An entity with different interpretations

“One nation” bound in freedom, peace and unity is culled from a line in Nigeria’s national anthem, And in the last line of the second stanza of the anthem, it says, “to build a nation where peace and justice shall reign”.

Looking at those lines in both the first and second stanzas of the national anthem, one obvious and common thing there is “one nation and peace” which is a far cry from how and who we are and represent as a nation today.

The issue of “one nation” is being thrown to the waste bin as we speak as everything and anything that bound us together as a nation seems to have been cut into pieces, things have fallen apart for us as a nation and it’s now inevitable that the center cannot hold any longer.

As a country, we are now a divided house that cannot stand and it’s gradually getting to the dreaded cliché of ‘to your tent, oh Israel’ which was not the original script. The problem with the discrepancy is that it makes peaceful coexistence a total mirage to such an entity as Nigeria.

We cannot achieve progress in such a toxic atmosphere where no one trusts anyone and no one agrees with the other, making everyone a suspect.

Is it possible for Nigeria to be an entity with common goal and interest again?  We are gradually becoming an entity with so many interpretations about us which is not healthy and we need urgent surgical operation in our mentality to get back to the “good old days”.

David Wole Owaboye,

Lagos State.

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