Why Nigeria still falters 65 years after independence. By Prince Dr Wumi Akintide 

Why Nigeria still falters 65 years after independence. By Prince Dr Wumi Akintide 

Any nation whose economy can be held hostage by a single individual, a workers’ union, or a tribal group wielding political and military power for more than a century is a nation in deep crisis.

This, in essence, is the Nigerian story, one that this article will attempt to unravel and explain.

We now understand why Nigeria has not worked efficiently as we would all have a right to expect 65 years after independence and why the country has become a Pandora Box, all things considered.

The article would explore who to blame for the tragedy and what is being done by the current Federal Government to create a pathway out of the doldrums or distress in which we have found our country

First of all Nigeria was built on a quick sand from its very foundation in 1914 by Lord Lugard and our British Colonial Masters by their siding with the weakest link in the Nigerian chain of power configuration for the emerging country. It was like the South was made a junior partner in the merger with the North which at that point was in far worse shape in fiscal landscape to be very candid and truthful

The British Government committed a major blunder for the future survival of the country by merging into one country three irreconciliable and culturally divergent tribes into one country for their administrative convenience and expediency.

The British Authorities created the merger of the North and the Southern Protectorates just for the British to be able to use the resources and the fiscal buoyancy of the South to augment and to sustain the fiscal stability of the North and to save Great Britain from having to spend their own resources to maintain and to run a colony they have established to serve their own economic interest and not the economic interest of the unworkable country and the Tower of Babel they Have just Created.

If they meant well for Nigeria from the get go, one of the first things they would have done was to add the teaching of Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba to the early education curriculum of Nigeria if not immediately but at least within these first 50 years of taking over the country.

What did they do? They made it compulsory for Nigerians to focus more on making English the “Lingua Franca” of their new Colony and to apply that same policy to all of the British Colonies in West Africa namely Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Gambia for a start.

The British Authorities working side by side with the Church Missionaries had decided to use religion as a bait to soften any resistance from the South in particular because they quickly realized that the Northerners were more insistent on keeping their Islamic faith than the Southerners were about their own native religion.

The British made an early decision to let the Northerners keep their Islamic faith, if they were willing to cooperate and to do the biddings of the Colonial Masters.

They therefore allowed the Northerners to keep their Islamic Faith and their way of life by adopting the Indirect Rule System which was later extended yo the South to minimize the resistance from the more feudalistic System in the North, while they were more open to opening schools based on Western education while the North stuck to their Islamic education and cultural system and that explains the yawning gap between the North and the Southern Protectorate in education up till now

They knew the Northerners, as at that point in time, were much more easier to macro-manage than the South .

They therefore allowed the Northerners to keep the feudalistic system they met on the ground but they allowed those traditional institutions to continue to govern their own people but to now do so in the name of His Royal Majesty the King and the Southerners and the Northerners were quite open to that principle of indirect rule.

That was the nexus or the beginning of the Nigerian problem when the traditional rulers had begun to lose their power but nobody knew that for a fact at that point in time. Today the proliferation of traditional titles all over the place by the political class have further weakened the institution so much so that traditional rulers are not only subservient to State Governor, but also to the Chairman of their Local Government.

Over time time the British first discovered Tin Ore in the North and Coal in the Eastern Region and for many years those two minerals had remained the main pillar of the Nigerian Economy before other minerals and Cash crops like Ground nuts and Cotton in the North and Cocoa and Palm Oil and Palm Kernel and Rubber became the dominant cash crops in the South

That was long before Oil and liquified Gas were discovered in the Niger Delta Area of the Southeast.

Rather than diversify the Nigerian Economy from the get go Petrol and liquified Gas now account for close to 95 percent of the externally generated revenues of the country and Nigeria became more or less a one product Economy which is truly dangerous for any country.

Once that became a fait accompli, the British who still continue to be the major adviser to Nigeria after granting the country her independence on October 1st, 1960.

If the British Gover ever knew there was such a heavy deposit of light Crude Oil in Nigeria they probably would have found some excuses to delay granting independence to Nigeria at the time it did.

But the British still remained a major ally and adviser to the new Nation.

They did not encourage Nigeria to build its own Refinery from the get go.

They instead encouraged Nigeria to bring Nigeria crude oil overseas at very cheap price and they sell back the refined oil at Triple or quadruple the price so the trading arrangement benefitted the British more than it did Nigeria.

When Nigeria finally saw a need to build their own local Refineries , the British made sure the Refineries did not work and they use Nigerians to sabotage those refineries just like they are still doing till today with the conivance of Nigerian Professionals in the Oil Sector Business.

The looming crisis between the Dangote Refineries and NNPC and the Workers Union of the Oil Industry and we are now witnessing now is a byproduct of the problems I have briefly analyzed with this article .

We now know why NNPC has failed woefully and why the new Dangote Refinery has temporarily closed down for now and why the country may soon explode and implode, if care is not taken by the Federal Government to address the situation.

That in a nutshell is why Nigeria is where it is today.

Who to blame? We have our British Colonial Masters and our own Government and political leaders and our own people to blame for where we are today.

Once upon a time the live wire of the Nigerian Economy was concentrated in the hands of few filthy- rich Individual like Dangote who has now become the richest man in Africa because he very much enjoyed Government patronage.

He was no doubt a very hard working Businessman but it was also true that he had enjoyed Government patronage arguably more than any Businessman of era and generation.

He got that advantage because of his tribal identity as a Fulani man from Kano.

Who are those who have helped in any way to mitigate Nigerian problem on the situation.

The first I have identified are Journalists like Olayiwola Alaga of the Yoruba World Center, a Research Institute of Nigerian Political History based at the premier University of Ibadan and his colleagues named Ademola Adejare and Yemi Ogunjobi

I give much of credi to very bright journalists like Edmund Obilo who is making History with his State Affairs Series and Documentary which I have found to be very educative and sound and flawlessly instructive.

I rest my case.

Prince Dr Wumi Akintide a public affairs commentator writes from Oyemekun Terrace New York City 1st October 2025