The Tragedy Of Our Independence

By Sunny Awhefeada

The notable Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o dedicated his novel A Grain of Wheat to “the peasants who fought the British yet who now see all that they fought for being put on one side.” African independence didn’t meet the aspirations of the people. It did come with betrayals of tragic proportions. The decades of nationalism from around 1920 to the late 1950s were not just about the struggle for freedom, but were years of hope anchored on Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah’s admonition, “seek you first the political kingdom and every other thing will be added onto you”. The struggle for independence wasn’t of the same character in the evolving countries. The East African experience of it was brutal and bloody and it culminated in the Mau Mau resistance. In West Africa were two variants namely, direct rule and indirect rule. The former anchored on the idea of assimilation was driven by the French and their arears of influence were called francophone colonies. The British who colonized Nigeria also had the Gold Coast later Ghana under their apron string. Africans fought for their independence in anticipation of everything good. Sadly, when it came it did come with betrayal. Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat anticipated the tragedy of post-independence betrayal.

Many an African writer made the inscription of post-independence disillusionment the raison d ‘etre of his artistic calling. Camara Laye, Chinua Achebe, Sembene Ousmane, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Okot p’ Bitek, Christopher Okigbo, Ayi Kwei Armah, George Awoonor-Williams (Kofi Awoonor), among others, constructed the African imaginary around the crisis of independence which essentially was the failure of leadership. The new leaders, whom the day before were vocal antagonists of the colonizers, became neo-colonizers perpetuating in more abrasive tempo the ills for which the Whites they replaced were infamous. Achebe’s A Man of the People and Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born are classics of this tradition of novels of post-independence disillusionment. The novels reflect the stark reality that not only kicked Africa in the face, but made freedom bitter for her. Africa’s moment of reprieve was probably one or two years after independence. The succeeding years were those of unbridled crises that have put the continent in reverse gear. Africa remains the world’s most backward continent to validate the European’s christening of the region as a dark continent. Josef Conrad, the Polish writer, who authored The Heart of Darkness must be very pleased in his grave.

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Our beloved, but beleaguered Nigeria was sixty-three years old as a sovereign nation last Sunday. As it has always been, it was a moment to sit back and take stock of our sojourn so far as a nation. In truth and in deed, there was nothing to crow about. Our leaders who are indeed dealers only had words of admonition for us, “e go better”! Nigeria like most African countries is reeling under the throes of state capture. Rogue elites are in charge and Nigeria has become more or less a picaresque narrative. Nothing is working. Nigeria is practically dismembered as the roads which should link her various parts have packed up and the nation is now one big inaccessible wasteland. The state of Nigerian roads represents for us a metaphor of how decrepit our polity has become. Yes, our roads have come to mean a lot of things that speak to the Nigerian debacle. The state of our roads reflects inefficiency, it reflects corruption, it reflects failure and most significantly our roads have become the quickest route to death. The tragedy of our independence is not just an abstract metaphoric rendition, but a painful manifestation of how Nigeria kills her own citizens. That tragedy showed its bloody hands on October 1, our independence day, when some Nigerians died on the road.

There are conflicting figures regarding the number of those done to death that black Sunday. What is however not in doubt is that the road killed them. And it was not just the road that killed them, but it was Nigeria that killed them since they died on a Nigerian road that the federal government’s callous neglect turned into a death trap. The stretch of the road where the tragedy took place has been in the news for the wrong reasons for about a decade now. The Ologbo-Ugbenu stretch of the Benin-Warri road has brought agony to the people of the South-South zone, the region that lays Nigeria’s golden eggs. The Ologbo terrain is swampy and the quality of the road in question is in serious doubt. The road has failed and the number of vehicles locked down there is in hundreds if not thousands. The craters on the road are so deep that they swallow up vehicles as they meander perilously to their destinations. The monstrous petrol bearing trucks always instill fear in travellers on that stretch. The trucks with their inflammable and deadly content usually stagger like drunken giants.

It was the falling of one of such staggering trucks that sparked the inferno that burnt those victims to death on our independence day. Those who died in that avoidable fire would not have died if only the hostile and un-federal government had fixed the road. The road like most federal roads have packed up and become impassable. Many parts of Nigeria are now isolated because there are no roads to access them. Roads that take twelve months to build elsewhere and at much lower cost usually take forever in Nigeria at ridiculously over-padded costs. The government officials and contractors smile to the bank and travel by air, while the hapless people perish on the roads. The immediate past regime of Muhammadu Buhari couldn’t complete the Lagos-Ibadan road in eight years. The government kept celebrating its inability to complete the road by organizing press conferences to announce postponement after postponement in completion date. The number of those undone by the Lagos-Ibadan road has attained the status of uncountable.
Sixty-three years is not such a long time in the life of a nation, but it is long enough to get a serious nation out of the wilderness. It didn’t take the Asian Tigers that long to get out of the woods. Those nations found their bearings in good time because they had leaders who were thinkers and not dealers. Despite the crisis that rocked the First Republic, Nigeria would have evolved a crop of thinking leaders, but for the successive coups that rocked and ruptured the soul of Nigeria and robbed the nation of values, vision and dreams. The soldiers who pretended to be corrective were actually destructive and showed their hands as rogues of state. They went on to recruit an assorted band of civilian collaborators, colluded and took the state captive.

Independence means nothing to these eaters of carrion. They can go ahead and feast on those the road they refused to fix undid.
Nigerians must brace up and look beyond the present crop of rulers for our collective salvation. Time is ticking and the moment to decide our fate is now. The leadership has taken the people for a ride for too long. While we agonize and reel in hunger due to no fault of ours, our senior government officials made videos of themselves cooking and savouring expensive cuisine. They released the videos to assault our sensibilities and make us hungrier. These same people were on hand to tell us to bear and sacrifice more for Nigeria. We have listened to them for too long. It should be their turn to listen to us now as we tell them to allow the food to go round or get out of the kitchen. We must end the tragedy of independence.