September 30, (THEWILL) – Nigeria clocks 64 tomorrow, Tuesday, October 1, 2024. It’s her Independence Day, an event for celebration and merriment.
This time round it seems like there shall be extra of stock-taking and sober reflection than celebration. Certainly, for a lot of Nigerians struggling to outlive the prevailing hardship within the nation, there shall be no celebration.
Nigeria gained independence from Nice Britain in 1960 and virtually instantly settled all the way down to the intricate enterprise of nation-building. Critics had been fast to foretell that the way forward for the younger African nation was vibrant and gifted with plentiful pure assets and human capital, she was sufficiently outfitted to play a dominant function in Africa.
Awed by Nigeria’s huge potential, they known as her the ‘Sleeping big of Africa.’ Because it turned out, the remainder of the world reposed monumental confidence within the former British colony.
Unknown to the leaders of the brand new nation, the trail to greatness was strewn with obstacles and hazard. Quickly, seven years after independence, a sequence of undesirable occasions conspired to plunge the nation right into a civil conflict that lasted three years, between 1967 and 1970.
The conflict value Nigeria about 1 million lives and extra losses by way of the destruction of bodily infrastructure and social capital. One of many bloodiest in Africa, little doubt, it left a legacy of loss of life and destruction, significantly in war-torn southeastern Nigeria which was the principle theatre.
Fifty-four years after the top of the battle, it appears clear sufficient that Nigeria has not fairly recovered from the consequences of the conflict. Lots of the nation’s post-war issues are nonetheless plaguing it as we speak. As a matter of reality, the unity of the nation is persistently underneath risk from such issues.
Ethnicity, one of many components that precipitated the Nigerian Civil Warfare, which can probably hasten the collapse of the nation anytime, continues to be dominant within the affairs of presidency.
With an estimated inhabitants of 200 million, Nigeria is but to totally obtain peaceable coexistence amongst her element ethnic nationalities, no due to prevailing ethnic tensions and the absence of peace-building constructions within the nation, in addition to failure on the a part of the leaders to actively promote peaceable coexistence by way of their actions and utterances.
Successive occasions within the nation throughout the final 20 years have proven that Nigeria is in dire want of excellent governance and visionary leaders who perceive the actual challenges of nationhood and are competent sufficient to steer her alongside the trail she has desired since independence.
Corruption, which has reached endemic proportions, stays certainly one of Nigeria’s largest issues. Regardless of real efforts by successive Nigerian governments to eliminate it, it has through the years embedded itself deep within the material of society.
Corruption lies on the root of the nation’s stunted improvement. It’s the cause why Nigeria is beset with a myriad issues that might have been efficiently solved or managed by a dedicated authorities with the correct focus an angle to governance.
Nigerians are bored with the infinite combat in opposition to corruption which have up to now didn’t yield optimistic outcomes. They need a change.
Additionally, they want an finish to banditry, kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking, armed theft, impunity, gas shortage and protracted hikes within the pump worth of gas, unprovoked assaults by varied ethnic militia, poverty and naturally, the prevailing hardship within the nation.
The judiciary, as soon as a extremely revered establishment in Nigeria, is not considered because the widespread man’s final hope for justice. Resulting from latest occasions which appear to forged it within the picture of a failed system, many Nigerians have expressed their want for reforms.
The underside line is that the persons are fed up with all the system and its deficiencies. Greater than anything on this planet, they need a break.
