In 1914, in what has proven to be a moment of madness many years down the line, Lord Lugard, Nigeria`s British colonial administration amalgamated the Northern and Southern protectorates of Nigeria to become one country.
The amalgamation, done with little regard for the irreconcilable differences of the different regions was to prove an exceptional disaster in 1967 when a catastrophic civil war threatened everything the country had ever cherished. Coming just seven years after independence, Nigeria survived the war in 1967 but has since continued its journey to nationhood on crutches.
However, as a country founded on great hopes and liberated from the shackles of colonialism on great hopes, Nigeria` survived multiple military coups and heinous military administrations to return to democracy in 1999.
It has been twenty-three years of democracy and those who argue that the country has nothing to show for those democratic decades may have a point especially when the depredations witnessed under the Peoples Democratic Party which was in power from 1999-2015 are considered.
In 2015, Nigerians scrambled together what little was left of their hopes and deposited same in the candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari who was then fronted by the All Progressives Congress which was then the major opposition party.
These hopes caused a fledgling candidacy to blossom into a presidency in the general elections of that year, handing the then incumbent and his Peoples Democratic Party a historic defeat in the process.
However, those hopes have since waned. In seven years of President Muhammadu Buhari as the president of the country and the All Progressives Congress as the ruling party, many Nigerians, including many heroic survivors of the cataclysmic civil war of 1967-1970 have lived some of their worst experiences as Nigerians.
While poverty has continued to stalk the land with an insatiable vengeance, insecurity`s monstrous appetite has ensured that countless communities have been turned upside down with many innocent lives and livelihood violently lost.
While Nigerians have groaned under a drought brought on by the incompetence and ineptitude of a government that once promised so much, many of those who staff the government have shown nothing but chilling nonchalance, treating Nigerians with nothing but cold contempt along the line.
It is why the question must be asked whether or not anything good can come from the All Progressives Congress which as part of its forceful intention to contest the 2023 general elections holds up the frail hand of Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu as its candidate.
If Mr. Tinubu who occasionally loose lips cause his catalogue of gaffes to bulge was not controversial enough, his central message of ‘Renew Hope’ ahead of the elections is the stuff of nightmares.
Pray, what hope is there to renew? In 2015, Mr. Tinubu himself was central to the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC under whose watch the last dollops of hope have been savagely squeezed from the breasts of the Africa`s biggest democracy.
While Nigerians students were marooned at home as a result of the strike action embarked upon by the academic staff Union of Universities, the APC-led government led the jamboree that was the expression of the APC`S internal (un) democratic credentials, presumably with public funds.
It is under the APC that many Nigerians,having lost hope in their country, are fleeing the country as if death is the only fate that awaits those who refuse to flee.
Practically every promise made by the APC-led government since 2015 has been broken, yet Mr. Tinubu by some sorcery wants to renew hope.
It remains a measure of the scandalous aloofness of the APC as a party and Mr. Tinubu as its candidate that at such a critical stage of Nigeria`s life as a country and a democracy, they presume to place nothing on nothing and expect it by some miracle to become something and stand.
Nigerians were sold short in 2015 and again in 2019. If those for whom Nigeria is a commodity succeed a third time, Nigerians would have to count it as the moment all hope finally took flight from the country.
Kene Obiezu,
Twitter: @kenobiezu
