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We celebrated our 66th independence anniversary last week with hope and disillusionment. To so many Nigerians, it was more of disillusionment than hope. I say so because hope is fading fast in a country that got its independence from the British colonial masters on October 1, 1960, with great hope of being a black power and an inspiration to the black world. This country coupled together by white men came into existence with great potential. It had material and human resources and enough land mass to be great not only in Africa but in the entire world.
However, a few years after independence, what some analysts call flag independence, things started falling apart in our own dear country. The politicians failed us; the military that intervened also failed us. We fought a civil war for almost three years. After the war, we started afresh after the declaration of “no victor, no vanquished,” all in the spirit of brotherhood and oneness.
There was oil boom, which became oil curse because it made us lazy and indolent. It made us neglect our agriculture, factories and enterprise. It came with corruption and preference for anything foreign. It made us prodigal sons and daughters of our motherland or fatherland.
Nature was kind to us and gave us good weather and every other thing we need in excess. We had plenty cash and food crops. We had plenty rivers with fishes and other aquatic produce. We had exotic fruits and everything nature could bestow us with. Having acquired new tastes led to our being greedy, jealous and wicked.
The corruption level is no longer 10 percent of the 1960s. It has exceeded that threshold by far. Corruption has become a native of Nigeria. It walks on all fours with great swagger. No government has been able to tame corruption in Nigeria because all are corrupt. The beautiful ones are not yet born in our political firmament as portrayed in Ayi Kwei Armah’s novel, “The Beautyful ones are not yet born.” Armah’s novel was a lampoon on corruption in Ghana, a few years after independence.
We have made modest achievements in our 66 years as an independent nation. We have had civilian and military administrations. Both of them are good and bad in varying degrees. None is good and none is better. The two are like the two knives in old woman’s house, the one with head is not sharp and the one that is sharp is without head. This is our dilemma as an independent country. We have changed our national anthem twice or more, a road that leads to nowhere.
What does independence mean to a man without food to eat and water to drink? Independence should mean something beyond the green-white-green flag. It should go beyond the singing of the national anthem and the recitation of the national pledge. Doing this ritual can never instill patriotism in disillusioned citizenry. Our politicians have again failed us since the return of democracy in 1999.
Conducting election in Nigeria has become a ritual meant to fulfill all righteousness. It has become a costly and wasteful exercise. It has lost meaning too. The ballots no longer determine the winner of election in the country, the courts do. This is an aberration. Local government elections are just mere coronation exercise for selected candidates of any government in power in that state. Such elections do not inspire hope.
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Local government election is dead. Local government is also dead. The national election will soon die if the ballots fail to determine the winner of our national elections. The judiciary should not be allowed to determine the outcome of our elections. Corruption in the judiciary is also another problem waiting to be tackled.
Political party’s primary election has been bastardized. All the candidates are selected even before the primary election. All the political parties are guilty of this charge. The political parties have lost internal democracy. Party owners decide who gets what and how. This is not right.
Our governance is fast deteriorating. From 1999 till now, everything in governance has been falling down drastically. Our value system is fast eroding. The quest for money and quick wealth by any means possible is in vogue. Nobody asks about the source of wealth of children and wards these days. Governance is dying at the federal level. It is in coma in the state and local government levels, where governors have become emperors.
They control the state and local governments’ resources. This can explain the poor development at these levels of government. However, it is worst at the local governments, where there are no elected government officials. The increase of insecurity at grassroots level can be traced to the death of local government administrations. Until we go back to having real elected officials at the local government level, the general insecurity at that level will continue to increase.
The wasting of time over creation of state police is needless. We have already a semblance of state police in every state. It has even reached local government level in some states. What we need now is the actual inauguration of state police all over the country. Let it be done fast. We have wasted too much time over this.
It is sad that our transportation system is in total chaos. Travelling by air is as difficult as travelling by road. At 66, we deserve better in this department. Everything about Nigeria is very problematic. We can find this in housing, health, education, employment and appointment of ministers and aides. Nepotism has defined our federal appointments since Muhammadu Buhari. However, President Bola Tinubu has overtaken Buhari in this regard. It is never supposed to be so. There is need for a change in this area of our national life.
Our fragile unity has deepened the more. It is very difficult to define a Nigerian. We define ourselves from our ethnic and religious prisms. At 66, we should think, eat and believe our Nigerianness and stop promoting our ethnic and religious cleavages. We must fine-tune our constitution and define who is a Nigerian citizen.
We have not defined it enough like Americans or other countries we tend to copy and model our national existence most times. We have not even defined our democracy and its modus operandi. We have not also defined our governance model. This winner-takes-all model will kill our democracy sooner than later. As we celebrate our 66th independence anniversary, let’s ponder on these germane issues.
