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Since the death of the revered British monarch Queen Elizabeth II 15 days ago, all sorts of opinions have been dished out on the social space, with the majority eulogising her 70-year reign, and others condemning same.
From the Biafran War of the late 1960s to our perennial record of under-achievement as a nation, these critics are quick to rest almost the entire blame on the doorsteps of the late Queen.
Aside from being a Nigerian, I see myself as deserving of making some comments on this issue because, even though I have always been a Muslim, I was exposed to Christianity, a religion introduced to Nigeria by the Queen or her subjects, the colonial masters.
I was six years on planet earth when my father, of blessed memory, enrolled me in a boarding primary school belonging to Christian missionaries. I left that school at age 11 and can vividly remember that no one, from the teachers, the owners or anyone else taught us to hate fellow human beings just because we belong to a different religion or tribe, as Nigerians do with an uncanny passion today.
At that young age, we were reasonably versed in the Holy Bible, and I recall that the keywords that have till today remained as constant as the Northern Star in that great book, same as in the Holy Qur’an, are compassion, love and forgiveness. More than 60 years since the late Queen left us alone by granting our country independence, these virtues have practically disappeared from our social lexicon and have been replaced with wickedness, hatred and vindictiveness that we recklessly harbour for one another.
Boko Haram started almost 50 years since our independence as a nation, and before long the group that started with mostly Kanuris as leaders started killing fellow Muslim Kanuris and in no time succeeded in turning Borno State, their state of origin, upside down.
If you visit prisons all over the world, chances are you will find that, apart from the natives of that country, the next country that has more inmates is Nigeria, with its citizens imprisoned for offences ranging from high wire fraud, dealing in hard drugs, murder and all sorts of sundry crimes.
Will you be blamed as a parent for the actions or inactions of your 60-year-old child whose faculty of reasoning has fully developed years earlier? Was it the Queen who taught us these ills and registered them into our DNA? Even if she were the one, don’t we have the sense to realise we were placed on a wrong path and chart a better one for ourselves?
See the case of banditry that has reared its ugly head more than five decades since this same Queen granted independence to our country. Like Boko Haram, it started as a case of Fulani brothers killing their fellow brothers, all of the same faith and tribe, the same way some Igbo men are killing fellow Igbo today in the name of self-determination, as confirmed last week by Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State.
Talking about Biafra, those interested in Nigeria’s history have all the details of the war of ego that persisted between Gowon and Ojukwu, which grew so thick that their differences ran riot and waxed irreconciliable. We requested and pressured Britain for inependence only six years earlier and were granted same. Yet, the proof that we could not even manage ourselves as a people started manifesting as early as then, and has unfortunately continued till date, resulting in a situation where we have mismanaged every opportunity to launch ourselves among the biggest nations on earth and are now the poverty capital of the whole world.
While Britain, with the Queen as its Head of State, keeps developing itself by ensuring highest quality education for its citizens, here all we have continued to have are endless cases of internal sabotage of our educational system, by leaders with consistent tunnel vision, resulting in ASUU going on reckless strikes and shutting down the public university system. And as far as I can remember, at least for the past 50 years, those in charge of our education and entire destiny have been Nigerians, not the Queen or her people.
As British Prime Minister Liz Truss said the day the Queen died, every positive thing that has happened to Britain for the past 70 years was attributable to the late monarch.
The reality, bitter as it might sound, is that we have chosen a path of perdition from the word go. There is the comparative analysis of our evolution as states, between Nigeria and India, by an intelligent author I do not yet know that goes as follows:
The biggest country in Africa that the United Kingdom colonized is Nigeria. The biggest country that the United Kingdom colonized in Asia is India (which then comprised the present Pakistan and Bangladesh). When the UK came into Nigeria and India, like all other countries they colonized, they brought along their technology, religion (Christianity), and culture: names, dressing, food, language, etc.
Try as hard as the British did, India rejected the British religion, names, dressing, food, and even language, but they did not reject the British technology. Today, 80.5% of Indians are Hindus; 13.4% Muslims; 2.3% Christians; 1.9% Sikhs; 0.8% Buddhists, etc. Hindi is the official language of the government of India, but English is used extensively in business and administration and has the status of a “subsidiary official language.” It is rare to find an Indian with an English name or dressed in suit.
On the other hand, Nigeria embraced, to a large extent, the British religion, British culture – names, dressing, foods, and language – but rejected the British technology. The difference between the Nigerian and the Indian experiences is that while India is proud of its heritage, Nigeria takes little pride in its heritage, a situation that has affected the nationalism of Nigerians and our development as a nation.
Before the advent of Christianity, the Arabs had brought Islam into Nigeria through the North. Islam also wiped away much of the culture of Northern Nigeria. Today, the North has only Sharia Courts but no Customary Courts. So from the North to the South of Nigeria, the Western World and the Eastern World have shaped our lives to be like theirs and we have lost much or all of our identity.
Long after the British and Arabs left Nigeria, Nigeria has waxed strong in religion to the extent that Nigerians now set up religious branches of their home-grown churches in Europe, the Americas, Asia and other African countries.
Just like the Whites brought the gospel to us, Nigerians now take the gospel back to the Whites. In Islam, we are also very vibrant to the extent that if there is a blasphemous comment against Islam in Denmark or the US, even if there is no violent reaction in Saudi Arabia, the Islamic headquarters of the world, there will be loss of lives and destruction of property in Nigeria.
If the United Arab Emirates, a country with 75% Muslims, is erecting the tallest building in the world and encouraging the world to come and invest in its country by providing a friendly environment, Boko Haram ensures that the economy of the North (and by extension that of Nigeria) is crippled with bombs and bullets unless every Nigerian converts to Boko Haram’s brand of Islam. We are indeed a very religious people. Meanwhile, while we are building the biggest churches and mosques, the Indians, South Africans, Chinese, Europeans and Americans have taken over our key markets: telecoms, satellite TV, multinationals, banking, oil and gas, automobile, aviation, shopping malls, hospitality, etc.
Ironically, despite our exploits in religion, we are a people with little godliness, a people without scruples. It is rare to do business with a Nigerian pastor, deacon, knight, elder, brother, sister, imam, mullah, mallam, alhaji or alhaja without the person laying landmines of bribes and deception on your path. We call it PR, facilitation fee, processing fee, transport money, financial engineering, deal, or whatever. But if it does not change hands, nothing gets done. And when it is amassed, we say it is “God’s blessings.” Some people assume that sleaze is a problem of public functionaries, but the private sector seems to be worse than the public sector these days.
One would have assumed that the more churches and mosques that spring up in every nook and cranny of Nigeria, the higher the morals in our society. But it is not so. The situation is that the more religious we get, the baser we become. Our land never knew the type of bloodshed experienced from religious extremists, political desperadoes, ritual killers, armed robbers, kidnappers, internet scammers, university cultists, and lynch mobs. Life has become so cheap and brutish that everyday seems to be a bonanza.
We import the petroleum that we have in abundance, rice and beans that our land can produce in abundance, and even toothpicks that primary school children can produce with little or no effort. Yet we drive the best of cars and live in the best of edifices, visit the best places in the world for holidays and use the most expensive electronic and telecoms gadgets. It is now a sign of poverty for a Nigerian to ride a saloon car. Four-wheel drive is it! Even government officials, who were known to use only Peugeot cars as official cars as a sign of modesty, have upgraded to Toyota Prado, without any iota of shame, in a country where about 70 per cent live below poverty. Private jets have become as common as cars. A nation that imports toothpicks and pins, flaunts wealth and wallows in ostentation at a time its children are trooping to Ghana, South Africa and the UK for university education and its sick people are running to India for treatment.
India produces automobile and exports it to the world. India’s medical care is second to none, with even Americans and Europeans travelling to the country for medical treatment. India has joined the nuclear powers. India has launched a successful mission to the moon. Yet bicycles and tricycles are common sights in India. But in Nigeria, only the wretched of the earth ride bicycles.
I have intentionally chosen to compare Nigeria with India rather than China, South Korea, Brazil, Malaysia, or Singapore, because of the similarities between India and Nigeria. But these countries were not as promising as Nigeria at the time of our independence.
Some would say that our undoing is our size: the 2012 United Nations estimate puts Nigeria’s population at 166 million, while India has a population of 1.2 billion. Some would blame it on the multiplicity of ethnic groups: we have 250 ethnic groups; India has more than 2000 ethnic groups. Some would hang it on the diversity in religion: we have two major religions – Christianity and Islam; but India has many. Some would say it is because we are young as an independent nation: we have 52 years of independence; India has 65 years, while apartheid ended in South Africa only in 1994.
The comparative analysis ends here. But if anything, what it tells and proven is that many of the ills afflicting us are courtesy of the path we have chosen to tread as a.people and as a nation.
Next year, for example, we are going to have a general election. In our everyday analysis in the social and mainstream media, we keep talking about our desire for effective leadership. Yet, we that do so almost always end up electing some of the worse among us as our leaders.
In my state of Kano for example, majority of those vying for national assembly positions next year could not express themselves in English. The masses know of this. Yet, they will ignore the polished, educated candidates and go for these illiterates for reasons that begger comprehension. These same people will then abuse government later when development eludes them, forgetting that these illiterates cannot make a case for them since the only medium of communication at the national assembly is the English they cannot speak.
At the national level, we all know the record of the gladiators seeking to rule this country as president from mid next year. Yet, there is no guarantee that at the end of the day, we are not going to vote into office, someone who could not even discharge the functions of that office.
For many of us, once a leader is a member of our tribe, it does not matter even if he ends up killing us. Such is our pitiable lot as a nation. Amazingly, we love blaming others for our misdoings.
So if it is true that repeating the same mistake and expecting a different result is the height of folly, it means we cannot get it right as a people unless the restructuring we call about starts right in our homes and within our individual souls.
Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth.
