In 2022, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as he then was, expressed the wish to return our lost treasure, our national anthem at independence. He said it was better because it was about brotherhood, service, justice, peace and prosperity. Now he is the President and God has granted his wish of reclaiming the anthem from the jaws of archives to which the military consigned it 46 years ago.
Since yesterday, we the children of that anthem who sang have mixed feelings about the anthem. On the one hand, it has immersed us in the nostalgia of the good old Nigeria in which we sang it at our school assemblies. On the other, we grieve over the failure of the nation to realise the dream of anthem; instead, our majority have continued to work against it in public and in private.
Motherland
Many leaders have not treated Nigeria as their “native land”; instead they continue to sell it to foreign interests. The citizens too have not been treating it as a motherland. Visit the internet and see the degree of disdain that many Nigerians treat the country with. Many are refusing to stand with us “in brotherhood”, wanting a nation of their own “tribe and tongue”. This, even after their agitation caused the deaths of our leaders and three million citizens few years after the anthem was born.
Many also, on both sides of the faith divide, do not stand with others in one brotherhood. They shed the blood of innocent Nigerians and prefer members of their faith above others in appointments and opportunities, thus creating a hatred and nepotism that perished the culture of merit which we enjoyed for quite a while into our adulthood some 40 years ago.
Beside, are we the “Nigerians all, and proud to serve our sovereign motherland?” or are our majority proud to serve themselves from the public treasury and cultivate the corruption that destroyed every good we inherited from our fathers, of excellent civil service, functional industries, estates, public utilities, etc?
Our Flag
Our anthem says “our flag shall be our symbol that truth and justice reign, in peace and battle honoured and this we count as gain”. The greed and corruption especially of public servants—who sadly were the children who sang that anthem in the 1960s—have unleashed on Nigerians an injustice that has rendered our majority poor: unemployed, hungry, homeless and insecure. “In peace and in battle,” they have not honoured the flag or its symbols but only themselves, their relatives and cronies.
As a result, as many of them are dead already, that generation has not handed “on to our children a banner without stain”. Instead, we have been handing over to them a banner stained with hatred, suffering and blood.
Prayer
Finally, God has certainly not answered the prayer of those children and their parents because they have evidently failed “to build a nation where no man is oppressed.” The masses whom it pinches most will testify to the rejection of the prayer.
Yet, the last part of the prayer still stands: “And so with peace and plenty, Nigeria may be blessed.” To achieve the blessing of God the leadership must wake up to its responsibility. It alone steers the vehicle that can make Nigeria the land of peace and plenty by prudently utilising the resources that God has blessed this nation with. But as long as they continue to consult greed and consort with corruption, the “we hail thee” anthem they returned will be nothing but a testament of their failure to abide by its pledge or pursue its dream. Any time it is read it will be a spit on their face.
The National Anthem
Nigeria, we hail thee,
Our own dear native land,
Though tribe and tongue may differ,
In brotherhood, we stand,
Nigerians all, and proud to serve
Our sovereign Motherland.
Our flag shall be a symbol
That truth and justice reign,
In peace or battle honour’d,
And this we count as gain,
To hand on to our children
A banner without stain.
O God of all creation,
Grant this our one request,
Help us to build a nation
Where no man is oppressed,
And so with peace and plenty
Nigeria may be blessed.