What's There To Celebrate?

Photo Credit

In a twinkle of an eye, another year has passed and Nigeria is once again celebrating her independence from the claws of the British colonists yet, the annual national poser is put forward again: What’s there to celebrate? This, just like every other question challenging the state of the nation may always lie unanswered.

Over centuries and millenniums, birthdays have been known to be a time to celebrate an addition of another year to one’s time spent on earth. At the years of nascent it’s accompanied with: “Many more years to come”. At the middle age, it’s buttered with a golden jubilee celebration however, at the years of old age you hear words like: “Celebration of Life” and “A well life spent”. For such people celebrating the ‘life’ in their lives, birthdays are times for retrospection and not necessarily celebration.

Today, Nigeria, my alleged mother’s land throws a historic fanfare in celebration of her independence. More importantly is the fact that a century after the amalgamation of the northern and southern flank of what is today known as Nigeria, there is little or nothing to show for the union. It is a known fact that few years after the unholy marriage, there was a civil war that lasted for three years.  International extended family members (stakeholders) gave military support to the husband and he was able to compel nay force the Baifran-wife back into the union. Four decades after, there is a tug-of-war within the family yet some members celebrate. What are we celebrating? I plead to know.

I wouldn’t like to sound like a pessimist who doesn’t see anything good in the nation. Definitely, we have in-depth potentials, we have turbo-charged intellectuals, we have power-house politicians and imbued, highly saturated unquantifiable wealth but, we’ve had these for over three decades and from what we are told, all is well, the government is on top of every awry situation. As a matter-of-fact, it hasn’t been well right from the beginning.

Politically, Nigeria experimented with the parliamentary system of governance for three years before trying out the American modelled presidential system which we currently manage and haven’t mastered after fifty years of experimenting. It’s not that we cannot copy and implement. Without sounding ethno-discriminatory, copyright records will show that our brothers in East are doing a very fine job both home and abroad. The problem is we are unsuccessfully trying to perfect what was never made for us. Perhaps, if we fine-tune the presidential system of governance, as some other countries have done, to suit our diversity, we may be able to avoid the political mishaps we often seem to encounter. Speaking of mishaps, the constant hailstorm of terrorism, bouts of kidnappings, and the latest asinine $9.3m scam is enough to ruin a birthday party. It is no longer news that the Nigerian ship has long grown rudderless. But, the question remains: what has been done to put things in the right place? Our captain who unsurprisingly owns a doctorate degree in the dynamics of animalistic and other related behavioural symptoms seems not to be able to get a firm hold of his human sailors and passengers except those who reflect symptoms of a disease by crossing to the opposition party (they are well taken care of via impeachment procedures instituted by pocket friendly legislators). In the midst of these confusions, we celebrate! What are we celebrating?

Sadly, the index of our independence still remains physical emancipation. It appears we are yet to attain psychological and spiritual autonomy from the dementia of colonialism and military rule. We are still living with a colonial mentality. For instance, an average Nigerian believes in the qualitative superiority of imported products as he seems to have lost faith in the innovative ingenuity of his brethrens. We are ready to spend millions of naira on anything that smells foreign (even foreign education). The reason is not far-fetched. We still practice kleptocracy at the central, mamatocracy in the East, god-fatherism in the West and undertone Emirtocracy in the North. The late Fela aptly summed these manifestations in a single word: DEMO-CRAZY. I dare say that we suffer from Post Colonial Stress Disorder.

Truth be told, Nigerians have lost the appetite to celebrate. Just like every other day, this day shall pass us by as the common man plies his trade seeking for daily bread. The ship of our nation is dangerously drifting from the radar of intellectual leadership and until we realize our precarious state and take action, we may yet drift into oblivion. An infinite state of sober reflection should be the only celebration today.