Nigeria marks 55 years of independence from Britain on Thursday, October 1.
As the norm worldwide, we should have rolled out the drums, light up the grounds with fireworks, bonfires and spectacular pyrotechnics modern technology provides for celebration.
The happiness of the largest number of our compatriots at any time is the ultimate goal of modern, democratic governance.
Such hilarious celebration would also have glorified our heroic founding fathers for casting off the burden of colonialism for independence on October 1, 1960.
Instead, we are confronted with the glum faces of dissatisfied countrymen and women.
The country has a noisy, fractious, treasury looting political class which relishes corrupt, primitive acquisition as a “prestigious” way of life.
Mutually antagonistic, fragile political parties crucify one another as opposition in a multi-party democracy; the economy is weak, built on monocrop crude oil export.
There is a huge number of the unemployed. Above all, the wider society is fractionated along the ancient fault lines of religion, tribe and geo-political origins.
We agree with the federal government that there is little to celebrate.
We must heed the warning of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, that high inflation may lead the country into recession next year. There is no clear-cut economic blueprint yet for resuscitation of the economy.
Private operators are awaiting the economic team of well-honed cabinet technocrats who would teleguide the continent’s largest economy out of the doldrums onto the path of growth and prosperity with its enormous unrealised potential.
Every sector presents the same catalogue of woes: national food self-sufficiency is a mirage; for a population of 170 million, 4,500mw of power is abysmal.
Nigeria was pejoratively labelled a “generator economy” for the varied models and sizes of standby generators which become the expensive, noisy, sooty pollutant that substitutes for uninterruptible public power supply.
In education, world class universities of yesteryear producing globally respected graduates at independence ceded place to violent-cults’ infested campuses in a chaotic miasma of inadequate government funding.
Academic, physical and recreational infrastructure for learning, research and teaching campus environments deteriorated.
Everyone who can afford it would rather jet to India, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere to treat headaches than take chances on local medical diagnostic equipment.
More rich Nigerians now die abroad than at independence when it was rare.
At 55, the jury is still out on when and at what point Nigerian leaders got it all wrong. Accusing fingers point at military rule.
But they are quickly buffeted by the reality that 16 years after transition to civil rule in 1999, there is no remarkable change in orientation towards purposeful leadership and national advancement with enlightened, democratic governance.
Very clearly, we are superimposed with greedy, unenlightened, corrupt and lawless leaders with no shame for plundering national wealth as their God-ordained blessing.
Democratising the putrid corruption to uncritical followers legitimised the national turpitude which also derailed the national moral compass. Corruption is everywhere.
Worse still, greedy public officeholders violate all laws guiding public office pay and allowances to corner national revenue as their bona fide loot.
Now, Abraham Nwankwo, Director General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), warns that governors must depend more on internally generated revenue than the crude oil cash cow.
That is where President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration assumes critical relevance for a strategic role in national rebirth.
We are still optimistic that Nigeria is redeemable, using as yardsticks the Asian Tigers of South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, among others, with which we started at independence.
For now, the follies, missteps and organisational confusion of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) befuddle all. The silly muscle-flexing in wrong-headed intra-party power plays exhibit inexperienced governance, distract attention and makes a mockery of its leaders’ capacity to govern.
But the interplay of good governance and formulation of sound economic policies is well known and urgently needed.
If successful, it creates the conducive business climate which spurs the private sector into investing, expanding capacity to produce more and create more jobs and wealth to minimise the proclivity of idle unemployed youths to take to violent crimes like kidnapping, armed robbery, militancy and worst, insurgency.
APC leaders must sit up, end their mutual recriminations with the legislature which is indispensable to the executive for good governance.
Buhari should remember that Nigerians invested huge trust in his integrity for high democratic dividends in his leadership and its change agenda.
He must cede the corrupt party leaders and their distractions to face the task of governance in an economy whose monocrop-dependent crude oil price has hit the trough.
He must appoint a competent cabinet of minimal treasury looters, prepare for effective census next year to generate accurate data indispensable for efficient national planning.
Buhari must prepare the 2016 budget once the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission (RMAFAC) fixes salaries and allowances according to the carrying capacity of the economy – and not according to the pockets of greedy, corrupt, criminally-minded politicians – as minimal preparations for effective governance take-off.
On the eve of the anniversary, former presidential candidate, Olu Falae, was kidnapped for N100 million ransom.
Prior to that, a journalist, Donu Kogbara, the wife of a journalist, Toyin Nwosu, and Esther Uzoma, wife of Daily Sun columnist, Nath Nwosu, were also kidnapped for ransom.
All are a sad reminder that the fictional devil is providing bad jobs for idle youths while the security agencies are overwhelmed.
We hope a year from now, crippling insurgency will be a bad dream, the APC and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party will imbibe good governance, distractions in the legislature will end, and Nigerians will have everything to celebrate because governance has taken hold, the corrupt have returned their loot or gone to jail, and the economy is on an even productive keel.
Happy independence day.
