Browsing: Independence

Today, Nigeria is not secured. It is suicidal to travel in the day along Kaduna-Abuja or Birnin Gwari road. Most people in Zamfara and Katsina have become refugees due to activities of bandits. People pass through Jos at personal risk. In Kaduna kidnappers pick their victims on the streets.

For most Nigerians, 1st October every year is a day to celebrate our independence from colonial rule. But fifty-nine years down the line, nothing has really changed. Some Nigerians say we are worse off now than we used to be under colonial rule. Where that is not true, they can not be blamed because the state and its polity have refused to improve. The white man may not be directly calling the shots, but we are surely still living under the heels of a privileged few.

Our Nile has refused to open and we are tired. Promise-and-fail have burnt our dear hearts. The land flowing with milk and honey now shed blood. It’ll get better they say but is it getting harder. We are cajoled into seeing another coming Messiah. Who knows if Nigeria will ever be healed?

We desire a working and sane government who would help build more schools and fund the existing ones with necessary equipment and facilities, train and employ more facilitators/teachers, re-visit the school curriculum, pay teachers/lecturers very well for their huge contributions in the society and help make a free flow academic calendar.

I may be right if I consider it ludicrous to celebrate independence when kidnapping, banditry, insurgency and general insecurity are becoming order of the day while nothing is done to get them eliminated.