Nigeria will be 55 this October – next month. The question is, is 55 years too short to make an impact, and where did we go wrong? Have we gone wrong because we never could have gotten it right or because we were determined to get it wrong? At Independence, regardless of what our former colonial masters tried to do, Nigeria had an extremely good chance to make it and succeed. Regardless of what part of the country the then prime minister was from, Nigeria stood a very good chance. Why then is Nigeria crawling at 55 years? Why then is Nigeria crippled and seemingly abandoned at 55?
Japan was terribly crippled and infirmed after Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; but from the early 1970s, Japan had bounced back to be a country of great economic strength.
The nation of Israel was nowhere to be found in 1947; but since the 60s, Israel has become a centre of world politics, with major issues in the world featuring around Israel and peace in the Middle East. It has built itself up from an arid desert land into a net supplier of food and agricultural products to the rest of the world.
Germany was a nation in total economic ruin after the World War II. It had by the 70s bounced back to be champion of the European community.
What about Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore who used to look up to Nigeria, admire her, borrow her processes, seedlings and methods of agricultural administration and are now net exporters to the world and even to Nigeria? Singapore and Nigeria started on the same slate at about the same time.
Nigeria’s resources are limitless; what a young child would call uncountable. The intellectual capacity of the average Nigerian is feared and revered all over the world. In most major companies in Europe and America, you find a brilliant hard working Nigerian. The hospitals in the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and even Kuwait are supported by Nigerian intellectual capacity.
In the area of sports, especially football nowadays, Nigerians have become world-rated demigods. Everything that Nigeria does interest the world. Nigeria must be special in the eyes of God, for she is an extremely prized and privileged child.
Nigeria represents the case of the spoilt child who has no appreciation of who he is, or the fabled hunter’s dog who in his determination to get lost does not recognise the hunter’s whistle. From a Biblical perspective, Nigeria represents a cripple who had been by the pool for 38 years, waiting for the stirring of the pool to enter in, yet his salvation was right in front of him.
Nigeria has been plagued by one set of inappropriate leadership after another. A set of self-serving people determined to get along, no matter the cost. A set of people who have no real vision, no plan for Nigeria other than for them to corner the nation’s resources for themselves. This situation has been so endemic that it has entered every area and facet of national life. A situation so terrible that it guarantees acute blindness and intellectual limitation to privileged persons. Those who should lead us out of the pit are the ones dragging us in the mud. Those who should show us the way are the ones asking for direction. Those who should be settling quarrels are the same people instigating rebellion. Those who should be protecting lives are the same people destroying property.
Very few policies in Nigeria have had genuine intentions behind them. Most of them have been specifically and specially designed to serve the interest of a few for their own personal benefit. At the very best, some of them have been extremely populist and self-promoting. We have been plagued with economic ideas, fraught with loopholes to be specially exploited by the proponents of the same policies. Even when reforms are proposed, for one self-serving reason or another, we do not see them through, and such are abandoned mid-way, only for another government to come and start all over again.
We go back to the man at the pool of Bethesda in the Bible. (Bethesda means house of mercy.)
The question is, does Nigeria want to be made whole? This was the question the Lord asked the man by the pool. My answer is yes, it is long overdue. It is time for a healing of Nigeria; it is time for a wholeness of Nigeria; it is time for a completeness of Nigeria. The challenge is that nobody is willing to sacrifice and lay down their lives for Nigeria. If Martin Luther King had not laid down his life, Barack Obama would not have become the first African-American president of the U.S. If Nelson Mandela had not literally laid down his life for 27 years, South Africa would not have been free from the clutches of apartheid. Nigerians must be willing to sacrifice and be selfless for Nigeria to be healed and rise up again.
