Discussion on National Identity and Unity

Look at Nigeria.

Forty-five million people.

They don't enjoy our standard of living.

Vast natural resources,

about twenty persons per square mile.

Why?

I've asked myself this often, why?

Because

I must know the reason, otherwise I cannot fulfill my simple

elementary function as a minister of the Singapore

government.

And I tell you there are many reasons.

First, the will to be a nation.

If a group of human beings do not want to together constitute a nation,

nothing can make them other than superior force.

That's what the Dutch and the British did with their empires,

and the French.

Whether you like the other chap or not, I say that you together constitute

my colony, and you are all British subjects

or French citizens or

Dutch protected persons, and so on.

Now, each one of them

have taken over,

and a heterogeneous lot have taken over.

And that

variegated group must agree that they want to be a people