Last Wednesday—the 54th anniversary of Nigeria’s Independence—was a
day of silence for me. I didn’t have the stomach to leave any comment on
Facebook or Twitter. Two or three friends and family members sent me texts of
felicitation. Demure, I merely wrote back: Thanks!
But at the back of my mind I was thinking, What is all the fuss about?
What was one supposed to celebrate?
Last Wednesday, Nigeria reminded me of nothing so much as—to invoke the
title of Wole Soyinka’s short polemical book—an open (festering) sore.
I know: many super-“patriotic” Nigerians now insist that, before one
says a critical word about our dear, dear Nigeria, one must first pause to
count the country’s blessings. So let’s count them.
Blessing Number One: We all woke up on October 1, 2014 and Nigeria was
still there. As we Nigerians love to say, nothing spoil. We still had our
transformational president sitting pretty in Abuja, he and his beloved wife
amused to see all the “transformation ambassadors” staging rallies all over the
country to draft him to run again, to win again (by a landslide of course), and
to, once again, bestow on us that magic rule of his that created so much
prosperity that Nigerians raced to the front ranks of private jet ownership in
the world.
