Nigeria at 56: Nothing to Celebrate

by Aduratomi Bolade

Things are worse now than they were 56 years ago. The politicians and their supporters would want us to believe otherwise but they know it would be a hard sell.

I’ve tried very hard to be happy as Nigeria celebrates another independence day. I tried switching on my trademark Nigerian-cup-half-full mindset; I’ve tried applying our iconic hope in a hopeless situation attitude, but the more I try, the more despondent I feel. I think my mind has taken too much of a bashing from Nigeria and it doesn’t want to continue with the deceit any longer. But what is there to be happy about? What has changed? What is working?

Credit must be given to Nigerians for being resolute and mostly upbeat in a systems that has consistently deteriorated, the state of things would have led to a full scale revolt in other climes. The quality of everything you have now was better 56 years ago.

We are now more fractured than ever in our history – Boko Haram in the North, IPOB in the East, Niger Delta Avengers and the others in the South-South and politicians all over the place. Yes, politicians are terrorists as well. Roads are bad, power is still a problem, public and many private hospitals, when not on strike are the places to go and die. Only a wicked person sends their wards to public schools now; security is to the highest bidder, if you are poor or don’t know someone, the security system in Nigeria doesn’t consider you priority. Security has become so bad that you have to conceal any signs of prosperity. If you fail to do so, you are either kidnapped or robbed. No one is immune to this now. It is now foolishness to work hard and make an honest living in Nigeria.

Such is the state of our nation.

Even more depressing is the fact that a country with a youth population of 60% has absolutely no idea what to do with its youth. There is no plan, no agenda whatsoever to ensure that the next generation of citizens are ready for the task ahead. Governments talk about their noble plans to fix what is wrong with Nigeria, which is all talk by the way, but no one talks about how to prepare for the Nigeria of the future. To have a good and competitive education you have to pay exorbitant fees to private schools in Nigeria or join the trend of sending your wards to Europe, America, Asia and sadly, places like Benin, Togo and Ghana. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to demean these African countries, all I’m saying is while we fall asleep at the switch, these people are improving their country and profiting off our foolishness.

I’m not even going to talk about leadership, but if you consider that many Nigerians that are in the same age bracket as many of our founding fathers are either still living with their parents, looking for a job or are trying to get to Europe through the Mediterranean, then you’ll realize that what we have is a time bomb and it’s only a matter of time before it blows up in our face.

I’m sure you want to say things could be worse, we could be like the Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or even Burundi, where there has been plenty of strife and violence. But I don’t see how the situation in these countries makes ours praise worthy. Presently, we have over four million internally displaced Nigerians. There is the fear that thousands, millions even, could die of starvation. Criminal elements masquerading as herdsmen are killing people and burning down their homes, oil installations are being bombed unchecked. There’s nothing to praise or admire in a country where things are so bad the military has virtually taken over functions that ordinarily should be performed by the police. This is not a situation to be envied or celebrated. Why more Nigerians are not angry and are tolerant of this malaise is what I will never understand. Could that be why we are referred to as the happiest people in the world? You may want say that some people are doing well, the richest black man and woman in the world are Nigerians after all. You can even be ridiculous and say Nigerians have the highest number of private jets in Africa, but how do you juxtapose that with the number of poor and deprived in this country? It doesn’t make any sense that a country can be said to be very wealthy, yet the majority of its population are in abject poverty. What an embarrassing paradox.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? We don’t even have tunnels in this country to start with, but maybe. I however don’t think so though, but I’d loved to be proved wrong.  There are a great number of Nigerians who are braving the odds and making the best of a bad situation, creating things and scaling up ideas that many thought impossible in a country as disorganized as Nigeria. The tech industry gives one plenty of hope, the entertainment industry is a leading light in Africa. But we know that these industries seem to be working because they are run independent of government and that summarizes the sad state of affairs in Nigeria, 56 years after.

Happy 56th Independence Nigeria…

 


Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

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