Who says we should not celebrate Nigeria at 100?

I had expected that with the Federal Government leading, civil society organisations, the media and the generality of the people of Nigeria will open the year with fanfare in celebrating our union. I think the amalgamation is an event of great importance in the life of our nation worth celebrating with vigour and passion and […]

I had expected that with the Federal Government leading, civil society organisations, the media and the generality of the people of Nigeria will open the year with fanfare in celebrating our union. I think the amalgamation is an event of great importance in the life of our nation worth celebrating with vigour and passion and merriment in the air.
I am tempted to believe that the atmosphere of subdued nonchalance pervading the air today is largely because of the audible mutterings by some disaffected Nigerians that the union should not have taken place. I am not on the same page with those intellectuals especially from the southern half of the country who describe, or rather dismiss, the event of January 1, 1914 as a ‘’historical mistake’’ and wished it had not taken place at all.  
Some of our compatriots from the South of Nigeria view the event of January 1, 1914 with unhappiness because they say the unification of a comparatively richer, better educated and more prosperous South with a poor, uneducated North is the reason why Nigeria has not made much progress. They feel that if the South had been left alone, it would have made faster progress than it has made under this unification. I do not take delight in arguments about what would have been. I therefore leave that to pundits who make such their specialty.
Anyone who is discerning enough can see that it is frustration that is at the root of the anti-amalgamation argument. Enemies of the amalgamation are simply disappointed with the less than spectacular progress we have made since 1914. Nigeria has adopted snail speed since 1914 and even since the discovery of oil wealth in the 70s when she had a chance to become a world power, she flopped it. And now there is deep despair in the land. Apart from this overwhelming sense of frustration, there are some who are irked by a different anger which I may call the injuring of their nationalistic pride.
Some argue, like my dear brother and friend Segun Ayobolu did in his column on the back page of The Nation of Saturday 23rd February, 2013, that it will be a sheer waste of money and time to celebrate an event which ought to be one of a tortured memory to us because it reminds us of our subjugation and dehumanisation under Lugard or British colonial rule. They maintain that Lugard did what he did not out of any noble motive for the good of the peoples of both protectorates but out of a shrewd administrative and business calculation. He is said to have said that he will institute a marriage of a poor husband (North) to a very rich wife (South). The anti-amalgamation describe this marriage as one of convenience for Lugard and the British and one of great inconvenience to one of the parties involved.
My answer to this is that there is no marriage on earth that is ever perfect.  I therefore do not worry myself too much about how Nigeria came to be. In fact, I chuckled to myself because I ask: what difference does it make if a man is a product of harlotry between his father and mother or the outcome of an honourable marital union between the two? The important thing to me is that the man (Nigeria) has been born and there he is before us, an undeniable proof of an encounter he had no say in. No matter how he came about you cannot wish him away. To quote the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola, ‘’you cannot abort a pregnancy that has been delivered’’. If you do, you would have committed murder!
And as in individuals, so are nations. How any nation came about is not really important. When you think seriously about it you will wonder just how many countries in the world had a glorious birth. There is hardly any nation on earth that came about as a result of an honourable, peaceful, consensual agreement among the parties that gave it birth. Someone or some people’s will was always imposed on some others before any nation is birthed. We should not therefore spend precious time lamenting how Nigeria came about. If Nigeria was born out of the economic and political interest of some smart colonial overlord is not of much relevance now. What is, is how do we engage ourselves to try to improve the country and make it one that gives a covering to all its citizens and even the strangers within it.
It has been said several times that Nigeria is the number one country in the world in terms of unjust distribution of the wealth of the nation. As we have hit the 100 year mark, this is one of the challenges that our leaders must face. The disparity between the rich and the poor of our country is wider than the state of existence in heaven and hell. And this is not good at all.
I have always maintained that a nation is not just a physical thing; it is, more importantly a spiritual entity as well. It was not Lugard who willed Nigeria into being. A force higher and superior to him orchestrated it. It is not by accident that Nigeria is today the most populous black nation on earth peopled with some of the most smart, ingenious, self-confident and self-assertive citizens on earth. Many who have spiritual eyes can see very clearly that in spite of our fumbling we will soon become a world power. No one can become a serious world power without population. If for nothing else, the amalgamation has set the stage for Nigeria to have a great population necessary for becoming a great power. That is something to celebrate, if you ask my humble opinion.
If Lugard had not happened along, it would have taken us hundreds of years of fighting, killings and destruction to be able to come up with a big, populous and large nation state like Nigeria. None of the tribes had the means and organisational ability to have been able to easily subdue others and impose their will on the rest and come out with a place like this. This statement will cause the stomach of some ‘’progressive’’ intellectuals to churn but that is the truth.
In any case we are not the only people or nation on earth to have been colonised. It looks to me that colonialists are tools in the hands of God which he uses to create nations. The amalgamation has also helped to give us diversity which I consider another source of strength.
In a sense therefore, Lugard’s amalgamation was a master stroke which helped our nationalist cause. See even the imposition of a unifying language-English. This is another issue that if left to us would have resulted to several wars and the loss of lives and property. If we accept my argument that since a nation is a spiritual as well as a physical being Lugard was merely an agent of a higher being in bringing to birth this potentially great nation, we should roll out the drums and cymbals and celebrate our coming together.