Two major factors crippled my hope in Nigeria: the last presidential election with the dirt, tribalism, and impunity that attended it, and a certain article by Simon Kolawole.

On the election, restructuring was key for me. Not being clairvoyant, I had no way of knowing Atiku’s genuine intentions on the subject; I had mere faith. I keep saying Nigeria is not a nation, but a loose group of people stampeding for personal and ethnic survival. Stampedes are predatory, and there is no such thing as an organized stampede.

Ethnic groups are the real nations in Nigeria, wherein people’s true patriotic passions lie, never mind the denials. Not necessarily a bad thing, for all politics is local. People can die for Yoruba, Igbo, or Hausa-Fulani causes. Except those benefitting from Nigeria’s darkness, or those totally naive, no one is willing to die for Nigeria. Nations are strong bonds of unified purpose, vision, culture, belonging. What we have is a stampede to grab resources everyone thinks belongs to no one. Which leads me to Kolawole’s article written two years ago.

The journalist writes that he was awake one night, and decided to read news reports of old newspapers to pass the night. Nigeria, cheered a 1988 story, had attained 4,000 megawatts of power supply, targeting 12,000 megawatts by year 2000. Thirty-one years after in 2019, Nigeria now boasts some 3,000 megawatts, after spending over $30 billion on power. This sealed it for me, but you can keep believing for yourself that anything will change.

Read more: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/05/30/biafra-by-immanuel-james-ibe-anyanwu/