Let Us Save Nigeria

By Sunny Awhefeada

Growing up in Ibadan, our thoughts of Nigeria were lofty and sublime. We thought of Nigeria as the best place to be born. Nigeria was not just our country, but it was a country of everything good. Was that idealism borne of ignorance or childhood innocence? It certainly was not. Nigeria survived a civil war that raged for close to three years and crawled up rising to towering heights in just less than a decade after that fratricidal conflict. Despite the cataclysm of the war and destabilizing coups, the nation returned to civil rule in 1979 and was sailing towards Eldorado! Crude oil that pumped in petrodollars was in abundance. The land was arable and vast. The climate was perfect. There were rivers with the Atlantic Ocean endowing the land with the wealth of nations. There was a vibrant and forward looking citizenry and everything looked good for Nigeria. We were children in Ibadan when the soldiers who had ruled Nigeria for thirteen unbroken years handed over to civilians. That act marked the beginning of the era of ijoba alagbada! Looking back I recall the beauty and excitement that enveloped Ibadan, and I am sure it was the same all over Nigeria. Even as children we got the hint that the new system of government which we heard was called democracy was going to make life more abundant! So, we rejoiced and gamboled whenever we heard campaign songs. I cannot now remember ever getting hungry or lacking anything in our corner. All I remember was plenitude, comfort and a sense that all was well. Electricity was constant and pipe borne water ran in the compound where we lived at Oke-Ado.

My memory of 1^st of October 1979 is dim, but unforgettable. We sat in front of our small black and white television and watched the proceedings of the handing over ceremony that must have taken place at the Liberty Stadium. When the new government settled down to work, school children were given free books and other learning materials. We were also given milk to drink during break. For us, life was good. The days, weeks and months moved fast and in no time I found myself being taken “home”. Home then was not where we inhabited, but our place of origin. Home then was Urhoboland in the old Bendel State. I was taken to live in Evwreni with an uncle. Although, not Evwreni by birth, Evwreni was “home” since it was in Urhoboland. Our pristine configuration of existence outside our place of origin made us to consider every other place within Urhobo as home. The Evwreni of my childhood was an Eden that was to lose its idyllic ambience in no time. By the time we finished primary school, we started observing disquiet and anxieties. Our parents and guardians would go on complaining about how difficult things were becoming. They used the word “austerity” quite frequently and then one day they told us that teachers had gone on strike! Soon food rations at home were reduced and in no time having bread and tea for breakfast stopped and rice vanished from our menu. We did not understand what was happening.

Then we woke up one morning to a bombshell that ruptured our lives. A coup had taken place at midnight on the eve of 1984! While some rejoiced, others were pessimistic saying that military intervention was not the way to go. As children, we could not discern what was happening. We listened to and parroted what the older people said. It was not until around 1985 that I read Chinua Achebe’s 1983 book, The Trouble with Nigeria did I began to make sense of what was amiss. By 1985, another coup had taken place and things took a turn for the worse. I think we also became anxious as we announced our entry into teenage. Reading Achebe’s pamphlet in which he dissected “the trouble with Nigeria” many of us thought the solutions to Nigeria’s problems were embedded in the pages of the book and that in no time the trouble would be over. Unfortunately, instead of reprieve, we experienced turbulence the consequences of which are still tormenting us. Achebe’s opening chapter puts the cause of our trouble at the doorstep of leadership. His now popular prognosis is “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely the failure of leadership” was on the lips of many people. We all then knew the cause of the trouble, courtesy of Achebe, but nobody could offer the silver bullet to take care of it. Rather Nigeria cascaded on the path of disaster and had to be pulled from the brink again and again!

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Nigeria has been whipped and mercilessly so. The hapless citizens now bear the brunt of misrule or the failure of leadership that Achebe wrote about. Right now, Nigeria is in turmoil and one of its component states is under emergency rule. The state is now governed by a retired military man twenty five years after the return to civil rule. The emergency rule in Rivers State has taken the nation a quarter of a century back. Besides the imbroglio in Rivers State, there are more than many crises rocking the nation. Insecurity now looks like a permanent fixture as the nation’s military appears overwhelmed. Despite claims by government officials to the contrary, many parts of Nigeria are in thralldom enabled by insecurity. Nigeria’s economic crisis has pauperized the populace to the extent that an estimated 160 million people are hungry and live in multidimensional poverty. Health, education, electricity and roads are badly affected to the point of irretrievability. The same negative character defines Nigeria’s all time number one enemy which is corruption.

The Nigerian crisis appears intractable. But we cannot give up and throw our hands in the air. We must as a people rethink what kind of country we really want to build. This rethinking must be geared towards saving our country and in doing so save ourselves. The Nigerian crisis has turned into a conundrum to the extent that many see the option of exit which is popularly known as Japa as the only way out. Not many still want to think about the way out of the Nigerian debacle. A few days ago, the very class of friends and associates who brought us to our knees was in Abuja to celebrate the birthday of one of their own. They pontificated and offered hollow rhetoric about Nigeria, her woes and the way forward. Among them were a former president and his vice-full vice. Former governors, senators and other state wreckers were in attendance with glistening apparels and chubby cheeks in the face of the lean times and acute deprivations. They pretended as if they love Nigeria, so they spoke about her. The truth is that these are not the ones to talk about Nigeria and save her. Those who destroy this country are avowed to ruining it without remediation. It is therefore the task of the people to work out a destiny for Nigeria and reclaim her. Those fighting to destroy Rivers State cannot redeem her. Those who made corruption attractive and destroyed our public institutions cannot fight the menace and rebuild those institutions. Those who set fire to the North-East, North-West and part of the North-Central can never be the ones to extinguish the inferno. Those ravaging parts of the South-West, South-South and the South-East would not want to give up on rendering these places prostrate. We must step forth now to save Nigeria. Time is ticking.