When the Union Jack (the British flag) was, at the glittering
mews of the Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos on October 1, 1960, lowered for a free
Nigeria’s green-white-green flag, gloriously fluttered in the sky by the breezy
flurry of pride and ecstasy, it was a great moment pregnant with hope and
expectation. The whole world had seen a newly independent Nigeria, a
potential world power, only buried in the sands of time. Endowed with
immense wealth, a dynamic population and an enviable talent for political compromise,
Nigeria stood out in the 1960s as the potential leader in Africa, a continent
in dire need of guidance. For, it was widely thought that the country was
immune from the wasting diseases of tribalism, disunity and instability which
remorselessly attacked so many other new African states. But when bursts of
machine gun fire shattered the predawn calm of Lagos its erstwhile capital city
in January 1966, it was now clear that Nigeria was no exception to Africa’s
common post-independence experience.
During the
following four years (1966-1970), the giant and ‘hope’ of Africa measured its
full length in the dust. Two bloody military coups, a series of appalling
massacres and a protracted and savage civil war which claimed over a million
lives threatened to plunge the entire country into oblivion. It also
deprived Black Africa, already weakened and disillusioned, of a crucial element
of strength and leadership in the growing confrontation with White Africa along
the Zambezi. As God would have it, at the end of the civil war in 1970
the nation experienced an oil boom and a staggering wealth never before
recorded in the history of young nations. This new status, coupled with
the emergence of a dynamic leader in the person of the late General Murtala
Mohammed, in the mid-1970s, launched Nigeria back to a position of relevance in
Africa when it proffered a new meaning and identity for the continent. Today,
instead of a consummation of that hope and expectation, what confronts Nigeria
is the story of a nation that has turned full circle as a giant with feet of
clay: a big national and international nuisance and embarrassment. We are
experiencing an unnerving weight of fuel scarcity in the sixth largest exporter
of crude oil in the world.
A sadistic
cabal of recycling local imperialists in both khaki and agbada has
since hemmed the supposedly “giant of Africa” in a colony where misrule,
ineptitude, crass opportunism and corruption have been elevated to a national
culture. More than half a century into this circuitous game in which the
nation’s till has been pillaged and her vast wealth frittered away abroad, the
rot is peaking; and the hapless people are paying the imponderably colossal
price. At the moment, in spite of a record huge revenue from the sale of
crude oil and other domestic sources, the social services sector, which more
directly impugn on the people’s lives, is almost at the height of a complete
system collapse. The story of virtually every social responsibility of
the state to the people; of every area where the state remain relevant to her
subjects under the unwritten social contract code, has been rewritten on its
head: hospitals have graduated from mere prescription clinics into mortuaries
as even medical doctors and other health workers are constantly on
strike. The public school system is in a shambles; roads, including
hitherto smooth expressways are now death traps; and almost a century after
electricity supply debuted in Nigeria, her citizens still live more in darkness
than light.
Here is a
complete story of retrogression and decay. Above all, there is an
alarming rate of insecurity in the land. Nigeria is in a ferocious state of
anomie. This is made worse by a tired and disheartened bitterness among
the citizenry. If Hilaire Belloc is right in his opinion that ‘readable
history is melodrama’, the true story of the first decade of the twenty-first
century in Nigeria, which also doubles as the longest tragic period of civil
misrule since the past 99 years of the forced union by Lugard, should be
mind-boggling. It has been a decade of turmoil, with the elemental
passions predominant. Never have Nigerian public officials in responsible
positions, directing the destiny of the nation, been so brutal, hypocritical
and corrupt, leaving the country to swim in infrastructural decay,
unemployment, hunger and desperation as in the past fourteen years of
quasi-democracy. The outcome is the pervading poll of insecurity which is
threatening to drive the country into yet another civil war. Like a
demented society, Nigeria is soaked with irrational impulses, stress and
tension as the people can no longer elect their leaders.
Aside from
armed robbery which has rendered the entire police force vulnerable, there is
candidly speaking, an alarming rate of mockery killings in Nigeria. There
are indeed gruesome stories of rapes, perversities, and child murders. Hostage
taking is now a booming business in the country. An extremely partisan
and sympathetic public is willing to read and believe anything as even the
crime pages of our national dallies appear tinged with sadism. Yet, where is
that Nigerian who does not know that the real criminals in our midst today are
our rulers?
Who does not
know that much of the savagery connected with our current state of hopelessness
and bloodletting could be explained in the character of the buccaneers who have
misruled us for all these miserable years? How did Ghana which was at the
level we are today in early 1980’s make it to now become an enviable haven
where our foreign and local investors now relocate to? Why has Nigeria
suddenly relapsed into a country where violence has become a national pastime?
It is
interesting at this point to draw a historical parallel between Nigeria and
India, a former victim of colonialism which has now turned itself to a world
power due to political doggedness and economic independence. For a
country like Nigeria still paying lip-service to the ideals of a federated
union, the Indian Federation is an enduring model. There is a high level
of competition with every state controlling its economy, separate army and
police. Hence the drive for massive, unprecedented investment in education and
manpower development as India exports more than 800 scientists annually to the
Silicon Valley of the United States who manufacture made-in-America
goods. The difference in age between India and Nigeria is 13 as India
gained political independence from Britain in 1947. But the question is:
can Nigeria attain the height India has reached in the next 13 years?
From a position of relative despair and frustration, India has bequeathed to
her children hope and happiness while Nigeria is still dancing in circle.
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