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A Nation Without An Anthem…Nigeria, Movement Without Motion (Sober Reflection) By Prince Charles Dickson Jos, Plateau Nigeria Nigeria’s National Anthem with the pledge inclusive is supposedly a patriotic musical composition, a national song, a sacred awakening, a well above average poetic piece and an everyday wake up call second only to the Christian morning devotion or the five times daily prayer of the Muslims. However, it is not or mildly put it is no longer, it has been relegated to the background with smash hits such as ‘Nigeria go survive’ of the 1980’s and contemporary lyrics by Idris Abdulkarim the ‘Nigeria jaga jaga, scatter, scatter’ crooner. Negative songs, pathetic or at best Ajegunle crooned choruses have become national songs.
I have decided to leave the political front today
although painfully to look at the issue of an unpatriotic nation. Let us
leave the Goats…Greatest Of All Thieves that call themselves leaders and
politicians as they have simply failed. Today is, either one person is
confessing to have rigged elections in Lagos and the President simply
says “go and sin no more…that is how God wanted it”. Tomorrow the
killers of Bola Ige, Harry Marshall, Saadatu Rimi would only have to
confess in private audience with the President and finto…no justice,
Allah Ki yaye (Allah forbid).
In a chur ch I was invited to recently, somewhere in
Lagos, the Pastor called a prayer point as Christians call it…He said to
pray for the nation. And as I was about to commence intercession for my
beloved Nigeria, I could not help overhear the brother in Christ close
to me as he screamed in prayer…Father God I thank you for America, bless
America, Let America…grant George Bush wisdom to… America this and
America that, he went on and on. I was lost as everything he had to say
in his prayer was punctuated in and with America. It sounded like a big
joke but I can tell you a later encounter with the brother showed he had
lost hope in his nation and he had a visa interview the next day at the
US embassy…so he could not waste his prayer tickets on Nigeria… He could
recite the God Bless American anthem but sadly while in Nigeria there
was no allegiance whatsoever for his fatherland.
In the middle of the present bitter interlude called
Obasanjo’s government, I recall when a number of ambassadorial nominees
could not recite the national anthem of Nigeria and they were going to
represent us and the nation outside… Some that tried, did it in style,
the skipped several lines and recomposed their versions and in turn they
all were asked to take the ceremonial ‘senatorial bow’. The bitter truth
is that the national anthem with the accompanying pledges, one of the
remaining instruments of patriotism is going extinct. I dare say with a
measure of certainty not even half the National Assembly can recite it
without mumbling and soon maybe our kids would tell us that the national
flag is red, green, blue or something like that.
When we were young, I still get high from the kicks one
felt at having to stop whatever one was doing just to pay allegiance to
the national anthem and standstill while the pledge was being said.
Among our rural and urban kids the same anthem has become a caricature
with versions were certain phrases tell the story of
Nigeria. An example…”to serve our fatherland with love,
strength, and faith” has become ‘to serve
Nigeria
is not by force’, ‘to thief Nigerian money is by politics’ and more such
ridiculous jokes. Before I started this piece I had to recite the anthem
and pledge and it was no mean feat.
These days unlike yesteryears radio and television
stations do not even bother to sign in with the national anthem or sign
off with it. Even the state owned and taxpayer funded National
Television is culprit as it is more conventional to play street music
with the rainbow colour intermission before transmission ends.
“Arise O Compatriots, Nigeria’s call obey”. We no longer
have patriots…our compatriots are political jobbers and looters of the
national treasury that milk the nation’s resource without recourse to
their tribal marks. The real patriots that exist are the commoners be
them Hausa, Ibo or Yoruba, that sit together and watch Nigeria defeat
Tunisia through a nail biting penalty shootout. We all celebrate,
despite a full blow 120 minutes of tension, passion…a nation hug each,
no religion, tribal sentiments even when 90% of the Super Eagles are
Christian and the team they defeated is predominately Muslim.
The same patriots mourn when we loose to the Ivoriens,
they are taxi drivers, from Zaira to Abeokuta, Motorcyclists from
Onitsha to Kafanchan, housewives, peasant farmers that in most cases
only heard commentaries on the radio as they could not afford a
television, those of them that could had no electricity. These set of
Nigerians have continued to heed the call to obedience but our leaders
have on the contrary abused that call to service as a call to
enrichment, a call to dehumanize the ordinary Nigeria, a call to
rigging, a call to third fourth and live terms in power.
“To serve our fatherland, with love, strength and faith”.
What beautiful line of poetry, but sadly that is all there is to it for
most Nigerians…a line of poetry because every Nigeria whether in
leadership or not has learnt it pays better to serve ones pocket with
passion, strength and greed. As for faith…it is a case of if I do not
get to that position, I have a family member who can get there so he
will play ball…or better still the easy way get a godfather…then I will
determine how best to serve, the Ladoja way or the Ngige way.
Talking of fatherland, we have none, we simply have
Ijawland, Arewaland, Biafraland, Odualand…PDPland, Asorockland, INECland,
EFCCland, Obasanjoland, corruptland etc. there is no land, we have just
been spared a national embarrassment by the men of Deltaland and instead
of solving the problem through concrete positive short and long term
measures. After surviving the heat the government goes-a-bragging “we
did not negotiate with the hostage takers…they only realized the
futility of their action” sweet talk from Obasanjoland.
There is tension everywhere; the government is heating up
the polity through its actions and inaction. For the populace love has
become strange in their vocabulary, step on a person’s foot in the bus,
you will be left with the impression that you just had an encounter with
Saddam in court. Where is the strength when all the government does is
to talk and talk…going two years after the ‘monetization movie’ the
latest is that Ministers and top government officials are colonizing the
process and yet we want the civil servants to serve with strength?
Several months of unpaid salaries and many more earning survival wages,
we talk of strength.
A nation that has been continually raped economically by
her leaders will loose faith and have only fate to look forward to.
Service to humanity, to fatherland, with love, strength and faith has
become ‘mouthology’ (rhetoric) because…
The labour of our heroes past is now in vain, this is not
the Nigeria that they or any of us envisaged but indeed it is the
Nigeria we deserve. Because we all got here somehow, it was not the job
of spirits, we got to this point of decay where the National anthem is
no longer sang in schools instead like slaves that our kids have become
in the assembly grounds the sing the hymn “we shall overcome someday”.
We have become encapsulated in the burden of struggling towards
nationhood with a patriotic zeal, one tends to buy the argument that we
got our independence on a platter of gold and so, and we knew not what
to do with it, and when we discovered black gold, we became Mickey mouse
and went spending without looking at our pockets. So the dreams of our
heroes past are nightmares now.
Last year in the United States the National Association
for Music Education launched a large 3-year initiative called the
“National Anthem Project”. The anthem project is to revive America’s
patriotism by educating Americans about the importance of the
Star-Spangled Banner-both the flag and song…despite the critics the
project has been warmly received and is chaired by First Lady Laura
Bush. This silently speaks volume of the attachment that an anthem holds
for any nation.
Let me end by the last stanza of the national anthem “one
nation bound in freedom, peace and unity”. The type of peace in Ibadan
pioneered by Adedibu or that in Jos inspired by the impasse amongst the
EFCC, the State House Members and the Governor. What manner of freedom,
that of association, speech…when journalists have become government
lackeys and security personnel prowl the streets looking for treasonable
‘felonists’ like me when robbers and assassins operate in freedom, peace
from security operative and unity from a fearful populace. Is Nigeria
really united…? When Obasanjo has achieved virtually the
unachievable-divide the North, confused the South, deceived his
Southwest kinsmen, created an optical illusion for the Southsouth, made
the Southeast more gullible to the second fiddle role and has made sure
the Middle has been kept belted. It is a sad day ahead for this nation
if we fail to wake when our mates are waking; else we may wake up to
discover yesterday we were Nigerians, and tomorrow… Only Allah can tell
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