A REVIEW OF THE BOOK, "TO THE RESCUE"
BY PRINCE CHUKWUEMEKA I. ONYESOH BY A POLITICAL SCIENTIST

As a first step, I wish to forcefully draw attention to the title of this tome, 628 page magnum opus. It is a tour de force in presentation and encyclopaedic in compass and we warmly congratulate Okpala Eze Nri, Emeka Onyesoh for its timely release.

The subtitle clearly introduces the burden of the work, and that is the question of “to be or not to be” of Nigeria. I must confess that Prince Onyesoh exhaustively dealt with this question in this book that it will amount to disservice and distortion to attempt to summarize the content of the work. It is absolutely necessary that every Nigerian must read this book, and painstakingly too, from preface to index.

The book, To the Rescue boldly interrogates the challenge of the continued existence of this country that is steadily cascading down the abyss and could crash any time unless something drastic is done to halt the fall. Never in the chequered history of this country have there been such wide cleavages along ethnic, religious, geopolitical, and class lines, as we have today. Even government officials do not seem to have faith in the government they run, and whatever binding cord of the society that still exists is weak and fragile. Agitations for disintegration of the country continued to gather momentum from various parts of the country, and at least two world recognized terrorist organizations, the armed cattle herdsmen and Boko Haram have become a feature of Nigerian society. The Federal Government is probably incapable of fighting back although it is believed in some quarters that the government or some highly placed personnel of the Government, are in fact behind these terrorists.

It is a fact too that there is so much insecurity in the land; kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism, are rampant, just as infrastructure, amenities are also lacking. We behold along the streets in every urban centre in the country unemployed youths roaming about in their millions. Only recently it was reported that over 3,000 Nigerian youths were stranded in Libya on their way to Europe in search of sources of livelihood and many of them are being sold into slavery by Arab captors.

We must be right to conclude that many have given up on Nigeria; however Prince Onyesoh at 76 years, who has seen it all still thinks that the country can be rescued. As an outspoken intellectual and patriot he insists that he cannot live “through the squalid state of Nigeria and make no meaningful inputs to its rescue. This work, (he continues) is an effort to diagnose Nigerian’s aliments and attempt to offer solution”.

Nigeria, the book reveals is peopled by 379 ethnic nationalities (with the list of all of them attached if only to authenticate his assertion) who have no shared values; and are yet to develop any meaningful and binding ones. Prominent among these ethnic group are the Fulani and Ndigbo. There are, he pointed out “thirteen areas of irreconcilable divergence of values between the Igbo and the Fulani’s which include Islamization, the morbid quest for domination, enslavent, violence, attitude to life/death and women. Resistance to the six values (just enumerated) are in Igbo DNA and can never be subdued or wished away”. But it is in fact not the Igbo alone that resent the Fulani/Islamic dominance although some of the ethnic groups appeared to have been totally subdued by the Fulani. It is the relentless attempt by the Fulani to impose their rule including the religion of Islam that is at the root of the crisis in the country; the solution to which lies in restructuring the country.

Prince Onyesoh then defined the concept of self determination and did a survey through the ages and the globe of its application. He vividly observed that neither the size of the ethnic group nor its location, particularly being landlocked nor population nor even age of being part of a larger political entity has ever impeded the assertion of right to self determination. Specifically he cited Canada, Scotland, countries of Euroasia, countries of East Africa etc, as cases in point. In fact recently Scotland (United Kingdom) Catalona (Spain) went to polls without hindrance and molestation to assert their right to self-determination.

Prince Onyesoh acknowledged the effort of President Jonathan at convening the 2014 National Conference on constitutional reform of the country but noted that the outcome did not fully address some fundamental issues. For instance he noted that the resolutions on religion did not fully address the problem of Islam and Christianity. “Sharia and Islamic fundamentalism are indeed inconsistent with secular democracy and rule of law”, he observed. He therefore called for a Sovereign National Conference, “of all the Nigerian ethnic nationalities proportionally represented with full constituent powers to renegotiate Nigeria”.

The celebrated intellectual Dr. Arthur Nwankwo hailed this work as an “extraordinary service in giving us the true picture of what contradiction Nigeria truly represents and the need for immediate restructuring of the country (to avoid) the risk of permanent disintegration”.

I wish to add that this book is a must read for all the intelligentsia across the length and breath of this country and immediately too!
God bless us all.


Prof. Elo Amucheazi,

At the Book Presentation in Enugu, on14th Dec. 2017.