At 60, Nigeria Needs You Alive

In less than 48 hours, our great nation, Nigeria, amalgamated by the British in 1914 would be celebrating its diamond jubilee. So, as convention demands; happy birthday Nigeria! Nobody wishes a celebrant a miserable birthday.

But how happy are we? Well, that depends on whom you ask. If you ask a Biafraud, even one carrying a Nigerian passport and living in the abroad, the term - Nigeria is a mere geographical expression. Biafraudists, like Sai Babarians have sold their reasoning to their beloved messiah.

Opinion pollsters, who sit in comfortable offices, make a few calls and conclude that everybody else has spoken once rated Nigeria the happiest nation on earth. Well, their security is no longer guaranteed even from their lofty hotels. Who is happy in a country where every village’s loftiest aspiration is to become Africa’s 55th state?

Even people of the old Kabba province recently wrote a letter to Google Earth officially renouncing their age-old geographical classification. They want to be known, called and identified as Yorubas. It sounds logical when you remember how hard it has been for the police to identify criminals in most parts of the north where every first born is a Mohammed or its variant. The Okun have a semblance of tongue-twisting names that sound like Yoruba; they were bred to regard their language as vernacular and penalised in school for using it. Their first language of instruction is Yoruba even though most of their chiefs wear red fez hats. They manage, courtesy of the SIM to speak a Yoruba that is mutually intelligible to native speakers.

The Okun are not the only dreamers in Nigeria. Kano street names and road signs are written in Ajami; an attempt to Arabize a people who now identify tarihi or culture as idolatry. These days, the entire North Central, and its motley tongues want to dissociate themselves from their ‘northern’ identity. By so doing, they hope the world would stop lumping them with the failure associated with the political offsprings of Sardauna.

If Google accepts the petition of my people, things could be better. According to Sunday Igboho, the new Generalissimo of the Yoruba nation, the Oduduwa flag, would be officially unveiled across western Nigeria on this anniversary. That means from next year, children of Kogi West extraction would no longer claim catchment area in any northern university. While no Okun billionaire has invested in private universities, western Nigeria accounts for nearly 60 percent of privately owned universities. With traditional federal institutions, Oduduwaland could absorb the deluge, bearing in mind that the only industry associated with the old Kabba province is minting professors and unemployable graduates.

Did you ask me when and where of the Oduduwa referendum and adoption of colours? Sorry, your guess is as good as mine. Things happen when elites get brain waves and arrogate to themselves the right to think and take decisions for the masses without consultation. The masses have never protested the usurpation of their natural rights by their elites.

This is not a happy anniversary for Muhammadu Buhari. After seeking this position with tears and finally getting it, his critics say he has not done well with it. He may have fought for a one Nigeria; his second coming is not to cement that unity. He said so himself. He has not returned to please the five per cent at the expense of the majority home base. His appointments, body language and the latest promotion by the Customs Service show he means it.

Six years ago, Buhari promised to stop further distortion of Lugard’s map after Obasanjo, his former boss and predecessor, ceded parts to Paul Biya. Boko Haram were then in control of most parts of northeastern states and making incursions to other parts of the north including the FCT. Buhari vowed to stop them in 12 months. Ask him and he’ll say he technically did.

Last week, Governor Zulum escaped the second attack from the insurgents. Sitting pretty as commander-in-chief from his ornate office in Abuja, Buhari ordered Zulum to keep putting his life on the line!

Now, according to the Nigeria Customs, (which woefully fails to protect our borders so much so that Buhari had to close them); BH is very present in the FCT. Apparently, the Customs are better at doing the DSS’s statutory job, another exhibition of the Nigerian wonders with failed institutions. Our secret service has its hands full defending the state from critics, vocal opposition members and protesters.

President Buhari is expected to ignore these issues as he commands the nation to rise on this auspicious occasion. The foundation for this platinum celebration was laid last year under apprehension that the rigging might go wrong. Only Americans believed anything went wrong.

Nigeria has come a long way from 1960. It has kept the green-whitegreen that replaced the Union Joke and managed not to concession Tafawa Balewa Square to loyalist private developers. We have changed the irrelevant things. For instance, Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, ECN, morphed into NEPA that has now unbundled into Discos and Gencos while darkness and epileptic power supply has remained constant as well as crazy bills, crooked staff and disconnections.

We have changed our national anthem, currency, rebelled against the British style of driving on the wrong side of progress and embraced the metric system. The roads, where they exist, have huge craters helping day and night marauders to waste life and providing tollgates for uniformed people. For nearly 50 years, resuscitating Lugard’s locomotives became a drainpipe and stopped working until Goodluck smiled on them. Buhari now wants to extend it, not to Kabba or Okeagi, or Ogoniland but Maradi. He might be working on annexing Niger with the endorsement of France.

Lugard would not be mentioned in Buhari’s broadcast even though Buhari spent more time in London, than he has spent anywhere else except his other room. Buhari might disagree, but he has had more citizens yet less to worry about than Lugard who ran a safe country, built and ran schools, clinics and hospitals, as well as roads and infrastructure. Buhari runs on promises and denials. The convincing government mantra is - government has no business running government. The corollary to that are amorphous bureaucracy, a wasteful and indolent parliament and a retinue of ministers that often forget what they were meant to be doing for the nation.

All said and done, if you are a friend of the regime, you would argue that there is reason to celebrate. Canopies don’t just appear - they cost money and government has tons of it. You will disagree that this house has fallen. You will expose your 32 as you send out happy birthday memes and messages, but you will be keeping an eye out for your own safety and security even in broad daylight. You’ll be hoping for a happy night’s sleep when it’s all over. You’ll pray not to be sick and hope not to be kidnapped.

As citizens, do what you can to survive, because Nigeria needs you. It needs you and your children to pay the $85 million debt it owes and it is still borrowing. It needs you to be around when the Chinese takes it over. Nigeria needs you to stay alive to pay your part of the national debt.

tundeasaju@dailytrust.com