If this election fails should Nigeria finally split?

Nigeria is the most populated Black nation on earth with an estimated 150 million plus people inhabiting it. A country just over 50 years since it's independence from her colonial masters, the United Kingdom, is the union of over 250 ethnic groups speaking over 500 languages between them. Nigeria has an almost 50/50 division in religious population between the Muslims and Christians and has undergone years of distrust and in fighting for almost as long as she has been independent.

With at least 5 successful military coups between the 1960s and 1990s and as many or even more botched attempted coups, Nigeria has never really seen political stability up until 1999 when she begun practicing what some might call 'American style' democracy. That democracy headed by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military dictator himself (he won two tenures as president and exhausted his eligibility as stated in the constitution), has held on against all odds and alleged attempts to topple it so far.

Past elections held have been rife with allegations of electoral fraud but with a reputation for corruption, it has never been fully investigated or prosecuted up until recent years (a lot of elections have been annulled or overturned on the gubernatorial and lesser levels in recent times by the Nigerian courts).

The question at hand is "Will the April 2011 elections shape or break Nigeria?"

In the oil rich south of the country, militancy has evolved to terrorism with kidnappings, vandalization, bombings, assassinations and other forms of intimidation being perpetrated by these militants who initially were welcomed by the people for their struggle over the unequal distribution of the oil wealth which is primarily drilled from the south. And more recently the bombings in the capital city, Abuja, that took lives and injured many have made them enemies of the state and most of the people.

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In the north, a sect of extremist Islamist have resolved to similar tactics including a bombing in one of the country's military cantonments to discourage the introduction of what they call "Westernization" of their religion and culture.

Jos, a once vast tourist city has become ground zero of continuous religious and ethnic genocide between the ethnic inhabitants and the naturalized inhabitants and as it so happens, one sect is Christian and the other Muslim.

Nigeria is not new to religious and ethnic divide. This way of life has made reprisals several times in it's 5 decades as a country and it peaked during the 'Biafra war' (the country's only civil war) in the late 1960s.

A lot of it's indigenes are calling for the country to split between the mostly Muslim north and mostly Christian south and they blame the British, particularly Lord Frederick Lugard for amalgamating the country in 1914 and only see a peaceful country if it were two states. For others, this April's elections will be the final straw and litmus test of whether the country can stand as a united entity.

With Sudan's electoral mandate that suggests that the people have overwhelmingly decided to split to end the war and killings, many Nigerians who are currently living at home and abroad believe that that is the way that Africa's most populated nation should go.

Do you think that Nigeria should follow the path that Sudan has set?
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Related Articles: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12201063
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/world/africa/22sudan.html?_r=1
http://www.thisdayonline.com/
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/2011-kudos-knocks-for-inec-timetable/79079/
http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2011/jan/30/national-30-01-2011-001.htm
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36957:15-feared-dead-in-fresh-jos-crisis&catid=1:national&Itemid=559