By Isaac Asabor
Ordinarily, when a country celebrates 62 years of Independence, it is a matter of celebrations. But as Nigerians, we should certainly ask ourselves whether our country is headed in the right direction.
Without any scintilla of hyperbole, Nigeria was founded as a Republic with the qualities of being democratic, secular, and treating all its citizens equally. Our freedom fighters struggled for several decades to bequeath Nigeria with what was considered to be the most valuable gift at the time of independence. They held protest marches, fasts, and even voluntarily courted arrests for a cause they believed in. One of the main goals of our founders was for Nigeria to reclaim its place on the world stage, and historians told us that there was a general consensus among our political class to achieve that goal.
To achieve this purpose, over the years, our political leaders have taken several strides particularly as priority was misplaced by focusing on exploration and marketing of oil instead of agriculture, leading Nigeria to fewer successes and several failures, even as the economy has persistently been mismanaged. Our leaders have since on the day the British declared Nigeria an Independent state been positioning the country as an object of mockery on the world stage, and in the same vein pushing millions of people into abject poverty. Without resort to sound unpatriotic, there are several more failures we achieved since we attained independence on October 1, 1960.
Unpretentiously speaking, our leaders should hide their faces in shame, particularly today which marks Nigeria’s 62 Independence Day, and which invariably calls for sober reflection. As the man on the street would say, “Dem nor try at all”. There is no basis for us to be jubilant at all as nothing have being achieved since our country attained Independence from the British.
There is no doubt that bad leadership has remained a significant socio-economic and political crisis of our times since Nigeria attained Independence. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating. It has destroyed employment, and businesses in the organized private sector, and compromised the well-being of millions of people.
Expectedly, today, if observations from previous years are things to go by, is the day when our leaders would one after the other, with cheek in tongues, mount the soap box, and begin to wax poetic as they would tell the people, in a consolatory manner, that despite the disruptions in the global economy and internal troubles that Nigerian economy has continued to be resilient and maintain an upward trajectory. They would tell us that the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the loss of substantial volumes of oil have had negative impacts on the Nigerian economy. Who will blame them? After all, it is idiomatically said that “A bad workman blames his tools”.
They will hide under the façade of the fact that with COVID-19 and now the conflict in Ukraine that the past three years have been turbulent ones for the global economy, and Nigeria is not exempted. They will add that global interdependence has become more apparent as we have had to deal with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The foregoing excuses have become perennial so much so that by each passing year, speeches made by our leaders on Independence Day are usually embellished with consolatory words to the extent that they will blame anything blamable to exempt themselves from being part of the leaders that are destroying Nigeria’s economy.
To my view, irrespective of how they would try to exempt themselves from being responsible for the parlous state of the economy and insecurity, the fact remains that the World Bank, early this year in one of its Reports asserted that Nigeria’s economy under Buhari’s rudderless leadership was worse than it was 10 years ago. The forgoing fact was conveyed by the Global Bank’s flagship Report for 2022, titled ‘Global Economic prospect’, “Nor be me talk am”.
It added that “The pandemic has reversed at least a decade of gains in per capita income in some countries, in almost a third of the region’s economies, including Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa, per capita incomes are forecast to be lower in 2022 than a decade ago,” the report said.
It is expedient to say in this context that yearly, the lead-up to Independent Day is usually marked with pomp and pageantry in the face of a poor “Report Card” to justify the celebrations. Without any iota of exaggeration, a dispassionate look at our leaders’ collective “Report Card” reveals that it is faltering on several fronts. As is often the case, Buhari’s government has run yet another successful marketing campaign that will today strike a chord with many citizens. But there is very little to celebrate about Nigeria at 62.
