Come Saturday (27th May), it will be exactly 50 years that Lagos State was created (along with others) by the military administration of General Yakubu Gowon to give Nigeria a 12-states structure. Instructively, four days after that historic event, on 30th May 1967 to be specific, the late Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu announced the secession of Eastern Nigeria and the establishment of a State of Biafra. Taken together, a combination of the creation of states, the military incursion into our national political affairs that precipitated the dismantling of the regional structure and the subsequent declaration of Biafra would define the unfortunate trajectory of our country in ways that nobody could have foreseen at the time.
However, if ever any proof was ever needed that we don't learn from our mistakes, it is in the fact that the possibility of a military coup would still be subject of a national conversation in May 2017 while many communities and groups are yet to be weaned of the ideas of secession, agitation for more states etc just as hate-mongering has become the defining issue of the day.
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