Nigeria: What Is The Meaning Of Independence?

 By Sunny Awhefeada

I must begin by confessing that the title of the present discourse is not my invention. It was what I thought was an innocent question from Isio, my eight-year-old daughter. The day was Monday, the eve of this year’s Indepen­dence Day anniversary and the time was morning just before seven o’clock. As has been the norm since 2008, I already had the key to the car in my hands waiting as my wife dressed Isio up for school so I could take her on school runs when she shot the question, “Mummy, what is the meaning of independence?”

Thinking it was an in­nocuous question from a child who want­ed to know what independence was or is all about, my wife began to explain to her. Isio retorted saying, “I know what inde­pendence is” and gave a brief overview of the subject matter before going on to do an expose on what provoked the question. She took on a rhetoric note saying, “I am asking the question because what is the meaning of independence when people are not happy. People are suffering. Peo­ple are hungry.

People are afraid because of insecurity. People are dying. There are no good roads. There is no regular elec­tricity. Fuel is very costly. That is why I asked, what is the meaning of indepen­dence?” Obviously she has been reading newspapers and watching the news like her older siblings. I usually compel them to read newspapers during weekends and make them watch the news. My wife and I exchanged uneasy glances and heaved when our daughter was done talking. We were both disturbed. I glanced at her again and again through the rear mirror imag­ining what was going on in her mind that morning as I drove her on the seven and a half kilometers journey to school.

My fear that morning, and even till now as I write, derives from my concern for Isio and her generation and also for Nige­ria our beloved country that is being laid waste as a result of bad leadership and complicity of the led. If a child that is less than ten years old and in primary school could be so intensely aware of the sordid and sorry condition of our country then things must have gone bad if not “worse and worst” for too long. My recall of my earliest critical engagement with Nigeria should be around 1986 when I had attained teenage.

That was the decade of the na­tion’s economic downturn when families had to starve or invent strategies that earned them survival. It was around that period that the Structural Adjustment Pro­gramme (SAP) was foisted on the nation to sap the citizens. Our childhood conscious­ness was assailed by hunger and we knew that something was giving way. The other indices that presently buffet us were then unknown or incipient and of unfelt conse­quences. Therefore, at that level of teenage awareness my critical engagement with Nigeria was not as intense, deeply con­scious and heavily indicting as that of my eight-year-old daughter in the present era.

The question, “what is the meaning of independence?” is not really Isio’s question alone, it is the question of the children of her generation and Nigeria owes them answers. Nigeria is the space in which that generation, just like mine, found itself so whatever contradictions that have made life unlivable and unbear­able for them must be tackled and resolved by Nigeria, and by Nigeria I mean those of us who sired the generation. But are we ready to address and redress the situa­tion? I doubt and strongly so. The “trouble with Nigeria”, apologies to Chinua Ache­be, has become infectious and almost in­curable. 

When Achebe did a diagnosis of the country’s ailing condition in 1983 in his insightful and refreshing monograph The Trouble with Nigeria some people na­ively thought that the views expressed in that treatise will light the nation’s path and lead it to some redemptive destination. For so all-encompassing and thorough was that analysis that readers thought an understanding of the thoughts shared in that pamphlet would constitute the silver bullet for the eradication of our woes. Un­fortunately, the problems multiplied and became inveterate phenomena.

Looking back one is wistful to the point of tears in remembrance of what inspired my generation. The stories our parents, especially our mothers and grandmothers, told us about independence and the hope it held and the untold joy its realization brought to them on that day in 1960 when the green-white-green flag displaced the Union Jack thrilled us. Our social stud­ies, government and history textbooks contained the inspiring stories of the in­dependence movement and its eventual attainment.

Our teachers, great teachers that they were, also zestfully taught us about the ideals and beauty of the activ­ities that culminated in independence. It was a frenzied moment that held the thrill arising from the infinite possibilities of freedom. Ghana’s founding President, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, gave thought to the feeling generated by independence when he told his countrymen to seek first the political kingdom and every other thing would be added onto them.

Critical observers of the Nigerian and African condition should now reach the conclusion that the euphoria that greet­ed the anticipation and attainment of independence was misplaced. While the struggle for independence was ongoing there were Africans whose interests were largely selfish and they wasted no time in subverting the ideals of nationhood in new nations that they liberated from co­lonial bondage. 

If historians and social scientists didn’t see that cankerworm that gnawed at the body politick of the newly independent nations, African writers from Nigeria, to Ghana, Kenya, Somalia, among others, saw the pernicious trait and they aptly depicted it in their writings. Wole Soyinka’s pessimism in A Dance of the Forest, Chinua Achebe’s corrosive A Man of the People, Ayi Kwei Armah’s bleak The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s indicting A Grain of Wheat, all point to the African writer’s capacity to see beyond the frenzy and revelry that greeted independence. The crises that have held us down have always been there incip­ient and unnoticed for a long time except for the clairvoyant.

Nigeria didn’t and couldn’t celebrate her 64th independence anniversary be­cause the phenomenon no longer has meaning. It lost its significance many years ago. Rather than celebrate and me­morialize the day, Nigerians held their breadth and were tensed up in anticipation of the unknown. The nation was milita­rized as security forces poured onto the streets to preempt protests calling for an end to bad governance and clamouring for good governance.

The new wave of protest which began in August was intended to end bad governance and all its attendant ills. It was not about regime change, but a call for responsive and responsible leader­ship. The protest organizers, patriots them all, insist on continuing the protest on 1st October, the day of the nation’s freedom in 1960. Afraid of freedom and uncomfortable with good governance, those holding the levers of power rolled out military tanks to put unarmed civilians clamouring for good governance in check while bandits and terrorists are enjoying a field day in many parts of the country.

Independence has truly lost its meaning to the extent that those ruling Nigeria have become afraid of freedom from bad governance. Nigeria has been dubbed a failed state. It has been named among the most unsafe places to live in the world. It has been awarded the unflattering medal of the most corrupt country in the world. It has also been de­scribed as enmeshed in multi-dimensional poverty. These are real, scary and biting reality to the point that a child could ques­tion the essence of our independence. May be we should bring back the colonial mas­ters. After all, did government not give us the old national anthem when we asked to be governed right? Let the old colonial masters return in the same token!

* Awhefeada is a Professor of English 

 

Security: Nigeria Still At 100 Level

By Adekunle Adekoya

In the last few weeks, the global news media and the internet have been awash with the exploits of the state of Israel in the campaign against Hamas, Hezbollah and other real and apparent threats. In sympathy, Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel last Tuesday. Israel claimed most of the missiles were rendered ineffective by her advanced air defence systems called the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow.

For information, the Iron Dome is the most well-known of Israel’s missile shields, and is designed to intercept short-range rockets, as well as shells and mortars, at ranges of between 4km and 70km from the missile launcher. David’s Sling is meant to destroy longer-range rockets, cruise missiles and medium-range or long-range ballistic missiles from a distance of up to 300km. The Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems defend against medium-range and long-range ballistic missiles when they are anywhere up to 2,400km away.

Umuahians In The US Storm The Windy City

 By Obi Nwakanma

Twenty years ago, the alumni of the Government College Umuahia first met in the United States, and decided to take on the challenge of restoring their famous alma mater, the Government College Umuahia, and while at it, have some fun. 

In that first convention that drew many of the “old boys” of the Government College Umuahia – “Umuahians,” as they are best known – for the first time to a national gathering in New Jersey, their distinguished “old boy,” the world famous novelist, the late Chinua Achebe, in wheelchair, tended lovingly all the way from Bard College, in the Catskills by his wife, Christie, reminded his fellow Umuahians, of what every generation of schoolmasters used to say to students at Umuahia: “to whom much is given, much is expected.” It was the basis of the “noblese oblige.” 

Nigerian Elections: INEC Can Do Much Better

 By Tonnie Iredia

Anyone who followed the conduct of the September 21, 2024 governorship election in Edo State would not have found it difficult to identify several challenges which derogated substantially from what could easily have ended as a free, fair and credible electoral process. Must every Nigerian election be contentious and unduly controversial? Why is it so difficult to play the game of election by its rules in Nigeria?

If Nigerian politicians who have become notorious for their anti-democratic disposition make it hard for the country to attain successful elections, must election managers also allow their unacceptable partisanship to continue to worsen Nigeria’s political dilemma? Many more questions must have been silently considered by well-meaning citizens in the last one week.

Fears For Our Children’s Future

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

The most immediate source of disconnect between Nigeria’s wealth and poverty is a failure of government at the federal, state and local levels” – Hillary Clinton (2009) 

The poem titled, ‘Our Children’s Anthem’, was written by yours truly and published by the Nigerian Herald back in 1988, sincere concern was raised over the quality of life of the upcoming generations of Nigerians, if the political leadership did not get it right, as a t that time. 

Edo Sham Poll: UN Must Safeguard Nigeria’s 2027 Presidential Election

 By Olu Fasan

Outrageous! How dare you say the United Nations should help run elections in Nigeria, a sovereign state? That’s how some will react to this intervention. But leaving aside the fact that countries often seek United Nations electoral assistance, what’s truly outrageous and utterly shameful is that Nigeria, so-called “Giant of Africa”, cannot conduct free, fair and credible elections, something less endowed African countries do routinely and successfully.

*INEC Chair, Yakubu and Tinubu

This week, on October 1, Nigeria turned 64 as an independent nation. Sadly, it’s 64 years of sham elections and hollow democracy. As John Campbell and Matthew Page said in their book, Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know, “massive election rigging has been characteristic of Nigeria since independence”.

Before Nyesom Wike’s Fire Consumes Nigeria

 By Luka Danboyi

The self-immolating tendency for people to be indifferent to situations in which they are not directly involved seems to be playing out in the debacle in Rivers State. Curiously, there are people who are enjoying the political drama between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor-cum-godfather, Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.

*Wike 

There is no question that the vast majority of Nigerians are inured to the shenanigans of a disoriented political elite that hardly reckons with the plight of the people. Only such a situation would produce the present economic nightmare afflicting a country so richly endowed that, less than 50 years ago, other countries were visiting to understudy its impressive developmental effort and to borrow ‘seeds’ for their agricultural revolution.

Egowure Anyanwu-Okahia: A Mother-In-Law Like No Other

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

When I came home on Saturday, August 31, 2024 to meet my wife, Chioma, lying on the bed with bloodshot eyes, I was alarmed. When I asked what the problem was, she retorted, “Check your phone.” She accuses me of bad telephone etiquette – not reading text messages and responding timeously – with a warning that if I don’t change, sooner than later, I would miss out on an information that needed urgent attention. From the tone of her voice, I had a hunch that foretold day may have come.

Late Mrs. Anyanwu-Okahia

I quickly checked my phone and froze. “My mother is no more,” was her pithy message at exactly 4.01pm, more than five hours before I came back. I was shocked because we had spoken to the old woman the previous day and she was not only in high spirit but also, typically, prayed for everyone. There was no premonition whatsoever which explains why the news hit me like a thunderbolt, even when we all knew that at her age, she was at life’s departure lounge.