Nigeria @ 51: The Labours of Our Heroes Past
So goes a part of our national anthem which we always sing with gusto
without meaning any word of it! My fascination with this part of our
national anthem came by a comment of a friend on FB. He thinks,
erroneously though, that our present leaders are wasting the "labours
of our heroes past."
And I ask, what labours? Which heroes? Unfortunately, our country has
no national hero. Tell me one that you know, if you doubt me. All we
have are folks who worked solely for their regions and at the national
level, they worked tenaciously at keeping us polarised. Sadly, at 51,
we are yet to see any true (not pretentious or tribalised) hero for
our country.
We do ourselves a great injustice by blaming our present leaders for
the rot in our nation. Stop reading where you disagree:
If not for the divisive politics of the First Republic, would we have
had the coups of 1966? If not for the coups, the civil war of
1967-1970 wouldn't have come. If not for the war, our government would
not have been permanently zoned to the military and the north. Of all
the military rulers, we seem to have forgotten the squandermania
stance of the IBBs and Abacha!
Tell me, what is the difference between the agitations of Biafra in
the late 60s and the Niger Delta militancy of today and the
intractable violence in Jos as well as the Boko Haram menace? We
deceive ourselves if we keep glorifying the dead even with the glaring
crimes they committed instead of seeing the efforts of few of us in
the present who are getting it right.
Today, permit me to just sing the anthem this way: "The labours of
tribalistic leaders past, are not in vain because the killings
continue ..."
S/he who forgets the past or glorify its sordid nature will make the
same mistakes in the present and the future. Sorry anniversary my
country. Let's hope we mark another year of failure with real
fireworks other than bombs.
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