Consequently such nations get locked in endless conflict, most often becoming failed states and most often ending up in disintegration.
The latter, is the same no win route Buhari and the Nigerian army has chosen to travel.
By choosing to so callously deny its own citizens the most fundamental right to peaceful protests and the inalienable right to life, the Nigerian state has constituted itself into a colonial state and in its worst form an Apartheid state.
Colonialism and Apartheid is the only fitting description for a regime that so callously kills its own citizens for espousing different opinions.
When in June 1976; the South African Apartheid regime unleashed its police on protesters killing many in Soweto; a shocked and outraged world condemned it.
Incidentally Nigeria was one of the countries that voiced its criticism of the Soweto massacres.
The Soweto brutality went on to become famous, emerging as one of the most important galvanisers of the global anti-Apartheid movement.
Similarly the 1929 Aba women’s riot and the 1949 massacre of 21 coal miners in Enugu by the British colonial authorities was condemned by all.
Both incidents represent the most notable casualties of the anti-colonial struggle and like the Soweto crisis helped to galvanise the anti-colonial movement.
But today; the Nigerian army in a supposed free state can kill hundreds of peaceful IPOB protesters in cold blood, kill hundreds of peaceful Shiites in cold blood, hold Nnamdi Kanu, El Zakzaky and other peaceful agitators in detention against court orders and practically act as it deems fit.
Of what purpose did independence from British colonialists serve if the supposed Free State has turned out to be more repressive and murderous than the colonial authorities we sought freedom from?
The sadistic killing spree of the Nigerian state under Buhari has become worse than a colonial and Apartheid state put together.
It is a tragedy of limitless proportions that in the 21st century and in a supposed post-colonial state, Nigeria has a leader and an army that relishes the wanton killing of its own citizens.
This is a no win route that will lead nowhere other than to the sure and further balkanization of the nation.
Lawrence Nwobu; Email: lawrencenwobu@yahoo.com