Nigeria at 60: Songs of lamentation cannot save country

By Uche Onyebadi

AFTER sixty years of inelegant nationhood, who can reasonably blame Nigerians for being trapped in some eerie and hypnotic temptation for lamentation over missed or mismanaged opportunities that could have resulted in their country’s attainment of excellence and greatness? If I were to guess, most heartfelt views expressed on electronic and print platforms this independence anniversary will be enveloped in disillusionment that could have been precipitated by an inner, unexpressed question I can only frame this way: Has it been worthwhile identifying as a Nigerian?

We cannot offhandedly delegitimise such thoughts. Nevertheless, such thinking might not really be different from attempting to construct a bridge that leads to nowhere. It will be more prudent to resist this impulse to characterise Nigeria as a debilitating, deplorable and hopeless case of paradise lost, and then confine ourselves to a life that is so full of despair and heartache.

Admittedly, we are far from realising the laudable objectives and aspirations that galvanised and heralded our independence from British colonialism. Here is how our first prime minister, Sir. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, envisioned our future in his independence speech at the arena named after him in Lagos on October 1, 1960: “This is a wonderful day…….. I feel sure that history will show that the building of our nation proceeded at the wisest pace: it has been thorough, and Nigeria now stands well-built upon firm foundations.”

In 2019, fifty-nine years later, President Muhammadu Buhari also addressed Nigerians and told his compatriots that, “Nigeria will emerge from our present challenges stronger and more resilient than ever…” Such platitudes by Nigeria’s past leaders are well documented in our country’s overflowing history of presidential vagrancy, rigmarole and sheer nothingness. What Buhari called challenges are essentially self-inflicted and festering wounds, and the historic evidence of the tendency for our leadership to take us through the tortuous, thorny and unproductive roads to national underdevelopment and misery.

But, at 60, I believe and argue that instead of imprisoning our minds in the dark caves of the past, we need to revisit, re-visualise and re-envision Prime Minister Balewa’s ideals of a country “well-built upon firm foundations.” While we have zigged and zagged as nation, the future appears to be filled with more luminous years and opportunities. So, what does it take to regain the vision of a Nigeria that was to be the navigational lighthouse to the rest of Africa and beyond?

First, we need to re-set our collective mindset and align it with the fact that at 60, the critical issue is not necessarily about regurgitating what went wrong and blaming our leadership – we have done so already – but re-dedicating ourselves to making it right; to revive the fibers of our national pride; to desensitise and disabuse our psyche of the thinking and suspicion that Nigeria might well be beyond redemption. All these rest on the shoulders of Nigerian citizens, not their leaders.

Granted, we literally see evidence and stimuli for demoralisation everywhere, but I argue that we need to re-believe in Nigeria. Cynicism and despondency will not and cannot be the panacea to our troubles, if we plan to move the country forward. This is not call for collective amnesia or exercise in self-denial or delusion, but an exhortation to embrace the more positive energy to rise up and dust off the ashes of past unpleasantness. Countries that have successfully walked away from historical periods of national desolation and economic dispiritedness have had to decouple themselves from past inequities, iniquities, regrets and inconsolable hopelessness.

Examples abound about countries that have managed to re-route themselves away from the rough waters of national calamity and underdevelopment. In today’s world, so many young men and women of about 40-45 years old marvel at China’s economic and technological greatness and influence around the globe, such that the mighty United States even feels threatened that it would soon be dislodged by China from its preeminent position in geopolitical affairs. But China has not always been this powerful and economically strong.

In 1978, a hitherto uncelebrated Chinese leader known as Deng Xiaoping took over power in Beijing. By 1989, just ten years when he had to leave office, Deng had launched China onto the path to greatness. And, the world took notice. This is how columnist, Abraham Denmark, described the Chinese “miracle” in the Washington Post (December 19, 2018): “What happened Dec. 18, 1978, nonetheless would prove as geopolitically significant for the 21st century as the fall of the Berlin Wall was for the last century. This was the day Deng Xiaoping — who had recently emerged as China’s new leader in the aftermath of the death of Chairman Mao Zedong — opened a top leadership meeting that would put China on a new course, and unalterably change the contours of global geopolitics.”

Nigeria can recreate China’s miracle and I readily acknowledge that a major challenge in this quest for national re-birth is revamping our lackluster leadership, something we all know too well. Nonetheless, to blame Nigeria’s woes on past and present political leadership has become a cliché. We need to pause and do some self-examination. How about those of us who are not political leaders; those of us who are followers, the citizens? Leaders are historically enabled by their followers. When citizens realistically, conscientiously and energetically demand change, leaders pay attention. When citizens lapse into reticence and despondency, leaders are more unlikely to change course because such citizenry is the tonic that energises them to wobble along.

This annual ritual of reciting Nigeria’s woes at Independence Day celebrations is in fact like the narcotic that lulls everyone into further dependence on leaders who also find escape in reciting their own platitudes and all that bunkum. We need a paradigm shift to ask and encourage Nigerians, people outside the parameters of constitutional political power, to politically decolonise their minds and realise that when the people truly say enough is enough, leaders can and will be ousted.

There is something called Peoples Power. Inept leaders fear and dread it. But it is good for national re-birth and progress. If we only sing songs of lamentation, Nigeria will still remain where it is today, come the next sixty years.

Uche Onyebadi (PhD), Chair of Journalism Department, Texas Christian University, USA, is on the Editorial Advisory Board of NaijaTimes.