I vaguely remember learning in school, probably in my government class, that Nigerians once sang a different anthem which was replaced amid the Nigerianisation frenzy that followed political independence from Britain. This anthem was written by an English lady and was sung when Nigeria had a throne upon which a foreign queen sat.
After this anthem was reinstated, I mostly stayed out of the debate because I didn’t really know much about the motives for the reverse gear. I did not have all the facts and didn’t really care that much because the idea of an anthem itself rings hollow in my consciousness. The mass indignation was for many reasons – that we willfully chose to walk back in our own tracks. There is also the fact that we have too many problems that actually mean something to the lives of the Nigerian people and those should be the priority. The paradox was because this was true, we really shouldn’t have the time to be so riled up over this nonissue and should instead have been more preoccupied with those priorities. Instead, we seem to have fallen for this political gambit which might as well have been scripted to distract the masses.
We seem to have an ironic penchant for wasting our time and energy chasing shadows and this is why too many Nigerians are willing to cut and run chasing illusions that are nowhere near a match for the rivers of milk and honey underneath our feet.
Over the weekend, a former colleague of mine was in Kano to attend a wedding and in the course of our conversations, I learnt that another colleague of ours “don japa” to the States. And this was someone I thought would never go down that way. Like myself, he also believed that there was no place like Nigeria when you talked about opportunities. I have always believed that it is the people who want to go back to a time and space where we are at the mercy of neocolonial forces in the Global North.
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Nigeria is about to cross the bridge to its time of elevated status. The country and its people have been going through a cycle where the poor and other such vulnerable social interest groups will eventually replace the wealthy and powerful just as man is born and grows to full-blown strength where he can sire children and is at the peak of his existence only to become memory and dust. Dubai, for instance, is only the visible and transparent carriage giving notice that a future global giant called Nigeria is awakening from its slumber. Believe it or not, Nigeria is not inherently cursed; it is simply following both the course and cause of nature. It is not cursed or doomed to fail no matter what; its fortunes are typical of states that emerge from the collapse or withdrawal of a colonial superpower as they struggled to find their footing, to settle the questions of identity and common interest/vision and at the same time fill the sprawling vacuum by trial and error.
Every nation has its day because nations go through a cycle and no nation is eternal. Typically, dominantly wealthy and powerful superpowers become fragile, poor, and weakened over time only to be replaced by other once-poor nations that have, over time, become wealthy, dominant, and powerful with superior technology, values, and culture. These nations become world leaders with their peoples determining the global economic system and the rules of world trade. Historically, this trend has shifted power from Egypt to Greece to Rome to the Byzantines to the Crusaders to the Dutch to the British and to the Americans and the Japanese.
As they keep saying, with apologies to von Metternich, Nigeria was a mere geographical expression, sculptured by way of a boundary definition by the powers at the Berlin Conference. The colonisers, be they British, Danes, Dutch, French, Germans, the Spanish, or the Portuguese, did not even envision an independent Nigeria. Indeed, they did not see the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria, on the order of magnitude of the amalgamation of the protectorates of Nigerian Territories!
The northern part of the amalgam contained the Sokoto Caliphate which derived nearly all its income from the export of leather, hides, and skins to Europe. The area was semi-arid and arid with practice of the Fulani feudal land system; extensive agriculture over plantations and at the peasant level. The main export crops were the groundnut, cotton, and hides and skin. The habit or the taste for wearing hats and gloves in the European weather provided an agricultural boom from which the economy boomed. The mills of Lancashire provided the benefits!
Nigeria, the giant of Africa, has been described as a geographic giant, an economic dwarf, and a political child. It is not a giant because of military prowess, technical feats, industrial capabilities, or any other attributes that command respect, the world over. It is declared such, mainly by default, as the only country in Africa that has a population in excess of what India had in 1989, over 250 ethnic groups and 4000 dialects. In all aspects of life, as already outlined, the diversity of its population has proved to be a source of weakness. Since independence, no region of Nigeria has ruled the country without its brand of coup d’etat and it has either fought or still fights a civil war. In fact, federal officials have at one point contemplated a law that makes the mention, teaching, or speaking of the secessionist Biafra, with its connotations of doom and imponderables, a treasonable crime.
This has been one of the biggest reasons people from southern Nigeria, in particular the Igbo people, are more likely to leave the country for the so-called greener pastures than their countrymen up north. The economic and social forecasts for Nigeria have never been so promising and this is not because we have a capable Moses at the helm, but in spite of the fact that we have a reactive Pol Pot who wants to take us back to the time of domination by a force, we have no control instead of looking beyond the horizon.
Indeed, Nigeria… we hail thee.
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