For most Nigerians, irrespective of social class, have shown their anger and anxiety over the country’s current insecurity, increase in fuel price, increase in prices of goods and the present fall of Naira against Dollar.

In the past, Independence Day was a major national celebration that was marked with fanfare and merrymaking across the country. School children, students, workers and paramilitary and military formations engaged in colourful, choreographed parades at local government, state and federal levels. Families went on outings, but it appears that Nigerians are fast forgetting the essence of the Independence Day.

The theme for the 2023 Independence Day Anniversary is tagged; Nigeria @ 63: Renewed Hope for Unity & Prosperity.

Going by the theme for this year’s independence anniversary, after 63 years of the “unity in diversity” aspiration, Nigeria remains as the late statesman, Obafemi Awolowo, remarked many years before self-rule, “a mere geographical expression.”

Today, the dream of greatness is elusive, and the country is in reverse gear. On the UNDP’s Human Development Index 2023, it ranked 164th out of 191 countries, based on health, education, and living standards. While average global GDP per capita in 2022 was $12,607, according to WorldData, Nigeria’s stood at $2,184, compared to Brazil’s $8,918, South Africa’s $6,776, and Egypt’s $4,295.

Unemployment rate hit 33.3 per cent by 2020 and currently hovering around 40 per cent. Among the youth, it is about 53.4 per cent. Inflation rose to 25.8 per cent in August, and food inflation by 29.1 per cent, reported Trading Economics. The Composite Consumer Price Index stood at its highest in 15 years last month, the NBS said.

With weak leadership and a distorted federal system, the republic is hurtling towards failure. On the Fragile States Index 2023 prepared by the Fund for Peace, Nigeria ranked 15th most fragile out of 179 countries.

Insecurity reigns, overwhelming the dysfunctional security architecture. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Location Project estimate that over 80,000 persons were killed in the country from 1999-2022 by terrorists, bandits, Fulani herdsmen, armed robbers, kidnappers, and in inter-communal and sectarian clashes. In 2021, says SBM Intelligence, 10,366 persons were slaughtered.

Apart from Islamic terrorists in the North-East, bandits in the North-West, and Fulani herders/militants in the North-Central spreading death and destruction, a separatist agitation in the South-East has spun off a virulent terrorist element. The South-West and South-South regions also host murderous cults and criminal gangs, militants, armed robbers and oil infrastructure thieves and vandals.

In the 10 years to June 2023, reported the National Security Tracker of the Council on Foreign Relations, 19,366 Nigerians were kidnapped in 2,694 incidents. After the spectacular abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, in 2014 by terrorists, and of another 110 girls in Dapchi, Yobe State, in 2018, the criminals have abducted 769 students in various Northern states since 2020, according to Aljazeera. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre records 3.6 million refugees within and outside the country.

Ranked sixth most terrorism-impacted country 2022, Nigeria hosts three of the world’s six deadliest terror groups – Boko Haram/ISWAP, bandits, and Fulani militants. In the just-released 2023 Global Organised Crime Index, Nigeria was ranked sixth.

Nigeria is at a bad junction. It has failed to imbue a sense of oneness among its people primarily because of the wrong political strategy of centralisation. Elections further polarise the populace. Its various experiments with democracy, lacking the essential ingredients of a federalist superstructure, and visionary leadership, deliver misery. The Fourth Republic especially, is led by particularly self-serving politicians

Now 63 and lame, Nigeria is living on borrowed time, its fundamental contradictions, worsened by successive inept, corrupt, and visionless leadership, are driving it into implosion.

Beyond the reasons given by the government for opting for low-key independence anniversary celebrations, some Nigerians, who spoke with DNTWOK, are of the opinion that Nigeria has nothing to celebrate.

Speaking with Mr Alvin Johnson a civil servant, said “Today is just like every other first day of the month. What can we celebrate in this Nigeria, is it the high cost of living or the lack of payment of salaries or the insecurity”

Mrs Funmi Adams, an entrepreneur, noted that with each passing day, Nigerians keep loosing faith in a better Nigeria and their leaders.