Others can share our oil, but we are barred from gold. Where is Bugaje’s geographical pyrotechnics?"

I look forward to reading your full-blown essay on the nature of the control and the state-sponsored disparities in the ownership rights over our mineral resources by the respective State Governors. This is one way you took for inside another essay, no work. Period. That topic deserves your time, space, and attention. As a Naijadeta native and as a prominent voice in the affairs of our nation-state, that topic merits a free-standing profile in your weekly column. Thank you.

"No one sees the other’s teardrop. We hear Yoruba sob, or see Fulani tears and are deafened by Igbo cry. We hardly hear the Nigerian lyric for the dead." "When such discordant funeral notes happen, it means we don’t have a nation yet. It means we are just making a patchwork of unity. To grieve together is to feel together."

We cannot see the other teardrop because that is the nation they gave to us following our independence. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sadauna of Sokoto and the First Premier of the Northern Region, and may his soul rest in peace, laid the foundation of our disunity. In 1953, Chief Anthony Enahoro made the first motion for Nigeria's Independence in 1956 or 57, the Sadauna of Sokoto opposed it, arguing that the North didn't want a second colonisation. Colonisation from where? From the East and West. Our independence had to be delayed until October 1960, to create room for the Northern Region to educate its needed workforce.

And that was how Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who went to the United States to acquire Western Education after Zik of Africa (a Nigerian born) had returned from Obodo yinbo, was able to get independence for Ghana in 1957 ahead of Zik and Awo. Kwame went to America after Zik, but he came back and got independence for Ghana before Nigeria. Because Nigeria was and still is not one country.

In the mid-70s, when Obasanjo was the Military Head of State, Dr. Jubrin Aminu, who was at the time the Executive Secretary of the National University Commission, sent a memo to the Federal Government and argued vociferously against the proposed free education at all levels program. His thesis was that Southerners are likely to benefit more from the program than Northerners, because of the aversion to Western education by his own people. And the idea died. Where are we today, educationally?

I am not writing this because I hate one region or because I love one tribe more than the other or because I want to exacerbate the regional divide; not at all. I did because I want your readers to know the genesis of the disparities in the teardrop. I did because I want your readers to know that the disparities are endemic. And I did because I want the Nigerian leadership to get rid of their denial and confront the reality. The entitlement culture is ingrained. Is President Buhari ruling Nigeria as one country? Why is Gold exploration a Zamfara affair but the crude oil bloc in Oloibiri is not a Bayelsa affair? The counter-motion of 1953 is alive and well. Until it is confronted, discredited, and abandoned, we are not going anywhere. How can you confront it and put an end to it when their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are born into the culture?

If we cannot go Confederal or are willing to discard the Unitary Model, we can as well amend our constitution and take mineral resources out of the Exclusive list and make it a local affair. Thank you.