Patriotic Nigerians no longer need to think of Nigeria as having a future. They should instead contemplate Nigeria only in ways that lead them to lose themselves from what does not have a future. The country with a so-called future has abandoned them, and holding on to any appearance of a future is mere pretence.

The period for contemplating Nigeria as a nation with a future is gone. Right now, the time is short. In fact, time has contracted itself to the point there is a short runway to the dissolution of our nation as we know it. So let those who have hope act as not having hope; those rejoicing as not rejoicing; those patriotic as not patriotic. For the passing away of the figure of our nation is nigh. The new patriotism is the revocation of all patriotism, the renouncement of all commitments to Nigeria. This is the only acceptable form of patriotism. It is what is necessary to live into the time that remains between Nigeria as it is presently and the Nigeria-to-come. We have to kill the idea of Nigeria as we know it for the Nigeria-to-come to emerge.

This is not the death of a nation in the common sense but an abandonment of a certain subjective path of disaster we the citizens have followed for too long. We have to say “no” to our divided self (one part of us wants development, but another part is also an instrument of the nation’s destruction) and take up that part of us that must maintain itself in the precarious becoming of the Nigeria-to-come. We have to embrace the part of us that can invent life for a new nation on the horizon. This Nigeria-to-come cannot be inferred from the death of the old Nigeria. Our work consists in inventing a new life for our being together. For instance, the resurrection of Jesus Christ cannot be inferred from the logic of death; the dead do not rise again. Jesus’s resurrection came from a power exceedingly beyond death; it came from a source, from life which is beyond life and death.

Death of Nigeria is required for the Nigeria-to-come to happen, but it is not reducible to the destruction of Nigeria itself. The Nigeria-to-come is neither an overcoming nor a sublation of the present Nigeria. The Nigeria-to-come is not a negation of the country, but an extraction, subtraction from it. We have to think of the Nigeria-to-come as coming after the death of Nigeria, but it is not founded through its negation. Nigeria-to-come cannot be merely conceived as the antithesis of a thesis enacted for us by the British colonial system. The Nigeria-to-come is our subtraction of ourselves from the path of death and replanting ourselves on the site of subjective commitment to what is not yet visible but must be realised through our lifelong fidelity to its cause.

This new Nigeria-to-come is not a site where we would get past all our ethnic, religious, and class differences to reach a point of sameness or construct universality beyond our divisions. The universal Nigerian or Nigeria cannot be found in the depths of any of us or our ethnic group. What the Nigeria-to-come demands is for each of us to be separated from ourselves, engender tension with ourselves, and recognise the impossibility of any of us coinciding with ourselves. This means we have to realise that the other, the other Nigerian, the other ethnic group is already within us. There is no running away from them.

Each of us needs to realise that we already have within us the others. Every human existence is always a coexistence; the singular is always already a plural. Neither citizens nor the nation will be above cuts and divisions. No citizen is the concrete universal. All that is required of him or her is to act justly, love Nigeria, and work for the flourishing of all Nigerians. You, my friend, you must extract, subtract yourself from yourself. You must subtract yourself from the path of death, from the site of destroying yourself and your nation. There is no negation or opposite of you out there that you can step into; you just have to extract yourself from yourself. It is from here you must begin; it is from our faith in ourselves and in the Nigeria-to-come that we begin as subjects determined to “kill” Nigeria and “resurrect” the new nation from its ashes. Within ourselves is the “resurrection” of the great nation we dream of and the subjects that will transform our nation.

The commitment to the Nigeria-to-come makes you a subject of transformation. You are a subject when you follow the new way of life for the Nigeria-to-come; when you proclaim Nigeria-to-come and remain faithful to it. This is beyond proclaiming your freedom to act in a democratic society. It is about being faithful to a new chain of action from which new subjects can emerge rather than freely acting within a chain of actions without changing the context or situation that sustains the chain. The new Nigerian subjects show fidelity to the Nigeria-to-come which is not only a disruption of Nigeria, but the death of Nigeria and self. Lose yourself (citizenship) from what does not have a future and “resurrect” as a subject of the glorious Nigeria-to-come.

My fellow citizens, the hour has come for a new Nigeria to emerge, for a new nation to be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless Nigeria falls to the ground and dies, it remains a corrupt and economically and technologically backward country. But if it dies, it produces many seeds, ideas, technologies, and peoples. Your participation is urgently needed for casting the vision of the Nigeria-to-come and birthing it. The arrival of the Nigeria-to-come and the hour of your participation in the struggle for it are so close that if you delay you risk the arrival occurring before you arise. Arise and shine, your hour has come. The dream of the Nigeria-to-come has its basis and energy in those of us who are committed to its realisation. Your individual fidelity (including others like you) to the Nigeria-to-come constitutes the Nigeria-to-come.

Nigeria and the Nigeria-to-come are not operating at two different times. The Nigeria-to-come is a split that separates Nigeria from itself. This cut divides the citizens from themselves, separating people into those who have arisen and those who have not arisen to embrace the Nigeria-to-come. The split ultimately introduces a new Nigeria and new Nigerians and dislocates them into the Nigeria-to-come. While in this article I have focused on the transformation (rebirth) of the subject as the power through which the Nigeria-to-come will be constituted and reconstituted, I am not ignorant of the importance of structures and institutions in its creation.