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Nigerians will in a few days time celebrate our 65 years of being together as a nation, where tribes and tongues differ, but in great brotherhood we stand or we shall stand. Like some other nations in Africa and elsewhere forged together by foreign powers, the colonialists, who came on a ‘civilizing mission’ or ‘exploitative mission,’ whichever is the case, Nigeria has had its ups and downs, more downs than ups. We have passed through many political crises, coups and counter coups plus a gruesome 30-month civil war, otherwise known as the Nigeria/Biafra war.
We have experimented with parliamentary system of government under the three and later four regions, which we naturally borrowed from our colonial overlords, Britain. We have also experimented with the bogus American presidential system of government, which we coveted from the United States more because of its sound than substance or both. Our coming together was by love and force or force and love considering our linguistic, religious and cultural differences. Some people have described our nationhood as artificial creation.
Almost every nation is an artificial creation and an imagined community of people. Some others describe our oneness as the accident of 1914, alluding to the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates by Lord Lugard, the British colonial administrator or messenger. Some Nigerians, including some of our founding fathers, believe more in our tribes, clans, tribes than the new nation. This has been our common tragedy. Our tribal and clannish cocoons have not enabled us to really forge a truly united nation. Some even postulate that our unity is seemingly cemented by crude oil from the Niger Delta region. And they predict that once the crude oil is finished, the unity will fizzle out. Whether this will happen or not, only time will tell.
Some of us have refused to cling together like the two lovers described in ‘The mesh’ by Ghanaian poet, Kwesi Brew. “We have come to the cross-roads/And I must either leave or come with you. I lingered over the choice/But in the darkness of my doubts/You lifted the lamp of love/And I saw in your face/The road that I shall take.” In our fragile journey to nationhood, we have paid lip service and politicized our unity. Our unity is cosmetic and artificial. Like the lovers in Brew’s poem, we are at the crossroads. We must decide what to do with the nation now. Time is indeed running out. The world is not waiting for us to catch up. We must hit the ground running and build this nation or we forget it and go our separate ways. These are options.
This can explain our penchant for the words; tribe, state of origin, local government of origin, religion and the signature of our traditional ruler before a Nigerian can get a federal job, contract or get enlisted into the police and military service. That is why our nation-building is taking us too much time to accomplish. At 65, we are still struggling to build a nation after our image and likeness. At 65, we are still engrossed with debates over state police, reserving seats for women in parliament, fiscal federalism, resource control and devolution of powers from the ubiquitous long exclusive list to the federating units.
At 65, we have experimented with two national anthems with great similarities and minor differences, yet we are still more tribalized and religionized. At 65, we must either decide to be a nation or not. We must stop playing the ostrich. We should stop pretending that all is well with our style of politics and the structure of Nigeria with unbalanced 36 states and 774 local government areas. The South-East zone is the major victim of our present structure and no government has deemed it right and necessary to correct the structural imbalance and all of us are laughing that all is well with our soul. The truth is that all is not well with our land. This fact must be boldly underlined.
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At 65, we are still struggling to feed ourselves. Food insecurity is our lot. Hunger is staring us in the face. Poverty is our lot. We have over 133 million people who are multi-dimensionally poor. They live below $1US dollar per day. Our most existential challenge now is insecurity. No zone is free from it. It is fueled by marginalization, social inequality, poverty and unequal distribution of wealth. Our insecurity cannot be defeated with the force of arms alone or what has been described as kinetic measures. It has even gone beyond that. Some of our governors now dialogue with bandits who brazenly attend such meetings armed to the teeth.
We must begin to solve our existential problems the right way and with the right answers. We cannot become a strong virile nation with our present unitary 36 state structure. Only a balanced federal structure can enable the government overcome our present challenges. The discovery of crude oil has been our major developmental curse. Oil has not translated to the much-expected development and peace. Ours has brought war, strife, corruption and unending struggle for the control of the national resources. We must listen to Birago Diop in ‘Vanity’: “If we tell, gently, gently/All that we shall one day have to tell,/ Who then will hear our voices without laughter/Sad complaining voices of beggars/Who indeed will hear them without laughter?”
Nigeria at independence was the hope of Black race. Now it is the butt of jokes in Africa and across the world. In the ‘Vultures’, David Diop reminds us of our colonial experience. “In those days/When civilization kicked us in the face/When holy water slapped our cringing brows/The vultures built in the shadows of their talons/The bloodstained monument of tutelage/There was painful laughter on the metallic hell of the roads/And the monotonous rhythm of the paternoster/Drowned the howling of the plantations/O the bitter memories of extorted kisses/Of promises broken at the point of a gun/Of foreigners who did not seem human/You who knew all the books but knew not love/Nor our hands which fertilise the womb of the earth.”
It appears David Diop is speaking directly to our political leaders known for ‘extorted kisses and broken promises.’ We have litany of broken political promises all over the country. Our leaders behave more like colonial masters. In fact, the colonial masters are even better than some of them. We have dictators all over the place parading as democrats, especially at state level. We must change our attitude to governance.
Let me end this independence anniversary epistle with J.P Clark’s ‘Streamside Exchange.’ “Child: River bird, river bird,/Sitting all day long/On hook over grass,/ Sing to me a song/ of all that pass/And say,/ Will mother come back today? Bird: You cannot know/And should not bother;/Tide and market come and go/And so shall your mother.” In our own case we must know where we are going before it is too late.
