Nigeria that Would not Have Been (Please Share)
It is 2056, I sat by my balcony of a duplex in a place where I used to call my village but now it turned to a city. Grey haired and healthy. I looked amazingly at the streets that were cast in nylon coal tar, eating pringles made in Jos Nigeria. As I thought about good things in life, I looked over the the car my 25 year old son had bought for me after graduating from the prestigious SLS University in Kontagora. The car was made in Nnewi, a town in south eastern Nigeria. The car was being recharged. I thought again, thirty years ago, only mobile phones could be charged, now a car made by my nation is recharged like a mobile phone when I was in my forties.
A few months back, I was in Abuja Nigeria, a city I lived in until my retirement in 2026 had changed; it is now a mega city. A city that once had its electricty rationed, each area having 4 hours of electricity per day now has 24 hours of electricity. Electric trains arrived their stations every 10 minutes. I heard the trains were manufactured in Lagos, Nigeria. The defunct Peugeot company in Lagos was bought over by young man from Jos plateau and was used churn out electric trains and their exotic cabins which we only saw in the Europes when we were young men. I was informed that the regional train line between Port Harcourt up to Liberia was made by the same company, Datong Electro Mobility (DEM) Limited.
I called my 25 year old son to tell him the story of how Nigeria had narrowly escaped being subdivided into chuncks of little countries because it was falling apart due to bad Governance. Nigeria shared cabinate positions based of fair division between first people’s religion, then the region they came from then their professional abilities were looked at later. This made some people to be relevant king makers for over 40 years. Their ideology was to keep Nigeria one but by managing the regions with National Political Appointments based on fair distribution across the areas of conflict namely religion and region. This was because of the tensions that were evident as a result of sentiments drawn along those lines.
In 2017, regions started declaring the desire to break away from the country. There were tensions everywhere. Northerners living in the south felt threatened. Southerners living in the North felt theatened. From time to time, violence erupted and people were maimed simply because of where they came from. Nigeria was at the brink of another civil war.
2019 was an election year, young men took a decision to break the norm of recycling of leaders.They declared that any one that had served in any previous Government would not be re-elected. This singular decision changed the destiny of Nigeria. 80% of those elected into power were unpopular young people; some in their thirties. Things began to take shape and got to thus stage where you are enjoying life in a country that was nearly subdivided. The young men built this new Nigeria on the strengths of difference; agriculture in the North, Technology in the south east, education in the South West. The synergy put everything in place and it was the seed that led to today’s Nigeria. The most important step they took, in my opinion, was the introduction of peace education which was compulsory from primary school. This built a based for the synergy against the apathy that existed in the past.
Today as an old man of over 70 years, I looked with awe at a “Nigeria that Would not Have Been”. I have free healthcare just because I am old and have served Nigeria all my youthful years not because of my religion nor did I lobby my highly placed kinsmen.
Datong, Dominic Gwaman
dgdatong@gmail.com, December 7, 2056
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