2015 Tutu Fellow, Dr Uzo Iweala, has written a piece for Foreign Affairs magazine titled Nigeria's Second Independence - Why the Giant of Africa Needs to Start Over. The piece is published in the July/August 2022 edition. Uzo is the Chief Executive Officer of The Africa Center, a non-profit based in New York.
In the piece, Uzo begins by saying that from the moment of it's independence in 1960, observers have questioned the country's viability as a multiethnic, multireligious state. When the devastating Nigerian civil war broke out in 1967, that skepticism appeared warranted. Since then, he says, the country's leadership has sought to preserve the unified state - even by force. But what the country needs more than ever, is to reimagine its structures of power and governance.