By Dan Onwukwe
Do you know why Bola Tinubu is always pushing the envelope on presidential powers and ignoring calls to end pervasive hardship in the country?
By Tony Eluemunor
“I prefer to be accused of nastiness than to join in
the national pastime of consigning events of a few years ago into prehistory”.
Chinua Achebe wrote that in the preface of his book of essays, Morning Yet On Creation Day, to explain why he had to include essays on the Biafran war in that book instead of pretending that the war never took place. Here and now, I second that “motion”.
Tatalo Alamu, in his offering titled Ninety Bouquets For Jack Gowon published in the Nation newspaper of November 3, 2024, poured encomiums on Gen. Yakubu Gowon, “as an exemplary Nigerian patriot, a soldier-statesman and shining moral exemplar for many of his compatriots”.
By Olu Fasan
Every nation that secured independence from its colonial rulers celebrates the freedom annually, as Nigeria did recently on its 64th Independence anniversary. However, such events transcend the symbolism. The real worth of an independence anniversary lies in whether a nation is better off today than it was at independence.
.jpeg)
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!
*
By Kenechukwu Obiezu
Protests may be no pills for the dying, but in Nigeria, they pilfer the dead, or at least, their dainties.
On August 1, Nigeria erupted in protests. The protests which pinched many states of the country hard, some harder than others, were over bread, but quickly bared deep-lying issues, braiding together knots of anger and despair over the state of the country.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Today has been declared a public holiday by the Nigerian Government to mark Democracy Day. May 29 used to be Democracy Day until then President Muhammadu Buhari put forward June 12 as the real McCoy.
The greatest piece of fiction written in Nigeria
since the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart back in 1958 was the
fantastic yarn that promoted May 29 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day.
Some of us are even hard put coming to terms that there is civil rule in Nigeria let alone democracy. At the very least, to practice democracy a country has to first boast of democrats.
By Banji Ojewale
One of the captivating political campaign lines of MKO Abiola has been immortalized in a seminal work by Professor Tunde Ope-Davies (Tunde Opeibi) of the University of Lagos. Titled Discourse, Politics and the 1993 Presidential Election Campaign in Nigeria, the book documents the drive of the gladiators to secure the mandate of the electorate.
Ope-Davies’ uncanny nose for hidden details smokes out Abiola’s rush for virtually every trick in the advertising books to outwit his main challenger, Bashir Tofa, of the National Republican Convention, NRC, leading Abiola to create the famous punchline on the transformer as a metaphor for abiding leadership. MKO, as he was fondly called, was of the Social Democratic Party, SDP. He is quoted by Ope-Davies (then known as Tunde Opeibi) as saying during his search for votes that all Nigeria needed to overcome its age-old statehood concerns was ‘one transformer’, one singular and enduring personality in the saddle whose beam of integrity would permeate all of society for salutary ripples in his days and beyond.
By Owei Lakemfa
I drove to Mamman Vatsa Writers Village, Mpape, Abuja. It is a huge sprawling estate of multiple storey buildings, many under construction. It is easy to get lost in this maze that is the home of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA. Somebody from the hilly top pointed at a building in what may well be a valley.
Outside the huge theatre, I found nobody. I was confident there were people inside. But it was like a void. Finally, I found somebody who confirmed a reading by Odia Ofeimum was scheduled for the theatre. But that was still some three hours away. I knew that, but I was also aware a pre-reading session was going on. The task was to locate it.
By Tony Eluemunor
What Nigeria is going through now, be it religious, ethnic, social, political and economic, national insecurity, uncontrolled militancy and banditry, all our national ills, were disasters that were clearly foretold in a major publication.
Next month will mark the 30th
anniversary of Robert D. Kaplan’s “THE
COMING ANARCHY – How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease
are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet”.
Published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in February 1994, it pretended to scrutinize the entire planet Earth, though it actually focused on West Africa – with Nigeria receiving a special attention which detailed out our problems and warned that things were about to get worse.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Dr Betta Edu, the vivacious and chirpy politician from Cross River State, must be introspecting now. Just yesterday, she had the world at her feet, literally, and Nigeria was her oyster, where, it seemed, she could achieve anything she wished.
And she achieved a lot. Born October 27, 1986, Betta chalked up incredible attainments in only 37 years. Right from the time she completed her secondary education in 2001 at the Federal Government Girls College, Calabar and obtained her first degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Calabar in 2009, her rise to super stardom has been incredible.
By Tunde Olusunle
Whenever I’m privileged to visit
Ilorin the Kwara State capital, I include in my itinerary a visit to the
University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), as is popularly abbreviated. My passion, maybe
obsession with the institution is informed by a number of reasons. Principal
among these is the fact that I had two academic excursions to the revered
school, during which I obtained a bachelors honours and a master’s degree in
English, respectively.
By Sunny Awhefeada
I do not know why countries or nations are thought of in feminine forms (she/her). Perhaps, it is a strategy to endear us to the place of our nativity and create a bond, the kind that exists between a mother and her child. Growing up, we sang songs that endeared Nigeria to us. Our young and impressionable minds glowed with noble ideas to which our sonorous voices gave clarion utterances. Men and women who lived generations before this era also thought of their place of birth in endearing terms and they went to war in defence of their homeland.
Empires and kingdoms rose and fell in battles to defend the homeland. Even Nigeria’s national anthem and pledge have memorable and endearing words to configure our allegiance and love for “our beloved country”.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
The man fondly called Zik of Africa deserves his day. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s foremost nationalist and first president, deserves his birthday, November 16, to be slated as a national holiday.
-2.jpeg)
It is a deserving honour for the pivotal leader who led the charge for Nigeria’s independence on October 1, 1960.
As a result of his unparalleled efforts Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe would in the course of time become the only black Governor-General of Nigeria, the first President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the only Nigerian whose name appeared in a Constitution of Nigeria, the first Senate President, among many other sterling firsts.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
On Thursday, October 26, the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, Nigeria’s foremost think-tank on foreign affairs, will host the 2023 edition of TheNiche Annual Lecture spearheaded by the TheNiche Foundation for Development Journalism.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
There is a Chinua Achebe International Airport in Anambra State. It was a spectacular masterstroke from Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo when he renamed the Anambra Airport at Umueri after Chinua Achebe.
The ovation that Soludo got when he made the announcement in his speech at the 63rd Nigerian Independence Anniversary which took place at Dr Alex Ekwueme Square, Awka, on October 1 was thunderous and long-lasting.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Nigeria is fiction. The country’s Constitution has been transferred to a new shelf in the library: the shelf containing fictional works. The latter-day patriots of Nigeria can cry all they want against me, but in this instance I only choose to stand solidly in solidarity with the words that Samuel Johnson uttered on the evening of April 7, 1775, to wit: “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
There can never be a short supply of toadies and ill-assorted scoundrels defending the many fictions of the government of Nigeria in this new age when former activists and revolutionaries have turned into government spies and informants.
By Tunde Olusunle
If you were a student of English in my generation, there were authors and titles, African and foreign, you just had to encounter. Nigerian writers like Daniel Fagunwa, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, John Pepper Bekederemo-Clark, Timothy Aluko, Gabriel Okara, Elechi Amadi, Ola Rotimi, Zulu Sofola, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, all members of the “first generation” of Nigerian writers; they were irrevocable constants.
On the African scene, Nadine Gordimer, Dennis Brutus, Peter Abrahams, Lenrie Peters, Alan Paton, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Meja Mwangi, Simon Gikandi, Camara Laye, Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho, Ayi Kwei Armah, Sembene Ousmane, Frantz Fanon, Sonne Mbella Dipoko, Naguib Mahfouz and so on were featured variously on our reading lists. Indeed, in several instances, we had prior exposure to the works of some of these icons in the syllabuses of our ordinary school leaving and higher school certificate examinations respectively. In our multi-generic poetry, prose, drama, oral literature and stylistics classes in the university, these legends were further encountered in various ways.
By Olu Fasan
Every great nation is built on a strong moral foundation. No nation succeeds without, as Plato put it, a “healthy soul”, where reason, passion and will drive leaders and citizens to defend their nation’s best interests. Equally, no nation succeeds without a moral compass, without a robust sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.
By Andy Ezeani
The Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as with most public institutions in the country, hardly gets embarrassed with anything or under any circumstance. Were it otherwise, the upper chamber of the country’s National Assembly would have ended last week with its tails between its legs. It ought to. But that was not so. On the contrary, the lawmaking institution embarked on a bullish pushback against an obvious gaffe that it ought to feel thoroughly embarrassed at.
The strenuous effort last week, marshalled by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Yemi Adaramola, on the umbrage taken by some citizens at the seeming mockery of the poor on the floor of the Senate led by the Senate President himself, was quite pathetic. Couched in highfalutin language that came across more like a students’ union composition than any purposeful communication from such height, the Senate missed an opportunity to cast a better image of itself.
By Obi Nwakanma
The Federal Republic of Nigeria is now, to all intents and purpose, like a patient etherized on life support in hospice care. It is suffering multiple organ failure. There is just very little hope of a rebound. Anytime soon, it is bound to code. The hawks are circling. The grave diggers are ready. The obituary writers in the world’s great Metropolitan Centers are waiting in the wings. A great elephant is finally about to take its last breath. The thing is, there are no winners in this outcome. Even the separatists will soon discover that this country which we have all managed to kick in the groin was “the black man’s last hope.”
With the death of Nigeria, much of Africa will be rendered orphans. A light will leave the eyes of this continent. Nigeria, until it began to thaw, held West Africa in its firm grips. Analysts have predicted that the death of Nigeria as a sovereign state (even so, it is that only in name currently) will throw sub-Saharan Africa into 100-year turmoil, and unleash a demographic movement that might disrupt the social fabric of the continent.
