Britain colonized the area known as Nigeria and united the three regions of North, West, and East in 1914, a process referred to as amalgamation.  Colonization introduced Christianity, formal education, and, of course, Western civilization.

Civilization triggered agitation for independence on the basis of the new composition and not as the Old African kingdoms.

This specific strategy engineered disharmony, disunity, and distrust among African states from which they never recovered, even more than sixty years after independence.

The British are particularly notorious in this regard. Not only have they planted disharmony, distrust, and disunity, but they fostered it by deliberately handing over power to the Northerners through whom they feel they can perpetuate their agenda.

Nobody wants to relinquish power, not the British, they feed on the proceeds and resources of the colonies and use the wealth of the colonies to develop their economies, nor the northerners, their elites use the power to oppress the common people and the people of the Southern regions.

So the outcome of these was agitations which led to military rulers, coup d'état and counter coup, and then civil war.

After many years of military rules dominated by Northerners and their protégés, the military decided to step down and cede power to civilians but the platform was always skewed to either bring to power the northerners or their southern cronies until Tinubu became president and he began to show that he was nobody's lackey and began to bring people from every part of Nigeria into government, to the serious distaste of Northerners particularly their elites who had hietheto grew up to believe that power in Nigeria belongs to the northerners only.

There were offices which are their exclusive rights. Tinubu, being a Southerner, brought many Southerners to power and gave them many appointments, no Southerners had ever had.

They began to occupy positions that had been for northerners, but then what do you use power for but to empower your people, whom you can depend on for their loyalty. 

Apart from being polarized along regional and religious lines, they are also divided along ethnic and social lines.  And their vision is sharply divided, embodied in confusion.  While some want to Islamize Nigeria, others want to take over power by force. Some want to separate from the nation by force. So there is a lot of confusion.

But there are a few who still believe the nation can be great. And it seems one of them is Bola Ahmed Tinubu.