NIGERIA @ 57 Kayode Ekundayo & Sunday Michael Ogwu
We thank God that we are still together after 57 years of our independence. Unfortunately, this is not where we should be as a nation. Rather than progress, we have taken a reverse gear.
Before independence, Nigeria was a great country with huge potentials. At that time, the Saudi royal family used to come to Nigeria for medical treatment at the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan.
However, 57 years after independence, it is only those who do not have any option or are not recognised by any political party in Nigeria that patronise Nigerian hospitals.
Before and shortly after independence, Nigerians were enjoying regular water supply, we had regular light, we had goods roads; the public health officials were working on our roads, cutting grasses and the rest of them. Today, our roads have become waterlogged.
We need to sit down as a people to look at the architecture of Nigeria as a nation.
We built the University of Ife as one of the best universities in Africa, but look at all the universities we built after, which can we compare to Ife?
Look at our roads, there are very few places you can travel 50 meters without getting a pothole.
The present structure we are running in Nigeria is underdevelopment and it has taken us back. We must restructure Nigeria to a proper federal state.
Look at the federal roads, like the Lagos-Ibadan Road, they have been abandoned, so is the Apapa Road that was just given to Dangote. And we don’t even know what will happen now that The Federal Government is concessioning roads to private firms.
The structure of our country is not working, so we must agree on a system that can work in Nigeria. Different tribes and groups must embrace federalism so that every section in Nigeria can develop at their own pace, then we can now agree on what to do at the centre and make it effective and function properly.
Currently, every state government takes subvention from Abuja and that is why the Federal Government is overburdened and can’t perform and the state governments do not also perform despite the huge subventions.
The structure of our country is not working, so we must agree on a system that can work in Nigeria