It has become a common phenomenon among some Nigerians to continually heap the blame over the country’s backwardness on the British colonialists. They blame them, especially for what they (Nigerians) perceive as wrong amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates of the nation in 1914. To this class of Nigerians, this marked the beginning of failure in attempts towards the development of the most populous country of the blacks in the world.
This posture is unfair to the British colonialists. There was nothing like Nigeria in the 17th century. Using the Biblical phrase, The present geopolitical entity was without form and void. It was so terrible that there was scramble for and partition of West Africa around 1884 by nations in Europe, including France, Britain, Germany, Denmark and the United States of America. In order words, these countries were dividing and choosing portions to possess among the lands representing today’s west Africa.
A mild sucour came in 1886 when Sir George Godie founded the Royal Niger Company, a British Mercantile company that took responsibility for not only trading in the Rivers Niger and Benue areas but also offer its own type of commercial governance over the people that inhabited the place at the time. The company maintained its own army and police for the purpose of peace maintenance until the zone was handed over to the British government on January 1, 1900 AD.
This was the beginning of the journey into Nigeria’s nationhood. But then, there was no clear cut identity and demarcations. Prior to the Amalgamation of 1914, the place was also like a matured boy-child without circumcision. The status remained same till 1897 when the same colonialists gave the West African region a name – Nigeria by Flora Shaw (later known as Lady Lugard).
The people gave Nigeria ‘eye openers’ – education and religion. The first ever centre of learning, St Thomas Anglican Nursery and Primary School was established in the country in 1843 at Badagry, Lagos state.
With all sense of sincerity, if these Nigerians criticizing Britain were there in 1886, what could they have done differently, given the country’s population and knowledge base at the time? One of the most difficult truths to be told is that if the black man with his selfish inclination was in the shoes of the Colonialists, nothing would have been given to their colonized territories by way of development.
Despite the existence of over 400 languages spoken in the United States of America. USA and with a population of about 3.5 million people, the country remains the strongest democracy in the world. And she was once a colony of Britain like Nigeria and India.
India got her independent in n1947. Yet her economic status when compared to Nigeria’s does not reflect that she is only 13 years older than Nigeria in terms of nationhood.
It is important therefore that Nigerians begin to blame themselves for the state of affairs in the country while appreciating Britain for the light she brought into the nation. They provided America the freehand to choose their leaders after independence in … and they chose a man with a British ‘blood’, George Washington as their first president in 1789. Since then till date, the country has continued to prosper with emphasis only on things that unite the people as a nation with common goals and aspiration – to act as God’s own country.
As the 2027 general election approaches, it is only logical that Nigerians focus on the type of leaders with the nation’s promised land in mind and also with a mind set of the country first, and not self or tribe.
When the Tower of Babel was to be constructed, God saw that it was a dangerous thing for mankind to achieve. He put a stop to it by changing only the common language spoken by the inhabitants of the earth, not their character. It is, therefore, high time Nigerian citizens began to cultivate the right attitudes that have caused the major difference between the country and the developed nations. According to Keith Harrell; “attitude is everything”. The country must therefore develop it with relevant agencies of government.
