At the Independence celebration at the Race Course (now Tafawa Balewa Square) in Obalende, Lagos, on October 1, 1960. Photo courtesy: Getty Images
My dear Nigeria,
You were 38 years on Thursday as an independent country, your umbilical cord having been severed from Britain on October 1, 1960. But you are 84 years old now, having been born in 1914 with the amalgamation of the Southern Protectorate and the Northern Protectorate by Sir Frederick Lugard. When you became independent from colonialism at the age of 46, there was hope that you would mature further into a strong, virile, democratic and sensible nation. Alas! Only a few years later, that hope was mercilessly dashed and, as my colleague Sani Babadoko wrote in the New Nigerian two days ago, you are still toddling.
Toddling at 38? Oh, yeah. Those of us your grandchildren born after 1960 cannot be said to be toddling but rather ‘adulting.’ Any servant toddling after spending almost four decades as a free person could only have been retarded or deformed at birth or after, or both. Most analysts writing on your independence anniversaries seem to share the unpalatable thought that you were actually a retarded entity even at birth, that the British who created and midwifed you knew the kind of motherland we were inheriting. But they had to go because your children and grandchildren had forced them through newspaper campaigns, constitutional conferences and prayer sessions. They sincerely thought they would do better.
But we your children and grandchildren have failed. The politicians who took charge In 1960 were accused of ethnicising national issues, among others. But I reckon, in retrospect, that they were only trying to find their bearing, having horse-traded with their white overlords. They should have been allowed to sort themselves out, to survive the crises of governance in an emerging Third World nation. Some us your children hailed the soldiers who seized you in 1966, seeing them as saviours, believing in their claim of being patriotic and concerned with your unity, welfare and progress.
We were wrong. The soldiers raped you in turns for 28 years and the politicians did the same for 10 years, leaving the rest of your children in abject penury, struggling to find work and food, worrying about what tomorrow might bring. The rape, as expected, has not produced any sensible or acceptable issue. We have tarried at the crossroads, indecisive of what to do or where to go, holding onto each other’s throat, suffocating each other with self-righteous postulations. Because we have been denied the right to choose (courtesy of M.D. Yusufu), we have become distrusting of one another, more of ethnic champions at heart than of your true children. Many of us are not even sure whether we are your legitimate children or products of a four-decade rape session. For all of these, we are a laughing stock among the comity of nations, a beggarly tribe of refugees in a global system governed by new values, ideals that we are at pains to imbibe, an order that we should have mastered decades back. We should have been spearheading those values for others to emulate.
Grandma, your future worries me. General Abdulsalami Abubakar, the esteemed child of yours who drew you back at the last minute from the brink of final damnation (With God’s grace), has enjoined all of’ us your kids last Thursday to turn a new leaf, “put the many problems that have hindered our nation’s growth behind us, and ensure that we begin at last to live up to our full potential as a people.” I suppose that was a sensible blandishment. The problem is that we have been hearing such calls, year in year out, any time we celebrate your independence anniversary (NB: We don’t celebrate your birthday!). The various “corrective” regimes that ruled (ruined?) you did not do much to practise what they preached. The relief, however, is that the Abubakar regime is fulfilling the solemn promises it made. Most of us are happy with it even though we rarely found it easy to smile during military regimes.
Yes, as I said, I am now more concerned with your future, your past having been spent. My worry is with your next 38 years as an independent nation. The last 38 years have been wasted ones, a period of much teeth-gritting, swearing, blood-spilling, sharpening of weapons, a long, dark tunnel of hopelessness, of stillborn hope and despair, of painful indecision and wherelessness, of women pretending to be men. It was a period of increased retardation, a time when you could not grow or make meaningful use of your ample resources: men, material, machinery. In the next 38 years you should please be different. Try and put the grim past behind you.
In the next 38 years — that would be in 2036 — you should have practised democracy for 37 years, beginning from the May 29, 1999 we were promised, a democracy uninterrupted by gun-toting men with tongues of sugar promising heaven on earth but ending up visiting hell on your children and grandchildren. Your soldiers, who swear allegiance to protecting your corporate entity and your honour as a democratic society, should be able to remain in the barracks; anyone of them interested in ruling over the civil society should first pull off his fatigues and join a political party. By 2036, your economy should have thrived and grown to a world standard, eliminating poverty, unemployment, corruption, crime and decay, or at best reducing them to the barest minimum. You should have had better and more roads, hospitals, schools, independent courts, policemen and women, media, cultural institutions, financial houses, agricultural facilities, etc. You should have maximised your oil and other revenues for the betterment of your citizens.
By 2036, your denizens should have had more individual and collective rights — to speak, write, congregate, practise religions, agree/disagree, ask questions, move about, etc. They shouldn’t fear that someone would stop them at checkpoints to collect unofficial fees, knock on their door at midnight, haul them into detention, fabricate charges against them, gag or sideline them in matters pertaining to their rights.
I liked it when Gen. Abubakar told us, in his first and only independence day broadcast, that the eyes of the world are now on you. Why do they stare? Simple. They want to see if you’re really ready to retrieve your respect, enter the new millennium as a trustworthy nation, and care for us your hapless kids. If by 2036 you fail to live up to these expectations, you would have finally outlived your usefulness. You would have been 122 years old and 76 years as an independent nation. I may not be there then, but my children shall be. If you fail, I wouldn’t be surprised if they refuse to celebrate your 76th independence anniversary. Honestly. I wouldn’t. But for now, a heartfelt cheers!
* Published in my column, Melting Pot, in the New Nigerian Weekly, today
