There must be something wrong with Saturday compared with other days of the week! Why was it not a Sunday or Monday; things would have been remarkably different! I have now discovered the root cause of our problems as a nation; it’s the day of the week! If not, what else should I apportion the blame to; certainly not the good people of this country who are very religious; certainly not our leaders who are either His/Her Excellency or the Distinguished or the Right (and the Left) Honorable. I must blame our woes on something, obviously. Saturday is to blame!
Nigeria became an independent nation from Great Britain (now Untied Kingdom) on Saturday 1st October 1960. It was with so much promise and prospects that the then new country would be great in many respects. Today, at 63, the grown up nation is still a toddler, holding its feeding tube in two hands and unable to be independent. Its current president, sworn in some four months ago, is up and about in international circles doing what almost all past governments have been doing: wooing foreign investors into the country and nearly none answering the clarion calls. I remember when the immediate past president Mohammadu Buhari visited the United States of America, his press secretary, Femi Adesina, was all over the place enumerating the wonders that were going to happen in Nigeria on account of the visit. He knows that nothing happened.
Aside from the flag independence, there is very little to celebrate this 63 year old nation. You can even see it in the speech of the president this morning; very uninspiring, says nothing about where we have come from, where we are now and where we are headed. The speech signposts a nation of over 200 million people to nowhere; and we think it’s funny.
The speech speaks volumes about the stunted growth of Nigeria. At 63, the Black Race should be hearing the President of the most populous black nation on earth say something about: how we have overcome poverty; how we are helping other African countries do same; how we have defeated common diseases which used to plague us; how we have developed a vaccine for malaria; how our literacy rates have rivaled the Western nations’, how our education system has attracted people from all over the world, how we are ready to land a man or woman on the moon; how our armed forces have eradicated terrorism in Africa, and such like.
But at 63, we are being told that low level civil servants will receive $25 monthly as temporary relief for six months. It was not a circular issued by the head of service of the federation, but in a nationwide broadcast of the president on the 63rd anniversary of our independence as a sovereign nation. And I am suppose to clap for the president, suppose to be happy for this earth shaking promise, and suppose to be a proud Nigerian.
How come the president did not follow the same pathway of thinking he in his address to the nation nation this morning as he so eloquently enunciated in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) two weeks ago? Could it be because he knows that in Nigeria the buck stops at his desk and that at UNGA he’s not to be held responsible for anything?
National cohesion, a desideratum to meaningful development, is lacking. The country is at war with its own people: the north east has not been peaceful since 2009; the north west has been in a lockdown for nearly a decade by bandits and criminals; the north central has been ravaged by armed herdsmen and gangs fighting for the lands of the natives; the south east has all but decided to become independent of the entire country; south south people have connived with some security forces to capture state oil in a crude and environmentally destructive manner while cultists are having a field day in the south west.
Wherever one turns, insecurity, unemployment, hunger and abject poverty now walk on all fours. Second term governors who begged and cajoled voters to return them to power for improved governance have abandoned their jobs literally. In Lagos, craters, pits and potholes have become common in many parts of the city’s roads. I was in Ibadan last month when the taxi driver who took me from the train station to my destination lamented that governor Makinde, who he said did very well in his first term, has not done anything since he won the election. The story is worse in Ogun State. The Akute-Ajunwo road (if it can qualify as a road) in Ifo LGA can comfortably compete for a national-worst-road award.
So, what is there to celebrate about? The dancing governor of Osun State, Mr. Ademola Adeleke, has perhaps given the best treatment for this Independence Day celebration: No celebrations! Thankfully, tomorrow will be a holiday and Nigerians will find time to rest, just rest from the daily chores of having to live in Nigeria. The joke about living in Nigeria qualifying for a full time job seems to be a self fulfilling prophecy for many. You see it on the faces of beggars at every traffic light; you see it on the faces of street vendors who, come shine and rain, they must hawk their kobo kobo wares to survive.
Four months into his administration, the renewed hope president Tinubu promised has turned into renewed suffering for most Nigerians. The man is behaving like a tiro chief executive officer of a business company. His focus is on the economy, and he has not started to see results yet. Worse, he doesn’t know what to tell the shareholders when the story will turn north. The Naira he hurriedly devalued has become an albatross. It appeared as if as our president was ringing the bell to close trading on nasdaq two weeks ago, his nation’s currency was receiving the beating of its life. It is inconceivable that the Naira which exchanged with the dollar at N200/$1 in 2014 (the last full year of the defeated ruling party, the once invincible PDP) would be gasping for breath at N1,000/$1 today and counting!
And all other matters of national significance such as insecurity, brazen corruption, and disunity are kept in abeyance until Mr. Tinubu finds a handle on the economy! When in 2014 the current ruling party was formed, it promised political reforms, creation of state police (Reflections! is not for a state police at this time of our national development), national restructuring. In fact, the incumbent president was the architect and arrowhead of these talks. They even found their way into the constitution of the party; but Buhari never touched any of these matters with a long spoon for all the eight years of his presidency. One would have thought that Tinubu, being the preeminent apostle, and one who is not afraid to take tough decisions, would have swung into action by now. He even spurned the opportunity that the Independence Day gifted him to articulate his government stance on these issues.
The Buhari government left us in the deep pit of indebtedness. Last year, Nigeria is said to have spent 106% of its revenue to service its debts. You would think that the government of our president, who is also a western trained accountant, would stop digging the pit, but alas; he has borrowed money to the tune of $1.5 billion from the World Bank alone in just four months.
The greatest challenge facing Nigeria is not so much its monumental failure of the past 63 years but the lack of hope for a bright future. If there is a scintilla of hope for the future, the highly industrious Nigerians would have clutched on and turned the situation around within a generation. Instead, it’s the same people putting in less than half of their talents and intellects in other climes and churning out mighty successes in every field of endeavour.
Let’s face facts: Nigeria’s best talents are outside Nigeria. And we will not get them back by mere rhetorics. It is this dispiritedness that has made many Nigerians want to do anything but live in the country. Make no mistake, most Nigerians have given up on the country. The tribe of genuine nationalists has shrunk greatly. The few pretenders are those whose filthy fingers are buried in the state treasury.
So, if your neighbour refuses to wish you a Happy Independence Day, blame it on Saturday, the day in the week that gave Nigeria bad-luck!
Esiere is a former journalist
