Recollections on Independence Day

As one is now getting into the ages of reflections, at every Independence Day I find myself engrossed in recollections of where we once were and where we find ourselves now. I dare say it would be presumptuous to look ahead to where we will be. But would there be any harm to hazard a guess?

I am privileged to belong to that group of Nigerian children who stepped out to school for the first time in 1960, the year the country received independence from Great Britain our erstwhile colonial power. In other words, I belong to the Independence year school children. I cannot say I have a good recollection of that year. Being so small, I can only remember being walked to the school with my father at my side holding tight to my hand. The primary school I went to was just a shouting distance from our family home in the Fezzan ward of Maiduguri. In fact, the school sat just opposite our family home. Probably because it was so close to home, I became a perennial late comer earning a few lashes from my headmaster, Ubaliyo Yunusa Maihajja, a strict disciplinarian, who later joined the Nigerian Army and rose to the post of Major.

What happened to Maiduguri, and us the Independence school children, over those many years is a reflection of what has happened to the country and its citizens in general. In 1960, Maiduguri was a compact town, small and tidy. Actually the town was only settled into in 1907, making it a toddler of sorts when compared to old cities like Benin, Kano and Lagos that had hundreds of years behind them. But there were advantages. You didn’t need to be a professional planner to see that the Maiduguri outlay was well thought-out. Built around the banks of a seasonal river, the streets were wide and straight with angular ends. It was hot but the town was well serviced by thousands of neem trees adorning all the streets and making a dense wall around the town.

There were no tarred roads, nor drainages though heavy rains never caused a flood. Even when development crept on the town in 1962 when drainages and tarred roads came to be built, we never really adjusted. There were no vehicles to ply on the tarred roads. For some time, the macadamised roads became playing sites for children. I recall many happy hours having rollicking fun with other children on those roads which we saw as new phenomenon, and some kids actually fell asleep for the night there. There were no taxis, no buses, only hundreds of bicycles and donkeys. There were plenty of horses too, particularly in the Shehuri ward that were mostly ridden on special occasions, at durbars on Fridays and Sallah days. Interestingly there was even a street named after horses, Furmari, behind our family house leading to the Dandal (Fur is the Kanuri equivalent for horse). However, donkeys were more ubiquitous particularly on Mondays when the market held sway and they came into the town in hundreds as carriers laden with whatever. In many parts of Monday Market there were spaces specifically for donkeys complete with stumps, fodder and water. It was just like the parking spaces we now have for vehicles.

The school I attended was one of the four or five junior primary schools (class 1-4) in the town. Students from these schools ended up in the only senior primary school, situated on the Dandal, a walking distance from the Shehu’s palace. There were no private schools though there was one primary school run by missionaries. We had a General Hospital, one or two clinics, but definitely no private clinic or hospital.

If indices of human development were kept for that period around the independence year they would be pretty dismal. The infrastructure for human development were still coming up. Health and educational facilities were limited. Water and electricity supplies were only available to a few houses in Maiduguri. There were only two tarred roads in the town all emanating from the Residency (now Government House) to the Shehu’s Palace: one coming down towards post office, passing the front of the General Hospital to Dandal roundabout and the other through Elkanemi cinema to Makera to the library and reading room.

When I went to secondary school and had to travel the long distance to far-away Keffi, the roads were terribly bad. The Maiduguri to Jos single lane highway was only tarred in parts. Maiduguri to Benisheik (then called Gangatilo) was particularly bad and when it rained the road would be closed for more than 24 hours. The road from Jos to Keffi was one long stretch of a dusty road running over frightening hills and gorges. The vehicles we used, mostly Bolekaja and the like were rickety and made climbing Plateau hills with the risk of falling into those dark gorges a very daunting task. Looking back, however, I realize that there was no incidence of any student dying as a result of accidents on the road. The Nigerian Civil War started when we were in form one and we suffered the depravations associated with war conditions. Of course it was nothing compared to the harrowing experience of my age group in the other side of the war curtains.

That’s why when I stand back today and look out to the Nigerian space I marvel at the spectacle of the progress we have made since independence. We have a lot to beat our chest for. Maiduguri, the place I started from, is completely transformed from what it was in 1960. You can make the same pronouncements on the other Nigerian cities. Wherever you look the majority of Nigerian citizens have access to all modern facilities. Of course the access can be better managed and the facilities could be better.

But that is no reason for the rampant cynicism particularly among the youths who feel, at times, left out and disheartened. We have a very prosperous country with abundant resources that needs a little bit of better management to get us to where we want to be.  We should be critical and make efforts at participating in the management of our affairs instead of being laid back and allow despair to guide us. The sorry stories of Nigerian youths leaving the country in droves, suffering the harsh conditions of the Sahara Desert as well as the Mediterranean Sea for the uncertainties of Europe is rather distressing. For them and many others I close with this story, titled: ‘The man who willed himself to die’. I picked it from the New Nigerian Newspaper of 2nd September 2005 for my readers because it speaks volumes on the situation we find ourselves.

Here is how it goes: “There was a man who worked for the railroad. One day as he went into the freezer compartment to do his routine work, the door accidentally closed and he found himself trapped in the compartment. He shouted for help but no one heard him since it was past midnight. He tried to break down the door but he could not. As he lay in the compartment, he began to feel colder and colder. Then he began to feel weaker, and weaker, and he wrote on the wall of the compartment, “I am feeling colder and colder and I am getting weaker and weaker. I am dying and this may be my last words”. In the morning when the other workers opened up the compartment they found him dead. The sad twist in the above story is that the freezing compartment had broken down a few days earlier. The poor worker did not know about the damaged freezing apparatus and in his mind the freezing apparatus was working perfectly. He felt cold, got weaker and literally willed himself to die”.