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Nigeria: A toddler at 44:
Forty-four years
ago today, the state of Nigeria was born into the comity of nations as an
independent sovereign entity and was bounteously vested with all the
rights and duties of a modern state. There were justifiable hopes and
unparalled expectations by citizens and non-citizens alike on this richly
endowed nation for a life more abundant in the succeeding years.
Unfortunately, that was not to be. Today, rather than serve as the beacon
of hope and redemption for Nigerians and, indeed, the Black race
worldwide, Nigeria has become a colossal disappointment, so bad that the
real concern of every discerning person in the affairs of the country is
how to save the 44-year old entity from total
extinction because it is precariously trudging on as one of the potential
failed states of the world.
If the Founding Fathers had
the faintest inkling that this was going to be the outcome of the entity
called Nigeria, chances are that they would have thought twice before
asking for political independence when they did, much less celebrate its
inauguration with the pomp and pageantry that followed it in the morning
of October 1, 1960. With all the enormous endowment that was at the
disposal of the new nation at independence, no one in their right senses
would have blamed those who invested so much hope in the capacity of
Nigeria to live up the heights of their dreams. If Nigeria were a human
child, it would now have been obvious to all and sundry that what we have
in our hands has since turned into an ogbanje, a child whose destiny has
been drastically limited - all by her choice.
For a new nation blessed with
such scandalous amounts of human and natural resources, even the most
pessimistic evaluation would still have placed her as one of those
entities whose future is secured in affluence and material well being.
Tragically, however, whatever was the lofty destiny of Nigeria was quickly
truncated by a series of events and happenstances whose combined effects
and aftermath she is yet to recover from even as you read this. In the
intervening period, she has suffered military usurpation of the political
process, a civil war, sectarian and ethnic crises, unprecedented official
corruption, communal apathy, a distortion of the federal principles which
led to actual and perceived marginalisation cries across the land,
economic sabotage and so on.
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