It is such an honour and a privilege to have been asked to give this 80th birthday lecture in celebration of a most distinguished Nigerian, a progressive public intellectual, an elder statesman and a major subaltern in the struggle to return Nigeria to a genuinely democratic and restructured nation – father, teacher, activist, diplomat, mentor, culture enthusiast, broadcasting guru, and most importantly, old boy from the best secondary school in Nigeria, our very own Uncle Yemi Farounbi.
I have been asked to speak on “The Future and the Challenges of the Nigerian nation.” The unspoken assumption in that topic, of course, is that we all agree that the geographic area known as Nigeria has attained the status of a Nation and that I, the speaker, knows what the future portends and even more importantly, that I possess the intellectual key to address the challenges militating against that assumed future. Well, I don’t think it would take much time for us to arrive at a consensus that twenty five years after embarking on our current electoral journey, our citizens are more disillusioned about the state of the nation than ever. But that’s where the consensus is likely to end. Truly, like many compatriots, I often ask the question what the challenges confronting us are and how best we should approach the nation building task in the country.
In all segments of our population, the thirst for excuses and culprits to blame for our challenges is an insatiable one. There are those of us who think the problem with Nigeria is her size, some others think it is the many ethnic interests conflating one another for domination. Others think it is all about bad leadership, while some others believe it is the constitution.
There are those who blame poverty as the issue, while some pan-Africanists believe colonialism, foreign religions and intellectual imperialism are the reasons we are still lagging behind. In the midst of this epistemological melee, there have even been more disillusioned solutions as to how to end the problem – the loudest of these today are the clamours for secession and unending complaints about marginalisation! For me, whatever defects that currently ails our country can be corrected without having to collapse the whole structure. This is very logical if we understand that nation building is an endless endeavour and that no generation is ever satisfied with the work it has done, it is the generation that comes after that can truly appreciate the progress that has been made when they begin to take for granted what was scarcely available for the generation before them. Nation building is an unfinished business.Renowned Nigerian author, Ben Okri in his award winning book, The Famished Road, tells of a people who, for several generations have been trying to build a road.