries, harden dormant fault lines and create new theatres of conflict. It is therefore misleading to portray Nigeria’s unity as a project sustained primarily for the benefit of the North, or as a lifeline without which the North would collapse. Such assumptions do not withstand historical or empirical scrutiny. If anything, the balance of risks suggests that the most severe consequences of disintegration would fall disproportionately on those regions whose internal diversity, demographic pressures and unresolved historical tensions are currently moderated by the Nigerian state.
This is not an argument against reform. Nigeria urgently requires justice, equity, fairness and a rebalancing of its political and economic arrangements. But reform is a fundamentally different project from rupture. The former seeks to improve coexistence; the latter risks destroying the very framework that makes coexistence possible. In the final analysis, unity is not a sentimental slogan but a pragmatic choice. Understanding one another, accommodating differences, respecting diversity and strengthening a just common state remain far less costly – and far more realistic – than gambling on separation, and inviting an external superpower to orchestrate that. As late General Murtala Muhammad would say, “we are not adolescents who cannot discern their interests and act accordingly”. Nigeria, imperfect as it is, remains a better option for its peoples, for Africa and for the Black world at large.
Umar Ardo Ph.D. is a celebrated historian, an intellectual, and a principled politician. He writes from Abuja, Nigeria.
