The various social problems confronting Nigeria as a nation are rooted in the very foundations upon which the national institutions and the country as a whole are resting. After 43 years since independence Nigeria uses over 40% of its budget to service its foreign debt and provide profits for the imperialists through Joint Venture Cash. There is no stable power supply, no efficient means of communication, no good road system. There is high unemployment, no decent educational institutions, no living wage. There are still high levels of illiteracy, high mortality rates, no health facilities. The manufacturing sector is crumbling, the banking system is inefficient and we have unfavourable foreign exchange relations. Side by side with this we have some very corrupt and rich individuals, some of whom are now richer even than some of their old masters. They have stashed their money away in foreign banks and still they are not satisfied, and want to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the working class.Freeing Nigeria is our collective responsibility. The first task is to overthrow the present buffoons that are ruling the country. There is only one class that is capable of carrying out this historical task, and that is the Nigerian working class. But before this, the Nigerian working class needs its own ideology. It must take the power out of the hands of this degenerate, corrupt and callous Nigerian ruling class.
Fifteen straight years of military rule have ended but now the federal government’s executive side is in continual war with the legislative branch. Meanwhile, seventy percent of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day, according to the World Bank, although the country is the world’s sixth largest oil exporter. As many questions as cheers are being raised on this anniversary.
Few of the newly emerging nations of Africa seemed as promising as Nigeria. There were abundant agricultural and mineral resources and a solid core of dynamic human resources. Anti-colonial Nigerian leaders like Herbert Macaulay, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe were respected across the African continent. Writers like Soyinka, Achebe, Okigbo, Ekwensi and Tutuola, popular at home and abroad, made Nigeria seem a land filled with extraordinary literary and intellectual talent. Certainly from outside the continent, Nigeria seemed poised to lead the way toward a new Africa. Instead, it has become Africa’s greatest example of unfulfilled potential.
Nigerians, for the most part, acknowledge that they took a wrong turn somewhere. Thus the nation’s disappointment with itself is questioned”…why would the optimism of 1960 give way to the despair of 2006? Greed has played a very great part in our unfortunate circumstance – greed for power and greed for filthy lucre to the detriment of the nation and its people.”
That’s part of the usual finger-pointing and no less true for being – in every corner of Nigeria – a commonly held attitude.
But other contributors to Nigeria’s decline may be more pertinent to the dialogue of non-Nigerians. Most of Nigeria’s forty-six years of independence have been under military rule. And all of those military rulers were trained and recipients of aid from Europe and the United States. Whatever their Nigerian interests, ambitions and cruelties, these rulers also served larger and — dare we say it — more global interests.
Nigeria’s enormous debt burden grew up under these regimes. The burden continues to mount because creditors — again our eyes must turn to western nations — refuse pleas for relief. And there is little doubt that the crushing poverty and environmental degradation in the Niger delta area is linked to the great financial profit overseas oil corporations are able to extract from the region. Finally, to a non-Nigerian trying to look more deeply than the issues of leadership, governance and the economy, Nigeria seems less Nigerian than it did on October 1, 1960.
It’s not that Nigeria’s people are any less fiercely Nigerian; and that in itself is quite remarkable since in some ways Nigeria is one of Africa’s most artificial colonial constructs.
But in 1960, and in the years of agitation leading to independence, hope for the future was lodged in a shared idea of nation: common laws protecting all citizens, institutions that linked culturally diverse groups to a national culture, and resources used for nation-building.
Looking at Nigeria today this seems some romantic idea from the distant past. The critical question confronting Nigeria today – embracing all the questions of leadership, governance and the economy – is whether the ideal of one Nigeria still exists. So Nigerians, stand up and fight.
You know what? Zoe. You see, Nigeria will not develop or change nor grow until the old, rustyideas (brains) are done away with. Imagine, for the pass forty six years, the people that were there then, are still the very people there now. Which way, NIgerians? Which way? Think of it.