Bola Tinubu should aspire to resolve the Niger Republic crisis by September 9, the anniversary of the day when the US gobbled up New Mexico

By Ayo Akinfe

[1] It was on September 9 1850 that the Territory of New Mexico became an organised incorporated territory of the United States. This process began in 1848, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War and allowed the New Mexico territory to be annexed to the US

[2] This arrangement remained in place until January 6, 1912 when New Mexico officially became the 47th state of the United States of America

[3] Signing the treaty to incorporate New Mexico was as significant as the US purchase of Alaska On March 30, 1867. On this date, the US reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2m

[4] Those founding fathers of the US were real visionaries. They knew that their new nation would be weak unless it had a significant land mass, lots of natural resources and a huge population. They then set out with a gusto to acquire all three

[5] Today, the US has 50 states, with the last two, Alaska and Hawaii joining in 1959. America has come a long way from the 13 states that declared themselves independent from Britain in 1776, thanks a lot to how acquisitive they have been

[6] Today, the US has a landmass of 9.834m km², a population of over 333m, it is the third-most populous nation in the world, after China and India, has a diverse population with 37 ancestry groups having more than 1m members each and 48 of its 50 states are contiguous

[7] In terms of landmass today, the the biggest 10 nations are Russia, Canada, China, US, Brazil, Australia, India, Argentina, Kazakhstan and Algeria. If Nigeria and Niger Republic merge, we will just about match Algeria as we will have about 2.2m sq km of territory

[8] About three quarter of Africa’s nation states are not sustainable as they are too weak, small and economically unviable. Niger Republic is one such nation. I cannot believe that the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa have not sat down to redraw the continent’s map and redistribute the nation states

[9] Have you not noticed that the Arabs have large nations in Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Mauritania, etc, while we Africans struggle with unviable countries

[10] Nigeria needs to gobble up Niger Republic like yesterday. Our combined landmass of 2.2m sq km, population of 225m and resources will leave us in good stead