WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH NIGERIA?

As we celebrate our centenary birthday as a nation, I consider it highly expedient that we reflect on our national life in this one hundred years’ journey as a country. After one hundred years, no water, no light, no good hospitals, no good roads, no work, no good schools, in fact, with the recent condemnable dastardly actions of the Boko Haram insurgents, the country is almost non-existent! While many people had because of all these said that Nigeria is moving towards the status of a failed state, many others had concluded that Nigeria is already, a failed state.

Nigeria, the most populous of the black nations has gone through much turbulence since her independence on October 1^st, 1960. Arguably the most blessed of all African nations by whatever measure, no aspect of her national life has justified the Mother Nature's benevolence to her by bequeathing her with more than abundant natural blessings. From human capital development to infrastructural provisions, the national impropriety is too transparent to be hidden from even the blindest man on the street.

I have read and listened to many commentators and their commentaries by which they blame the British for our national woes. The argument had always been that the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates done in 1914 was the genesis of Nigerian calamities. Those who belong to this school of thought argued that Lord Luggard and his wife, by that arrangement had encouraged an “unholy marriage”, and that is why Nigeria is not settled. They argued further that by that “marriage”, the British successfully imposed the Northerners on the other parts of the country.

People who argued along this line strongly believed that the northerners are the most backward of all the regions in the country. It is therefore argued that there is no way the Northerners could be the ones dictating the pace of events in the land. The Southerners, especially the South-westerners who are generally adjudged the most advanced in almost all areas of human endeavours do found it a bitter pill to swallow for them to depend on or take orders from the Northerners. The power tussle has been hellish, and during most general elections, hell was let loose because of either perceived or real malpractice by any section of the country to favour a particular party which does not enjoy much patronage in that part of the country. The mayhems of the ‘60s and early ‘80s are living testimonies.

Another school of thought that dwelt on why Nigeria is fraught with so much national upheavals opined that Nigeria is too big to be only one country. They argued that ordinarily, and even according to the map of Nigeria, there are three distinct countries in this only one called, Nigeria. People of this school of thought are always very quick to conclude that until Nigeria makes way for, at least, three different smaller nations, which they considered more homogeneous, there would be neither peace nor national growth or development in the country.

The people of this latter school of thought believed that the reason the country is having difficulties is managerial inefficiency. They strongly believed that the country is too large to manage; it must therefore break up into smaller units which they consider manageable.

The external orientation of what the British did or did not do has continued to generate controversies that have hampered national development in no small measure. South Africa, a country that got their independence from the same British, thirty years (1990) after Nigeria got hers is today recognized as the most advanced of all African countries. Ghana, another African country that was also a British colony is not also doing badly, though after some problems, too. Power failure is almost non-existent now in Ghana, unlike Nigeria, where it had remained a daily dosage which many parts of the country can not do without. Of these two countries in question, none is as naturally endowed as Nigeria.

As a person, I have failed to see the evil in the 1914 amalgamation. My position really is hinged on the fact that both South Africa and Ghana mentioned above have almost the same national characteristic as Nigeria. They are multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-whatever you can think of. For example, the language in South Africa is so diverse to the extent that they have seven official languages.

To the proponents and students of the second school of thought, I have been very quick to point out and mention a few countries that are much larger than Nigeria, and despite both their population and or land mass, are making serious progress in their national lives. Examples of such countries include India, China, the United States of America, to mention but a few.

So, what is the problem with Nigeria?