Independence day celebration is the most unnecessary annual event in Nigeria and other underdeveloped African nations.
What is the reason for the celebration; what calls for the celebration?
Nigerians celebrating that the country is free from its colonial masters and colonial rule, and so what?
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We should ask ourselves these basic questions; are we better off governing ourselves, is Nigeria in any way better than when it was under colonial rule, or is Nigeria worse now? We all know the answers to these questions.
The countries that deserve to be celebrating independence day and make a big deal out of it are countries like the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Bahamas, and other developed countries that were former colonies of the United Kingdom because they can boldly beat their chests and say that they are better off governing themselves than when the British was in charge of governance and it is obvious that they are better off as the evidence is glaring in their economy, human capital development, infrastructural development, education, etc.
As a citizen of Nigeria and or a citizen of other underdeveloped African Nations that are former British colonies, is independence really worth celebrating? Independent from what exactly?
We are more impoverished than they were under the colonial powers. We are enveloped in abysmal corruption.
Don’t you see that it is paradoxical to celebrate independence day in Nigeria and make a big fuss about it? We do not deserve to Jubilate or celebrate freedom from colonial rule yet, maybe we can in the near future, but we do not deserve the pleasure of celebrating freedom from colonial reign yet.
Someone may raise the argument that nothing beats freedom; that it is better to be poor and have your freedom than to be a rich slave but can we for all good reason claim that African countries are free? We might be free from other taskmasters with white-colored skin but we were only handed over to other despotic and corrupt colonial masters who happen to have the same color of skin as us and happen to be our kinsmen.
Being a slave under a white man and being a slave under your fellow black man, you are still a slave and you are not in any good conscience independent by any stretch of the imagination.
The reason why we think we are enjoying freedom under our current leaders is that they share the same color of skin with us, speak the same languages with us, are from the same tribes with us and we happen to see them in our religious centers and we are forced to think that they are one of us, but do not be deceived, they are still taskmasters who took over from the white taskmasters and will rather prefer to keep you as their slaves and make sure that the resources never get evenly distributed so you don’t acquire the material resources to stand up to them.
These black slave masters are far more brutal than the colonial slave masters but they were able to gaslight us into believing that we enjoy freedom under their reign.
Until we get rid of these black taskmasters who call themselves our leaders and build “a close to” utopian Nigeria where every citizen will have access to good education, where the economy will be stable, where there will be jobs for the qualified ones, where there will be high human capital development, infrastructural development and other good things of life, we are not free or independent yet and we do not deserve to celebrate independence and the past 62 previous independence day celebration we have had since 1960 were just mere deception and delusion of grandeur.