Geographically speaking, Benin and Togo are much closer to Nigeria. But Ghana and Nigeria have English as their lingua franca, haven been ruled by Britain consequent upon the colonial partition, and so the citizens of the two countries feel much at home in each other’s territory. I otherwise testify that Africans have a lot in common in their cultures, and wherever they find themselves in Africa, they are brothers and sisters.
When I first visited Ghana, it was for a conference in Kumasi in 2007. What caught my fancy was night travel, or what one can call 24 hours movement, as I enjoyed it in Europe and America. We arrived in Accra in the night, and went straight to a park, a very busy park, and boarded a commercial bus to Kumasi. On our way out after the conference, we left Kumasi at around 2 am or thereabout to take an early taxi to Lagos from Accra.
Why can’t Nigerians enjoy the same thing in their own country? Night travel was safe in the past. I used to travel at night alone in my official car in the 1980s. Gradually, insecurity became rampant. The extremely wide gap between the have and the have-nots is not helping matters, and the matter is not getting better as cases of official corruption and presidential protection of embezzlers/misappropriators have been on the increase.
Politically, Nigeria is unsettled. If the politicians are not using ethnicism, they use religion to divide and rule the land; politicization of religion and imperialism are banes of Nigeria’s peace and progress. Surprisingly, there is order in the way things are done in Ghana and that is why Nigerians in Ghana enjoy electricity and peace of mind. Nigeria needs to get better also if brain drain must be averted and if other nationals must come to our country to live.
Pius Oyeniran Abioje, Ph. D,
University of Ilorin, Ilorin
