2024 Independence anniversary offers another chance to reflect on the efforts at nation-building and to renew commitments for a better nation that will serve present and future generations. That is perhaps, the only way to fill the missing links in Nigeria’s march to greatness.
By Emeka Alex Duru
If you interpret Nigeria from the allegory of the blind men asked to describe an elephant, in which each gave different impressions of the mammoth creature, depending on which part of the body he touched, you won’t be wrong. The country means many things to its citizens, depending on how one encounters it.
Some say Nigeria is a great nation, in fact, the giant of Africa, apparently based on its size, population, natural resources and other latent features. Some see it as a lilliputian, lacking the will to maximize its enormous opportunities. Others simply say it is a crippled giant that has not been able to stand on its feet. They are all correct.
Here is an entity that is blessed with everything for growth and development but has refused to grow. If anything, Nigeria seems to be perpetually in reverse gear, losing whatever gains it had recorded previously. Instead of standing firmly, Nigeria has been tottering, existing on sheer mother luck and providence, hence the fad that it has been wobbling and fumbling, a fad attributed to one time handler of our Under-20 male soccer team, Fanny Amun.
In 1999, when Nigeria hosted the (Under) U-20 World Cup, Amun the then coach of the Flying Eagles presented a team that did not meet up with many people’s expectations but managed to record wins one way or the other and progressed in the tournament.
When asked about the chances of his boys to go further given their lack-luster performance, Coach Amun reportedly assured that the team would “wobble and fumble till it gets to the final.” Indeed, the team did progress in a shaky fashion and eventually earned a bronze medal in the tournament. Though Amun later denied making the comment, it has been freely used in football and in politics, ever since.
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At 64, Nigeria has been wobbling and fumbling. In my article of October 1, 2021, titled A nation and its shaky steps at 61, I recalled the paradoxes of nostalgia and regrets on the face of one of the foot soldiers of the country’s march to freedom, late Melie Chukelu Kafundu (MCK) Ajuluchukwu, while recounting their excitement on Nigeria’s independence on October 1, 1960, and what turned out of the country later.
MCK, an accomplished journalist, had recounted a touching story of the dreams of Nigeria’s founding fathers, especially their vision of a giant enterprise that would champion and protect the cause of its citizens and indeed, the black man all over the world. Buoyed by the attractive visions, the forebears, leading thousands of youths and even the elderly who provided the raw energy and verve for the nationalistic struggle, thronged the Lagos Race Course (Tafawa Balewa Square) hours before mid-night of September 30, 1960 to herald the birth of a new nation.
By 12.00 AM, the lights in the arena went off. When they were turned on few seconds later, a new era had dawned. Nigeria had become independent. The Green-White-Green National Flag had taken the position of the British Union Jack. Ajuluchukwu lacked words to explain the euphoria that seized him and others at the event. But when asked to make an assessment of the journey so far, the old war horse, bowed his head in regrets and uttered; “What people are pursuing now are not the things we fought for”. He belonged to the class of Nigerians that died with the pains of a beautiful dream they had for the country being bungled.
When the citizens, especially the youths and the urban elite come across a fellow citizen that has been hurt by the situations in the country or may have been handed the wrong end of the stick in business or political undertakings, it is common to say; “Nigeria has happened to him”. In simple terms, the person has lost out. Some may even say he is a fall-guy. That is the situation that most citizens find themselves now. We have been made fall guys by the system.
At a point in the crabby days of the Second Republic revolutionary music star, Sonny Okosuns, had in one of his songs posed a rhetorical question; “which way Nigeria?” remarking that after many years of independence, the country was still finding it had to stand. Okosuns had queried how long it would take the country to get to the biblical Promised Land. The question was not answered and has remained unanswered.
There is no how we can discuss Nigeria’s path to its present piteous state without mentioning the ignominious role of its successive leaders. Literary icon, Chinua Achebe, in ‘The trouble with Nigeria’, was right that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely the failure of leadership”. Successive leaders of the country have failed the people in no small measures.
At 64, Nigeria is literally on its fours. Indexes of development that should have been on the rise are in retrogression. Compared with China with which it shares October 1 as National Day, Nigeria is nowhere yet. In 2022, China’s GDP was $17.96 trillion in contrast to Nigeria’s $252 billion! Nigeria’s continental peers, South Africa and Egypt generate 58,000 megawatts each; we are barely able to generate 5,000MW. At a point Nigeria Airways had the highest fleet of Aircrafts in Africa. But the country cannot boast of a single airplane, presently.
Nigeria’s politics is also in recession. The trademark tolerance that had existed among the component units in the past, is no longer there. The ethnic nationalities currently cohabit in mutual suspicion, distrust, and disharmony. In 1952, a Fulani from Sifawa in the Sokoto Caliphate, Mallam Umaru Altine, was elected first Mayor of the city of Enugu, the political capital of Igbo nation. In the Western Region, Emmanuel Ebubedike, an Igbo was the honourable member representing Ajeronmi/Ifelodun/Badagry Constituency in the Western Region House of Assembly. Same instances of accommodation replicated elsewhere.
But in the same presumed cosmopolitan Lagos in 2023, Bayo Onanuga, Special Media Adviser to President Bola Tinubu and his fellow bigots, ensured that the Igbo were not allowed to vote or be voted for in elections. From seeing one another as compatriots, Nigerians are being made to see themselves from narrow prisms of religion and region of birth.
While the citizens struggled to get over the electoral heist unleashed on them in the 2023 general election supervised by Prof Mahmood Yakubu and his Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the farce that passed for a governorship election in Edo State on September 21, showed clearly that democracy had not taken roots in the country. If you then add these anomalies to the charade at the local government areas where the governors and ruling parties in the states, brazenly appropriate the entire chairmanship and councillorship positions, you can only conclude that Nigeria is a lost hope.
It is therefore, not enough for President Tinubu to declare in his Independence Speech that his administration understands the challenges the citizens are going through. These have become hackneyed expressions he readily dives at each time he makes public appearance without pronounced corresponding actions. This time, he needs to come up with realistic strategies devoid of propaganda, to tackle the problems on ground. This house is falling, if he wishes to know.
He is right that the 2024 Independence anniversary offers another chance to reflect on the efforts at nation-building and to renew commitments for a better nation that will serve present and future generations. That is perhaps, the only way to fill the missing links in Nigeria’s march to greatness.