Anthem for Nigeria at 50

My dearly beloved country. A country like no other. My mother’s country. My father’s country. My country. My children’s country. My unborn grandchildren’s country. My unborn great, great, great grandchildren ad infinitum.
It is for you I write this piece. It is for you I sing this song. You who would be 50 next year—by the grace of God. You who has been there long, long before all of us, yet they say you are just 50. Fifty years of independence. Fifty years of freedom from colonial rule. Fifty years of enslavement of ourselves.
Fifty years of struggling to get it right but not getting it right. Fifty years of prodigality, of sons and daughters who have squandered their fatherland’s wealth leaving nothing of substance to the new generation. Fifty years of a people whose fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.
Nigeria, my fatherland. Land of liberty, yet land of insecurity where people live encaged. Land of the law-abiding, yet land of the lawless. Land of riches, yet land of poverty. Land of good people, yet land of wicked people. Land of honest people, yet land of the fraudulent. Land of God’s people, yet land of the devil. It is for you I write. It is for you I sing.
I sing about decadence. I sing of honesty and integrity gone to the dogs. I sing of young men with laptops, defrauding foreigners on the internet with promises of millions of dollars stolen from government and waiting to be collected at the false Central Bank of their smart imagination. I sing of Nigeria at 49, a figure that reminds me of 419. I sing of insecurity, of anguish, of kidnapping, of ritual killings, of political killings. I sing for our murdered citizens whose murderers have vanished into the mist of oblivion, never to be traced, never to be found, never to be brought to justice.
I sing about classrooms with locked doors and the teachers refusing to teach because their cup of anger is full. Their cup of anger is boiling and is running over.
I sing of a country where bribery is our national currency. I sing of policemen, turned beggars at roadblocks. I sing of judges offering judgement based on who has offered money behind closed doors. I sing of a country where injustice sits like a king over justice. I sing of students wasting the sweetness and the vigour of their youths in the idle deserts of an uncertain future. I sing of education that has been polluted like the polluted waters of the Niger Delta. I sing of rebels in the creeks, temporarily dropping their guns and waving white flags of surrender. I see disillusionment everywhere on every face. I see our citizens in Diaspora too afraid to return home, because home looks like a picture of Dante’s infernal hell.
Each October 1 calls into question how far we have come, how much progress we have made, how much we have stretched our human intellect. But each time we make our self-assessment, each time we examine our report card, we find failure staring shamefully at us like a student scoring an F. We find that in spite of all that God has endowed us with in Nigeria, there is still so much to be done and so much that has been left undone. In our result slip, there are so many Fs, so many errors standing uncorrected in our zigzag journey to the unknown future. It was the great Nigerian Juju music icon King Sunny Ade who sang years back, in his heyday: “I don’t know where this driver is driving me to. Is it forward or is it backward?”
Many a times, the military have intervened to correct our collective errors only to push us back into the deepest abyss of mess. Corrective regimes end up as disruptive calamities. And even when democracy is restored, it is marred by massive election rigging. And our troubles worsen. Oh, Nigeria, which way are we going at 50? Is it right? Or is it left?
In Nigeria today, nothing seems right. Why can’t we get our elections right? Why can’t we get our educational system right? Why can’t we get our electricity problems right? Why can’t we put our horrible roads in the right path with all the money we are swimming in? Why can’t we get our economy right? Why can’t we get our banking right? Why is our nation driving in reverse when we should be driving forward in the journey to our 50 years of independence?
In the past, Nigeria was the country to fear even on the field of soccer, but today nobody fears Nigeria anymore. Not Tunisia. Not Kenya. Not Mozambique. The “Super” in our Eagles has been clipped away and we are no longer Super Eagles. Today, we are tottering at the brinks where we stand the chance of not even qualifying for the World Cup holding right here in Africa. Oh, what a shame! Even in youth soccer where we used to tower above the world, Ghana has taken over from us as the soccer kings of Africa.
The true picture of the state of Nigeria is reflected in our soccer. Look at the Super Eagles coach and you see the picture of Nigeria’s leadership today. A coach just sitting there, helplessly, bereft of ideas, staring vacuously and unable to influence anything on the field of play. A true leader should be a catalyst, a motivator, an agent of change for good. Not a passive spectator. Look at Governor Fashola of Lagos State and you see the picture of leadership in motion. A leader like Fashola gives us hope that all is not lost.
All is not lost in Nigeria. The future is for us to change. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” writes Thomas Paine in his book, Common Sense. We still have our destiny in our hands and Nigeria is for us to change for good. Nigeria would change for good. It will. Whether they like it or not, we, the people, will change Nigeria for good. With everything we have, we will change Nigeria. We will topple all our “nattering nabobs of negativism,” if I may use the phrase coined by the great journalist and speechwriter William Safire for President Lyndon Johnson who popularized the phrase. William Safire just died. May his soul rest in piece.
Next year Nigeria would be 50 and we owe this country a lot. This country has done a lot for us. It deserves at least a befitting 50th birthday celebration. As individuals, we know what it means to celebrate 50th birthday. It’s something we celebrate only once in a lifetime. Many of us will not live to see Nigeria celebrate its 100th birthday anniversary. This is a chance of a lifetime. So let’s celebrate this one. Let’s celebrate Nigeria at 50. Let’s reinvent Nigeria.
Let’s start planning for it now. Let’s set up a committee to organise the 50th birthday fiesta. Let’s borrow a leaf from Ghana when they celebrated the 50th anniversary of their country with so much pomp, pageantry and an overflow of patriotism.
I was in Ghana when Ghana celebrated the 50th anniversary of their country’s independence. It was a very impressive and emotional spectacle. I watched Ghanaians all dressed up in the colours of their country, waving buntings and carrying their national flags on top of every building and every moving object. Even animals shared in the celebrations as dogs and goats and cows were decorated in the red, gold and green colours of Ghana.
Let us show the world that at least, we too love our country. This beautiful country that has given us so much in this fifty years. This country that has blessed us with the best of oil, gas, mineral resources, agricultural resources and the best of everything. This land of milk and honey. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, so said President John F. Kennedy of blessed memory.
Without even asking, Nigeria has done so much for us already. Don’t blame Nigeria for our problems. Blame our leaders who have stolen and stolen and impoverished the larger majority of Nigerians. Without any doubt, Nigeria has tried for Nigerians and even non-Nigerians. For once, let’s join hands to give Nigeria a befitting 50th birthday party. Let’s boogie everybody. Let’s party.
Nigeria, my fatherland, it is for you I sing. It is for you I write this piece. It is my own version of the legendary Chinua Achebe’s “Trouble With Nigeria.”