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.
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.
During
the following four years (1966-1970), the giant and ‘hope’ of Africa measured
its full length in the dust. Two bloody military coups, a series of appalling
massacres and a protracted and savage civil war which claimed over two million
lives threatened to plunge the entire country into oblivion. It also deprived
Black Africa, already weakened and disillusioned, of a crucial element of
strength and leadership in the growing confrontation with White Africa along
the Zambezi. As God would have it, at the end of the civil war in 1970 the
nation experienced an oil boom and a staggering wealth never before recorded in
the history of young nations which made Gen. Yakubu Gowon its military ruler
then to announce to the whole world that Nigeria's problem was not how to make
money but how to spend it. *Buhari |
This new status, coupled with the emergence of a
dynamic leader in the person of the late General Murtala Mohammed, in the
mid-1970s, launched Nigeria back to a position of relevance in Africa when it
proffered a new meaning and identity for the continent. Today, instead of a
consummation of that hope and expectation, what confronts Nigeria is the story
of a nation that has turned full circle as a giant with feet of clay: a big
national and international nuisance and embarrassment. Indeed, we are
experiencing an unnerving weight of devastating and agonizing poverty in the
sixth largest exporter of crude oil in the world.
A
sadistic cabal of recycling local imperialists in both khaki and agbada has
since hemmed the supposedly “giant of Africa” in a colony where misrule,
ineptitude, crass opportunism and corruption have been elevated to a national
culture. Almost sixty years into this circuitous game in which the nation’s
till has been pillaged and her vast wealth frittered away abroad, the rot is
peaking; and the hapless people are paying the imponderably colossal price. At
the moment, in spite of a record huge revenue from the sale of crude oil and
other domestic sources, the social services sector, which more directly impugn
on the people’s lives, is almost at the height of a complete system collapse
despite the rise in our external debt profile to a staggering $83.88 billion.
The story of virtually every social responsibility of the state to the people;
of every area where the state remain relevant to her subjects under the
unwritten social contract code, has been rewritten on its head: hospitals have
graduated from mere prescription clinics into mortuaries as even medical
doctors and other health workers are constantly on strike while our
institutions of higher learning are completely shut down even before the
outbreak of the global pandemic known as Coronavirus or COVID-19 which has held
the entire world hostage since November 2019. The public school system is in a
shambles; roads, including hitherto smooth expressways are now death traps; and
almost a century after electricity supply debuted in Nigeria, her citizens
still live more in darkness than light.
Here is a
complete story of retrogression and decay. Above all, there is an alarming rate
of insecurity in the land. Nigeria is in a ferocious state of anomie. This is
made worse by a tired and disheartened bitterness among the citizenry. If
Hilaire Belloc is right in his opinion that ‘readable history is melodrama’,
the true story of the first two decades of the twenty-first century in Nigeria,
which also doubles as the longest tragic period of civil misrule since the past
106 years of the forced union by Lugard, should be mind-boggling. It has been
two decades of turmoil, with the elemental passions predominant. Never have
Nigerian public officials in responsible positions, directing the destiny of
the nation, been so brutal, hypocritical and corrupt, leaving the country to
swim in infrastructural decay, unemployment, hunger and desperation as in the
past twenty years of quasi-democracy. In fact, the magnitude of killings in
Nigeria, especially since the last five years of the Buhari administration is
monumental. The outcome is the pervading poll of insecurity which is threatening
to drive the country into yet another civil war. Like a demented society,
Nigeria is soaked with irrational impulses, stress and tension as the people
can no longer elect their leaders.
Aside
from armed robbery which has rendered the entire police force vulnerable, there
is candidly speaking, an alarming rate of mockery killings in Nigeria. There
are indeed gruesome stories of rapes, perversities, and child murders even as
Fulani herdsmen go about invading communities and killing people and taking over
their lands with reckless abandon. Hostage taking is now a booming business in
the country. An extremely partisan and sympathetic public is willing to read
and believe anything as even the crime pages of our national dallies appear
tinged with sadism. Yet, where is that Nigerian who does not know that the real
criminals in our midst today are our rulers? Who does not know that much of the
savagery connected with our current state of hopelessness and bloodletting
could be explained in the character of the buccaneers who have misruled us for
all these miserable years? How did Ghana which was at the level we are today in
the early 1980’s make it to now become an enviable haven where our foreign and
local investors now relocate to; where our wealthy families now send their
children to for qualitative education? Why has Nigeria suddenly relapsed into a
country where violence has become a national pastime?
It is
interesting at this point to draw a historical parallel between Nigeria and
India, a former victim of colonialism which has now turned itself to a world
power due to political doggedness and economic independence. For a country like
Nigeria still paying lip-service to the ideals of a federated union, the Indian
Federation is an enduring model. There is a high level of competition among the
eighteen regions with every state or region controlling its economy, separate
army and police. Hence the drive for massive, unprecedented investment in
education and manpower development as India exports more than 800 scientists
annually to the Silicon Valley of the United States who manufacture
made-in-America goods.
And despite the internal party wrangling which led to the unfortunate assassination of Mrs. Indira Ghandi, India's erstwhile Prime Minister and that of her son, Rajiv, who succeeded her, the military in that country did not intervene in their national politics but allowed their politicians to make mistakes until they were able to hone their politics to a considerable art. The difference in age of independence between India and Nigeria is 13 as India gained political independence from Britain in 1947. But the question is: can Nigeria attain the height India has reached in the next 13 years? From a position of relative despair and frustration, India has bequeathed to her children hope and happiness while Nigeria is still dancing in circle. Nigeria, where is thy soul? We are indeed a nation of 200 million fools!
And despite the internal party wrangling which led to the unfortunate assassination of Mrs. Indira Ghandi, India's erstwhile Prime Minister and that of her son, Rajiv, who succeeded her, the military in that country did not intervene in their national politics but allowed their politicians to make mistakes until they were able to hone their politics to a considerable art. The difference in age of independence between India and Nigeria is 13 as India gained political independence from Britain in 1947. But the question is: can Nigeria attain the height India has reached in the next 13 years? From a position of relative despair and frustration, India has bequeathed to her children hope and happiness while Nigeria is still dancing in circle. Nigeria, where is thy soul? We are indeed a nation of 200 million fools!
*Amor is a public affairs analyst writes from Abuja (danamor641@gmail.com)
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