My Nigeria…

October 1: When will it Be Celebration Time?

The Horizon By Kayode Komolafe, Phone no & Emai:08055001974, kayodekomolafe@thisdayonline.com, 10.01.2008

It was certainly a familiar tune last Wednesday when the federal government announced that today’s anniversary of Nigeria’s independence would be another sombre one. The announcement coming after the Federal Executive Council meeting attributed the choice of  “low-key” observance of the day to the need for national reflection. Not a few Nigerians must have received this with a good dose of cynicism asking this question:  What else do you expect from this government? For some others the question may be simply this: What is there to celebrate, any way? In any case, the government, by its statement, implicitly concedes that the mood is not for celebration and the people are also asking   if there is any basis for celebration.

Nevertheless, it is yet another October 1 and we must go beyond cynicism to ponder the historic import of the day. In any serious post-colonial society, the commemoration of the national independence is not taken as cavalierly as successive administrations have taken the matter in Nigeria. For a nation with a historic sense of purpose it should be one day in the year to rekindle the fire of nationalism and patriotism in the minds of the people especially the youths. It should be day to link the upcoming generation, symbolically, with the history of their   nation. The anniversary of independence should be the most important date in the political calendar of the nation.

For instance, today is also the national day of China. As the Chinese are wont to do it would be marked in a way that the significance of the day is not lost on the people. The Chinese would not tell you that between the 1949 Revolution and now they have got nothing to celebrate. And that is not saying that China is not facing huge challenges despite its fast-growing economy. It has to come to terms with the environmental costs of its development and also tackle the resentment caused by the growing inequality in its society, a consequence of its capitalist mode of development. It will ultimately have to configure its socio- economic structure with what obtains in the political sphere. Yet, neither the Chinese government nor the people (including the severe critics of the government) would deny the historic significance of the revolution that  brought China back into reckoning as a nation that is worthy of respect in the global arena.
The point at issue here is that the national day should carry a greater import that it is being acknowledged in Nigeria. October 1 should be a day to remind the nation and its people of the “labour of   our heroes past”, which according to the Nigeria’s national anthem  “shall never be vain”.

For clarity, this is without prejudice to the fact that it should also be a day of reflection as the nation faces the challenges of the future. However, a well-structured celebration is important in the context of a Nigeria in which a good number of people responsible for governance today at various levels were born after independence while some others were still school children in 1960. It is important to remind those whose shoulders leadership responsibilities rest in the various sectors that October 1 now taken for granted symbolises the crowning glory of the struggles of earlier generations for freedom. This freedom should not be treated so meaninglessly as successive administrations have been doing in the last 48 years. For Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, the younger men in the Zikist Movement and quite a host of other nationalists October 1, 1960 did not just happen. It was a product of heroic struggles costing blood and sweat of some generations of nationalists. As a nation looks into the future with determination and boldness to succeed, a sense of history is an important requirement for its movement forward. Douglas H. Ruben and Hugh Fox in their 2006 book, The Secrets of Jewish Success, identified a deep sense of history as a crucial factor in explaining why the Jews have been able to surmount all odds to survive as a people wherever they are located on the globe. In their resilience and perseverance, the Jews have not lost touch with their history. It is the break with history in Nigeria   that made an undergraduate sometime ago to ask his lecturer the infamous question: “Who is this Zik?” This is a measure of the enduring damage caused by those who conveniently downplay the significance of national independence within the broad contest of the nation’s history.

As many distinguished analysts of the Nigerian condition have correctly acknowledged in the preview to the anniversary, there is definitely a world of difference between the Nigeria of pre-October 1, 1960 and that of today. In whatever of department of national life you look at you cannot say nothing has been achieved.

Indeed, the colonial experience of Nigeria, like that of other African countries, should be a chilling reminder that the freedom from colonial bondage has meant a lot. Here is sampler. In his classic, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, the radical Guyanese historian, Walter Rodney, richly documented the viciousness of colonialism. For instance, the late historian observed as follows: In predominantly black countries, it was also true that the hulk of the social services went to whites. The southern part of Nigeria was one of the colonial areas that were supposed to have received the most from a benevolent ‘mother country’. Ibadan, one of the most heavily populated cities in Africa, had only about 50 Europeans before the last war. For those chosen few, the British colonial government maintained a segregated hospital service of 11 beds in well-furnished surroundings. There were 34 beds for the half-a-million blacks. The situation was repeated in other areas, so that altogether the 4,000 Europeans in the country in the 1930s had 12 modern hospitals, while the African population of at least 40 million had 52 hospitals. The same thing could be said about the statistics about schools and roads that existed for a century of British colonialism or the number of graduates produced during the period. Besides the quantitative indices of development (or is it underdevelopment) of the colonial era, there is the intangible issue of freedom, the pride of belonging to a free nation.

The contemporary Yahoo generation may not appreciate this, but those who were adults as students or workers in the colonial days might decipher the subjective difference between the colonial and post-colonial eras. This terrible colonial experience ought to be recalled especially for our neo-liberal experts who glibly say we should forget about the past and look towards the West for development. It is necessary to interrogate the view that salvation could from the direction of the successors of those who held Africa in bondage for centuries
Now, the foregoing is not to discount the truth that a post-colonial government that calls for “a low-key” anniversary is only admitting the abysmal failure of leadership to go give direction towards the path of development. The people who ask (sometimes cynically) that what is there to celebrate are only relating to the reality of the Nigerian condition with the obvious defining features of poverty, misery, hunger, illiteracy, homelessness and other glaring indices of underdevelopment. Those who say there is nothing to celebrate on October 1 are comparing the possibilities of a developmental leap with the miserable performances of the successive post-colonial administrations. They justifiably look back at the squandered opportunities for Nigeria to be a world leader. They ponder the wasted and looted resources, which if judiciously applied to developmental programmes Nigerians could have been happier as a people as their nation turns 48 today. They remember nations who became independent at the same time as Nigeria or even those that became nations after but have made developmental progress by adopting workable approaches to development under nationalist and progressive leaderships. They insist that today could have been a day of justifiable national celebration if Nigeria had been blessed with successive leaderships that were focussed on development.

So, what is the message of all this   to the contemporary leadership? The administration of President Umaru Yar’Adua should resolve that today will be last “low-key” celebration of Nigeria’s national day and that beginning with his leadership Nigerians will have cause to be proud of their nation as they reflect on the history leading to October 1, 1960 and what has happened thereafter.

In 24 months it will be the Golden Jubilee of the nation’s independence. It should not be another “low-key” anniversary when all that will be on display would be national lamentation and despair caused by a wrong-footed approach to development. The Yar’Adua administration can begin to work making the 50th anniversary of independence a day worth celebrating. October 1, 2010, should ordinarily not be another day of lamentation. After all, over a decade ago, some Nigerians under the administration of General Sani Abacha came up with Vision 2010. If the strategy sketched out in their document had worked, Nigerians ought to be looking towards a proud celebration of nationhood in just two years from now. That is why the Yar’Adua administration must take Vision 2020 beyond platitudes and take the business of governance more seriously. If this administration begins to perform today with a workable development strategy, by 2010 Nigeria may not be at the destination set for 2020, but it could be on the path of progress. A lot dynamism could be brought into economic management and governance that would make the celebration of independence possible in two years time without a national sense of guilty.

All told, the good news is that it is still possible to make 2010 a justifiable year for the celebration of not only freedom from colonial bondage but also, significantly, national development.