Nigeria at 59

By Stanley Chidozie Imo

The United Arab Emirates was formed in 1971. Their own national day is December 2nd, 1971. That was the day the Emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah came together and formed the United Arab Emirates with its capital in Abu Dhabi. The last emirate to be admitted into the union was Ras Al Khaimah. That was on 10th February, 1972. The eighth emirate would have been Oman but they opted out at the last minute. All these happened about 48 years ago. That was long after the independence of Nigeria.

Today the United Arab Emirates is the eight wonder of the world while Nigeria is a shadow of itself. The seven emirates that make up the UAE have competitively developed in such a way that there isn't much difference among them. The first time I went to UAE was in 2011. I first went to Sharjah. I stayed at the Sharjah Palace Hotel. When I looked out of my window on the 18th floor of the hotel I marvelled at the kind of development that was going on in the emirate. I later went to Dubai and discovered that more development was going on over there. On my subsequent visits I took time to tour the emirates. I asked questions and discovered that the secret of their competitive development is the fact that their founding fathers entrenched and practiced true federalism. The different emirates are allowed to develop at their own pace. The Emirate of Abu Dhabi is the big brother with more oil resources. But their brand of Islam is more fundamental than what you will see in Dubai. The most popular emirate is Dubai and their brand of Islamism is very liberal.

The whole world comes to Dubai. The Dubai International Airport is one of the busiest airports in the world today. It has four huge terminals. The first terminal plays host to almost all the international airlines from all over the world every day. The 2nd terminal is for domestic flights. The 3rd terminal is for Emirates Airlines only. While the brand new 4th terminal is for A380 aircrafts only. Abu Dhabi and Sharjah have their own International Airports. Currently, Airpeace flights from Nigeria land at Sharjah International Airport. The UAE has at least two standard airlines. The Emirates Airline belongs to Dubai while Etihad Airways belongs to Abu Dhabi. These two airlines can compete with any airline in the world today. The Emirates Airline started in 1985 with a fleet of less than 10 aircrafts. As at that time the Nigerian Airways had a larger fleet of aircrafts than Emirates Airline. Today the Nigerian Airways does not exist while the Emirates Airline has a fleet of 256 aircrafts that are in active service. This fleet consists of 112 pieces of Airbus A380-800, 10 pieces of Boeing 777-200LR and 134 pieces Boeing 777-300ER. Meanwhile the airline has placed an order for 231 new aircrafts which will all be delivered before 2024. The cost of one A380 aircraft is about 450 million dollars. There is no airline in Nigeria that has more than 20 aircrafts in active service.

The Airpeace Airline has only 20 aircrafts that are in service. Most of the Nigerian airlines use tokunboh aircrafts of the Boeing 737 model. Etihad Airways, which belongs to Abu Dhabi, has a fleet of about 113 aircrafts in service. They have also placed an order for about 200 more aircrafts to be delivered in the next 4 years. The most painful aspect of this narrative is that the UAE is not a big country. They have a population of about 10 million people most of whom are immigrants. Their land mass is about 84,000 square kilometres most of which are desert. They don't have rivers and neither do they have much rain fall. You can stay up to three years in the UAE without seeing rain fall. Apart from oil, they don't have much of any other natural resource.

But look at Nigeria. We are blessed with everything but still we are not making progress. We have a population of about 200 million people. We didn't plan for this population and we are not making use of the population We have a land mass of about 924,000 square kilometres. We have water and other natural resources. But for the last 59 years we've been incompetently fumbling with nation building. In our incompetent and dishonest bid to build a united country we ended up dragging ourselves down. All the steps we took since after the Nigerian civil war have become our albatross. In our bid to keep Nigeria as one united country we ended shooting ourselves in the leg. We destroyed the understanding our founding fathers had at Independence. We allowed ourselves to be carried away and obliterate the terms of the union which our founding fathers negotiated and agreed after a series constitutional conferences that took place in Lagos, Ibadan and London. In that process we totally forgot that unity, just like respect and love, cannot be legislated. Rather it happens naturally and can only be nurtured by positive actions. You can't force people to be united or love themselves. Rather you can create the enabling environment that will engender peace, unity and love.

That enabling environment can only exist when you have the right constitutional framework. Just like they did in the UAE. The constitution was not imposed on the country. Rather the emirates came together and agreed on the terms of the union. Even the Americans did a similar thing in 1787 in Philadelphia.

Anything less than this will amount to paying lip service to nation building and things will continue to deteriorate. It is not yet late. We can still salvage Nigeria.

**Mr. Stanley Chidozie Imo is the 1st Vice President of the Nigerian Bar Association**