Behold Nigeria, the 100-year dwarf!

Waiting to receive Balewa at an elaborate red carpet ceremony at the airport in Washington was no other than Vice President – later President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of state Dean Rusk as well as a host of other top American dignitaries. In a rare honour normally reserved for only the most respected Presidents […]

Waiting to receive Balewa at an elaborate red carpet ceremony at the airport in Washington was no other than Vice President – later President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of state Dean Rusk as well as a host of other top American dignitaries. In a rare honour normally reserved for only the most respected Presidents and Heads of governments till today, Balewa went on to address the United States Congress where his speech repeatedly drew resounding applause from the lawmakers.
The short video provided a telling reminder of how far our nation and leaders have fallen in stature, and prestige, around the world since Balewa’s landmark visit America less than half a century ago today. These days, our leaders employ the services of Washington’s top lobbyists for the same opportunity. They are never invited to any serious gathering of world leaders.
American Presidents repeatedly shun Nigeria even when they shuttle to and from fellow West African nations such as Ghana, whose leaders have somehow managed to reposition their country on the path of growth, and prosperity, at the same time ours continued to drift aimlessly.  
Today, our leaders shamelessly struggle for photo opportunities with American Presidents at meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. Our dear nation is now only good enough lowly American Secretaries of State. We have lost the enormous promise and potentials everyone in the world except ourselves saw immediately after our independence in 1960.
Since those lofty days of abun-dant hope and promise, Nigeria has retrogressed into one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Our human rights record is also among the most appalling in the universe. The life of the ordinary Nigerian has never been cheaper. In the last week alone, hundreds have died in needless circumstances. Hundreds more could die by the time you get to read this piece. We are now at par with nations like Afghanistan and Iraq on insecurity. From the defining days of the likes of Balewa, Azikiwe and Awolowo, our leaders have also declined in quality, character and integrity.
But even as Nigerians continue to search in vain for a silver lining in the horizon, going by the trend of recent, it has become obvious that things are likely to get worse before they begin to get better. And, whereas in the past was fashionable to blame the military juntas led by a succession of Generals from the north, or the much maligned Second Republic, led by another northerner Shehu Shagari for our collective failures, that theory is certainly no longer tenable by any stretch of the imagination.
With the return of democracy in 1999, Nigerians have had a taste of what life is like under a Southern presidency for twelve consecutive years, except of course, for the brief tenure of the late Umar Musa Yar’Adua. Are Nigerians better off today than they were thirty, or perhaps even forty years ago? Certainly not, and that is even with unprecedented earnings from oil revenues in the last fourteen years in particular.
Beyond all the smooth talk and misleading sophistry employed by the Finance Ministry to explain the exact state of the economy today, the exact situation of ordinary Nigerians confronted by the rampaging poverty in the land, decayed social infrastructure, sorry healthcare delivery system, and all that we already know about our public education system is beyond denial. The situation also explodes the silly and myopic myth that only the north is the breeding ground for corrupt and mediocre leadership.
In fifteen costly years since 1999, the PDP administration has failed to complete the dual carriage way between Abuja and Lokoja, a distance of less than 200 kilometres! They have contrived to enthrone darkness in the land despite the much taunted power sector reforms, and the billions of dollars expended to facilitate the same reforms. And because my education should count, I will also never accept that the mere renovation of relics of the outdated rail system bequeathed to us by the British is evidence of economic development or social transformation.
Today, the nation has never been more divided along our predictable fault lines. The same Octogenarians such as Ben Nwabueze who contributed to the absolute mess that is our past, still strongly believe it is their birthright to shape our future in their exact image. They are waiting patiently for the needless Constitutional Conference to foist the violence so manifest in their theory of ethnic nationalities on hapless Nigerians, in the 21st century!
The tragedy, so glaring and damning in its evidence, is not in the embarrassing knowledge that we have erred, but in our collective reluctance to accept the degree of damage that corruption, and primordial sentiments, continues to do to our efforts to build a modern nation that all Nigerians can be proud of. And the fact is known to all discerning observers of political developments on these shores with the exception of our inept leaders.  
Last week, I looked in vain for Barrack Obama, or the British Prime Minister David Cameron at any of the centenary events to no avail. Certainly, a nation of our stature and natural endowment; and one which also prides itself as the leading and most populous black nation in the universe deserved more respect. But not even the diminutive figure of South Africa’s Jacob Zuma was within a thousand miles of Abuja. By contrast, President Jonathan was among the world leaders that jostled for space at the FNB stadium in Johannesburg during the burial of Nelson Mandela. How pathetic!
But it was not only the top foreign dignitaries that gave the celebrations a miss. Nigerians, too, gave their damning verdict with their attitude. Most were too numb with shock that the government still went ahead with such elaborate celebrations and fireworks at the National Stadium anyway. They couldnt have forgotten that a day earlier, in killing fields that has become of our northeast, more than forty teenage students were slaughtered in their school beds while they slept! There were other reasons at play as well.
In the days preceding the ceremo-nies, the FCT Minister Senator Bala Mohammed’s bulldozers went around the fringes of the Abuja and levelled various businesses and block industries. Simultaneously, gangs of thugs – there is no other way to describe their mode of operation – dressed in Police and Army uniforms, ambushed young artisans and petty traders who were clinically robbed of their goods.
Those unlucky enough to be caught were ferried to police stations to pay hefty fines or rot in jail for eternity. And that for a nation without the semblance of social security in whatever guise! The state has been absent in their lives. Now, it is also unhappy that they had the courage to help themselves. They are to lie down and die from hunger. The performing artists at the national stadium in Abuja last week actually outnumbered the spectators. Only the artists, or those who employed them, could have celebrated and smiled all the way to the bank.
100 years after the amalgamation, the state still remains an enigma to many Nigerians. It has failed millions their greatest hour of need. Just as it failed those 20 teenage girls kidnapped in Borno, or their teenaged brothers in Adamawa; who woke up to the deadly chatter of AK47 assault rifles and RPGs, on a day that will forever live in infamy for ordinary Nigerians, no matter what was celebrated in an empty stadium in Abuja last week!