Nigeria’s independence on October 1,1960 didn’t come cheap
The air of freedom came at huge cost and sacrifice from many of its founding fathers-some of who paid the supreme price.
But the struggle to keep Nigeria united sixty years on has required even more sacrifices and pains especially from the Nigerian people.
The journey into nationhood is a chequered history of many odds- and all of it, Nigeria has miraculously managed to survive in the last sixty years.
At independence, expectations were high that the oil rich country with the largest population of black people in the world will in no time join the league of super powers in the world.
That hope didn’t last for long. Barely 7 years after independence; Nigeria was at the precipice.
A civil war orchestrated within its young military set the country up in smoke; threatening its very foundation to the roots.
Before then, a political upheaval in the West of the country had sent out the first panic that Nigeria was going to perish young.
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Yet Nigeria survived the odds!
The agony of the civil war that lasted 3 years left Nigeria brutally bruised with casualties on all sides and the bruises are yet to heal in the aftermath.
A country that was once united now hangs delicately on the feeble thread of mutual ethnic and religious suspicion among the various federating units.
Yet Nigeria’s political history can’t be sufficiently told without reference to the years of brutal military coups that were to follow; truncating the enthronement of civilian rule for a total of more than 3 decades.
The memories of June 12 and the political upheavals that came with the annulment of the election acclaimed to be the freest and fairest in Nigeria’s political history has continued to linger on the conscience of the nation.
In the last 20 years, Nigeria has managed to sustain its brand of democracy; but not without endless agitations for a restructuring of the contraption many insist was faulty from the start.
That agitation has reverberated in many violent forms with secessionist group in the Southeast calling relentlessly for Biafra Nation and a struggle for resource control in the oil rich Niger-delta region.
The conflicts have also manifested in a spate of insecurity especially in notorious clashes between herdmen and farmers.
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Deep in the Northeast, terrorist groups; Boko Haram and its affiliates, ISWAP have engaged Nigeria’s military forces in relentlessly battles that have further shaken Nigeria’s fragile unity.
But in all of these, Nigeria has stubbornly survived all the upheavals and it is against predictions in some quarters that the country was heading for doom and will in no time completely disintegrate.
The predictions are yet to materialise and Nigeria soldiers on- albeit with bruises that have refused to completely heal.
Editor Paul Akhagbemhe
