By Dr Ugoji Egbujo

At independence we rolled out drums. And danced. We would keep our wealth. We would chart our own destiny. We would no longer have to satisfy some colonial masters with taxes and cocoa. We said freedom would make us great. Our kinsmen, the continent , said we were potentially great.

Nigeria has failed’

It’s 59 years.  We  will bring out drums  to commemorate the day that gave us hopes. But we are no longer euphoric. We are still only potentially great. The continent still seems dazzled by our potentials. But everyone is now thoroughly  baffled by our utter lack of real progress. We have confounded ourselves so much that not a few amongst us have wondered if independence was good after all.

It is true the colonialists pillaged us. But they were not insane. They siphoned our resources but they built roads, hospitals and schools. They had amongst them real missionaries. Had Nigeria remained a  British colony till 2019, we  would have had some world class universities and 24 hour power supply. It is sad  that it’s imaginable that we could have been collectively freer as subjects of the Queen of England.

We  have seen economic booms. Yet, we  have suffered  cumulative retrogression. We have witnessed more than six fold growth in GDP since 1999. But our growths are never really felt on the streets. 87 million remain in abject poverty. Nigerian Bureau of Statistics says that 43% of our huge population is either unemployed or under employed.  That’s why  we always long for the past. Everywhere we gather, we sit and eat nostalgia.

It’s more than joblessness. We can no longer do things we did 40 years ago.  40 years ago, we had a flourishing national airline. 35 years ago, we had  highly functional petroleum  refineries and some outstanding hospitals. We built Abuja 20-40 years ago. We cannot even dream of building another Abuja now.  We can’t keep livable cities. Our premier hospitals used to be centres of medical tourism. Today we are now all  actual or potential medical tourists.

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We may be consoled by the fact that our population has grown more than fourfold since independence.  We  were 46 million in 1960. We are  almost  200 million in 2019. We have indeed,  grown into a giant. And we can say despite being branded the new headquarters of poverty  in the world that we are not all chaff and fluff. Yes, we have the highest number of out of school children in the world. That wasn’t the dream at independence. But we have a huge number of highly trained manpower in diaspora.

That is our story. We are full of human and natural resources. Yet, we are full of children with chronic malnutrition. We help run the NHS in England. Yet, we contribute significantly to the number  fleeing human suffering and drowning at seas in Europe. We constitute  a good chunk of the nurses in America. Yet, we dominate human trafficking and prostitution in Italy. We have earned more from natural resources than perhaps any other African country. Yet, we are a leading country in the open defecation league table.

It is true we were bound together by foreigners. But we have been majorly responsible for our disunity. Selfishness and  greed; shallowness  and short-sightedness, have crippled our politics.  Ethnic and religious cards are the dominant political cards. Homelessness, joblessness and hunger coexist with wanton wastefulness and ostentatious living by public servants and politicians.

We are an enigma. We are one of the most religious nations on earth. We don’t play with God. But we have a very ugly reputation for lawlessness within and advance fee fraud, cyber fraud and drug trafficking without. We do God outside and frolic with the devil inside. We have prayed for constant power supply, but corruption and sin have made sure we remained in the dark. The world has told us that corruption could deny us 37% of our GDP by 2030.

At Independence we were optimistic. We said we would match and surpass the world. Our universities were new but they were respected. Our societal moral fabric was solid. We had taboos. We had agriculture. But it didn’t last. By 1965, Chinua Achebe captured the rot that had set in  in his political satire—A Man of the People.

Democracy failed in Africa.

Democracy was supposed to foster people-oriented ethical purposeful governance. At independence, democracy enthroned short sighted divisive  politics riddled with corruption.  Africa  lacked the minimum condition necessary for the sustenance of democracy. Democracy started crumbling early.  Those who tried  to salvage with military governance and one party dictatorships pillaged what was left of our hopes.

Can’t we sow our democracy to fit?

Liberal democracy needs  a critical mass of the free  and enlightened. It needs sense of nationhood and  surplus good faith.  Religion, ethnicity and sectionalism have not allowed  national cohesion. Poverty and illiteracy have made sure that the other evils have accentuated effects on the citizens. In our democracy, cash and violence often win. The few good people who have mass appeal and win well cannot sustain democracy. Democracy makes no pretension that it can yield good results in a society where  the electorate lack social safety nets, live  perilously below poverty line.

Democracy has not yielded. Our politics is still incontinent, still diapers. Politics that is not grounded on  basic good faith and  minimum patriotism will never usher in widespread prosperity. Our democracy has no moral foundations.

But if it’s not democracy then what should it be? We must find a system that yield a shared sense of belonging and make the government at every level very responsive, acutely answerable to the people. Boko haram has bled us. Thousands have been killed, millions have been dislocated, hundreds of billions have been wasted. But perhaps more troubling now is the proliferation of bandits. Bandits have left untold harm across the country.  And are leaving humiliated. State governments are everyday reaching  and announcing casually peace agreements with armed bandits. It’s a new low.

We helped South Africa fight off apartheid. We helped Liberia and Sierra Leone rediscover themselves. We helped Gambia regain balance.  We have made peace everywhere in the continent. We haven’t been derelict in all out duties. We have been the continent’s peacekeepers. But we have suddenly found ourselves negotiating sovereignty with murderers in our midst.

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We can bring out the drums. And dance.

We are building railways again. We are returning to the farm. Oil will be dead soon.  We want to stop importing food now. We want to diversify the economy. We want to gather more revenues through taxation. We want more children in schools. And we want to reduce infant and maternal morbidity and mortality rates. We want to improve education and health and roads and power. We  are feeding children in schools and doing social interventions. We are only scratching the surface.

We need peace. Our loans are growing. We don’t earn enough.  Yet, we are losing too much to corruption and violence. We want to do so much. But our purse is lean and we cant afford many more loans. Budgets come and go. We have no money to do major fixes.

We can bring out the drums. But we are still a sleeping giant.

We must find efficiency. And urgency. We must find peace and unity. We must enthrone social justice.

Otherwise,  the labour of our heroes past could actually be in vain.

Vanguard