Buhari's Nigeria: A tinderbox on the path of Yugoslavia

Buhari's Nigeria: A tinderbox on the path of Yugoslavia

As Nigeria under General Muhammadu Buhari tethers on the brink of economic and physical collapse, the story of Yugoslavia, a country that was in the south western part of Europe generally known as the Balkans, and its breakup pops to discerning minds. 

The Yugoslav breakup and subsequent wars have been deemed one of the worst in modern day Europe. Perhaps the so called Nigerians should learn one or two lessons from the Yugoslavia story and save themselves from impending doom. There were so many opportunities that would have averted the Yugoslavian wars but the country missed all the opportunities. Nigeria is about to lose her last opportunity for the resolution of the country’s myriads of problems. 

Last year quasi national conference would have done the magic of peaceful splitting of Nigeria into the various nationalities. But President Goodluck Jonathan was cowed into submission and added the ‘no-go-area’ clause. Pertinent issues such as right to self determination, confederation, resource control, and terms of continued association on the nations that would safeguard looming loss of lives and properties were left undiscussed at the conference, while frivolous matters such as minimum wage, creation of states, establishment of state police, funding of political parties, establishment of grazing lands for cattle herders etc have taken the front burner of the national conference. 

Like Nigeria, Yugoslavia was a multi ethnic and multi religious country made of various ethnic nationalities. Yugoslavia (commonly referred to at the time as the "Versailles state" ) officially came into existence as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after the First World War in 1918 through the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which took over from the Ottoman Empire). The Austria-Hungarian empire colonised them and used divide and rule system to control the various nationalities just like the British did to Nigeria. On 3 October 1929, the country was renamed Kingdom of Yugoslavia. 

The country was dominated by the Serbs who ruled through the Serbian royal Karađorđević dynasty until 1941. The domination and subjugation of other ethnic nationalities by the Serbs pitted them against others in the federation. By the late 1930s the fabrics of unity that held the various ethnic nationalities was weakening and the period was marked by growing intolerance between the ethnic nationalities.There was the certainty that the unifying order set up after World War I was losing its strongholds and its sponsors were losing their strength. By 1939, the Croats made their first attempt to pull out from Yugoslavia. Buoyed by the support from the neighbouring Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the Croatian leader Vladko Maček created the Autonomous Region of Croatia with significant internal self-government. 

Although the agreement specified that Croatia was to remain part of Yugoslavia, it however was hurriedly building an independent political identity in international relations. This move to secession was however briefly halted by the Second World War. By 1941, the Axis Powers (German, Italian and Hungarian forces) invaded Yugoslavia and split it up when the country surrendered, with German troops occupying Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as part of Serbia and Slovenia, while other parts of the country were occupied by Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy. The Germans subsequently created the Independent State of Croatia as a Nazi satellite state, which the Nazi’s ruled through a Croatia based pro Nazi fascist militia, the Ustaše (formed in 1929). The Croatian Ustaše regime was infamous for murdering around 500,000 people and expelling 250,000 non Croats (mostly Serbians and about 37,000 Jews) from 1941– 1945. 

The Independent Croatian state was however dismantled at the defeat of the Germany by the Allied Forces. At the end of the second World War, the country was reunited and Yugoslavia became a communist country after the abolition of the monarchy system of government. It became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946 and acquired more territories (Istria, Rijeka, and Zadar) from Italy. The country was subsequently modelled after the Soviet Union, with six republics (SR Serbia, SR Slovenia, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SR Croatia, SR Macedonia and SR Montenegro) an autonomous province (of Vojvodina), and an autonomous district (of Kosovo and Metohija), that were part of Socialist Republic of Serbia. 

Marshal Josip Broz Tito

The splitting of the Yugoslavia into semi independent republics and provinces temporarily solved the internal wrangling of the country as all nations and nationalities had the same rights. The strong man of the post-war Yugoslavia and the leader of the Partisans (a guerrilla army that helped in the liberation of Yugoslavia from the Axis of Power) Marshal Josip Broz Tito ruled the country as the president from 1945 until his death in 1980. 

Despite various agitations for greater autonomy to the republics such as the Croatian Spring of 1970–1971, Tito’s powerful authoritarian arms managed to hold the country together by banning and cracking down on all forms of nationalism from being publicly promoted. Croatians and the other nationalities viewed Yugoslavia as a Serb hegemony and demanded that Serbia's powers be reduced. This quest was assuaged by Tito in 1974 through an amendment of the constitution that reduced the powers of the federal government. Ethnic tension however grew in Yugoslavia after Tito’s death in 1980. For instance the Albanian majority in Kosovo renewed their demand for the upgrade of their status from autonomous province to a republic, which culminated in the1981 protests in Kosovo. 

The Serbian authorities however suppressed this sentiment and rather proceeded to reduce the province's autonomy. The Serbs whose hegemonic powers over the rest of the country and especially the provinces was reduced by the 1974 constitution sought to regain their lost power by restoring the pre 1974 status quo. Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milošević was the arrowhead of this quest to restore the pre-1974 Serbian sovereignty. Although the move was vehemently opposed by other republics such as Slovenia and Croatia, through a series of moves known as the "anti-bureaucratic revolution", Milošević succeeded in reducing the autonomy of Vojvodina and that of Kosovo and Metohija. This angered the majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and increased ethnic tension and conflicts in the province. 

Ethnic Albanian miners in Kosovo organised the 1989 Kosovo miners' strike, which snowballed into ethnic conflicts between the Albanians and the non-Albanians (mainly Serbs in the province). As a result many Serbs were forced out of the region. The Albanian agitation for more autonomy was supported by Croatia and Slovenia. Furthermore, Slovenia and Croatia quests for the reorganisation of Yugoslavia in 1990 through the devolution of more powers to the republics were strongly resisted by the majority Serbs. 

Once again the rising tide of nationalism gripped the country. With the economic crisis of 1990 triggered by IMF-induced he Financial Operations Act, which led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the collapse of many business enterprises, the country was filled with an atmosphere of social despair and hopelessness. By the autumn of 1990, the republics of Slovenia and Croatia proposed the transformation Yugoslavia into a loose confederation of six republics with the republics having right to self-determination. This proposal was however rejected by the Serbian leader Milošević who argued that like Slovenes and Croats, the Serbs living in Croatia and the other republics should also have a right to self-determination. On 25 June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia, becoming the first Yugoslavian republics to do so. 

Serbian leader Milošević 

The Serbian-dominated Yugoslav People's Army was ordered by the federal government to reclaim the boundaries and bring the seceding states back. This failed and Slovenia and Croatia was essentially lost from the grip of the Yugoslavia federal government. Gingered by the successes of Croatia and Slovenia, the Republic of Macedonia in September 1991, also declared its independence, from the Belgrade-based Yugoslav authorities. Surprisingly this move was not resisted by the Yugoslavian authority. Bosnia and Herzegovina followed suit in April of 1992 with the declaration of their independence. Consequently, the ethnic Serbs in Bosnia who had in November, 1991 in a referendum voted in favour a Serbian republic within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and staying in a common state with Serbia and Montenegro, consequently declared the independence of the Republic of the Serb people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This led to the Bosnian war that raged from 1992 to 1995.

Judging from the Yugoslavia case, the ingredients for Nigeria’s breakup are already on ground. The Hausa-Fulani hegemonic hold on Nigeria has stifled every sector of the country’s economy. Their brief loss of power at the centre threw the country into unprecedented security challenge aimed at destabilising the government. This has resulted in the rise of terrorists acts aimed at people mainly from other nationalities and moderate northerners. These targeted killings aimed at restoring Hausa-Fulani hold on power has led to increasing quests for the breakup of the country, just as Milošević’s quest to restore the pre-1974 Serbian hegemony on the rest of the nationalities in Yugoslavia led to increasing agitations for independence. Successive Nigerian governments have however made no serious attempt to assuage the rising ethnic sentiments, religious intolerance of the Muslim Hausa-Fulanis, and increasing agitations of the various ethnic nationalities making it up. The Hausa-Fulani dominated government have continued to shy away from or block attempts for the pertinent discussion and clear definition of terms of association and cooperation of the nationalities. 

It should be recalled that the failure of an attempt in 1967 for the reorganisation of the country into a truly confederated state at Aburi, led to the first Biafra-Nigeria war. The Hausa-Fulani led government of 1967 having agreed to terms of the Aburi Accord, returned to Nigeria and reneged on the agreement. Nigeria’s situation is even more severe that the Yugoslavs. The Yugoslavs on several occasions agreed to live in one country, but Nigeria’s case was different, because they were brought together by colonialists who only had economic gains on their minds when creating Nigeria. 

Despite this the Yugoslavs saw the need for the decentralisation of powers at the federal level and creation of semi autonomous republics and provinces. Similarly as is the case in Nigeria, Yugoslavia was also marked by a myriad of deep-rooted religious beliefs. Religious differences between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians alongside the rise of ethnic nationalism contributed to the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991. In Nigeria the Muslims have always been the aggressors. Right from the independence of Nigeria from British rule, the Islamic Hausa-Fulani north have pursued the goal of Islamising the entire country and subdue people especial the Igbos in the south east region and their cousins who are Christains. 

The Yugoslavian collapse was also catalysed by economic crisis that left the country in an atmosphere of social despair and hopelessness. The atmosphere in Nigeria is forlorn. Nigeria is battling economic mess with millions of its youths and graduates unemployed and uncared for. This is largely due to the failures of successive Hausa-Fulani dominated governments, who corruptly enriched themselves and cronies, and laid the foundations of corruption that has eaten deep into the fabrics of the nation. Nigeria under Buhari's slow motion government is in tatters, it is only a matter of time before the economy collapses and the naira becomes worthless.

The CIA warned of possible breakup of Yugoslavia as many United States institutions have warned of that Nigeria. In addition, the United States had propped and supported the Yugoslavia from 1918 (when it was formed at the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and all through the cold war (when Yugoslavia turned her back on Soviet Union), as Yugoslavia served as a buffer of the Communist encroachment into the west. Yugoslavia however became expendable at the end of the cold war and the imminent breakup of Soviet Union. Nigeria on its part has never been as expendable to the United States as it is at present. The reliance on Nigeria’s oil by the United States has greatly reduced with the recent exploration of shale gas in the US and the lifting of oil embargo in the United States. 

US multinational companies in Nigeria such as Chevron are divesting their oil interests in Nigeria. Recently the Minister of Petroleum Mrs Deziani Alison-Madueke, stated that United States has stopped buying oil from the Nigeria. Nigeria on her part is gradually turning her back on the west and looking towards China. This is a move the United States will not take lightly. Yugoslavia army was regarded as the fourth largest army in Europe but it could not stop the country from breaking up. 

The one time strong Nigeria Army that was a stabilising force in Sub-Saharan Africa, which was another strong point that used to go for it in international politics have become rag-tagged and underfunded through corruption and have therefore lost its strategic relevance. As it stands United States and other countries have nothing to lose with the breakup of Nigeria, and would quickly realign with any nationality that offers it what it wants. 

The inevitable breakup of Nigeria is imminent to discerning minds. Whether that would come in a violent or peaceful way depends on the government and people of Nigeria. Already there are indications that tilt the pendulum towards the violent side. Increasing Boko Haram attacks and attempts to extend the attacks to the Southern part of Nigeria will be a catalyst to the breakup as it can only end up waking up some southerners who still believe in the illusion of One Nigeria. For instance, bombs going off in any part of the southeast will galvanise the people into a formidable force and strengthen the ongoing quest for the restoration of Biafra Republic. The Serbians for once never believed that Yugoslavia will slip from their hands after all they had the formidable army in full control, same way the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy still believe Nigeria belongs to them and they can do whatever they wish to it. This level of arrogance led to the demise of Yugoslavia, Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, and will ultimately lead to the demise of Nigeria. 

Nigeria under the aged mind of Muhammadu Buhari is a tinderbox on the path of destruction. His tribalistic nature is propping up once again with his arrogant appointments of friends and relatives of the northern and Islamic stock into sensitive positions. The ball is rolling.