By KEN UGBECHIE

Nigeria turned 62 yesterday as a sovereign nation. That’s a good two years above the retirement age for civil servants in the country, bar teachers (65years). At such age, it’s assumed that Nigeria is no longer young. She ought to be competing with the best economies in the world. But she’s not. Only consolation is that there exists bold signs and imprints that suggest the nation is not far from her epiphany.

For a nation so endowed with smart citizens and a lavish share of mineral resources amid a verdant verdure and flourishing fauna, Nigeria should be numbered among the best places to live in using global liveability indicators like access to food, housing, quality education, health care and employment. Or better still using intangibles such as political stability, job security, clean environment, and individual freedom and rights. Again, here, Nigeria flounders. She does not come near top countries like Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, et al. Instead, she’s hobbled at the other end of living hell nations, sharing the orbit with Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and other war and crime seared nations. Even Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, is ranked among the worst cities in the world to live in. But this grim ranking has not doused the spirit of a new generation of Nigerians. A generation that, from all indications, will herd the nation to her epiphany of greatness and stately opulence.

Yes, nationhood in its pure context may be far away. But out of the wasteland of yesteryears, there is a rainbow of hope, an effervescent torch of sanguinity held up by Nigerian youths, at home and in the Diaspora. That torch is borne by 25-year-old track and field Queen, Tobi Amusan, the current World, Commonwealth and African champion in the 100m hurdles, in addition to being the record holder in three other competitions in her area of speciality: track and field.  The torch is to be found shining from starry-eyed Chika Ofili, the teenage math genius who stunned the world at age 12 when he became recipient of the TruLittle Hero Award in 2019 for discovering a new and smarter division method in mathematics. Now known as the Chika Ofili Formula, his innovation has been algebraically proven to be true and full-proof division method using the number 7. There are many other young whizzes at home and in the Diaspora. Innovators. Entrepreneurs. Social activists. They bear the flag of a new Nigeria that will inevitably emerge from the dunghill of wasted opportunities piled up by the varnishing brigade of prodigal leaders.

This is the generation that still inspires hope of a better tomorrow. They are the repairers of the broken breaches. A young army of achievers ready and primed to drag Nigeria out of the umbra of poverty and under-development to the pavilion of prosperity. It is for such people and many more that Nigerians should merry, not mourn, at these times.

Without a doubt, this Union is troubled. Like a couple in an abusive marriage, each party wanting out but not getting out. Nigeria is in an abusive union with her many units. The nation is fragmented by ethnicity; scoured by religion and puckered by sundry primordial sentiments all lashing viciously at her foundation and threatening her existence.

Were Nigeria a marriage, it’s obviously an abusive one. Husband is abused. Wife is emotionally battered. Children are in eternal torment, fearing for their lives and unsure of the next moment. Yet, even in such sadistic and monstrously distressing union, none of the parties is allowed to exit. They suffer in silent pain. They hurt in fitful anger. The union chokes them. They want out but can’t get out. They’re stuck in the muddle. Like gum-stick in a mud-pie!

And it’s been so for sixty-two years. The self-governing union cannot govern herself. The people choke in spasmodic pain. Fear grips the land. Faith takes to flight. Trust is betrayed. The animosity bites with vengeful vigour. Sixty-two years after Independence, you could hear the land seething with religious bigotry. Steeped in self-flagellating masochistic disorder. You could hear the baleful symphony of hate. Hatred along the fault-lines of ethnicity, religion. Distrust in discourses. Mistrust in the marketplace. The auguries get even worse and more worrisome.

Emboldened now like never before, a strange breed of nomadic herders, armed to the hilt, traverse the nation; killing, maiming and kidnapping for sundry ransom. Another breed of bandits emboldened by a collapsed national internal security system, plunder bank vaults in broad daylight; overrun our highways and byways, take commuters hostage. Their whim is a harvest of anguish. They inflict pain on the rest of the people. And the people, helpless and hopeless, seek solace in far-flung domains. Nigeria has one of the highest number of migrants seeking safety and comfort in Canada, America, Europe and Asia. They have become mortified migrants, reduced to a life of wandering and globe-trotting by elite misrule at home.

The centrifugal forces pulling to tear the union apart are only responding to a stimulus. They react to the reality that at 62, the vision of the likes of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to birth a nation where merit is enthroned over mediocrity, where equity, justice and fairness are the norm, has been violated and aborted. It’s on account of these distortions that Nigeria appears not to be together at 62. The pockets of agitations from the Niger Delta, Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC, Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, the Northern youth forums, Arewa guardians and many more, are all vestiges of a nation spooling wool over a gangrenous sore and expecting it to heal.

But Nigeria can heal herself if she wants to. She can reset her national algorithm to accommodate the dissenting forces and douse the growing tension. And it’s not what President Muhammadu Buhari can do. It’s beyond him and far beyond his capacity. Buhari has divided Nigeria more than any Nigerian leader, living or dead. He has by his own hand destroyed the surviving ligaments that have held us together as a nation. More disturbingly, Buhari has dragged Nigeria many decades backward. Nigeria is currently the poverty capital of the world. What a trophy!

At Independence in 1960, Nigeria was ahead of Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea in nominal GDP and income per capita. Sixty-two years after, Nigeria cannot advantageously benchmark her GDP against the GDPs of any of these nations. South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore are all looking down on Nigeria from their economic Olympian heights.

The difference is not in the people. It’s in the leadership of these nations. In 62 years, the Nigerian political and military elite have pushed the citizens off the cliff into another nadir of enslavement. Whereas the nation gained her political Independence from Great Britain in 1960; today Nigerian citizens are demanding their own Independence from their fellow citizens: the leadership elite.

But there’s hope. The younger generation has woken up. At home and from the Diaspora, they are working and innovating their way to take back their beloved country from desperate despoilers. It’s on behalf of this young generation that I say HAPPY INDEPENDENCE!

First published in Sunday Sun