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Nigeria’s national anthem: A post mortem

By Bayo Fasunwon
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Arise o Compatriots

Nigeria’s call obey

To serve our fatherland

With love and strength and faith

The labour of our heroes past

Shall never be in vain

To serve with heart and might

One nation bound in freedom

Peace and unity.

 

Once to an every tribe and nation come a period of apprehension, a time when encouragement is needed, and a period where fear or flight becomes the available options. At such times, as it is with men who make up the political system, the nation encourages itself with songs. Songs have a healing and motivational effect on the singers, especially when the lyrics are understood. This is what makes the songs of Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Bob Marley an aphrodisiac to the afflicted and oppressed. So much more is the power of songs that the presence of the supernatural is heralded by songs in places of worship. However, these exemplary songs have transcended the ownership of any nation, and have become global in its outreach. The power of songs to any nation therefore necessitates that countries have their own songs, which are called national anthems. Of these nations, Nigeria is not left behind.

Nigeria’s national anthem in its current form is one of the characteristics that portrays to other nations that she is a sovereign nation. This anthem has been sung over the years by generations of ‘liberated’ Nigerians. Students have learnt it by rote, while political appointees are expected to sing it during interviews and most Nigerians sing it with enthusiasm whenever Nigeria lines up on the football pitch. We sing it so that our Eagles can soar high. However, do Nigerians live the song? How can they live what they do not understand?

Arise o compatriots!  is the first line of Nigeria’s national anthem. The first word states ‘Arise’. It takes a person or people who are asleep to be aroused from sleep. A sleeping people beget a sleeping nation. Given that over the years, Nigeria has been described by academics within and outside the nation as a sleeping giant, there is no validation needed to describe the nationals as a sleeping people. It takes an association of  sleeping people to watch as their elected representatives engage in the pillage of their collective resources, without revolting against such malfeasance.  It takes a sleeping people to rejoice as their embezzled resources are being used to buy their votes during elections. It takes a sleeping suffering and smiling people, watch as policies that are repugnant to human dignity are rolled out to exacerbate their poverty and distress, without resistance.. A people awake would not fold their hands as the education sector that ought to banish ignorance is starved of resources that would illuminate and liberate their consciousness, thereby turning them from darkness to light. The national anthem had seen ahead, that Nigerians would sleep and allow their enemies to sow tares amongst their wheat. It takes a sleeping nation, blinded by elitist brainwash, being forced to choose between a Barabbas and a Judas, as their Presidents, while Jesus is given up to crucifixion  with applause.  Arise o sleepers of a sleeping nation!

However, could it be that the call for rousing from slumber restricted to a few Nigerians? The call of the nation’s anthem goes to the compatriots. Who is a compatriot?  A compatriot refers to people of the same country, those who see themselves as colleagues, brothers of a nation. Does this describe Nigerians? The elites have drummed it into the ears of all who care to listen that Nigeria is a mistake of 1914. A people of diverse cultures, languages, and orientations, forced to be one for the convenience of their captors. Therefore, the elites want the people to believe. Nigerians who meet outside the country, irrespective of their ethnic divide and religion see themselves as brothers. During football matches, NYSC programmes and church services (where miracles are being sought), Nigerians are one, undivided nation. However, those who are benefitting from the inglorious acquisition and colonization of the ‘national cake’ shout at the roofs tops that the nationals are not compatriots but ethnic nationals. Now comes the call for restructuring. From 1914 or from 1960?. The call to arise goes to those who see themselves as one people, one nation with one destiny. Is it a call to the oppressed Nigerians, who are united in poverty but are divided by the whims and caprices of their oppressors? Alternatively, is it a call to the elites who are united in greed and oppressive, but are disunited in their quest for power to control the instruments of oppression? Who exactly is a Nigerian, to whom the anthem calls?

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Nigeria’s call obey is the commandment that follows the call to be awake. Right from October 1, 1960, Nigerians have been called to make sacrifices. Sacrifices, for the survival of the fatherland. The poor, underpaid and suffering Nigerians have been forced by structural adjustment policies under different names and guises. Personal freedoms, salary cuts, nonpayment of salaries, lands and houses; many times lives, have been laid on the altar of the call for sacrifices by Nigerians, without results to the common man. It seems it is only the Priests (politicians, elites, and men in cassocks and turbans) who have been the selected beneficiaries of the blood of the sufferers. A nation calls by the voices of its citizens. The citizens’ call for qualitative education at less cost, good governance, reduced cost of living, infrastructural development, job creation and sustenance of human dignity have never been heeded over the years.   The call of the people, and hence Nigeria have been silenced by homosexually centered oppressive leadership over a sleeping nation. What is Nigeria’s call? A call for a responsive and responsible governance,  or a call for continued oppression of the sacrifice bearers. According to Henri Fayol, there ought to be a unity of direction and a unity of command before an organisation’s or national goal can be achieved. For a nation with diverse commands and commanders (cabals) and scattered direction, where is the call to be heeded?

Moreover, To serve our fatherland with love and strength and faith, seemed to be call of Nigeria, as perceived by the author of the National anthem. In the various researched conducted in the academia by various researchers and my humble self, fatherland does not seem to refer to Nigeria in the minds of the average Nigerian. An Ijaw man refers to the creeks, situated differently as it were, from the creeks of the Urhobos, Itsekiris and the Ilajes as the fatherland. The Hausas cringed at being referred to as a Fulani, while the Gwaris can take to arms at being called a Hausa despite being from the same geopolitical zone. Such is the case that a Fulani for the sake of his cows can slaughter farmer,  a Boko haram can sack local governments, and a people can agitate for a Biafra. All ethnic cleansing, killings and violent resistance are birthed in response to the anthems call “to serve our fatherland with love and strength and faith”. The strength, love, and faith exhibited by ‘land grabbers’ and ‘land preserver’ are directed unconsciously towards the nation that calls for it. Could it be that Nigerians are seeking for true federalism, and or a confederal system? Have Nigerians lost faith in the nation or has the nation lost faith in her diverse peoples? There is the need for Nigeria to stand as a father: protective, productive, supportive provider to the children she claimed to have birthed. Until Nigerians are weaned from the bosoms of their ethnic fathers, through good and cohesive governance, they would continue to heed the call of their primordial fathers, while the national father fulfills Chinua Achebe’s prophesy and implodes ingloriously.

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Nigeria through her anthem expresses a great determination that ‘the labour of our heroes pass shall never be in vain’. The Greek mythologies and in recent times, the Avengers’ movies that have captured the hearts of our children gives us a reflection of heroes as being people endowed with supernatural strength. They exhibit great courage, and use their esoteric and physical endowments to save their people from their oppressors. Nigerians are well aware of the American heroes, Roman heroes, south African heroes and Biblical heroes, their deeds and legacies. However, who are the Nigerian heroes? What are their heroic deeds and legacies? Nigeria and her offspring have always demonized their founding heroes, erased the legacies of her heroes past, killed the living heroes, and suppressed upcoming ones. I have always questioned the rationale behind denigrating masquerades and celebrating Father Christmas,  who in reality is an English masquerade. Nigerians demonise their ancestors and celebrate the ancestors of their colonial masters. A father once berated his child from watching Sango, a Nigerian movie and found nothing wrong in his child watching and acting like Thor in the Avengers. Meanwhile both Thor and Sango are regarded as Thunder gods.

Role modeling has a major motivator to youths in seeking the development of their nation. In Nigeria, the models (heroes) have been erased. At a time, the Federal Government thought it wise to remove History from the school curriculum. What a terrible mistake. Where else can Nigerians learn about the labours of their  heroes past aside studying their histories? The Nigerian child knows next to nothing about the deeds and persons of Lisabi, Queen Aminat, Moremi, Madam Tinubu, Aba women, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Herbert Macaulay, Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Adaka Boro, and the  likes of them. Other heroes who have fought for democracy with their blood and freedom are often hunted down by government, and celebrated at death. Tai Solarin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, MKO Abiola, Ken Saro-Wiwa and Chief Gani Fawehinmi have sad stories to tell in their graves. In recent times, our heroes who endanger and lose their lives in the service of the nation are buried privately, while looters are given state of the art burial.

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One nation bound in freedom, Peace and unity is the last verse of the nation’s energy drink. The word bound connotes several meanings encapsulated in two broad indications. Firstly, bound refers to the force of movement that propels an object to leap. This leap is however made impossible without an external, calculated, targeted, and intentional goal backed by force. This was the thought I perceive of the writer of the national anthem, but sad to say is not what it meant. It could have been so, if the nation had a development plan that successive regimes have followed to the letter, irrespective of the regime and persons in power. A leap could have held sacrosanct as the intention if there had been no policy somersaults in all sectors of the economy, abandoned projects all over the nation, and lack of direction on the part of the ruling class. Therefore, I would like to explain the second indication of the word, before pitching my tent.

Another indication of the word bound means to be tied, incapacitated, caged, demobilized, and subdued. It implies that in most cases, the struggles, efforts and determination of the bound to be loosed is mostly in futility. Nigeria has developed which other nations have copied and smiled at its dividends while Nigeria still groans. So many agendas have failed in a nation bound.

Can a nation be bound in freedom, peace, and unity? Yes. When criminals are free to carry out their nefarious activities without hot and fast justice, such freedoms will bind any nation. When legislators are free to make laws for their own benefits; religious fanatics are free to practice their heresies and ethnic groups are given the freedom to exterminate other groups, the nation can be bound. When a nation in search of peace and unity celebrate those that they should annihilate, embrace those forces that should be repelled, sign treaties with those they ought to war against, tolerate excesses that should be destroyed and adopt systems of government that should be abhorred, such a nation is bound. We must not fail to realize that war is peace through other means, and that peace without equal rights and justice is the celebration of imprisonment. This explains the various killings, sabotage, political crises, and reckless nature of the ‘constituted authorities’ who cover their ineptitude with the garment of freedom called immunity. Nigeria is in chains, as predicted by her national anthem.

This is my Coroner’s report of the post mortem carried out on Nigeria’s national anthem. The nation can move forward if they heed to the observations raised, arise and heed truthfully heed the call of a dying nation for change, and also change the last line of the anthem. May the destiny of this nation, be loosed from her bounds.

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Nigeria’s national anthem: A post mortem

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Nigeria’s national anthem: A post mortem

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