By Chris Ekpenyong

Once, Hitler came to one meeting with a live chicken. He started to pluck off its feathers one by one.

The chicken quacked in pains, blood oozing from its pores. It gave out heartbreaking cries but Hitler continued without remorse,plucking feather after feather until the chicken was completely naked. After that, he threw the chicken on the ground and from his pockets, took out some chicken feed and started to throw it at the poor creature. It started eating and as he walked away, the chicken followed him and sat at his feet feeding from his hand.

Hitler then told members of his party “This chicken represents the people, you must disempower them, brutalise them, beat them up and leave them. If you do this and then give them peanuts when they are in that helpless and desperate situation, they will blindly follow you for the rest of their lives. They will think you are a hero forever. They will forget that, it is you who brought them to that situation in the first place.”

This has been the situation of the ordinary citizen of Nigeria for 62 years now, worse of all the dreams, visions of our founding fathers have been forgotten

Yes we have made some progress than where we were 62 years ago, but we’re not where we are supposed to be, by 62 years we should have a working economy, we should have 21st century rail lines that connect the north to the south, we should have stable power system, quality health care system, stable education calendar, visible infrastructure that can support entrepreneurship and businesses, this country ought to have been a great Nation by now with the enormous resources we have but human and natural resources

If you go to the embassy now, you will see the huge number of Nigeria leaving this country to other countries

The country has been so messed up that the citizens no longer believes in the country anymore

At 62 we should continue to hope and pray that God will give us good leaders who will love this country and will want to work for it to work for the benefits of all it citizens, leaders who will believe so much in Nigeria and it existence

For the past 62 years leadership has been our major problem, leadership that can unite and develop the country, what we have had are those who believes it is their turn to feed on our common patrimony alone

We pray for leaders that will understand that development should be bottom – top, development should start from the rural environment to reduce crave of rural- urban migration

This country needs to be restructured, decentralized to reduced the burden on federal government

Sector like electricity should be decentralized, so states can control electricity it will help so well in improving rural electrification and rural development

62yrs after, no sector has seen any significant growth or development

Yes we left the chains of our slaves masters to the chains of poverty, insecurities, corruption, economic instability, ethnicity etc

A man at 62 should be blessed enough to bear fruits for his children and children children

Let us rethink again at 62

Happy birthday Nigeria

• Ekpenyong, a former Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State and lawmaker representing Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District in the Senate, writes from Abuja