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Editorial

Nigeria celebrates at 58

 

Today Nigeria celebrates her independence. Barring any last minute changes, this year’s edition will attract a celebration in the real sense. This will be the first time a thing like this will happen in a very long time. Hitherto, independence celebrations have taken a grave yard toga. It is usually as if we mourned our coming of age with our nationhood. It is always dark and this culminated in the bomb blast that happened in 2010 during a mini celebration at the Eagles Square, Abuja. This was during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan. That bomb blast which we later understood was masterminded by the defunct Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta; MEND sounded the last open celebration of our birth anniversary.
Nigerians who grew up in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s will say that October 1 of every year ushered good memories to citizens due to the plethora of activities that heralded the anniversary. Gradually we began to pay scant attention to our independence, before you knew it, we had totally gone mute about that epoch in the history of our country. Sometimes, “prevailing” economic realities or other factors such as insecurity were blamed. No country has it all, thus the celebration of our independence should not be stacked against prevailing circumstances in the first place. We are a country today as a result of the fight of our forefathers. What we celebrate isn’t much about flag independence from Britain but the recognition by our forbears that we are human too. Though we may make mistakes but as Africans we have the right to govern ourselves to the best of our ability.
However, as every other country have seen, we too have seen the best and the worst of us. Indeed, Independence some argue came too soon. Shortly after 1960 political upheavals culminated in a civil war. We managed to overcome this set back, and started the task of reconstruction. We were lucky that within a short time, coupled with the oil boom that came after the civil war, we were able to recover from the atrocities we suffered during the civil war.
Truth is as at the time we attained independence as young people, our hope was that within the first 50 years, Nigeria would be at least one of the first 20 leading economies in the world taking into consideration the human and natural resources of the country but unfortunately the intervention of the military terminated the first set of patriotic and selfless civilian leaders. That was the beginning of our problems because if those leaders in the first republic had survived like their counterparts in other parts of Africa did, today would have been a different story.
Our hope as young people at the time of independence has been dashed. The corruption that took place during the military era appears to have got worse when the civilians took over the reigns of governance. What civilians are doing today, no military government could have done it. The civilian governments today have been accused of more dictatorship than the military governments. However, the beauty of it is that all hopes are not lost because Nigerian voters are getting more and more educated, getting more and more enlightened and are learning in the hard way and therefore they are gradually taking the right decisions with the belief that 2019 will be the beginning of Nigeria voters teaching politicians unforgettable lessons.
Having therefore survived these years, it is our hope that our situation will greatly improve if we have respect for the rule of law more. Our country was born into democracy and rule of law. Thus that is critical. Once you have a government and you respect the rule of law everything falls in place. When there is respect for the rule of law, there is going to be fairness in government, there is going to be equity, so all parts of the country will be treated equally without any discrimination. Each and every citizen will have equal opportunity to realise their potentials as citizen of the country. Once we observe that, the sky will be the limit of the possibilities of our country men and women.
Going forward, it is important that our independence becomes the day that reminds us the entire country of the task ahead. Let us device events and actions that will show the possibilities that is Nigeria.
Our independence celebrations should not just be about aircraft stunts or military and school children parades. Those are good but we need more. The Nigerian people should have something to celebrate on that day.
That thing should be visible to all or felt by all. We should equally get the buy in of every strata of society including state and local governments so that after today, next year’s event and subsequent ones will be periods of national rebirth, unity and patriotism.

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