October 1, the most important day in our national political calendar, has been systematically downgraded to a non-event.
This is more unfortunate for the country and its future than you might think.
October 1 descended from the Olympian height as a high-key national celebration to a low-key celebration and to no celebration.
Celebration is not about popping champagne; it is, in this case, an honest tribute to the men who wrested our independence from the British colonialists and made our country free.
October 1, 1960, marked two important events rolled into one: the end of colonial rule and the beginning of our indigenous rule.
It is not right to grudgingly acknowledge it today as just another event attended by a hollow ritual.
The fortunes and the misfortunes of October 1 are tied up, obviously, with the rise of our nation to lofty heights and its descent to the bottom; a once-rich and proud nation swaying in the wind of its errors of the head and the heart.
This year, President Buhari carried the absurdity to the next level by making our 60th independence anniversary not as a one-day event but as a year-long event or celebration.
A year-long independence anniversary, whether it is marked with bells and whistles or introspection, makes no sense.
An independence anniversary has much less to do with celebration but much more to do with a nation’s sense of its own history.
We began our journey as an independent nation on October 1, 1960.
Each year when we mark it, we invite ourselves as a people to a) remember the labour of our heroes past and renew our pledge that it would not be in vain, b) appreciate the labour of our heroes present and c) savour the fervent hope that our future heroes would carry forth the torch and continue with the honest labour of building a great and egalitarian nation in tribute to the labours of our heroes past and present.
On October 1, we look back to the past and we look forward to the future.
When we treat the day with contempt, we treat our history with contempt; we treat the labour of our heroes past with contempt and we treat our future as a nation with contempt.
Each year, we tell ourselves there is nothing to celebrate on our independence anniversary. It is understandable.
After all, we can see signs of lack of progress all around us.
Our problems of yesterday are still with us: no light, no potable water for the majority of the population, our government hospitals are mere consulting clinics, our roads are death traps and daily trap people in death and, the promise to rid our country of corruption is anything but fulfilled.
It is not illogical to suggest that we ought to celebrate our independence anniversary on the basis of the identifiable progress we have made in the basic indices of national development.
But there is something more profound about October 1 than that in the context of our national history and the struggle to weld the 350 tongues and tribes into one nation.
October 1, 1960, was a challenge to our nationalists; October 1, 2020 remains a challenge to our current crop of political leaders.
No one wants to be reminded that the day is a cruel reminder of our missed opportunities and our continuing failure to make this mere geographical expression into a united, strong and prosperous nation in which the sound of 350 tongues is a blend of the sonorous music of our diversity.
It is not the fault of October 1 that we have disappointed our hopes over the years.
Our attitude to October 1 shows how utterly confused we are about the progress we have made; it makes us feel even more uncertain about our future; after all, the deaf can hear the drums of threats of unravelling the 1914 amalgamation.
None of these diminishes the importance and the place of October 1 in our national history.
They make the day even more relevant because October 1 reminds us of the promise of independence when the prime minister, the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, told the world that our representatives in parliament “…were fully capable of managing our affairs both internally and as a nation.”
Managing our internal affairs has been and remains problematic but human beings live on hope so long as there is tomorrow and a reason to hope that tomorrow will come.
At its height, October 1 was that one day in the year we all looked forward to as Nigerians.
Parents took their children to witness the colourful independence parades by our armed forces, the police and school children waving our national flag.
Participation in those parades made a lot of sense to the children because it made them participants in the rites of our independence and national history.
State governors, military or civilian, addressed their various states, marketing hope in the future greatness of our country to them.
It was the day General Yakubu Gowon rose to the occasion as the leader of a country in which the world and black people everywhere had invested hope in its independence and leadership in Africa.
His profound words rang down the hills and valleys of our nation.
He told us how far we had come in our journey, the problems we had had and were still grappling with and what needed to be done to take our nation to where we believed it should be.
We received a pep talk and felt encouraged to trudge on, guided by the profound feeling that we were being led and led aright towards the sunrise of our national development.
His October 1 speeches were the equivalent of our own state of the union address.
He preached unity, fairness, justice, sacrifice and urged us to have abiding faith in the greater future of the giant of Africa.
Military and civilians after him continued with this profound national ritual each year.
But progressively, the loud voices of the past now sound more like the roar of the mouse with the diminishing importance accorded October 1. Democracy is not a silent system of government.
Psyching the governed is an important element in governance at all levels.
The absence of this ritual opens the nation to various avoidable problems.
If the people do not hear uplifting words from their leaders when they face difficulties, as we do now, they listen to alternative voices.
The least we can do is to retrace our steps back to the promises of October 1, 1960, by giving the day the importance it earned 60 years ago when the Nigerian flag replaced the British flag on the flag pole.
It is not right that we treat the day with contempt because if that day did not come, none of our leaders, military or civilian, would have become our leaders.
And history would not bother to remember them. It bears repeating: to treat October 1 with contempt is to treat our history with contempt; it is to denigrate the labour of our heroes past and present.
