American political thinker, Robert D. Kaplan predicted the dire security situation Nigeria and other West African nations now face 21 years ago, Professor of Political Economy, Pat Utomi has said.
Utomi, who is a former presidential candidate, said that Kaplan, 68, made the prediction in his book titled, ‘The Coming Anarchy’.
The Founder of Centre for Value in Leadership (CVL) stated this in an interview published by The Punch on Sunday while describing insecurity in the land as “unfortunate” and “a shame”.
The erudite scholar noted that the situation should not come as a surprise because it was forseen.
Utomi said, “Anybody who studies the history of societies will be able to forecast certain things. For me, the signal, pointing to where we are today, started quite some time ago.
“If you do a content analysis of my writings over the last 25 years, you will find very frequent references to phrases like ‘The Road to Somalia’ and ‘The Coming Anarchy.’ This is because there are a number of trends that you watch and you see where they will lead to.
“‘The Coming Anarchy’ is from a book written by an American, Robert Kaplan, about 21 years ago, in which he looked at trends in West Africa and where we would be going.
“He identified what he termed ‘cleavages’ on the ethnic, economic and religious spheres and how these will converge in a way that will result in, potentially, a descent into anarchy in different countries in the developing countries.
“He specifically focused on West Africa and mentioned to Jos, Nigeria as a potential epicentre for that disintegration.
“Well, after I listened to Kaplan being interviewed on CNN, I was thrilled; so, I quickly ordered copies of the book and distributed it to the ruling elites at the time.”
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Utomi blamed the current situation on misgovernance by the ruling elite.
He said he engaged in various intervention programmes, including founding Nigerians United to Resist Anarchy, a civil society group, to warn leaders of the impending disaster.
“Our objective was to send information to people within public authorities to look at these trends and to act in ways that can create better employment opportunities for people so that we won’t have an army of unemployed young people who will be easy recruits for nihilists and people who have a society-hidden agenda.
“I suggested things like religious tolerance. After a while, I got a little tired of singing these things, because it was clear that we had a political class that was driven by self-love and could not quite understand the consequences of not developing society.”