FOR Nigeria to tread the path of greatness and maintain its leadership role in Africa, its citizens and leaders must rise above ethnic and religious cleavages now threatening its cohesion, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said yesterday.
Museveni who spoke in Abuja said the ethnic and religious crises ravaging the continent would retard its development in the new millennium.
Besides the resort to such atavistic tendencies instead of development of trade and human resources would only keep Africa away from the path of prosperity, he noted.
Making a case for the African Union (AU) which replaced the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the Ugandan leader stated that the present structure of 53 countries in the continent made them individually weak to compete and survive in a world that is increasingly becoming competitive.
Nigeria, Museveni said, being the most populatous and endowed black nation in the world, should not squander its manifest destiny of greatness and leadership of the race because of "extraneous and irrelevant considerations" of tribe, religion and clan by some of its citizens.
He contended that the development of the continent's human resources and not just the abundance of petroleum and other natural resources, was the only guarantee of a prosperous Africa.
Museveni, who enunciated his standpoint as guest lecturer at the inaugural lecture of National War College, Abuja Course 10 with the title, "Regional Integration," stressed that development of intra-African trade rather than aid from Western countries holds the key to its growth.
His words "Our great need is to unite in order to trade, to give viable markets to our potential industrial capacity. The great need is to unite in order to defend our sovereignty. Our need is unity, not to quarrel as to whether somebody prefers pork or yam, whether one prays five times a day or once a day or does not pray at all. As far as religion is concerned, we shall know who is right and who is wrong on the judgment day. We can, in the meantime, prepare for our future in heaven aware that since we do not have a uniform vision about the message of God, we should not interfere with others at all in this connection.
"While I talk of African unity, I need to remind you of what Jesus said, 'man shall not live by bread alone.' Man has got culture and spirituality. We should, therefore, manage our unity in such a way that we do not practise ethnocide. We should not endanger the identities of the constituent parts of the respective African units. The diversities within unity are a tremendous source of strength and potential. In Uganda, we never allow religion to interfere with state matters while the religions are free to evangelise for adherents. We also practise a three-language policy. We cannot forcefully kill the identities of our various peoples because some of them are uniquely rich", he emphasised.
The president cautioned against Africa's over-dependence on natural resources instead of developing human resources.
He went on: "In a country like Nigeria, I sometimes hear about arguments relating to the areas that are currently producing petroleum. A thinking exists that oil-producing areas are being exploited by the non-producing areas. There could be need for facilitating the oil producing areas more, including protecting the environment.
"However, the long-term wealth of Nigeria or any other country is more in its people than in most natural resources including oil. It is the more than 120 million Nigerians. The only natural resources that are next to human resources (people) of a country, in importance, are fresh water and arable land. Otherwise, the people are the greatest natural resource. The more you have, provided they are empowered, the better. The failure to grasp this creates unnecessary problems.
"Japan and South Korea are countries without petroleum or minerals of any type. Even their agriculture is quite modest. They, however, have empowered (educated) populations and fresh water. If you have natural resources good. If you don't good. You can still be prosperous without them. The more you have the people, provided they are empowered, the better. Agriculture is the everlasting petroleum. It will never finish."
Africa is greatly marginalised in world output and trade of agriculture, tourism, automobiles and services, he noted advocating its amalgamation into one giant country (Union) or at least six viable states.
Museveni added: "A union of African states would obviously, be a super-power with 750 million people, given our vast natural resource provided we address the problem of parochialism and arrogance exhibited by some groups. The market is therefore the key to a modern way of life based on factories rather than based on looking after goods. The one who does not have the key of an adequate market has no key for development.
The wider the unity, the more bargaining power one has in trade and diplomatic issues."
Museveni stated that the major problem that aided colonialism was lack of organisation.
He added: "They manipulated the local tribes and clans to fight one another. They used the political fragmentation of Africa to conquer Africa. Africans must admit they had internal weaknesses; that's why they were conquered. It is not a good quality to trumpet that you were conquered. The kings were supposed to protect the sovereignty of Africa. They didn't. The conquering colonialists found the kingdoms unviable and merged into the African states we have now. So, today, we have to organise, be in unity to survive as a free people. We have to organise at supra-tribal level. For reasons of viability, we need the African Union or seven African States. That is the challenge we have."
Present at the lecture were Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, ministers, National Assembly members, Service Chiefs, members of the diplomatic corps and senior military officers.