By Chioma Onuegbu
UYO—A FORMER military administrator of Akwa Ibom State, Air Commodore Idongesit Nkanga, has said that Nigeria has done reasonably well after 56 years of independence.

Nkanga who spoke, yesterday, in Uyo said, “Sincerely speaking, I think Nigeria as a country has done well. You see 56 years in the life of a human being is quite much, but for the life of a country it is not that much.

“If you were in Nigeria in the 60s and see what it is today, you will agree that we have done reasonably well. Things were not like this. We still have a lot of grounds to cover, that we agree, but we have to encourage ourselves. If you condemn totally that there is nothing at all, it could be discouraging. And I don’t think that is right.

“In terms of infrastructural development, by now we may not have been able to catch up as it is in a lot of developed countries, because we have not taken advantage of the blessing God has given us as a country. However, when compared to the rest of the third world, we have done reasonably well.

“But having said that, there are certain things that should have been done which we haven’t done and I get worried about those things. I think at the point that we are now, we as a people need to start taking responsibility.

“We blamed the colonial masters, then the military, and now we are blaming past administrations. I think we should have gone beyond that by now.”

Nkanga also identified ethnicity and religion as well as attitude of governments to not consolidating on previous development efforts which he said must be changed for the country to forge ahead.

“By now,  we should have had an environment where everybody is competing to build the nation, and not allow things like ethnicity, religion to continue to drag us back. In a computer age, we should have overcome all those things and sadlym we have not. We should start looking above such matters so that we can take rational decisions.”