Celebrating 20 years without the Berlin Wall

Last week the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the re-unification of the two Germanys into what is now a prosperous single Germany. It was a spectacle watching hundreds of thousands of huge dominoes fall one atop the other for miles and miles. For me, the significance of the celebration is not that the huge Berlin Wall was torn down twenty years ago but that there are several more Berlin Walls waiting to be removed.

The first of such walls waiting to be removed is the massive, albeit invisible, wall separating the two Koreas. For more than half a century, the two Koreas have lived side by side with family members marooned on either side. If the Berlin Wall was offensive, the Korean Wall is oppressive! Family members on either of the two Koreas cannot as much as communicate with each other, even though modern communication facilities have made communication a cinch! Somebody, somewhere should tell the authorities of North and South Korea that what they are doing is not fair!

Another Wall waiting to come down is the huge Wall dividing the Niger Delta region from the rest of Nigeria! If the Berlin Wall created an economic and social disparity between the East and West Germany, the Wall separating the Niger Delta from the rest of project Nigeria has effectively kept people in this area in the stone age! There is no part of Nigeria where you cannot drive your car except the Niger Delta. There is nowhere in Nigeria where the people use the same water for drinking, washing and everything else except in the Niger Delta region. There is no other place on earth where people still live in stilt houses except in the Niger Delta region. The Niger Delta is the only place on earth where developmental indices are so dismal that they are not included in the national statistics lest we will never meet the MDG’s even if we are given another one hundred years! This is a classical case of how not to treat the goose that lays the golden eggs!

The International Community who contributed immensely towards the erection of this invisible wall separating a set of people from their kith and kin in the hinterland should do something to tear down this wall. President Barack Obama, are you listening? Prime Minister Gordon Brown are you awake? Please tear down this wall!

Tata, everybody

Napoleon