It was colourful ceremonies in the Federal Capital Territory and across the state capitals watching Nigeria celebrate its 58th Independence Anniversary on October 1.
The spectacle was electrifying with military ceremonial parades, display of military hardware and scintillating show of combat aircraft manoeuvre.
The equipment on display was not manufactured by any company in Nigeria or our own Defence Industry Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) by our military.
Yes, 58 years in one’s life is worth celebrating ordinarily.
As a young child growing up in the early 1970s, Independence Day had meaning to me and my peers in the primary school.
We were conscious of the Green-White-Green flag and what it symbolized.
Growing up in a hamlet in Agbor in present day Delta State, we celebrated independence more than Christmas as we were not used to celebrating our birthdays as villagers.
I remember as if it were yesterday, when in our Local Authority Primary School, we look forward to the independence with excitement and elation.
This is because our school would be in a celebration mood; our parents cleaned us up, shaved our heads with razor blade as barbers with clippers were not popular.
Our school would be given a cow with bags of rice and we go to school with our plates to enjoy sumptuous meal of rice and stew.
I remember with nostalgia that in our primary school, we start the day with an assembly of students for morning devotion, followed by the recitation of the National Anthem and Pledge.
We rounded it off with a march past.
That was our routine and every child learnt the National Anthem and the Pledge by rote and we recite it like our prayer bids.
We had Civics class during which we were told to respect the Nigerian flag, respect places of worship and be honest.
There was relative peace notwithstanding the interregnum of the Nigerian Civil War which we were not old enough to appreciate.
Everybody to us was a Nigerian from different ethnic groups with no resentment or animosity towards one another.
We watched the itinerant herdsmen and sang some rhyme as they herded their cows with stick thrown across their shoulders.
This period, there was honour and integrity and morality was a guiding principle even among the elite and other professionals.
The political class was not as rapacious as we have them today because there was relative moral check on them.
As a nation, we kept faith with the consciousness of October 1, as a National Day and celebrated it all through the military regime until 1999 when Chief Obasanjo came back as the civilian president.
He appropriated May 29, the day he was sworn in as the president and elevated it over and above the Independence and National Day in self-glorification.
The Nigerian elites did not find voice to challenge the historical distortion and they joined the bandwagon.
Today, the Independence Day celebration has become an urban and elite pastime.
Independence is loss to the ordinary Nigerian as it has become an occasion to reel out government achievement and exaggerated scorecards of the government of the day.
I am unable to decipher what we are celebrating as a nation after 58 years of independence.
We have rich arable land and yet many Nigerians still go to bed hungry.
We have rich mineral resources but we lack the capacity and knowhow to harness our God-given wealth for the benefit of our citizens.
We have refineries that our engineers cannot carry out turn-around maintenance.
After 58 years, our roads remain seasonal, barely motorable except during the dry season.
After 58 years, we engage foreign companies for basic civil engineering work and the Chinese have virtually taken over the entire construction work across the country engaged by both the federal and state government.
At the end, they repatriate their profits leaving us with the short end of the stick.
The roads are not made to last and we soon return to square one and the structures are dilapidated.
After 58 years we are not able to get the electoral process right; the fight against corruption appears selective and carried out fiercely more in the media and becoming almost unwinnable.
After 58 years, insecurity has become the defining feature of our polity and people go to bed with two eyes open.
We are reluctant to travel by road for fear of being kidnapped or waylaid by armed robbers in addition to the poor state of the roads.
After 58 years, Nigeria is governed like a conquered territory and the government and the privileged elite do not obey the laws of the land pronounced by the court of law.
Our leaders sit together and award themselves salaries and allowances that shows absolute lack of feeling for the ordinary citizen who managed to eke out a living by the day.
After 58 years, we can only be celebrating the ruling elite and their authority over a conquered citizenry.
When we rolled out the drums, I did not see the people, the ordinary Nigerian, I did not see the children and youths, I did not see the workers and the pensioners.
I did not see a call to re-enact the patriotic fervour that used to be the driving force of our people.
After 58 years, we should be re-inventing the wheel.
Yes! That is what other countries did and are still doing.
We should not expect China to come and develop our infrastructure and drive the economy of our country; that is the mental indolence of our ruling elite.
After 58 years, we are rolling out the drums to celebrate how much loan we are able to secure in the international financial institutions to pay salaries of workers and entertainment.
When one looks back, it calls for a deep and sober reflection on the kind of leadership we have.
It is a misfortune that after 58 years we still have ruling elite that lack moral principles and introspection.
The choice now is ours and the time is here again and if what we have in the past 58 years have not served us good, we should change it; enough is enough.
Kebonkwu Esq, writes from Abuja
