There Was Once a Dream

Let me begin our study of the social identity of Nigeria with a personal reflection on the changes in the images or identifications that the name Nigeria has conjured up in the past fifty-five years. The word Nigeria has been nearly emptied of its originally powerful meaning. While growing up in the 1970s, it had a magical significance, brimming with hope, creativity, and pride. As primary-school children we all thought or were taught that it was in the body of Nigeria that the black race was going to enter into the history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with technological power, dignity, and justice. We believed that in the body of Nigeria, in the idea of a very determined and proud group, all the potencies of the black race were concentrated and were arranged in such a way that they could transcend their earlier forms and rise to the level of global respectability. Alas, that Nigeria appears to have slipped away.

Local leaders came to our primary schools and set ablaze our imaginations. They told us we were the leaders of tomorrow and that we should aim to be the best in the world. Thus when I was either in primary three or four and I read somewhere that the average American child read over one million words a year, I decided to out-read every American child. Boy, I did read all the way to first-class honors in economics and earning summa cum laude in ethics at the PhD level, and I am still reading. Somebody, some cruel being, has taken that Nigeria away from me. Where is that Nigeria that can inspire small boys and girls?

When in 1975 soldiers and bureaucrats came to us in the secondary schools and promised that in the year 2000 everything would be great we believed them. As secondary students in forms one and two, we believed the promise wholeheartedly. The Year 2000 campaign fired our imaginations. We were ready to take on the world.