It is doubtful for how long a country beset by all manner of challenges can expect to survive. In Nigeria`s case, it is simply a miracle that with the many infirmities that have afflicted the country since independence, the country is yet to break up completely and its debris long washed away by the tide of time.
If Lord Lugard`s disastrous amalgamation of 1914 held on for so long while the colonial administrator was around, it was because under his stern watch, the project he had ill-advisedly coupled together had had option but to hold together for as long as he was in the picture.
Specifically, while he was there, those who would tamper with the country had no choice but to be of good behaviour. The feel- good factor engendered by independence in 1960 only acted as a glue long enough for cataclysmic events of 1967-70 to unfold. Nigeria survived a war. Many Nigerians survived the war but with each day that has gone through the dawn-dusk cycle since then, conviction has concretized that the country lost its soul on the battlegrounds of Biafra, a loss from which it has never fully recovered.
The military coups which precipitated the Nigerian civil war continued long after the war. Indeed,it took a providential death for that sad chapter to be closed for Nigeria once and for all. However, the gloss of the new chapter turned for Nigeria by the country`s return to democracy in 1999 has since been toned down by the grime of corruption and leadership failure.
A stomping ground for thieves and saboteurs.
The oil Nigeria discovered in Oloibiri, Bayelsa State in 1956, has kept petrodollars streaming into the country. But it is doubtful that the oil, when put side by side with the problems that have followed, has been a blessing.
As money has come from oil, shocking planning has since other sectors of the economy criminally ignored for decades. The country is only now beginning to reap the effects of such criminal negligence.
The passage of time has had the effect of passing Nigeria from one inept administration to another like a limp doll. It remains a telling testament of Nigeria`s struggle as a country than in more than sixty-two years of independence, it is yet to get a leader that was courageous enough to leave behind a legacy fit enough to become the stuff of lore and legend for generations to come.
Instead, what the country has been plagued with are stories of how different leaders at different times either stashed away billions of the public funds in foreign countries or simply allowed abominable corruption to thrive under their watch while the institutions tasked with checking such barked but never bit.
A shocking discovery
The lines of Nigeria`s year so far have been dotted with the scandal of oil theft. As a flailing economy has continued to nosedive, a government that leaves a lot to be desired by its incompetence has been forced to acknowledge the damage oil theft is doing to the country.
Figures have varied wildly. Some of those figures have shown that everyday, Nigeria loses about $40 million dollars to the activities of oil thieves. The syndicates who carry out these grave acts of sabotage against Nigerians are said to include foreigners as well as some high-ranking members Nigerians in government as well as in the security agencies.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation recently uncovered an illegal oil connection from the Forcados Terminal that operated for all of nine years. The illegal four-kilometer connection line from from the Forcados Terminal into the sea had existed for close to a decade.
The problem remains a political as well as an economic problem. If the government can summon enough political will, it can be ruthless in clamping down on those who have been in the business of stealing Nigeria`s oil for many years.
Clamping down on them is a matter of life and death for the Nigerian economy which has recently fallen into desperately hard times thereby plunging millions of Nigerians in extreme poverty.
Kene Obiezu,
Twitter: @kenobiezu
