By Dan Amor
When the
Union Jack (the British flag) was, at the glittering mews of the Tafawa Balewa
Square, Lagos on October 1, 1960, lowered for a free Nigeria’s
green-white-green flag, gloriously fluttered in the sky by the breezy flurry of
pride and ecstasy, it was a great moment pregnant with hope and expectation.
The whole world had seen a newly independent Nigeria, a potential world power,
only buried in the sands of time.
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| *Buhari |
Endowed with immense wealth, a dynamic
population and an enviable talent for political compromise, Nigeria stood out
in the 1960s as the potential leader in Africa, a continent in dire need of
guidance. For, it was widely thought that the country was immune from the
wasting diseases of tribalism, disunity and instability which remorselessly attacked
so many other new African states. But when bursts of machine gun fire shattered
the predawn calm of Lagos its erstwhile capital city in January 1966, it was
now clear that Nigeria was no exception to Africa’s common post-independence
experience.
