Nigeria: Independent of Feeling

Childhood Celebrations

A time of my childhood returns as a fleeting memory of Nigeria's independence celebrations, as today marks the 66th anniversary. Back then, at primary school in Jos, we practised marching like little soldiers, ready to demonstrate some sort of military prowess to the governor, who stood on a dais saluting the troops on this significant day.

If I remember correctly, it would have been October 1974, and that was the last time I took part in any such event. It was probably the only occasion on which we were close enough to a state capital to have a governor in attendance. Rayfield was home, Bukuru was for school, and the stadium in Jos was for marching.

Another notable public holiday would have been Children's Day, on the 27th of May. We donned our school uniforms and wore white socks, and there was a preference for canvas shoes; I had none, however, considering that my feet grew faster than shoes could be acquired to last a year.

An Outsider Looking In

Yet, for all these shared rituals, I am not sure I ever truly belonged. I had returned to Nigeria with my parents from England, and I was betrayed first by my accent, then by my outlook, and finally by the dawning realisation that many thought me different and apart, even when I tried my utmost to integrate.

There were benefits to this; I was excused from many traditional requirements that bound others. Being the outsider, though, could be difficult too, and one learns early that exemption and exclusion are often the same coin.

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Percolating in the recesses of the unforgettable is the national anthem of the time, "Arise, O Compatriots", the one adopted by the military junta in 1978 and sung until 2024. The very word "compatriot" has always sat with me as "comrade" does; it speaks of a bond forged around an idea, a creed, or a cause, rather than the quieter fact of belonging to a land or a people.

That is the slant I could never warm to, worsened by the servitude of unquestioning obeisance, and worse still by the pledge, recited by the people yet ignored by the rulers. I have written before of my want of any reverence for it, and I will not rehearse that dismissal here. [The entity is Nigeria, the identity is Nigerian]

A Fading Affinity

As I sit here today, mindful that Nigeria is marking its independence, the refrain of the readopted anthem rings in me like an earworm, a tune that lingers though its meaning has long drained away.

Then again, even the colonial slant of that original anthem, now sung once more, still seems to exemplify what Nigeria remains. My affinity for what she represents is fast fading. Beyond heritage, she no longer exerts the pull of nostalgia, save for her cuisine, nor offers any real sense of identity as the years pass.

In the first stanza alone, everything militates against its reach and appeal; it has long become a historical artefact, of things told rather than lived. When I left Nigeria, I was also released from the grip it once seemed to have, until I realised that, by jus soli, I was indeed of a wholly different nation to my parents' jus sanguinis.

There is an irony I can no longer ignore. On the day a nation remembers its independence from an empire, proclaimed from a dais to a saluting crowd, I find I have quietly come into an independence of my own, won not at once but by increments. Hers was from a crown; mine is of feeling, the last tie to loosen and the hardest to mourn, settling in only when the heart finally stops answering a call it no longer recognises.

Nigeria, we hail thee,
Our own dear native land,
Though tribes and tongues may differ,
In brotherhood we stand,
Nigerians all, are proud to serve
Our sovereign Motherland.

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