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Many Nigerians believe that Nigeria at 59 is not worth celebrating considering the numerous man-made socio-economic challenges facing the country. The general insecurity in the land, the worsening unemployment figures as well as Nigeria being the poverty capital of the world are enough reasons why the 2019 independence anniversary ought to have been postponed because there is really nothing to celebrate about Naija at this point in time.
I do not want to bore the readers with tales of woes of Nigerians living in foreign countries simply because the conditions at home are suffocating. There are many Nigerians who will choose to die in the Sahara Desert or the Mediterranean Sea than to live in Nigeria. Many Nigerians have died by voluntarily jumping into the Lagos lagoon via the Third Mainland Bridge while some terminated their lives by drinking poisonous substances. Suicide has become an option for some Nigerians because of the excruciating economic hardships.
At 59, our founding fathers, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and a host of others, will be turning in their graves agonizing over the fate that has befallen the nation they founded with great promise to Nigerians, Africa and the entire black race. The Nigeria we have today is not the dream country envisaged by our founding fathers. Even the imperialist Lord Frederick Lugard will be weeping in his grave and full of regrets of what has become of Nigeria since the historic amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914.
His beautiful mistress, Flora Shaw, who named the country Nigeria will be full of anger in her grave, too. Our first national anthem written by a British expatriate, Lillian Jean Williams, noted that “Though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand.” It is unfortunate that we did not listen to that vital part of our jettisoned national anthem which underscored our diversity and the need to be one. The inability of the 250 or 400 ethnic groups that formed Nigeria to unite as one since independence is the cause of our problem.
Apart from ethnic diversity, we have to grapple with religious differences caused by the two imported religions from the Middle East, Christianity and Islam. The indigenous African religion does not give us much problem as the imported ones. While some Nigerians see the Lugardian unification effort as a great mistake, some others see it as a blessing and an act of God. Regardless of how Nigerians see it, the fact is that the nation as constituted today is not working the way it ought to have worked.
We should not blame Lord Lugard for our fate. We can only blame ourselves for our inability to forge a working country out of what the colonial masters left behind. We are not the only people colonized in history. India came out of colonialism stronger. We can say so of Ghana, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Botswana, Rwanda and many others. We have tried democratic and military rule and yet back to democratic rule. Nigerians do not actually know the difference between the Khaki and Agbada rulers.
It does not really matter which political party is in power or not. After all, there is indeed no clear difference between the two dominant political parties in the country, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). They can be better described as two sides of the same coin. The two of them have contributed one way or the other to what Nigeria is today. They are partners in the unfolding Nigerian tragedy. The two must therefore share the blame for the inability of the nation to develop like others it started this journey to nationhood 59 years ago.
Over a hundred years after, the amalgamated entities are yet to be truly united. They still see themselves as North and South of Nigeria instead of Nigerians. This year’s independence anniversary calls for a sober reflection on our checkered journey to nationhood. We have had military coups and a fratricidal civil war, whose scars are still threatening the corporate existence of the country. We are now fighting the insurgents, bandits, kidnappers, thieves and other enemies of the state.
The mineral resources God gave us have contributed to our laziness and the utter neglect of agriculture, the mainstay of the economy during the first republic. Our neglect of agriculture because of the easy money from crude oil is why corruption is walking on fours in Nigeria. That is why our politics has been reduced to a “do or die” affair and the survival of the political fittest. I do not blame those who regard our crude oil as a curse and no longer a blessing.
Our 59th independence anniversary is indeed the right time to interrogate why the country is the way it is. We should begin to ask urgent critical questions why Nigeria has refused to be great and united despite having huge human and material resources given by nature at no cost. We should ask questions why our successive leaders have failed to lift the country from being in third world category to the first. This is no rocket science. It is doable. Singapore under its inimitable leader, Lee Kuan Yew, did exactly that.
The issue of leadership failure in Nigeria has been adequately addressed by the foremost African novelist, Chinua Achebe. There is no need repeating it in this treatise. It is sad that at 59, we are still thinking of tribe, ethnic nationalities, religion, political parties, social clubs and what have you instead of thinking the Nigerian enterprise and how to make it work optimally for all of us. Ironically, every ethnic group in Nigeria is feeling that Nigeria is not treating it well.
Marginalization of ethnic groups by those in power is real. It manifests in different forms such as appointment of security chiefs, political appointments, recruitment into the civil service, Customs, Prisons, Immigration, Armed Forces and the Police, admission into unity schools and Federal universities, polytechnics and colleges of education and others that space cannot allow me to list. The appointment of university vice chancellors has been ethnicized as well as the recruitment of lecturers into federal universities.
Our independence will be incomplete if we cannot govern and feed ourselves well; if Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world; if we are at the bottom rung of all indices of development. Is there no solution? The answer is in the affirmative. We shall go back to the drawing board. We shall begin to use what worked better for us in the past to envision the desired future. The current political and economic structures of Nigeria are anti-progress. They are suffocating and cannot work in a 21st century world. They cannot work in an internet age.
Nigeria must embrace restructuring now. This entails a weak centre and strong regions. The regions may be the six geo-political zones or whatever Nigerians decided. The regions will control their economic resources and pay tax to the federal government. The regions will control their states and local governments. More powers must devolve to the regions and each region must develop at its pace as we had in the first republic. The federal government should be in charge of the armed forces, foreign policy and related matters.
Fortunately for all of us, the 2014 national confab deliberations and recommendations are far-reaching to resolve our national problems if implemented. This is where the National Assembly should pay urgent attention and work on them. There is need to stop the emphasis on state of origin and even local government in our recruitment process.
The recruitment process of our political office holders must be reviewed and improved upon. If we really want to build a united and self-sustaining nation, all the ethnic nationalities must yield themselves to the nation. They should first see themselves as Nigerians and nothing more.
