Speaking further at the lecture, Amaechi said the years of military interventions and coups set the country backwards.
By Jeffrey Agbo
Former minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said that Nigeria’s founding fathers secured independence for the nation, not as a team but as ethnic champions.
Amaechi said on Thursday while speaking at TheNiche Annual Lecture held at the National Institute of International Affairs, Lagos that although he was not trying to undervalue the efforts of the nation’s founding fathers at attaining independence for Nigeria, he believes their struggle for individual relevance set the tone for what is being experienced today in the country.
He said, “In this regard, I make bold to say that our founding fathers succeeded more in wrestling with the British for political independence and with each other for preeminence rather than in forging a united nation. If the aim of independence was an authentic and strong Nigerian nation, then our founders may have missed the boat quite early in the day. The stark burden at independence was therefore that of how to fashion a coherent nation out of the divergent tribes and ethnicities that make up Nigeria.
“This is not however to undervalue the illustrious struggles that led to political independence in 1960 but merely to indicate where and when our current problems with the National Question began. Regrettably and on the contrary, our founding fathers were more remarkable as sectional, regional and even ethnic heroes than as towering national figures. Their Nigerian nationalism was collateral to the primacy of regional supremacy. Consequently, Nigerian’s independence struggle had no single towering national figure that galvanized and personified the vision of a united Nigerian nation.”
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Speaking further at the lecture, Amaechi said the years of military interventions and coups set the country backwards, noting that Nigeria has only had 24 years of uninterrupted democracy which, according to him, is not enough time for significant progress.
“Admittedly, our democracy has not yet matured. Twenty-four years is too short in the life of a democracy to register any significant impact,” he said.
“Elections are still massively rigged and influenced by violence, manipulation and thuggery. Most of our mandates are purchased at exorbitant prices. Our legislature remains an over-bloated conclave of mostly inactive onlookers. The executive branch is often stuck in the swamp of its own bureaucratic creation. Our judiciary is embarrassingly corrupt and largely compromised, mostly dispensing judgments rather than justice.”
Amaechi, who was governor of Rivers State for two terms, said Nigeria has had more ‘rulers’ than ‘nationalistic leaders’.
“Even our democratically elected leaders have come from a background of ethnic balancing and compromise rather than merit,” he noted.
Amaechi concluded, “In my estimation, Nigeria’s democracy needs a serious re-think in terms of its scope, focus and informing vision to make it more appropriate to our condition.”